Whys Gifting hard Firstly, we have in recent times been going through lots of financial struggles with things getting more expensive all the time & no sign that’s stopping soon.
At least not without a hard reset by means of a Global Market Crash.
But that aside gifting really is hard.
Which is why I have been trying to understand this a bit better across different generations, let alone across different regions of the world.
Ryan YatesConsultant
Just a person in their 30's doing things in Tech & trying to break the stigma's around talking about Mental Health
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This is the personal blog site of Ryan Yates
In IT - Specialising in PowerShell, Automation, DevOps, Azure & Office 365
Outside of IT - Music, Psychology/Mental Health, Science, Law & Politics
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There are a number of posts on this blog
There are currently many drafts in progress & have been for a long time
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so kila’s kitchen This is just a very quick post to announce YARP (Yet Another Ryan Project) that is what I am calling kila’s kitchen.
Some I know will say this is perhaps a project that I perhaps should not focus on and instead focus on other more pressing things. To that I’d say, this is in line with what I need to do to get from where I am, to where I am going.
Seriously, They are #AssistiveTechBuddies not #AIAgents, so plz call them as such! This is a Hill to die on because all AI, is a form of AT or Assistive Tech, just like all Automation technologies are too. So let’s use a proper term, unless you all dislike being lumped with those with disabilities who already need to use specialist Assistive Tech to help them live, whether or not it enables them to work or not.
Background Firstly, CoreyT (Slipknot|Stone Sour|& more) is a talented musician, no one can doubt that, & not slightly talented, but immensely so. He & the members of both Slipknot & Stone Sour are definitely in my list of favourite Metal artists, along with many more that I will write about another time.
Like all other Musicians (which we all are in our own ways) & there’s no exceptions to that Music is both an art and a science & takes inspiration & talent to create anything.
Updated 16th May - Further Delayed - potentially indefinitely
DIN: Delayed - Derby PowerShell UK & Global Azure Gathering 2025 This is an example of a blog post, one that follows the process used with the different types of InteractionNotes by being published as a DIN or DevelopingInteractionNote which is part of a family of #InteractionNotes & is a part of the wider family of docTypes.
The Delay Reasons This event was initially delayed for the following reasons
What, we get more announcements today then…? Yeah though this was meant to be out last week.
What’s the (rough) plan May 10, in memory of my dad (on his birthday), a former British Royal Air Force serviceman when he was younger, who we lost suddenly in 2022 to Pancreatic Cancer & to coincide with Global Azure running May 8th to 10th, I will be hosting a follow the sun event from Singapore to Seattle (so over 24 hours) of Azure & PowerShell content, much like the #pwsh24 event I helped co-ordinate in 2020 (& still need to upload some of that content - whoopsie)
Announcing the Interaction Notes Family The Interaction Notes Family, is a set of notes that we subconciously use already, and whilst once you are made aware of this, it begins to make a lot of sense, however is not something I’ve heard as a term be used before and especially not in the world of Tech, or at least my slice of tech.
What’s ths do with DocTypes? Yes I just blogged about docTypes, and the Interaction Notes Family, is a part of that wider family of Documents & Notes that are of use in life.
Where have you been?? Well I’ve been in a mix of places really, mostly sleepy, due to the time of year & having well, deep thoughts about lots of things, which I was always going to have. But partally, just not in the right mood for content creation.
I have however spent lots of time with the PowerShell Team, as a member of 3 of the Working Groups, across the Cmdlets, Engine & Interactive User Experience.
PSProfile This is just a very quick post to announce the PSProfile Repository that I quickly demo’d at the PowerShell Community call on April 15th
PSProfile Goals Honestly, the key goals are that of having fun & sharing the learning I’ve been doing whilst playing a game of lets get more things out there that I know about and documented as that way I have more things that I can talk & present about, as well as guide others through via consultancy, whether that be internally facing or externally facing or just helping in the community again.
SARCASM Alert! This post is intended to be a mixture of sarcasm, different types and shades of humour, and actually is fundamentally entirely for educational purposes.
Please, please, take it as such.
It is not intended to offend or upset, though I do understand that due to the linkage to terrorism, it could be seen that way.
