Several years back, the Slack team built their own app for integrating with Azure DevOps, or then, Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). The app provided some basic information about VSTS in Slack channels, but was quite useful. Over the past year, Microsoft had created three different apps that were enhancements over what Slack had built:

Last week, I blogged about creating an Azure Function from a command line. We didn’t change the function at all as the post was just to show how easy it is to create and serve an Azure function locally. In this article, we’re going to use that basic function, add a static file, and post both to an Azure Static Web App.

Every now and then, I want to post a sample code block for my blog that displays a liquid template. However, if I simply paste in a liquid template, it will be rendered.

At 3:22 PM EDT today, NASA will be sending their first crew on a SpaceX flight. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will carry the two American’s for the historic Demo-2 Mission. The launch will take place on Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The initial attempt was this past Wednesday, May 27th. However, that attempt was scrubbed due to weather.

There are many package managers for Windows these days. Probably the most popular is Chocolatey. Microsoft has shown examples to get their own stuff installed using Chocolatey in the past. However, there was an interesting package manager that I started using a few months ago called AppGet.

There are several ways you can create an Azure Function. You can use Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, or even the Command Line. For purposes of this article, we’re going to use the command line. We’re also going to use C# for this article, though you can follow essentially the same steps for TypeScript or JavaScript. You can also use Java, PowerShell, or Python for your Azure function. The prerequisites, command-line parameters, and code samples will be different for other languages.

UPDATE: Due to a lightning storm, the launch is delayed until Saturday, May 30th

I’ve been using the free SSL service with Let’s Encrypt for several years now. It’s nice to be able to offer SSL on sites without the cost. We also use Let’s Encrypt to issue SSL certificates for TechBash.com. In late 2018, I blogged about using Azure functions and add a site extension to your account. Then in February of 2019, I blogged about a new Azure DevOps change that caused a failure. Recently, I have been receiving a notice from Let’s Encrypt that my software client was using ACMEv1:

While porting old posts over to Markdown, I came across a post from May 18th, 2008. The post contained a link to a futuristic Microsoft Home detailing some of what we may find in our homes in 2015. The article starts off by mentioning many of Hollywood’s perceived futuristic features:

I’ve been slowly adding small features and tweaks to my site. Eventually I’ll add this as a meta component for the SpaacedOut theme, but for now I’ve added the minutes to read a post to my website and pushed some of the other content (such as tags and the page edit link) to the bottom of the post. I want to get content higher in the fold.