Just Five Mins!

Why would you need a headless CMS (Content Management System)?

Very good point!  If you have ever used WordPress, Webflow, Wix etc. then you know what a CMS is - a platform to allow you to create a website/blog or whatever it might be.  That is great and works for a lot of people however, what if you want to have a slick visual CMS experience in your own website where you host it wherever as just a plain HTML website (although you can get more complex of course)?

Builder IO provides the slick visual CMS aspect, user management, role-based access and all of the admin boilerplate, and you can decide where and how to include the CMS "bits".  For example, if you have a basic HTML website with 10 pages, you might want 3 of those pages to be "fully CMS capable" (from header to footer so to speak) then you might only want a section or even component on a couple of other pages to be managed by the CMS.  You can decide what goes where very easily.

So, Builder IO is aimed at mostly a developer type audience but with the concept of providing a very slick and easy to use CMS without you having to re-invent the wheel.

There is a "hook" to Builder IO of course - the visual CMS bit to edit those elements/pages however, if you decide to stop using Builder IO in the future, your site is still your site and will continue to work, just you won't have the visual CMS part of course!

Pricing isn't too bad at all - a very generous free version.

The documentation is very clear and well presented.  Very easy to add Builder IO to pretty much any frontend development i.e. Vue, Angular, React, Svelte or Qwik which I believe the same people created as a very fast JavaScript framework - not tried yet, but looks impressive.

Builder IO also has a nice Figma import option to magically create the HTML...

At first, for myself anyway, I was confused a bit about how this all works - is Builder IO like WordPress? do they host the sites? but after realising they are providing the visual magic and you can use that "output" how/wherever you like, the penny dropped - finally!

When the cloud isn't enough ;)

Azure ARC lets you manage off-cloud infrastructure within the same familiar Azure environment, along with governance, security and visibility from one unified viewpoint.

Azure Arc – Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Management and Solution (microsoft.com)

Azure Arc for Developers (microsoft.com)

Well, it has been a couple of weeks or so since the last JFM mostly as I have been "lost in the machine" so to speak!

So much A.I. stuff happening, good or bad? who knows!  I can understand the concerns, but right now I am feeling the A.I explosion is providing some useful assistance within various tools/landscapes.

Today, I am looking into a few interesting ones:

• Microsoft Copilot - who wants to remember how to do vlookups anyway!
  Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work - The Official Microsoft Blog
  
  
• GitHub Copilot X - They say code is poetry so why not speak code :) along with a few other interesting extras!
  GitHub Next
  
  
• Fancy wiring your brain up to GPT?  well, you can! Neurosity have just a device! you can even use the Javascript SDK to get data from the Neurosity crown device :)
  Fireship YouTube channel takes this to the next level! :)
  (340) I literally connected my brain to GPT-4 with JavaScript - YouTube

Yet another low code development environment, but this one has some interesting twists!

Retool is a low code development environment which has a browser based IDE to allow you to build internal apps very quickly!  you can connect to lots of database systems out there, including SAP HANA which is interesting from my day-to-day role :)

You can also connect to a wide variety of API's including GraphQL, gRPC and custom REST API's - of course there are pre-built connections to a lot of popular API's such as Salesforce, Shopify to name a couple.

An additional bonus that caught my eye is the fact Retool allows a FREE version for up to 5 users, both cloud based and locally hosted!  The local hosted model is very interesting since you have the option to host the Retool stack in AWS or wherever you wish in addition to being able to run Retool locally via a docker container :)  that means you can run Retool on your laptop/PC or indeed on an internal server.  Again, this is FREE for up to 5 users.

The IDE is browser based and mostly drag and drop to build UI interfaces.  You can define your queries both via SQL script or via a GUI to assist you.

Definitely a cool low code environment to check out!

BONUS!  They also have a native mobile option in beta/preview currently!  again, worth checking out for sure.

Well, the name explains it! we are all a little lazy sometimes ;)

Introducing Lazy Docker - essentially a way to manage your docker environment from a command line with a command line UI (not unlike the days of MS-DOS!).  This is a good thing BTW!  it is nice to have a clean, easy to use and quick way to manage your docker environment.

Sent in this time by my good friend Tim Abel.  Tim also has a podcast worth a listen over here: Software should be free.

So, check out lazy docker - very easy to install and get going, and again, simplifies managing docker without having to remember the docker syntax!

Well, nothing like a light bit of listening!  Web 3.0?  Over hyped/Over used term? perhaps, but there are nuggets in them thar hype-fields!

Way too much to discuss in 5 (or even 6) mins!  but I try... Certainly, the world of decentralised "whatever" is here and has been some time.  I might delve a little deeper into some of the subjects of Web 3.0 including Blockchain generally, dApps of course, and NFT's - trying to make sense, and importantly, make use of any of these emerging technologies.

Some links I have been referring to:

Inrupt - the organisation with Tim Berners-Lee

Solid - PODS to store your data securely and keep control of

Article from Telerik here

AI is taking over!  well, maybe not quite, but it is and will continue to be embedded in our day-to-day lives.

For this episode, I have been exploring Motion (links below).  An app to use AI to organise your life.  Uses the concept of "time blocking" (link below) and essentially lets you pull in all of your calendars (personal and business) as well as a variety of todo apps, and keeps them in sync but attempts to use some good old AI to attempt to organise the important things you need to focus on.

In my honest opinion, the app is a bit pricey (no affiliation BTW, just my own observations!), but then if you think about synchronising all of your calendar/todo's anyway with the advantage of some organisation/planning, maybe it isn't too expensive.  Also, if you do pay, then there is probably more chance of actually employing good practices the app is attempting to help with!

This concept/idea is certainly one for myself - keeping focus on the important tasks whatever they may be (work/family/unicorn racing, whatever!).

Here is the link to the motion blog article about time blocking.

Also, the link to the main app page.

An interesting journey working with Docker over the years.  Docker is great for containerising your apps, but what happens when you start to have a lot of containers and/or you want fail-over support?

Well, even though Kubernetes (also known as K8S for short!) isn't the only orchestration tool out there, it is fairly common and a "go to" for a lot of devs.

Setting up and managing K8S can be a handful, but if you you use Docker Desktop on your OS of choice, you can take advantage of "Docker Extensions".  One being "harpoon" to visually create and manage your K8S landscape.

Open up Docker Desktop and click on Extensions.  Do a search for "Harpoon".

Also, if you want a nice introduction to Kubernetes, check out this link.  I do love ByteByteGo articles!

Here is a link to the Harpoon extension.

This time around we have some VPN and Tunnel info.  Lots of VPN solutions out there, but I wanted to highlight one that I have been using (successfully!) which has a really nice free version too!

The VPN (but also has tunneling capabilities and more) is TailScale 

Also, Cloudflare, which is a massive cloud based set of services everything from network management/firewall/caching and goodness knows what to, yes, tunnels too!

For more of a Microsoft/Visual Studio specific option, you can check out dev tunnels too.

Why do you need a tunnel? well, lots of reasons to perhaps want secure access to your own machines (although, always be careful what you expose and ensure you understand what it is you are doing!) or, in my case, I might create some API's or apps that I want to test/show online without having to host to start with.