Tag: Recap

2024 has started and we are in the second week already. Time for a short recap, as always but like oliebollen, it is part of the tradition. Last year flew by before we knew it. A lot happened but also a lot did not happen.

On a personal level I have been working on my physical state and crazy as it is joined the 5AM club. While travelling to Microsoft Build 2023 I was jet-lagged and was waking up at around four or five AM due to shifted time zones. There is about a nine-hour time difference between my home location and Seattle where Microsoft Build was hosted at the time. I started working out in the gym at the hotel right after waking up and that is still my daily opening scene today.

My physical condition improved a lot, lost a lot of weight (knowing that I also gained a lot of muscle), improved my stamina, lowered my heart rate and extended my sleeping pattern by a few hours.

The downside of more sleep and exercising obviously is that there is not much time left after a day with an extended morning routine, walking to the gym, exercise, walking back from the gym, having breakfast and a shower and morning routine. Add to that a full working day and before you know it, it is time to go to bed again to get the right amount of sleep.

Before all of this I crawled out of bed late, worked for the day and had a long night on Twitch and YouTube to develop stuff online. I was able to crank out a lot of things on my computer but neglected the state of my body and it was already in a bad state after picking up COVID-19. The patterns changed a lot last year but also took a large bite out of my development segment as part of the digital life I was living before.

I still did a lot of things, not as visible as before, ‘off screen’ such as working and supporting my pet project to create Office Add-ins in the context of Blazor. I created the sample projects here in the official Microsoft OfficeDev/Office-Add-in-samples repo as a prototype and helper projects for the community to work on.

I also extended my Azure Developer Associate Certification and was rewarded for the eighteenth time Microsoft MVP again. Completely out of context I did another Transatlantic Disney Cruise to travel from Southampton to New York together with my wife.

Developments on a professional level were a bit disappointing in 2023 and therefore, for 2024, I decided that this will be a time to reflect. At this time working about a day less each week (professionally, that is) whenever possible and focusing more on the fun side of life by working on my own expense on projects that give more joy to see where we end up.

Life is short and therefore it is important to focus on the happy stuff and stay on the positive side in body and mind. There is a lot going on in the world that impacted a lot of innocent people last year. I won’t go too deep into that but apparently there are a few individuals who think it is necessary to spoil the lives of others for their benefit (is there?) and their own position. For 2024, let us all try to turn that around for the better and make sure we all have a safe and prosperous future on this planet. We need to turn the negatives into positive, don’t you agree?

Like last year I have lots of plans on the shelf and I hope you will join me and see you on my YouTube Channel, Twitch Channel or on my Soft as in Software landing pages with this blog!

The first week of 2023 is behind us, my ‘holidays’ are over, and it is time to boot up 2023. Officially you are not allowed to wish anyone a “Happy New Year” anymore after January 7th.

In the Netherlands, the holidays are a bit different this year compared to other years. In general, we take the last two weeks of the year off but given how Christmas and New Year ended up on the calendar the two-week holiday disconnect was now set to the last week of 2022 and the first week of 2023 by our government.

2022 has been an ups and down year for me. The Up was definitely the Transatlantic Cruise to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary sailing from Dover to New York with stops in France, UK, Spain, and Bermuda. An experience I wouldn’t want to have missed for the world. The downside was that after staying away from it for over two years I finally got hit by COVID-19, most likely picked it up on our return trip flying back from New York to Berlin or on the train from Berlin to Amsterdam, where we ran into huge crowds all coughing and sneezing while travelling home using airplanes and trains.

Although COVID-19 did not hit me very hard, a mild flu without too much fever, the coughing didn’t go away and kept going on a low level. Just before X-mas, however, I adopted a heavy flu infection. I guess I was still somewhat vulnerable to not being completely recovered from COVID. This resulted in a Pneumonia and my body didn’t allow me to do anything beyond having a time-out. My ‘Body Battery’ didn’t even climb up on my Garmin and zero-ed out for a lengthy period.

Time to visit the doctor (last time was about 10 years ago, I am -knock on wood- not much of a doctor visitor). The examination by my doctor resulted in a huge pile of medication with powerful types that started to kick in the moment I took them in. It looks like things are changing for the better now, at least my ‘Body Battery’ is showing upward movements again.

From a Soft as in Software perspective 2022 was not bad, until my health went south that is. In 2022 I created Office Add-in Starter projects to have new fresh Office Developers to easily get started building their first Word, Excel or Outlook Add-ins using Office JavaScript APIs. Also, I was able to build Blazor based Office Add-ins allowing you to use more .NET based coding, still allowing you to interact with Office hosts such as Word, Excel, or Outlook.

I pushed all of my Office Add-in demo repos into the official Microsoft OfficeDev/Office-Add-in-samples repo by creating Pull Requests and even did some small presentations on the Microsoft Office Add-ins Community calls.

Here are the links to the Add-ins and presentations:

• Hello World Office Add-ins
• Blazor based Office Add-ins
• Microsoft Office Add-ins Community Calls Blazor Presentations

Look at the above links and try to build some of your own Office Add-ins and let me know what you like or don’t like about it. I think the option to use Blazor in your Office Add-ins can be a powerful help if you are a .NET developer from origin and should make it easier to hook into Office, maybe allowing you to move your VSTO Office Add-ins into Office JS Add-ins.

So, there is my New Year’s rant … let’s focus on the future and see where we are going. For one thing my body just warned and gave a clear message to put your health at number one.

I still have lots of plans though so keep an eye out and hope to see you on my YouTube Channel, Twitch Channel or on my Soft as in Software landing pages with this blog!