That aside, we have to deal with this in IT a lot, so let’s get on with the content and hopefully you’ll learn a thing or two on the way.
Background Info This post was partially inspired by a (Skeet…?) by a good friend of mine and Microsoft MVP Thomas Votchen, who’s recovering from surgery and couldn’t let his laptop be, and decided he needed to run winget upgrade --all to get the latest features of the applications he’s using. Thomas, being like me, wanting to be at the forefront of changes, usually due to wanting to ensure that a feature implementation is done in the best way for most use cases.
Yet Again, An Apology No, this isn’t a shout out to the song Oops!…I Did It Again by Britney Spears, or the Alternative version by Children of Bodom but to all attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors & organisers that were looking forward to seeing the session, meeting up & having a natter in the hallway chat, as well as some of the other people that I wanted to try catch up with in Aberdeen, I can only apologise, Yet Again 😔, for missing what seemed from the outside to be yet another amazing event.
Re-Initialise…? Re-Initialise, is at it’s heart, my new consultancy practice & is the evolution of my previous consultancy called Re-Digitise that stopped trading in 2018.
So whats in the name? I’m all for clever word plays, and both Re-Digitise and Re-Initialise are examples that do exactly that. A simple way to think of it is this
Re-Digitise To take a system or process, perhaps a manual paper based process and look to digitise it, whilst optionally taking that same process in the future and go back and re-build it, by potentially Re-Digitising it.
I recently read this article Bit rot is killing my pipelines by Richard Fennell (t | b) and this reminded me of a conversation we had in my time at Black Marble.
Essentially I had a bit of an interesting requirement to not be unable to build, test and locally release my scripts, modules, websites & applications if there was an issue with any of my hosted services. Now in many cases this is not so much of an issue any more, however I like to understand the moving pieces, especially if I decide I want to swap out any service that I am using.
As the title states and as an update to Wish 1 of 2024 Granted - No longer homeless! I have finally moved in to my new home., thanks to the help of a good few friends last week.
I have yet to sort out all the things that I’ll need to get sorted to be comfortable here, and had in some ways really wanted to be able to get these sorted first so that I could “hit the ground running” and just be comfortable.
So its official, I’m no longer homeless! 🎉
Granted it’s not quite ready to move into, but at least that’s the first wish of My 2024 Wishlist post has come true!
However, next will come the fun part, making it a home!
Over the following weeks & months I’ll need to get these things sorted,
flooring, as all prior carpet had been ripped out. I’m gonna go for lino as simple to clean.
2024 - the year of AI, Automation and the CoPilots Whilst quite self explanatory of a title I want to just highlight my thoughts on why 2024 is the year of AI, Automation and the CoPilots.
AI AI is going to help drive immense amount of changes across many areas of our lives. Mostly in good or fun ways but there will, as is always the case, be cases of it’s use not be for ethical or moral reasons.
My 2024 wishes - part 1 I have quite a lot of wishes for 2024, and in this post I’ll put the most important ones to me right now and in an update early next year I’ll add some of the others too.
Not to be homeless See this post for more details because this impacts everything else for the year ahead like my health, finances and also prospects of getting back into properly enjoying life again & contributing to society as much as I used to do & even more so as this stops me from being able to start & run business/es without making use of a PO BOX or other holding addresses, which I may still make use of.
I write this on December 6th 2023, and this post is actually now more than a month+ overdue.
Unfortunately, I recently found myself in the no so fun situation where I was given a Section 21 Notice (No fault eviction) by my Landlord, and this has now made me suffer from temporary homelessness, something that yet again has is something I’ve experienced many times before in my life. I have been lucky to some extent that I have some great support around me, both from friends & distant family, but also from my local council, so that I am not on the streets, but temporary shared accommodation, which is something that the UK has done better with in recent times, though I still had to push quite hard to get that support.
Why am I one of the best at what I do? I recently was indirectly asked this, and well, I thought about it for a moment and realised that it has also been something that I have regularly asked myself over the years too, perhaps in a slightly different way as often I will ask this question along with the "What do I need to do to be better than I am now?
