SPCHR: Speech To Text App for Windows

I’m excited to announce the release of SPCHR. Pronounced as “speaker”. I know, I know. My apologies, it was too late at night and that’s the best I could come up with 😉

It is a Windows desktop application for speech-to-text transcription.
You can use it to “add” voice input to applications that don’t natively support it. It works anywhere you can type or paste text.
You can use it entirely locally on your PC if you like, so it is private and secure.

Key Features

Flexible: SPCHR can use either Azure Speech Services or a local OpenAI Whisper model, giving you the flexibility to choose between cloud-based and local transcription.
Zero Configuration: The application works immediately with local Whisper processing – no account setup required!
Global Hotkey: Start and stop recording from any application with Ctrl+Alt+L.
Seamless Integration: Transcribed text is automatically pasted into your active window.

Getting Started

Clone the repository
Build the solution using Visual Studio and run it
Press Ctrl+Alt+L and start speaking
Watch as your words appear in your active window
For those wanting cloud-based transcription, simply add your Azure Speech Services credentials to the configuration file.

Open Source

SPCHR is released under the MIT License, and I welcome contributions from the community. Whether you’re interested in adding features, fixing bugs, or improving documentation, your help is appreciated.

Check out GitHub repository

What’s next

This is just the beginning for SPCHR. Several improvements can be done:

Additional language support
Customizable hotkeys
Installer
UI Enhancements
AI Enhanced Features

Try it out

Ready to transform how you interact with your computer? Visit the GitHub repository to get started with SPCHR today.

I’m excited to see how you’ll use SPCHR in your workflow and look forward to your feedback!

Kusto Queries on AKS Clusters

Kusto query language can be used to get insights into Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters. Container insights collects data from AKS clusters and forwards it to Log Analytics workspace, if enabled for a cluster. This data is available for querying in the Azure Monitor. Here is an example of how you can query the pods not in running state in specific namespaces.

KubePodInventory 
| where Namespace in ("dv","test","prod") 
| where ContainerStatus != "Running" 
| where ContainerStatusReason !in ("", "Completed") 
| distinct Namespace, Name

Run
Time range : Last 24 hours
E] Save v
14 Share v
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KubePodInventory
I where Namespaceän ('dv', 'test', 'prod')
I where ContainerStatusu !=
"Running"
I where ContainerStatusReasone ! in ('I", "Completed")
I distinct Namespace, Name
Results Chart
@ Display time (UTC+OO:OO) v
Columns v
Completed. Showing results from the last 24 hours.
>
Namespace
dv
prod
Y Name Y
app2
app2

The following query includes the name of the AKS cluster and renders the output as a stacked bar chart.

KubePodInventory 
| where Namespace in ("dv","test","prod") 
| where ContainerStatus != "Running" 
| where ContainerStatusReason !in ("", "Completed") 
| distinct ClusterName, Namespace, Name 
| summarize dcount(Name) by ClusterName, Namespace 
| render columnchart kind=stacked100

Run
Time range : Last 24 hours
E] Save v
14 Share v
+ New alert rule
Export v
Pin to dashboard
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KubePodInventory
I where Namespace in ('dv', 'test', 'prod')
I where ContainerStatus ! =
"Running"
I where ContainerStatusReason ! in ('I", "Completed")
I distinct ClusterName, Namespace, Name
summarize dcount(Name) by ClusterName, Namespace
render columnchart kind=stacked100
Results
Chart
@ Display time (UTC+OO:OO) v
Completed. Showing results from the last 24 hours.
00:00.7
2 records
z
o
100
50
dv
O
aksdemol
ClusterName
prod
Activate Windows
Go to Settings to activate Windows.

You can include multiple AKS clusters in the scope in which this query is executed by clicking on [Select scope] hyperlink.

Create an Azure Dashboard panel with this output by clicking on [Pin to dashboard] button.

You can also execute this Kusto query directly using powershell.

$workspaceName = "DefaultWorkspace-6637b095-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx-EUS" 
$workspaceRG = "defaultresourcegroup-eus" 
$WorkspaceID = (Get-AzOperationalInsightsWorkspace -Name $workspaceName -ResourceGroupName $workspaceRG).CustomerID 

$query = 'KubePodInventory | where Namespace in ("dv","test","prod") | where ContainerStatus != "Running" | where ContainerStatusReason !in ("", "Completed") | distinct ClusterName, Namespace, Name | summarize dcount(Name) by ClusterName, Namespace' 

$result = Invoke-AzOperationalInsightsQuery -WorkspaceId $WorkspaceID -Query $query -Timespan (New-TimeSpan -days 1) 
$result.results

This allows you to include the results of your custom Kusto queries in any reports you might run using Azure Automation Runbooks.

