The Silver Lining Blog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/feed.xml Open Source and Device Development in the Cloud Tue, 16 Apr 2019 05:50:01 GMT en-US hourly 1 Remember to read the entire document https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/remember-to-read-the-entire-document Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:39:22 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/?p=2485 Data Science and Machine Learning https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/data-science-and-machine-learning Mon, 02 May 2016 15:43:01 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/?p=2445 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/data-science-machine-learning/. This is going to be the home for any Data Science/Machine Learning links that my team thinks are interesting/useful, and hopefully it's useful to you as well. Thanks, Larry]]> Ruby, TinyTDS, and Azure SQL Database update https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/ruby-tinytds-and-azure-sql-database-update Wed, 05 Aug 2015 07:43:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2015/08/05/ruby-tinytds-and-azure-sql-database-update/ I got a note the other day that the 0.6.3-rc2 version of TinyTDS now includes the security bits needed to communicate with Azure SQL Database, on the Windows platform (it worked on other platforms just fine.) Previously, you had to manually build it against OpenSSL for it to work on Windows platforms, but with the new version it 'just works'. Use the following to install it from the command line:

gem inst tiny_tds --pre

or in a Gemfile use:

gem "tiny_tds", "0.6.3-rc2"

The following code is an example of connecting to SQL Database using the tiny_tds gem:

require 'tiny_tds' client=TinyTds::Client.new(:username=>’user’, :password=> ‘password’,
  :dataserver=>’servername.database.windows.net', :port=>1433, :database=>’databasename’,
  :azure=>true) 
results=client.execute("select * from [names]") 
results.each do |row| 
puts row end

Tiny_tds can also be used with ActiveRecord. The following is an example database.yml for using a dblib connection to SQL Database using the tiny_tds gem.

development:
 adapter: sqlserver 
 mode: dblib 
 dataserver: 'servername.database.windows.net' 
 database: databasename 
 username: user 
 password: password 
 timeout: 5000 
 azure: true
NOTE: All tables in SQL Database require a clustered index. If you receive an error stating that tables without a clustered index are not supported, add a :primary_key field.
NOTE: If you are using an older version of Ruby on Rails, Active Record, or the activerecord-sqlserver-adapter gem, you may receive an error when running migration (rake db:migrate). You can run the following command against your SQL Database to create a clustered index for this table after receiving
this error:
CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX [idx_schema_migrations_version] ON [schema_migrations] ([version])
After creating the clustered index, rerun the migration and it should succeed.
Enjoy!
- Larry

 

]]> PowerShell and Maven https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/powershell-and-maven Mon, 01 Jun 2015 12:33:57 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2015/06/01/powershell-and-maven/ I'm not normally a big PowerShell user, but the new version in the Windows 10 beta is pretty nice. It has some new tricks like coloring various bits of syntax and stuff like that. Also, it defaults to something that looks like a cmd.exe prompt.

Anyway, I've been using it recently instead of cmd.exe, but I did run accross a peculiar behavior when using Maven to build out some Java projects. Namely that you must enclose any -Dparameter=value statements in double quotes or you get errors.

For example:

mvn archetype:generate "-DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart" "-DgroupId=com.microsoft.example" "-DartifactId=EventCorrelation" "-DinteractiveMode=false".

Figured this might be useful to some of you.


-enjoy

Larry

]]> Atom.io for Markdown editing https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/atom-io-for-markdown-editing Mon, 18 May 2015 08:01:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2015/05/18/atom-io-for-markdown-editing/ A while back, Atom.io replaced Sublime Text as my go-to editor of choice for most things (I still use Visual Studio for .NET, but I work at Microsoft so that's expected I guess.) Since I work on the documentation team, a lot of what I use Atom for is Markdown authoring. Some folks on my team have asked about my recommendations on using Atom for Markdown editing, so I thought this might be interesting for those outside the documentation team also.

Markdown support

Out of the box, Atom has pretty good support for Markdown. It has syntax highlighting and rendered preview functionality right out of the box, along with support for things like GitHub flavored Markdown. However, if you are coming from a dedicated Markdown editor such as Markdown Pad you may miss features like a preview that scrolls in sync with the Markdown view.

Fortunately, Atom has a variety of community generated packages that can be installed to provide additional functionality. Here are the ones I recommend:

  • Markdown-Writer: Adds a bunch of keyboard commands for things like text formatting and creating links & images, along with support for popular static site blogging platforms.

  • Markdown-Scroll-Sync: Makes the rendered preview scroll in sync with the Markdown view.

  • Markdown-Format: Makes your Markdown pretty when you save. Things like renumbering lists so they are actually in order (vs. the 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9 I always seem to end up with,) and padding cells in GitHub Flavored Markdown tables so they are more readable.

There's more than this, so I'll leave it to you to explore the other Markdown related packages.

Installing packages

Once you've installed Atom.io, to install these or any other packages, perform the following steps:

  1. From the File menu, select Settings, then Install. Enter the name of the package you wish to install (or part of the name, such as Markdown to see all packages that contain that word.)

  2. Click the Install button beside the package. If you want to read more about the package before installing, click the title of the package and it will open your browser and display more information.

Configuration

Once installed, you can use the Packages tab from Settings to disable, enable, or configure packages.