This is part of a series called Using PowerShell in testing in which I intend to showcase lots of different ways that PowerShell can used for all sorts of testing. A prior example would be Building A Lab using Hyper-V and Lability - The End to End Example.
First things first, if you are writing code then you will have built up a series of preferences over the years in how you have your machine configure, or actually for many of us that is actually not just one machine but a collection of physical and virtual machines.
The title really says it all, doesn’t it.
Those that know me well know that well things have been tough, a big part of that is my fault, some is accidental fallout that has occurred due to events out of my control.
However the reason for this is a bit more compounded by too many things like
Currently Jobless I’ve spent months looking for work in tech & even have a M365 Planner board for tracking this project I regularly get emails from recruiters & from Job Boards & get sent things by many people too.
Firstly, an Apology To all attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors & organisers that were looking forward to seeing the session, meeting up & having a natter in the hallway chat, as well as some of the other people that I wanted to try catch up with in Manchester, I can only apologise for having missed the event entirely.
I have been a mixture of disappointed, frustrated and upset at myself that I was unable to deliver a session, one that I absolutely love delivering, on Mental Health, because mine was and has been suffering so badly on/off (in waves) in recent times.
But where do you begin? Note: this is a repost & update with minor edits of the blog post I authored that is hosted on PowerShell.org
I’ve blogged about this from the reversed perspective before about finding user groups with a small section about what you can do if your thinking about getting one off the ground which you can read at How to find Local User Groups & events - My Experience and it was only natural to eventually blog from the other side too although this has come up a bit earlier than I had planned to but alas it gets it done Smile
As a former 7 Time MVP for Cloud and Datacenter Management and one of the few that helped in restart the UK PowerShell Community back in 2015 which has lead to many in person and online events, here are a few bits of feedback on the site compared to the last version, feedback that I would have given via the MVP Program previously.
Design Feedback Firstly the design looks great, as it looks nice and fresh, which is always a good win with new releases of portals like this.
Yeah, Why…..? Many different reasons, however the main one is for future reference, whether this be by me or anyone else that finds the content I throw out useful.
However, it also shows a number of huge benefits when you look at content ownership, which you don’t get with platforms like Twitter (never will I ever call it X) FaceBook or other publishing platforms, whether they be public or private.
Recently I have diversified some of my time into a number of different areas, mainly to get back into the habit of doing impactful work so that I can showcase to employers as well as myself that I am ready to work on the big but challenging & importantly the interesting things, or at least those interesting to me.
However, that said some projects I will put on the side and not look at them for a while, but they are never truly finished until I decide to archive them or consider them complete.
Updated 12th July 2023 & again on 20th August 2023
Word of Warning - this post contains some not so nice language, but it’s use is for impact only!! Read on if you are happy to do so
As Linkin Park (One of my favourite bands of all time) started with in the lyrics to in In Between
Let me apologise to begin with Let me apologise for what I’m about to say But trying to regain your trust was harder than it seemed
I’ve blogged before about my involvement with the Microsoft MVP Program, always whilst respecting my NDA, over the years since I was first awarded on April 1st 2016 in the Cloud & Datacenter Management award category & no it wasn’t an April Fools joke. I then was awarded each year since then for the yearly award cycle, including the 2022 award cycle.
That said, this post will still respect that NDA to the best of my ability, even though I so could easily break it.
This post will be a nice short one that allows you to understand when I take a dependency on a tool in any development of production code and is inspired by this question by Waldek Mastykarzn on twitter
For a tool like #Microsoft365 Developer Proxy (https://t.co/sYRAexFJPR), do you care if it's v1.x or v0.x? Does it being pre-v1 make you not use it? If so, why? Asking for a friend 😁
Updated 2023-09-26 - Add link to PowerShell Discussion & gist updated Updated 2023-04-13 I have been running a dev system for a number of years that has had every Windows Insider build on it since I got this machine back in December 2019, & along the way we’ve seen plenty of new ways for you to get your hands on the latest versions of PowerShell. These also have some additional update mechanisms too, like via the store and Microsoft Update.
Where to start…?
