2017-09 on Funky Si's Blog (Dev)

Star Trek is back with Discovery

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 20:00:45 +0000

In November 2015 it was announced that a new Star Trek series was going to be launched. It has been a long wait with multiple delays but Star Trek Discovery is finally here.

Star Trek Discovery launches in the US on 24th September and in the UK on 25th September.

Lets have a look back how we got here.

Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s. He imagined a show where we would explore the galaxy while also exploring the human condition. He described it as a wagon train to the stars. However it was cancelled after 79 episodes and three seasons due to budget cuts and low viewers.

After cancellation its popularity boomed in reruns. In the mid 1970s an animated series was created. But demand for Star Trek continued until a new Star Trek show was commissioned called Phase Two.

In 1977 Star Wars came out, and the phase two idea was cancelled and turned into a movie. In 1979 we got Star Trek The Motion Picture. It went massively over budget and failed to really capture the Star Trek spirit.

A much cheaper sequel was created in 1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan with Roddenberry taking more of a back seat. A film widely considered to be one of the best trek films. Four more feature films starring the original cast were made.

However in 1987 Gene Roddenberry teamed up with Rick Berman and The Next Generation was created with a brand new cast. The series ran for seven seasons set roughly a century after the adventures of Kirk and Spock.

Popularity of Star Trek soured and this led Rick Berman to help create the spin off series Deep Space 9, Voyager and lastly Enterprise along with four feature films continuing the adventures of the TNG cast. When Enterprise was cancelled in 2005, Star Trek appeared to be dead after 18 years on TV.

However in 2009 movie creator JJ Abrams recast the classic crew for the big screen. The film was big on action, but took place in an alternative timeline allowing for familiar characters to have new adventures without interfering with events depicted in the TV shows.

Two sequels to this film have been produced and are bringing Star Trek back into popularity. This has given rise to Discovery. Star Trek is returning to the TV screen and it is going to be great.

Azure Friday

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 20:00:45 +0000

I think Azure is great, but there is loads to it so I can never know about all of its features. There is a video series hosted by Scott Hanselman called Azure Fridays which I have started to watch in an effort to keep more up to date about some of its cool features.

I watched this video recently and it is all about application insights and new ways you can debug your web applications by creating snapshots. I am a big fan of application insights so adding extra ways to debug my apps is a big win for me. Once I get this feature working in my code I will no doubt blog about it.

Azure Functions

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 20:00:45 +0000

I recently blogged about using Azure Web Jobs , Azure Function is another way of doing the same thing, lets look at how they work.

(Sorry its been a while since I blogged but I suspect an erratic schedule will continue for the next few months.)

To create an Azure Function go to the Azure portal and click add new and search for “Function App”

Give your app a name and select the usual resource group and location settings.

Now when you open Function Apps you should see your new app.

I want my Function App to run on a schedule so I clicked the + next to functions and selected TimerTrigger. I am a c# programmer so I selected this option as well.

Give your function a name and specify using the usual cron notation how often it should run. I want mine to run at 9.30pm each night so use 0 30 21 * * *

Now comes the code bit. By default you get a window with the following code in it

using System;

public static void Run(TimerInfo myTimer, TraceWriter log)
{
 log.Info($"C# Timer trigger function executed at: {DateTime.Now}");
}

It is entirely up to you what you get your function to do. In my case I just wanted to call a URL on a schedule so I created some code that used httpclient.


using System;
using System.Net.Http;

public static async Task Run(TimerInfo myTimer, TraceWriter log)
{
 log.Info($"Buffer 0 function executed at: {DateTime.Now}");
 HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
 var result = await client.GetAsync("URL");
 string resultContent = await result.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
 log.Info(resultContent);
}

Once you have created your app and it has run you can use the monitor section to view success and failures.

There is loads more you can do with Azure Function but this is a good place to start.