Using B-series for your Dev VM in Azure

Introduction

Earlier this week I tweeted my excitement of using an Azure B-series machine for my Dev VM in Azure. And Jan was curious to know what type I used…

Which size do you use?

— Jan Tielens (@jantielens) April 16, 2018

Which got a response from Sven that I would probably blog on it…

Wait a couple hours, days... He will create a blogpost with his full setup. 🙂 Would be great for everyone, sharing you experience. 🙂

— Sven Van den brande (@SVandenbrande) April 16, 2018

So…

Inbox Zero – How I (still) do it after about 10 years…

Introduction

A bit less than 10 years ago I posted about “Inbox Zero“. Though for as long as I’ve known the concept, I’ve been an avid fan/believer of it. Over the course of the years, I’ve evangelized about the concept to many, where a lot of people typically asked me : “Isn’t that really time-consuming?!?”. My answer has always been ; “It is a habit… And indeed, you invest a bit of time into it, though the gains of not having to pick up the same email(s) over and over again is where you easily win!”.

 

Theory

The basic premise of Inbox Zero is that your inbox is at all times.. EMPTY!

For a lot of people this seems impossible to achieve, though you realize this by going though the following flow for each mails that comes in… at the time it comes in. So yes, you “immediately” (as in the moment you open your mailbox) process all new mails. How do you do that, by the following rule set…

1. Do I/we need to care?
   1. No, Delete.
   2. Yes. Great! Is the mail something I should do?
      1. No, Delegate (forward).
      2. Yes. Interesting! Can I reply in less than 2-3 minutes?
         1. Yes, Respond (reply).
         2. No, Defer (flag for follow-up). => And schedule times to where you’ll focus on burning through your “backlog” (read: deferred mails), so Do.

 

Practical Guidance

That sounds quite simple to do? So why don’t we all do it?!? From what I’ve seen, it starts with not knowing / being taught the system. And on the other had, it also requires a given level of discipline / organization to achieve it. Though in my mind, it can be accomplished by all if you are just given a bit of practical guidance. That’s what we’ll be talking about today!

When your Single Page App needs CORS and meets Azure API Management with a Function Backend

Introduction

When you have an SPA (Single Page App), all your code is being run inside of your browser. This means that, from a network perspective, you’ll be talking to the APIs directly. It’s often (rightfully) said that SPAs are an untrusted client, where a typical server-side app is seen as a trusted client. Why is an SPA seen as untrusted? Because from the publisher side (the one providing the service/app), you do not control the device running the code. So this has a huge effect on the security risks involved and how you should mitigate them.

 

One of those mitigations is “CORS” ;

Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that allows restricted resources (e.g. fonts) on a web page to be requested from another domain outside the domain from which the first resource was served.[1] A web page may freely embed cross-origin images, stylesheets, scripts, iframes, and videos.[2] Certain “cross-domain” requests, notably Ajax requests, are forbidden by default by the same-origin security policy. (Source : Wikipedia)

 

With CORS, the request will indicate from which domain the calls would originate (and what actions / headers it would like to do). Therefore, the backend can check if the call is warranted or not…