2020 - the rise of the pandemic 2020 saw the whole planet have to deal with Covid19 which impacted almost every sector possible, leaving Tech being one of the few with the least amount of impact.
Needless to say I was far far too optimistic about how it would pan out and 2020 was pretty much one of the worst years of my life, & I’ve have some pretty bad ones.
I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen speakers for PSConfEu 2022 which wll take place June 20th - 23rd in Vienna, Austria.
I will be speaking about Building a High Quality Resource Module (HQRM) and all the surrounding technology that you need to be able to do so.
This isn’t a small presentation in the slightest and has lots of areas to cover, and whilst it will be a lot to cover I am confident that I can manage to get all the right information across for this presentation.
After a good few years with the last rather dated look of this blog as was per below I felt that it was time for a bit of an update.
This is especially true as that layout wasn’t really all that responsive (in loading as it was so damn slow or for different devices with different resolutions) and as such for 2022 I wanted a cleaner and much quicker site. Also looking back the site isn’t really all that accessible either which to a much bigger problem to me now than it originally was when I picked that theme.
If you work in a big organisation, or like me, are on a number a of cross organisation distribution lists or listservs, then it’s likely that you have some myriad of email rules that route all emails sent to a specific distribution list to a specific folder. This is a good email management practice as you can then filter your searches to a single folder that should just have conversations related to things sent to that distribution list.
Background The Azure Advent Calendar is a collaboration for members of the International #AzureFamily to contribute a video and blog post about a topic of their choice related to the Azure Public Cloud, which was brought to life by Richard Hooper (aka Pixel Robots) & Gregor Suttie two recent UK Azure MVP’s that make up 23 Azure MVP’s out of a total 164 UK MVP’s of which I am one of in the Cloud and Datacenter Management category.
This post is going to be all about Microsoft Ignite and my experience as both a 1st time attendee & a 1st time speaker. There’s going to be a lot to read so I highly recommend you go get a brew sorted (tea, coffee, beer, wine etc) before sitting down to read this post which at over 2600 words is quite a read, and this is just part 1 of 2 which focuses on the lead up to Ignite & not Ignite itself which will come in Pt2 of this series.
You can tell that the end of year conference season is coming up as we’ve just wrapped up PSDayUK, which was a resounding success!
Then this week there are a number of events currently going on, and with some of the Black Marble team, currently at Future Decoded, and some more of the team currently at Techorama Netherlands, this week as well, the office has seemed somewhat quiet.
Then next Saturday (12th October) there is DDD @ Microsoft Reading (which I am attending) and then in just a short few weeks is Evolve Conference, where I will be speaking on Making Operational Azure Management a breeze.
Yet again I’ve had another acceptance on a session that I have submitted to a conference, this time to Microsoft’s flagship conference, Ignite, this year taking place between November 4th - 8th 2019 in Orlando, Florida.
I’ve been accepted for 2 sessions, a 45 minute Breakout session and a 20 minute theatre session, both of which will be brand new to me sessions, and whilst both are completely non-technical, they are incredibly important topics in the Diversity & Inclusion track, something that I have been trying more and more to be better involved with.
After a good few years with the last rather dated look of this blog as per below
I felt that it was time for a bit of an update.
Though this also coincided with some software updates that I needed to implement as well so I thought I’d do a rolling update of theme, software and plugins and luckily most of it went ok (this time round)
Let me know what you think in the comments
You can tell that it’s the beginning of the conference session confirmation season as I’ve had another acceptance on a session that I have submitted to a conference, this time to the London leg of Microsoft’s Ignite on Tour conference on Feb 26th – 27th at the Excel London.
The session that I will be delivering is a new to me session called “Using Azure for Good - the story behind mhasl.
Looking through my emails & twitter on Sunday I was pleasantly surprised to see these two items popup
First batch of speaker confirmations has been sent out. We will announce the first 60 sessions in the coming week on our new site! Early bird ticket sale will start on January 21! #techorama pic.twitter.com/l6YRKXiFxY
— Techorama (@TechoramaBE) January 13, 2019 Followed closely with the following email
From everything I have heard about Techorama, it looks to be a good conference and I am certainly looking forward to visiting Belgium :-)
As promised in my last post - I wanted to let you know that the Call for Speakers for PSDay 2019, to be held on September 30th, at etcVenues in Birmingham, is now open.
