I recently finished reading Beyond diversification from Sebastien Page.  Sebastien Page (Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price) explains in Beyond diversification the different approaches to forecasting returns, risks and correlations across asset classes by combining academic research and practical hands-on examples.  This book is most likely targeted at the sophisticated investor  and should not be the first book to pick up if you want to understand diversification but it provides great insights on how asset managers think about their portfolios.  ..read more

 2024 Release Wave 2 Release plans for 2024 release wave 2 are now publicly available - Release plans for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry - Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn - from July 29th, early access will be available for activation - other key dates for 2024 release wave 2 are also available . Also check out the videos like Dynamics 365 Service 2024 Release Wave 2 or Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2024 Release Wave 2 - these might also contain features/functionality which are not listed in the release plans. 2024 Wave 2: Dynamics 365 Cust ..read more

The Get-AzSubscription PowerShell cmdlet gets the subscription ID, subscription name and home tenant for subscriptions that the current account can access. You can also pass this values in as a parameter e.g. "Get-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId" to find the name of a subscription.  The easiest way to execute this cmdlet (without having to install anything on your machine) is by using Azure Cloud Shell.  A handy feature of Azure Cloud Shell is predictive intellisense - use the RightArrow key to accept an inline suggestion ..read more

If you are not familiar with Agile or DevOps, I highly recommend the books below: The Phoenix Project: a Novel about IT,DevOps and Helping Your Business Win (Gene Kim) is a book which illustrates how Agile principles can be applied to solve complex problems in IT. It is  written like a novel, which makes it both educational and entertaining. The main character, Bill Palmer, an IT manager is tasked to rescue a critical business project named Phoenix Project. Thebook is best suited for IT professionals, managers and executives.  The Unicorn Project: A Novel About Developers ..read more

 This is a long overdue feature which will allow Dataverse plug-ins to connect to Azure resources (e.g. Azure Key Vault) using managed identities, eliminating the need for credential management and enhancing security.   It currently is available in public preview but GA is expected for November 2024 You will need to create a managed identity record in Dataverse and link it ot your specific plugin assembly - for more details take a look at Set up managed identity for Power Platform (Preview) and Power Platform managed identity overview (Preview) for more details. I ..read more

A couple of weeks ago, I uncovered an old Raspberry Pi 2 in a drawer and I wanted to try to upgrade the OS to a more recent version. The Raspberry PI still  had  Debian 8 (Jessie) installed.  After a number of failed attempts I just gave up and did a fresh install with Debian 11 (Bullseye) PS To check the installed Raspberry PI OS version type "cat /etc/os-release" in the command prompt or "hostnamectl ..read more

"The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller - Steve Jobs" I recently read the Harvard Business Review article : your strategy needs a story and the central idea resonated with me: "storytelling is crucial for business leaders because it effectively bridges the gap between strategy and action, making complex strategies engaging, memorable, and motivating for implementation1". Steve Job's quote also aligns with this view on the importance of storytelling in business and marketing Story telling transforms the complexity of numbers and logic behind a business strategy into si ..read more

 The Microsoft FastTrack team published a series of videos with best practices and guidance for Dynamics 365 Customer Service implementations in the last couple of months - here is an overview: Introduction to implementation resources, samples and tools for Dynamics 365 Customer Service | April 16, 2024   Implementation optimization resources for Dynamics 365 Customer - Channel Integration Framework (CIF) | May 13, 2024  Implementation optimization resources - D365 Customer Service (Samples and tools) | May 29, 2024  Implementation Optimization resources - Testing for ..read more

There is a new (annoying) functionality which  show meeting invite notifications in your Microsoft Teams activity feed. To disable this go to your  Teams settings and open the 'Notifications and activity' menu on the left sside. At the bottom you will find the calendar notifications which you can change to 'Off'. See Manage notification settings on Microsoft support for more details ..read more

In Python, a naive datetime object is one that does not contain any information about time zones or daylight saving time. This means it is unaware of the context in which it exists, such as whether it represents local time, UTC, or any other time zone. By default, the datetime object in Python is naive. You can make them timezone aware using the pytz library. If you are working with pandas dataframes or series, you can also use the tz_localize method of the Pandas DateTimeIndex object. References:  datetime - basic date and time (Python docs) pandas.Series.tz_localize ..read more