Book-Review

Hamida Rebai Trabelsi started her professional career in Tunisia working for multinational corporations as a software developer, then served as a .NET consultant in Canada. She is currently a senior advisor and information and solution integration architect. She has been awarded as Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Developer Technologies and as a Microsoft DevHero by Microsoft.

Thanks to the people at PackT, I recently had the pleasure of reviewing another one of her new books: A Developer’s Guide to Building Resilient Cloud Applications with Azure .

2025-04-18

I recently had the opportunity to read a preview of Business Intelligence Essentials You Always Wanted To Know by Irene Tobajas from LUKiN Consulting.

I like the way each chapter started with a set of key learning objectives.

I also like the way that quiz questions are integrated into the text (even though there’s the odd question where I didn’t love the answer. For example, saying that Data Mining wasn’t a component of BI).

2025-04-17

I recently finished another Audible audio book. It was How to Land an A330 Airbus: And Other Vital Skills of the Modern Man by James May.

I need to start by saying that I am a really, really big fan of James May. After watching his Toy Stories series, I decided that when I grow up, I want to be James May. It was brilliant, inventive, and just a bunch of fun.

2025-03-27

I recently listened to the audio book of Preincarnate by Shaun Micallef.

I need to start by saying that I’m a huge fan of Shaun’s, and I also love hearing him narrate books. Shaun’s humour can be a matter of taste. It’s not for everyone, but I generally love it, although I know many others that don’t. Mad as Hell was one of my favourite TV shows. The one exception is that I wish Shaun would lose the impersonations of Kenneth Williams.

2025-02-10

I recently listened to Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt on Audible.

When the book started with The Best is Yet to Come being announced loudly, I nearly stopped listening. I can’t get the look of Kimberly Guilfoyle screaming that, out of my head.

The way she did that was like an excerpt from a horror movie. She has ruined that phrase for me, for all time.

2025-01-28

I recently watched a YouTube video with Ali Abdaal that talked about productivity. Not sure what it was exactly, but I really liked listening to Ali. So I was pleased to find that his book Feel-Good Productivity was available on Audible.

I really liked this book. I found Ali great to listen to and compelling in his story. It’s another one where I really also appreciate that he narrated the book himself.

2025-01-24

I’m a long-term fan of Annabel Crab and her work. So I was pleased to get a chance to listen to a book she wrote a while back, called The Wife Drought: Why Women Need Wives and Men Need Lives. It didn’t disappoint.

There was an old adage that behind every successful man, there was an awesome woman. That’s a view that needs updated wording, but it’s true that the people who really get ahead in the world, have a supportive partner who fits the role that wives traditionally did. And still today, that’s mostly still wives in that role not husbands, even though that proportion is slowly changing.

2025-01-08

A while back, I received another book from my friends at PackT. It was A Developer’s Guide to Cloud Apps Using Microsoft Azure by Hamida Rebai Trabelsi.  I have been meaning to get a chance to read it, and I finally did.

I don’t know Hamida. I think I need to add her to my LinkedIn contacts though, as she clearly has similar interests in many areas. Hamida is a fellow MVP from Tunisia and currently working in Canada. Her MVP award was for developer technologies.

2024-12-16

I’ve had a busy time reading books lately. Another one from my friends at PackT that looked interesting to me was Database Design and Modeling with PostgreSQL and MySQL: Build efficient and scalable databases for modern applications using open source databases by Alkin Tezuysal and Ibrar Ahmed.

PostgreSQL and MySQL

Database design and modeling is a passion of mine and, while most of my time in recent years has been spent on the SQL Server side of the fence, I’m always involved in PostgreSQL projects, and occasionally with MySQL. Each database has “a way of doing things” that’s considered best practices. MySQL has never been a database engine that I’m keen on, but with tools like WordPress, it’s always been part of some projects.

2024-10-02

Another book that I’ve been sent for review lately, was a pre-release edition of Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI by Alex Kolokolov and Maxim Zelensky. It looks like it’s released now.

I’ve known Alex for many years, and have acted as a judge in his UI competition each year. He has a flair for data visualization. In the book, he mentioned that he was initially puzzled by many people finding it hard. But noted that “I later discovered that for experienced analysts and data engineers, visualization was entirely unnecessary. They comprehend the data structure, and the relationships are evident to them simply through tables. They genuinely don’t understand the need for all these pie charts and graphs.”

2024-09-18