The Call for speakers form is located over on Sessionize & we are looking for sessions for topics as listed is this post from last years PSDay Call for speakers and to be of 60 minutes in length for the main conference sessions, however unlike last year we are also accepting submissions for the post-conference Workshop Training day that we intend on putting on Tuesday 1st October 2019, also at etcVenues.
This year, we as the collective behind the UK PowerShell & DevOps User Groups, are running the third PSDayUK event, the only Conference that is totally Dedicated to PowerShell here in the UK & will be held on Monday September 30th at etcVenues, Birmingham.
I have already been asked by a few people about why we have decided to move the event this year, and a small part of that comes down to the overall event financials as running an event like PSDay or even the larger PowerShell Conferences like PSConf Asia, PSConf EU and also the US PowerShell & DevOps summit are not cheap events to run, and that is not including any time that myself and the other organisers put in behind the scenes, above and beyond our day jobs, to bring events like this & the PowerShell User Groups to you all around the UK.
With 2018 now being basically over, its time to reflect a bit, and well lets say that overall in the grand scheme of things it’s been a pretty good year.
Like any year there’s been ups, there’s been downs, there’s been lots of travel, laughter, tears, sun, rain etc etc. All in all, it’s safe to say that there’s been a bit of everything this year.
2018 will for many reasons stick out to me for years to come as the year that started building the foundations for my upcoming thirties, and yes you did read that right, upcoming thirties, and here are some of the reasons why (in no specific order, mainly because I could not decide on how I should order them)
I nearly didn’t start writing this mainly as I’ve found it difficult to get back into writing, let alone be in the right mindset to want to write at all. This partially stemmed out from struggling with injury last year. Thankfully, 2018 has been much much kinder to me, and I’m glad to say I am no longer struggling with at least the physical injury, that aside I intend to start getting back into the rhythm of writing once again, something that should come more and more frequently over the upcoming weeks and months.
Well the Title says it all in as few words as possible but I wanted to just expand briefly on this new chapter.
As of the beginning of September I will be leaving dotmailer after a fantastic 6 months here and this was a decision that was not easy to make as there are many interesting & exciting things happening at dotmailer in the upcoming few years & as such they are currently undergoing a huge increase in their tech team, I would reccommend that if you are looking for a new role in the London/Croydon area & are interested in DevOps and working with a predominantly all Azure environment to have a look at the roles that they have advertised at http://careers.
Info Share about PSDayUK 2018 - Call for Speakers, Ticket availability & Upcoming Call for Sponsors.
This year, we as the collective behind the UK PowerShell & DevOps User Groups, are running the second PSDayUK event, the only Conference that is totally Dedicated to PowerShell here in the UK & will be held on October 10th at CodeNode, London. You can find more info about at PSDay.UK including being able to purchase tickets & the eventual schedule once published in the upcoming weeks.
We will constantly be releasing information about PSDay as we approach the time for the event via various methods of social media including via our Twitter Account @psdayuk which I would highly recommend you follow if you want to be kept in the loop of what is coming to PSDay.
I have been absent from the Technical world for a short while, and in that time I have has a few people reach out and advise me that this blog has been down, due to an expired SSL cert.
Simple enough fix & well ‘I’m BACK’
Be on the watch for a series of blog articles to follow, over the course of the next few weeks, with a number of fun & technical items to be revealed, as well as some hints at some plans to be revealed, which is starting to make it look like it’s going to be a very fun filled 2018.
So this year the MVP program had a bit of a change to how it handled the renewal and awarding process, a change that I fully supported, as it would allow for the program to become, in my own opinion, more agile and therefore recognise more and more memebers of the amazing community on a more reasonable, and sustainable, cycle process. My only gripe, and this is so minor that I can look at it and laugh at it, as it only really affected me in a personal manner, was that the change to the renewal cycle meant that this year I got a free extension of 3 months from April till July (yay) but I lost the receiving the award as an early birthday present from Microsoft like I had for my 26th last year.