Frank Contrepois

Blog

AWS Pricing anomaly

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

As you can deduce from recent articles, I’m playing with the AWS price list. The research is about decomposing the cost into infrastructure, os costs and software cost. During the research I came across a negative value for a software cost. From my data it seems that in certain regions, the r4.2xlarge with Windows AND SQL Server Web, costs less than the same instance without SQL Server Web. So I did a fast check with the AWS Simple calculator (great tool) and voila Read more...

Chocolate Cake recipe

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

Today, with some Chocolate lovers in the team, we created the #Chocolate channel on Slack. Here is the first recipe (mine) The thin (dense) chocolate cake 70g of dark chocolate 70g of butter 125g of sugar 65g of flour or maizena 2 eggs separate whites from yolk melt chocolate with the butter mix sugar, yolks, melted chocolate, flour (optional) for some fluffiness bring the whites to snow and mix with the above 25-30 minutes not-pre-heated 180 degrees (if not fan add 5 minutes) Bonus: to share the cake correctly you give a slice to each person and keep the rest for you :P Read more...

Using stress as a positive force

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

Stress is always seen as a negative, but it does have some moments when it is useful. When you are stressed your body switch to combat more, providing more blood, adrenaline and other hormones I do no know about. How to use stress in your favour Do the two minutes brainstorming. Think about a topic, set a timer to 2 minutes, and start writing as many things on the topic as possible. Read more...

Windows pricing on AWS

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

There is also a version of this article on Strategic Blue blog Intro At Strategic Blue, we care about the money, and we’ve been collecting prices of AWS and other cloud vendors for a while. Another characteristic of Strategic Blue is that we are curious and love digging into the numbers, checking common assumptions, and find new ways to save money. This article is one such analysis done to understand how much a Windows license costs on AWS and understand if Azure Windows Licenses are cheaper (as per common assumption). Read more...

Why are kids asking why?

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

I don’t know, but what I know is that having my kids starting the why period brought three interesting thoughts: I really understand the power of the Five whys It gets annoying after 3 whys and very annoying after 5 It is very powerful to formulate answers that a 3 year old will understand (kind of) Note: the less I am able to answer the more annoyed I get, so maybe it is proportional to the ego Read more...

Can I help? and great links to survive in lockout

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

My job in this period of COVID can be summarise as: Keeping the team a team Coaching and mentoring Study IT stuff Learn how to best manage Cloud Budget (to create product) Happy to share my knowledge with you if you are interested in one of those topics. Learning and Sharing is the motto of this blog PS: my wife takes care of explaining how to manage work and kids while locked at home, and it works as we live-test the methods on us :) More info on LinkedIn Anya Smirnova. Read more...

My motivational music

Posted:   |   Categories: learning in public

Yes I do not know what to write now, I’ve just finished my GTD weekly review (late) and feel drained. As you may recall from a previous post (not searching it), I boost my motivation (and mood) by walking while listening to music at high volume: This is the Spotify playlist that triggers fantastic stories in my head and that helps get the creativity flowing without limits. My favourite way to think big, think far, think positive. Read more...

On-liner on MVP

Posted:   |   Categories: tech

To help shut the perfectionist in you remember that If it is not embarrassing, it is not an MVP Read more...