Using Github to Revive Blog Posts

I am currently migrating my blog content from Wordpress.com to GitHub pages using Hugo. During this transition, I wanted to have the ability to “revive” my blog posts on a scheduled basis on social media (e.g. Twitter). With Wordpress, you can use the WordPress Revive Old Posts plugin but with WordPress.com you have to have a premium business account to use plugins.

If you’re in a similar situation of if you want a free way to automate the “re-posting” of your blog content then you’re in luck! Below I have listed some initial requirements that are needed to use this process.

Connect Your Bot to Slack

In my previous two posts we created a knowledge base of questions and answers using QnAMaker and we created our Web App Bot in the Azure Portal. Now that we have a bot created and it is responding as we intended, we can interact with our bot directly through our web browser (or embed it into a website) or we can integrate into our Slack workspace.

Please make sure you have a Slack workspace created and you have access to create a Slack application. Login to your Slack workspace API and select Create New App in the top right-hand corner. You will need to give your new application a name and select the appropriate workspace to create your new application.

Create a Web App Bot Using Azure Bot Services

In my last post, we create a QnA Maker knowledge base that our Azure Web App Bot will use as it’s repository of questions & answers. Now, we are going to create our bot using Azure’s Bot Services.

First thing is that we should go ahead and log into the Azure Portal. In the top left-hand corner click the Create a resource button. You will then need to Search the marketplace in the New blade for Web App Bot.

Using Qnamaker to Create Chatbot

The first thing we need to do is login to QnAMaker. QnA Maker is a Microsoft service that allows you to easily generate a bot using either existing documentation for a product (or service) or you can create your own questions and answers – hence the name QnA Maker.

Login to QnAMaker and navigate to the Create a knowledge base tab. You will need to walkthrough 5 steps to create your knowledge base. Luckily, Microsoft has provided clear instructions to make this as simple as possible.

Create a Question and Answer Chatbot for Slack in Azure

Chatbots are all the rage right now, and they have proven to be extremely useful for organizations around the globe. You can have simple bots that take lunch orders or tell you the weather in your location. You can also bots tht act as part of an advanced distributed security alerting system. Whatever the reason, bots are not going anywhere anytime soon.

To create our chatbot we are going to use a few different services. Please make sure that you have all the necessary access setup and ready to go before proceeding. Here is the list of services we will be using:

Adding a Dlls Certificate to a Trusted Store

Yesterday I was asked to help with streamling a manual process that some QA folks were running into. They had a debug release of an applicaiton that was signed with a test code signing certificate. Part of the process was that they needed to select a DLL, view the certificate, and then install the certificate into the machines trusted certificate store.

This is a extremely simple task, but it was just an annoyance, so I wrote a few lines of code to autoamte this for them.

Butcher Block Iron Pipe Desk

Recently I built a butcher block and iron pipe desk for my home office. Within this post i’ll try and list out how I approached it as best as possible:

I purchased 2 8ft butcher block countertops from Lumber Liquidators while they were on sale. I paid $150 for each. Next, I researched quite a bit about how to finish them. Here’s what I did:

• Sanded using 80 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 120 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 200 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 320 grit sandpaper
• Sanded using 400 grit sandpaper

Once that was done, I used cheese cloth to wipe away all the debris. After that I did some more research and found a really cool product tha tturned out amazing (highly recommend). This product is unique, mostly because it is a finisher, sealer, and protector all in one. I was skeptical but I can not recommend this enough. Another point is that if you use typical stain and then polyurethe you are not actually touching the wood - it’s more of a coating. This stuff you are actually touching the wood cause the tung oil and sealer penetrates the actual wood; no rings from glasses, no oily residue, nothing. Its seriously great.