Our Blog

Implementing Azure Blob Storage in .NET 9

By Juan Pablo Ventoso
June 2, 2025

Businesses keep moving toward scalable and cloud-based architectures. With this in mind, a client that was dealing with random errors in a .NET app when saving files locally on the web server decided to get rid of that process and replace it with an Azure Blob Storage implementation.

Why use Azure Blob Storage? It’s an efficient cloud object storage solution from Microsoft, designed to store unstructured data, optimized for storing and serving documents, media, logs, or binary data, especially in applications that expose this data through an API. The key features are high performance, redundancy, reliability, and scalability. There’s an SDK that we can use for easy integration and development, be it in .NET or other languages.

Let’s take a look at what that change involves. For this example, we will set up the integration in a .NET 9 application:

Install the NuGet package required to connect to Azure Blob Storage. We can do it with the dotnet CLI, or through the NuGet package manager.

dotnet add package Azure.Storage.Blobs

Then, we need to configure our connection in our appsettings.json file. We will use the connection string that Azure provides us when we …

Rebuilding a Modern App in Rails 7 Without JavaScript Frameworks

By Couragyn Chretien
May 13, 2025

In the realm of web development, the allure of JavaScript frameworks like React and Vue is undeniable. However, I recently embarked on a mission to rebuild a modern web application using Rails 7, Hotwire, and Turbo, deliberately avoiding any JavaScript frameworks. The outcome was a streamlined stack, improved performance, and a more maintainable codebase.

Why Consider a Framework-Free Approach in 2025?

The complexity introduced by modern JavaScript frameworks can sometimes overshadow their benefits. Managing dependencies, build tools, and the intricacies of client-side rendering often lead to increased development overhead. With the advancements in Rails 7, particularly the introduction of Hotwire and Turbo, it’s now feasible to build dynamic, responsive applications without the need for additional JavaScript frameworks.

The Application: A Simplified Project Management Tool

I had previously built an app that was esentially a simplified version of Trello. The app is a lightweight project management tool featuring:

• Boards and cards

• Drag-and-drop functionality

• Real-time updates

• Commenting system

• User authentication and role management

Originally built with a React …

Client Mining: Growing Your Business Through Acquisition and Relationships

By Greg Hanson
May 7, 2025

What is Client Mining?

Client mining refers to acquiring new work from existing clients, but also refers to seeking and landing new clients. It involves three key components:

• Client Acquisition — Bringing in new clients.
• Relationship Maintenance — Keeping clients engaged and satisfied.
• Mining New Work — Expanding business opportunities with existing clients.

Why It Matters

In the simplest terms, without clients there is no business. Strong client relationships foster long-term success and financial stability. But even the best relationships don’t last forever—there can be budget cuts, in-house hires, or changes in business structure. A healthy client acquisition pipeline helps your company maintain momentum and staffing levels.

Consulting income is typically project-based and can be intermittent. More clients help offset these pauses in work. Diversification is important: relying on a few large clients can lead to problems if one of them leaves. Additionally, new clients lead to new development opportunities and possibly new offerings or services. Like exercise, client acquisition helps keep your consulting company in shape!

Client Acquisition

Understanding Your Target Audience …

Windows 10 End of Life: What Are Your Upgrade Options?

By Dan Briones
May 6, 2025

As technology evolves, so do operating systems. Microsoft has announced the end of support for Windows 10, meaning that after October 14, 2025, your device will no longer receive critical security updates. This blog post will discuss what this means for you and your upgrade options to Windows 11.

You can search for all Microsoft software lifecycles on the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy page.

Support will end on October 14, 2025, for these editions of Windows 10:

• Windows 10 Enterprise & Education
• Windows 10 Home & Pro
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise
• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2015
• Windows 10 Team (Surface Hub)

You can see a list of all Microsoft products whose support will end in 2025 on Microsoft’s website.

What Does End of Life Mean?

End of life (EOL) for an operating system means that the software vendor will no longer provide updates, security patches, or technical support. While your computer will still function, it will be more vulnerable to security threats. Continuing to use an unsupported operating system puts your data at risk.

Why Upgrade to Windows 11?

