All About Microsoft Azure

I have just published a long coverage article about Microsoft Azure: All About Microsoft Azure. Even if the title is in Romanian, most of the article can be useful for English readers.

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Short Version of The Tipping Point

I just finished reading the well-known book written by Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point. This is the sort of book that you can summarize in just a couple of sentences (that’s not to say it is not a good reading).

The book is built around the central thesis that:

Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

Malcom Gladwell

If you want yours do the same then what you are looking for is:

• finding the right people (connectors, mavens and salesmen)
• making your message sticky (a message that sticks around, that is easy to be remembered, etc)
• paying much attention to and using the context

Even if I was able to summarize it in just 2 paragraphs, the book was an enjoyable read, full of interesting and sticky stories that are helpful in understanding the above ideas.

Ice Hockey: Games on 10/23

NHL games scheduled for today:

• Toronto Maple Leafs (TOR) 23:6-2-1 – Boston Bruins (BOS) 14:2-1-3 (7:00PM)
• Dallas Stars (DAL) 21 – New York Islanders (NYI) 29 (7:00PM)
• Carolina Hurricanes (CAR) 12:3-1-1 – Pittsburgh Penguins (PIT) 7:4-2-1 (7:30PM)
• Calgary Flames (CGY) 24:2-3-1 – Nashville Predators (NSH) 18:3-3-0 (8:00PM)
• Buffalo Sabres (BUF) 4:5-0-1 – Minnesota Wild (MIN) 11:4-0-0 (8:00PM)
• Edmonton Oilers (EDM) 9:4-1-0 – Colorado Avalanche (COL) 17:3-3-0 (9:30PM)
• Washington Capitals (WSH) 13:3-2-1 – Phoenix Coyotes (PHX) 28:2-3-0 (10:00PM)

Which one is the game of the day? I’d say Sabres vs Wild and Hurricanes vs Penguins, but what do I know 🙂.

Ice Hockey: What team should I watch?

I don’t think I’ve said it before, but I really love hockey (and to be correct ice hockey). Anyways, in my part of the world, there isn’t much happening related to ice hockey. Indeed, we have a couple of teams playing a regular season, but the level is really disappointing. So, the best I can get is to wait for the Ice Hockey World Championship and hope that some TV channel will broadcast a couple of the final games.

Well, things are changing! Not about our ice hockey league and unfortunately not about broadcasted games. (in case you cannot identify one of nhl team logo you can drop me a comment, as I’ve spent some time learning them)

Couple of weeks ago, I’ve been to Toronto and even if I was really busy at that time, I had the chance to watch a couple of NHL games for the 2008-09 season. Man, I love that! And now I am really trying to follow NHL much closely.

There is one small issue though. I don’t know what team I should be watching! I guess you are usually a fan of your hometown team, but as long as I don’t live in US or Canada things are a bit different. So, I am wondering: what team would you recommend me? I know this may sound a bit stupid and that it will be difficult to become a real fan, but I do think that I should have one or two teams that I should be more fanatic about. So, what team are you a fan of? And why?

Python, Unicode and UTF8

I’ve thought of putting together a short list of links as a reference on how to handle Unicode, UTF8 in Python.

Before jumping to Python resources, you should also read Joel’s article on Unicode and Character sets (before going forward you need to be sure that Unicode and UTF8 are clear).

• How to Use UTF-8 with Python
• Python Unicode Tutorial
• Unicode HOWTO
• Guaranteed conversion to unicode or byte string
• Dive Into Python: Unicode
• PEP100 – Python Unicode Integration (final)
• Unicode In Python, Completely Demystified
• All About Python and Unicode

You can read about unicode in the newer versions 2.6 and 3.0 respectively.

Python 3.0 has completely revamped Unicode usage and even if I don’t think there are many places where Py3k is in production, you should make sure that you read about these changes.

If you have other good links about Python, Unicode and UTF8 just drop a comment.