Welcome stranger, sit down by the fire and let us hear the epic deeds, the tales of joy, of woe and of note that occurred these past seven days.

Hello guys! This month I had the idea to read Refactoring, Improving the Design of Existing Code, turn its examples into Katas and relax in general. But I am afraid I am going to have to pivot and change plans :). Refactoring is a great book, and I will write a separate article about my impressions in my next reading digest, but it is too elementary. It is the kind of book I would have loved to read at the very start of my career, but today, most of its teachings I have ingrained in my programmers’ soul and use as instinctively as breathing.

Instead my plan is to merge December’s and January’s Barbaric Monthly and build my first Windows 8 app. How does that sound? :)

I am going to start brainstorming and prototyping today. In the meantime, I leave you with some super interesting stuff I have been listening/viewing/reading lately:

Epic Podcasts

• Dan North Deals with Uncertainty at .NET Rocks
• Why C++ with Herb Sutter on Hanselminutes
• Miguel Castro Rethinks UIs for Windows 8 on The Tablet Show
• Chanse Arrington unpacks Nokia on AppBizDev Podcast with special mention to DVLUP, Nokia’s latest initiative to encourage developers to develop for Windows Phone.

Epic Courses

• Generation App. An Expert-guided 30-day Voyage of App Development for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8
• Windows Phone 8 Jump Start videos and related resources