Windows 11 is the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system. It offers several benefits, including: …

Converting MIDI to KML using AI: Bach’s Notes in the Hills of Greenland

By Darius Clynes
May 2, 2025

I have always been interested in ways of representing music visually. Aside from conventional music notation, I imagined other cross-modal generation methods that could take a sound and generate an image. In the same vein, I have frequently envisioned a 3D landscape in which you could discover musical “objects”.

Well, now I’ve realized a version of this dream — with caveats which will be mentioned later. In this blog I would like to demonstrate how I used AI (in my case ChatGPT using GPT-4 Turbo) to create an interesting JavaScript application from just a few phrases. In this case, we will be making an application that can take as input an existing piece of music represented by a MIDI file and as output, create a KML file that you can view as 3D objects somewhere on the globe.

Here is how I enlisted ChatGPT to help me:

please make a javascript application that can take a MIDI file and covert it to extruded polygons in a kml file

Here is a part of its response:

I was amazed. It included code to select the MIDI file, convert it to KML, and generate an output file. Plus, ChatGPT correctly interpreted my request despite my “covert” typo. :-)

Before testing it I was interested …

Understanding the Relationship Between Apex and Salesforce

By Couragyn Chretien
May 2, 2025

Salesforce has become a cornerstone for businesses looking to streamline their customer relationship management. At the heart of its customization capabilities lies Apex, a powerful programming language designed specifically for the Salesforce platform and based on Java syntax. In this post, we’ll explore the relationship between Apex and Salesforce and touch on how Apex differs from the general-purpose language Java.

Apex and Salesforce

Apex is Salesforce’s proprietary programming language, introduced to extend the platform’s functionality beyond its out-of-the-box features. Think of Salesforce as a robust cloud-based ecosystem with pre-built tools for managing leads, contacts, opportunities, etc. While these tools are configurable through point-and-click interfaces, there are times when businesses need custom solutions. That’s where Apex comes in.

Apex runs natively on Salesforce’s platform. This tight integration allows Apex to interact seamlessly with Salesforce data (like objects and fields), execute triggers based on record changes, and build custom APIs. For example, a developer might use Apex to automate a discount approval process or sync …

Interchange Compression for SessionDB

By Mark Johnson
April 30, 2025

New support for compression of sessions and more lists stored in a RDBMS has been added to core Interchange.^1,2

A new module, Vend::Util::Compress, operates as a general interface for compressing and uncompressing scalar data in Interchange. The module currently offers hooks for the following compression algorithms:

• Zstd (preferred)
• Gzip
• Brotli

Additional algorithms can be easily added as needed.

Each algorithm depends on the developer having installed the necessary CPAN modules for the given compression type:

• IO::Compress::Zstd/IO::Uncompress::UnZstd³
• IO::Compress::Gzip/IO::Uncompress::Gunzip⁴
• IO::Compress::Brotli/IO::Uncompress::Brotli⁵

Vend::Util::Compress exports compress() and uncompress() on demand. In scalar context, they return the reference to the scalar holding the transformed data. In list context, they return additional measurements from the process.

List compress() returns an array of:

• $ref
• $before_size
• $after_size
• $elapsed_time
• $alert

List uncompress() returns an array of:

• $ref
• $elapsed_time
• $alert

Any errors encountered when called in scalar context are written to the catalog error log. Errors encountered when called in list context are returned in $alert. …

Handling text encoding in Perl

By Marco Pessotto
April 29, 2025

When we are dealing with legacy applications, it’s very possible that the code we are looking at does not deal with Unicode characters, instead assuming all text is ASCII. This will cause a myriad of glitches and visual errors.

In 2025, after more than 30 years since Unicode was born, how is that possible that old applications still survive while ignoring or working around the whole issue?

Well, if your audience is mainly English speaking, it’s possible that you just experience glitches sometimes, with some characters like typographical quotes, non breaking spaces, etc. which are not really mission-critical. If, on the contrary, you need to deal every day with diacritics or even different languages (say, Italian and Slovenian), your application simply won’t survive without a good understanding of encoding.

In this article we are going to focus on Perl, but other languages face the same problems.

Back to the bytes

As we know, machines work with numbers and bytes. A string of text is made of bytes, and each of them is 8 bits (each bit is a 0 or a 1). So one byte allows 256 possible combinations of bits.

Plain ASCII is made by 128 characters (7 bits), so it fits …