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In the past few years, I have presented multiple sessions all around the world, although mostly virtual. Presenting for a live crowd was something I only did inside The Netherlands before.

With restrictions being lifted during 2022, new opportunities presented themselves and I was able to be in front of a live audience again, even outside the country!

Full article...

In the past few years, I have presented multiple sessions all around the world, although mostly virtual. Presenting for a live crowd was something I only did inside The Netherlands before COVID-19 struck the world.

With restrictions being lifted during the year of 2022, new opportunities presented themselves and I was able to be in front of a live audience again and on some occasions, even outside the country!

dotNed meeting February

This was not my first time doing a dotNed user group session. The session was still only online. It was interesting for me, because it was the first time, I would give my Azure cost management related session.

In Dutch it was called "Ons bint zuunig", setting the theme with Zeeuws meisje.

AzureLive

Still in a hybrid setup, the audience of AzureLive could watch the streams from home. However, half of the presenters joined physically at the same location where the recordings took place. It was nice to meet new people after doing everything virtually.

This was also my first time meeting Henk Boelman and Suzanne Daniels (my MCs), Stacy Cashmore, and Barbara Forbes as fellow speakers, which I would join again at later conferences.

dotNed Saturday

dotNed Saturday is an event where I have had the honor of speaking for multiple years now. I already did a talk about Azure Key Vault at the 2018 edition, but for this year the content was updated to reflect the current state of the service.

I was joined by (amongst others) Sander Molenkamp, Roland Guijt, Marcel de Vries, and Dennis Doomen as fellow speakers.

IglooConf: Midsummer

The first time I had to travel by plane to get to my speaking gig!

Not only was IglooConf a very nice 2-day conference in Helsinki 🇫🇮, it also meant multiple days being highly involved with the other speakers. My session was about Dapr, and how it can let you postpone architectural choices to a later moment in time.

I really had a blast together with Magnus Mårtensson, Glenn Colpaert, Alan Smith, Karl Ots, Mark Brown, Roberto Freato, Sakari Nahi, Rik Hepworth, Andres Erben, Pieter Vandenheede, and Stacy. Many of whom I will join at later conferences again.

Developer Week

This time I could take the train to the conference. Joined by my colleagues Hanno Embregts and Peter Wessels we traveled to Developer Week in Nürnberg 🇩🇪.

Originally, I would only do my session on Dapr. Due to many speaker cancellations, I also presented my sessions about Azure cost management and Using your source code to generate documentation.

During the conference I was able to join up with Dennis and Roland again and have the privilege to spend some time with Rob Richardson, Matteo Emili, Salvatore Merone, Scott Guymer, and Niek Palm. Specially meeting Niek was fun as we went to school together over 25 years ago.

Azure Fest

For this one I did not have to travel far as Azure Fest was hosted at the Info Support office. My session was about Azure cost management again, apparently a hot topic these days.

This was the first time meeting Sam Vanhoutte as speaker, but also joining up again with Sander, Henk and Barbara for a second time.

K!K live

K!K live is a smaller meet-up in the Netherlands. Still, I had some nice interaction with the audience during and after my session about Azure cost management.

CloudBrew

This was my last session of 2022 (I had to cancel the Dev-Cloud and .NET Developer conferences in Köln 🇩🇪 due to personal circumstances). I travelled, by car this time, to the nice city of Mechelen 🇧🇪.

Besides my session about Azure cost management, CloudBrew felt like a nice reunion meeting Rik, Barbara, Roberto, Sam, and Pieter again.

2023

Will I be speaking as often in 2023? I do not know; it is up to the people judging CFPs and hoping my talks fit in with their programs. But in January I am certain to hit the stage again.

NDC London

After being a speaker at the NDC London 2021 online edition, this time I will be travelling by train to London 🇬🇧, together with my colleague Sander.

I am looking forward to meeting Andreas, Magnus, Marcel, Pieter, Rob, Sander, Stacy, and Suzanne again on stage!

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When adding emoticons to your PowerPoint slides, sometimes the rendering might not be as expected.

For example, PowerPoint renders the emoticon only in a textual, monochrome variant on the slide.

So, how can we influence this behavior?

Full article...

When adding emoticons to your PowerPoint slides, sometimes the rendering might not be as expected.

For example, when selecting the desktop emoticon on my system, PowerPoint renders the emoticon only in a textual, monochrome variant on the slide.

After selecting the desktop emoticon, it is rendered as text, not an emoji.

I encountered this behavior multiple times myself and can depend on the machine used to view the PowerPoint presentation, while other persons looking at the same file at the same time can see the emoji rendering.

So, how can we influence this behavior?

