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Monthly Archives: July 2014

Comics – Offer : access to over 15.000 digital Marvel comics for a month for only $0.99

28 Jul

marveluniverse

Introduction

Since I was a kid I enjoyed reading all sorts of comics. These were mainly marvel based ones like Spiderman, X-Men, Iron Man, The Punisher. Since my childhood I haven’t read many comic books anymore. This is probably also because here in the Netherlands, Marvel comic books aren’t very common in shops. While I do still enjoy watching comic book based movies, I didn’t really think about reading comic books again (Naruto is an exception).

Marvel Unlimited one month for $0.99

This was until I saw the Marvel Unlimited offer where you can get a month of access to over 15.000 digital Marvel comics for only $0.99 for one month.
You can find the offer here: http://marvel.com/mu which contains the promo code SDCC14

Notes on the offer:
1) $0.99 offer ends 11:59 EST July 29th (05:00 CET July 30th)
2) It requires a credit card
3) The regular price (after the first month) is $9.99 monthly or $69.00 yearly.
4) The subscription auto renews, unless you cancel it. You can cancel it immediately after you sign up, so you won’t forget.

Notes on the Marvel Unlimited subscription

1) There are apps available for Android and iOS, but not for Windows tablets (the web based comic reader works fine though).
2) The newest comics aren’t made available immediately to Marvel Unlimited subscribers. It generally takes about half a year before they become available.
3) Not all comics are available for Marvel Unlimited subscribers yet. So before starting to read a series, make sure all the issues are available.

My experience and closing thoughts

I took advantage of this offer and started reading up on my favorite comics. I still have a lot of great comics to read from characters I know, but I’m also very curious about comics from characters that are less known to me. By example I don’t know much about The Guardians Of The Galaxy and plan and want to know more about them before seeing the movie. As such, I think I will be taking a monthly subscription now and then to read some comics, but only when I have time to read multiple comics.

So if you’re interested be sure to take advantage of this great offer and take a look to see if it is something for you. Also if you’re in Europe you’ll benefit from the strong EURO if you would decide to subscribe later on. A yearly subscription costs $69, which is about 50 EUROS. Not a bad deal if you ask me 🙂

If you have suggestions on which comics are must reads, please leave a comment.

 

 

 

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Posted by on July 28, 2014 in Books, Entertainment

 

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Free – Brocade Network Function Virtualization (NFV) course and exam

27 Jul

A student of mine informed me that Brocade is providing a free course and exam again. This time it is for Brocade Network Function Virtualization”
A while ago they also provided a similar offer for “Brocade Ethernet Fabric” which is also still valid apparently.

Take advantage of these offers if they are useful to you 🙂

 

 
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Posted by on July 27, 2014 in Hardware, ICT, Learning, Network, Storage

 

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Book review : Cloud Computing Concepts, Technology & Architecture

27 Jul

CCCTA_cover

Title: Cloud Computing Concepts, Technology & Architecture
Number of pages: 528
ISBN: 9780133387520
Released: May 2013

My opinion:

The book is well written, is vendor neutral, covers both business and IT aspects and contains many great diagrams. It also has a lot of useful references to external resources.
What I disliked, is that because of the vendor neutral approach some aspects are relatable enough (especially for people that don’t have a lot of working experience). I feel the book would have benefitted by providing more real-life examples of products or services.

The book is a good start for experienced people and will especially come in handy as a reference when getting involved in cloud computing projects. It will help understand vendor specific products and services better.

I would recommend people that are new to cloud computing (or that have very limited working experience) to first read a cloud essentials book like the one from Sybex before reading this book though.

To take a look at the book and its content, you can visit the book’s companion website: http://servicetechbooks.com/cloud

 
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Posted by on July 27, 2014 in Cloud, Data center, ICT, Learning, Private cloud, Public Cloud

 

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My ‘ITIL Foundation’ certification experience.

25 Jul

For quite some time, I was planning to get certified for the latest version of ITIL Foundation since I was “only” ITIL v2 certified. A couple of years ago I bought the v3 book and started reading, but for some reason I found it very boring and just couldn’t motivate myself enough to complete the book and get certified.

In the next couple of years I mainly focused on other certifications and ignored ITIL v3 until last week. I took my old book and started reading again. To my surprise everything seemed to be far more logical than back then and I went through the book very easily. Maybe it’s because of the added experience or maybe I just wasn’t motivated enough back then, but I even liked the content in the book.

After reading the book I tried some sample exams and these went great even though apparently my book was outdated since the ITIL Foundation book had been updated in 2011. Just to be sure I bought a new version of the book, but in my opinion there weren’t any big changes.

The exam itself was also very easy. So now I’m going back to focusing on cloud computing again 🙂

 
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Posted by on July 25, 2014 in ICT

 

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Book review : Cloud Essentials – CompTIA Authorized Courseware for Exam CLO-001

15 Jul

9781118408735 cover.indd

Introduction

For those who haven’t read my previous blog posts, here’s a short summary. About 1,5 – 2 years ago I decided that I wanted to know more about cloud computing and get certified as well. I used freely available resources to attain these certifications:

In short, my conclusion was that the quality of the freely available resources were not sufficient. ITpreneurs were kind enough to provide me with access to their e-learning course and Train Signal (now Pluralsight) provided me with their video training. Reviews for both can be found here:

Even though both resources are good, I personally prefer a book over eLearning and video training. As such I picked up a copy of “Cloud Essentials : CompTIA Authorized Courseware for Exam CLO-001”

Review

Number of pages: 268
ISBN: 978-1-118-40873-5
Released: June 2013

My opinion:

The book is well written and knows to provide a very good basis of cloud computing both technical and non-technical. Even though the number of pages is limited, the most important aspects are covered in my opinion, which should be enough to provide insight and to pass the Exin and Comptia cloud exams.

What I disliked are some of the questions at the end of the book, because they are sometimes a bit strange. But as far as I can remember, this was also the case in the official exams … so better get used to it if you are going to get certified.

All in all, this is a very good book to get started with cloud computing.

 

 
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Posted by on July 15, 2014 in Cloud, ICT, Learning, Private cloud, Public Cloud

 

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