All posts by Jon Culp

Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

The certification validates basic knowledge of cloud services and how those services are provided with Azure. Fundamental knowledge of cloud concepts, along with Azure services, workloads, security, privacy, pricing, and support.

Key Concepts covered by certification:

  • Cloud concepts
  • Core Azure services
  • Core solutions and management tools on Azure
  • General security and network security features
  • Identity, governance, privacy, and compliance features
  • Azure cost management and Service Level Agreements

AI-900: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals

I got my first certification. I’ve been in IT for more than a decade and have always been fearful to attempt getting certifications. I had a fear of failure. I realize now there is no shame in failing a certification test, it just means you need to keep studying. Luckily, I passed! Define your goals and do the work to achieve them.

Gartner vs Forrester 2021

I’ve been following Gartner’s magic quadrant and the Forrester Wave for a while now and decided to compare them for BI platforms, Integrations, and DB/DW. There are differences in what kind of platform and the attributes for scoring by each, but I wanted to try to line up the closest kinds of platform analysis that I had seen by each. I think it would be interesting to show how these have changed year-over-year to get a feel for momentum.

I didn’t pay for redistribution licensing for these, so I hope they don’t come after me.

Business Intelligence Platforms:

Integration Platforms:

Database / Data Warehouse:

Untitled

Waves dressed in sapphire,
green eyes aglow –
Pulsing through me,
her currents flow –
Deep breath, exhales,
protruding through Icelandic vales –
Наши сердца,
переплетаются в одно.

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

-William Butler Yeats

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“Interpretation is imposed by others. Paintings are to be admired and contemplated [not named or explained]. If I had something to say I would write it down or say it; I don’t need painting for that.”

-Zdislaw Beksinski