Unicode variation selector

I discovered an old post by Matias Singers about Unicode symbol as text or emoji.
The article describes the Unicode variation selectors.

By adding variation selector-15, or variation selector-16, after an emoticon the rendering of the character can be influenced.

Switch from text to emoji

Using variation selector-16 after the emoticon, the character will be forced to be rendered as a colorful image. Inserting character U+FE0F after the desktop character will change it in the expected emoji:

The desktop emoticon rendered as a colorful emoji after adding variation selector-16.

Switch from emoji to text

This can also be used the other way around. When a more textual or monochrome variant would be beneficial, this can be forced to render as well.

Let's start with the house with garden emoticon.

The house with garden emoticon rendered as a colorful emoji.

Using variation selector-15 after the emoticon, the character will be forced to be rendered in a textual fashion. Inserting character U+FE0E after the house with garden character will change it into a monochrome house with a flower:

The emoticon rendered in a textual fashion after adding variation selector-15.
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Learn how to stack emoticons in PowerPoint to create engaging and visually appealing slide titles. Bring your presentations to life with this quick and easy tip!

Full article...

Looking to make your PowerPoint slide titles more engaging and eye-catching? When a single emoticon doesn't quite capture the message you want to convey, why not combine multiple emoticons?
In this quick guide, I'll show you how to stack emoticons in PowerPoint to create compelling and meaningful slide titles.

Let's take this boring slide:

Slide with only the title text "Run locally"

I'm only showing the top-left corner, the rest of the slide is even more boring.

We can add an emoticon to emphasize the running part.

Slide with the title "Run locally" prefixed with a running person emoticon

But what if we also want to include the local part? Let's add a house emoticon.

Slide with the title "Run locally" prefixed with both a house and running person emoticon

This does not give the right feeling yet, what if we could combine the two a bit more?

Let's merge these two emoticons to set a scene.

  1. Select the running person emoticon and choose Font > Subscript
    Font menu with the Subscript option checked
    Font menu with the Subscript option checked
  2. Select the house emoticon and choose Font > Character Spacing > Condensed by 25pt
    Font menu with the Character Spacing set to Condensed by 25pt
    Font menu with the Character Spacing set to Condensed by 25pt

The actual value might depend on your font-size and emoticon width.

Slide with the title "Run locally" prefixed with a person running in front of a house emoticon

That is it! Much better!

More examples

The same technique can be used to combine several other emoticons in this way.
Just some random examples:

  1. Run through the street
  2. Finish 3rd in a cycling competition
  3. Choose something from the menu
  4. Sales of dinosaurs has increased recently
  5. Save that thread
  6. Comment on the shopping cart contents
Examples of several combinations of emoticons in PowerPoint
Filed under Office
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I recently joined the Advent of Code 2021.
During the first 25 days of December, the challenges made me (re)discover many possibilities with C#, some that are long available but maybe not that well known.

I share my code and list of concepts that might inspire you to discover a feature you were not aware of yet!

Full article...

Although Eric Wastle has been organizing the Advent of Code since 2015. I only discovered it recently when some colleagues invited me to join the 2021 edition.

Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like.

About

During the first 25 days of December, the challenges made me (re)discover many possibilities with C#, some that are long available but maybe not that well known.

Solutions

I had a blast (and some frustration ;)) solving the challenges, starting early morning, every day.

Some of the noteworthy concepts I have used:

  • Records, both class (C# 9.0) and struct (C# 10.0) based
  • Converting data (bits to int with bit shifting, char to decimal using addition or subtraction, etc.)
  • Efficiently read and slice strings, arrays, and lists using Index and Range (C# 8.0)
  • Work with Stack<T> (.NET Framework 2.0), SortedSet<T> (.NET Framework 4.0), and HashSet<T> (.NET Framework 4.7.2)
  • Using init only setters, with expressions and target typed new expressions (all C#9.0)
  • Many, many more...

I have put all my code and descriptions in my AdventOfCode2021 repo on GitHub. I hope this might inspire you to discover a feature you were not aware of yet!

Filed under C#
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In a previous article I described how to configure an Azure SQL database failover group for high availability across multiple regions.

But what if you want to limit network traffic to a database in this failover group to only your private networks?

In this article I show how to make a SQL database failover group reachable via the Private Link service and make sure the database stays reachable after a failover.

Full article...

In a previous article I described how to configure an Azure SQL database failover group for high availability across multiple regions.

But what if you want to limit network traffic to a database in this failover group to only your private networks?

In this article I show how to make a SQL database failover group reachable via the Private Link service and make sure the database stays reachable after a failover.

read more...
Filed under Azure, SQL
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