While some packages have their own configuration, you will also want to look at File, Settings, Settings to configure the following settings for Markdown authoring:

  • Tab length: If Soft tabs is enabled, then you should set this to 4 since Markdown expects either a single tab or 4 spaces when indenting.

  • Soft wrap, Soft wrap and preferred line length, and Preferred line length: This causes the editor to wrap lines at the specified line length. Otherwise, paragraphs will scroll off the editor to the right. Makes things much more readable, especially when the preview window is open.

This last one is a matter of preference. Markdown-Writer does its own special thing with the tab key for indention. In the current version, on Windows, it only seems to indent in a list, while I want it to indent everywhere when I hit the tab key. You can override the current Markdown-Writer functionality by doing the following:

  1. File, Settings, Keybindings, then click the link to your keymap file at the top of the page.

  2. Add the following new lines to the end of the keymap.cson file:

    'atom-text-editor[data-grammar~=\'gfm\']':
    'tab': 'editor:indent'

    This restores normal tab functionality for Markdown editing. NOTE: If you're using something like Markdown-Format, it may convert 4 spaces to tabs automatically when you save.

Tips

  • To toggle the Markdown preview, use ctrl-shift-m.

  • If you've opend Atom to a specific folder, and it's showing the tree view side bar, you can dismiss it with ctrl-.

  • Atom.io checks for package updates automatically. If you see a blue box in the lower right-hand corner, that means some packages have been updated. Click on the blue box to install them.

  • If you're working in a folder that contains a lot of Markdown files, don't even try using the tree view. It's 100x easier to use ctrl-t and then start typing the file name you want to open. This will search through the directory structure for files that match the text you've entered, and you can then click the one you want.

  • If you need to change the indentation for a section of text (for example, a section of source code,) just select it and hit ctrl-[ or ] to change the indent level.

So what about Visual Studio Code?

Yes, Visual Studio Code is nice, and it has some basic Markdown support. But it's brand new and the extensibility story hasn't materialized yet. So while it can be used for Markdown right now, it doesn't have all the things I need/want from a Markdown editor.

Long term, it may kick Atom off my system once the community can start extending it. I'll evaluate it and do a blog on it once we get to that point.

Summary

Atom.io is a great Markdown authoring tool for people who need a generic, extensible Markdown editor. While it may not have all the bells and whistles, or speed of a dedicated Markdown tool, it has enough functionality and extensibility to get the job done. Since it also handles code authoring, it's also a nice way to reduce the number of specialized tools loaded on your workstation.

]]> Hello again, it's been a while. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/hello-again-its-been-a-while Tue, 28 Apr 2015 11:02:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2015/04/28/hello-again-its-been-a-while/ It's been a while since I posted here, mostly it's been a combination of vacation and moving to a new technology space that's taken all my time and will to blog. And being sort of bored/depressed with limitations of the blogging software for MSDN. I'm seriously considering moving the blog to some other software and just host it on Azure, but haven't decided on what software yet.
 
 So what's my new technology space? Mostly HDInsight stuff. Since the move I've worked on docs for:

  • Storm and HBase on HDInsight
  • Linux-based HDInsight servers (Ambari, SSH, Curl, Python stuff)
  • Scalding, Pig, Hive, etc. for MapReduce
  • Maven (for building Java projects)


Anyway, still open source stuff, but not as web/client focused. Though I do still get some web work in - talking to REST APIs like Power BI or wiring up Storm to talk to a D3.js dashboard over Socket.io.

That's it for today, but I've got a few blog posts in the works for Linux-based HDInsight that you might find interesting. Will try to get those up in the next week or two.

- Larry

]]> Pie in the Sky (August 8th, 2014) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/pie-in-the-sky-august-8th-2014 Fri, 08 Aug 2014 13:35:16 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2014/08/08/pie-in-the-sky-august-8th-2014/ It has been a really long, really busy week, so not many links today. Looking forward to the weekend and a short week next week. I'll be on vacation next Friday, so no links next week.

Cloud

Client/mobile

Misc.

Enjoy!

- Larry

]]> Pie in the Sky (August 1st, 2014) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/pie-in-the-sky-august-1st-2014 Fri, 01 Aug 2014 10:39:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2014/08/01/pie-in-the-sky-august-1st-2014/ Missed last week as I was out of town, so catching up a bit this week.

Cloud

Client/Mobile

Misc.

Enjoy!

- Larry

]]> Pie in the Sky (July 18th, 2014) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/pie-in-the-sky-july-18th-2014 Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:12:03 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2014/07/18/pie-in-the-sky-july-18th-2014/ Flying this weekend, so definitely need stuff to read. Here's part of what I will be reading while traveling.

Cloud

Client/mobile

Hardware/Internet of Things

Node.js\JavaScript

Ruby

Misc.

Enjoy!

-Larry

]]> Pie in the Sky (July 11th, 2014) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/silverlining/pie-in-the-sky-july-11th-2014 Fri, 11 Jul 2014 12:42:48 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlining/2014/07/11/pie-in-the-sky-july-11th-2014/ Here's some links for your weekend reading.

Cloud

Client\mobile

Node.js

  • next-update: A utility to test if a module's dependencies can be updated to the latest version.

  • jsonapitest: A JSON driven test runner for REST APIs.

  • current-processes: A library to get a snapshot of the currently running process.

  • Passwordless: Token based authentication for Express & Node.js.

Ruby

Misc.

Enjoy!

- Larry

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