PowerShell v Q)
PS /home/ash>
PS /home/ash>
PS /home/ash>
Q
o
PS /home/ash> $workspaceName
"DefaultWorkspace-6637b095
PS / home/ash> $workspaceRG
"defaultresourcegroup-eus"
PS / home/ash> $WorkspaceID
(Get-AzOperationa11nsightsWorkspace
-Name $workspaceName -ResourceGroupName $workspaceRG) . CustomerID
'KubePodInventory I where Namespace in ("dv" , "test" , "prod") I where ContainerStatus ! =
"Running" I where Container
PS / home/ash> $query
I distinct ClusterName, Namespace, Name I summarize dcount(Name) by ClusterName, Namespace'
PS / home/ash> $result
Invoke-AzOperationa11nsightsQuery -Workspaceld $WorkspaceID -Query $query -Timespan (New-TimeSpan
-days 3)
PS / home/ash> $result.results
ClusterName Namespace dcount_Name
aksdemol
aksdemol
aksdem02
dv
prod
test
1
1
1
PS / home/ash>
PS / home/ash>
PS /home/ash>

AKS – Adding SSH Keys to VMSS Nodes

You can connect to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) nodes using ssh. It is documented here: Connect with SSH to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster nodes for maintenance or troubleshooting.

I needed to access nodes on the System node pool for collecting some logs recently, but the process documented above was not working for me. It turns out that there were two different issues, both related to adding your SSH keys to the nodes in a virtual machine scale set (VMSS).

This is the az cli command that adds the ssh keys to the VMSS:

az vmss extension set  \
    --resource-group $CLUSTER_RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --vmss-name $SCALE_SET_NAME \
    --name VMAccessForLinux \
    --publisher Microsoft.OSTCExtensions \
    --version 1.4 \
    --protected-settings "{\"username\":\"azureuser\", \"ssh_key\":\"$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)\"}"

I was running this command from powershell on a windows host. So, the first modification I needed was to escape the double quotes by doubling them. You can also use back ticks instead of doubling the double quotes.

az vmss extension set  \
    --resource-group $CLUSTER_RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --vmss-name $SCALE_SET_NAME \
    --name VMAccessForLinux \
    --publisher Microsoft.OSTCExtensions \
    --version 1.4 \
    --protected-settings "{\""username\"":\""azureuser\"", \""ssh_key\"":\""$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)\""}"

The second issue was due to the fact that ssh-keygen adds a comment to the id_rsa.pub file. By default, it adds username@hostname as the comment at the end of the file . Normally, this comment wouldn’t cause any problems, but in this case it was causing an error – “Invalid escape sequence \uXXXX”.

The problem was that my domain user name starts with character ‘u’ and “domain\userid1” was being interpreted as containing a unicode character “\useri” which is obviously not a valid unicode character. The workaround here is to either delete the comment from the id_rsa.pub file (it works just fine without it) or to override the default comment when generating the ssh key by specifying your own comment via -C command line option.

ssh-keygen -C mycomment

Finally, there is another way to execute az vmss extension set command to get around both of these issues by creating a json file and passing that as the value of –protected-settings argument. Here is how –

Create a json file, protected_settings.json, with the following content:

{
	"username" : "azureuser",
	"ssh_key" : "REPLACE_THIS_WITH_CONTENT_OF_ID_RSA_PUB_FILE"
}

Pass this file as the command line argument:

az vmss extension set  \
    --resource-group $CLUSTER_RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --vmss-name $SCALE_SET_NAME \
    --name VMAccessForLinux \
    --publisher Microsoft.OSTCExtensions \
    --version 1.4 \
    --protected-settings protected_settings.json

Works like a charm!

AKS Supported Kubernetes Versions

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) supports specific versions of Kubernetes.
It is necessary to regularly monitor the release of new versions and upgrade your AKS clusters to supported versions in order to remain in compliance with AKS Kubernetes Version Support Policy.

AKS announces the planned date of a new minor version release and corresponding old version deprecation via AKS Release notes at least 30 days prior to removal. An email notification is sent to the subscription administrators with the planned version removal dates. You get 30 days from version removal to upgrade to a supported minor version release. Patch versions can be released anytime and you get 30 days from the removal date to upgrade to a supported patch version.

You should test new target Kubernetes versions and upgrade your AKS clusters in a timely manner. For that, it is necessary to proactively monitor the AKS release notes. This can easily become a chore in a large Enterprise environment. Here is a Powershell script to make it easier to stay on top of Kubernetes version releases in AKS and publish/share it with others: Get-AksSupportedVersions.

$aksVersionsJson = az aks get-versions --location eastus

$aksVersions = $aksVersionsJson | ConvertFrom-Json
$aksVersions.orchestrators.upgrades.orchestratorVersion 

$data = $aksVersions.orchestrators | Select-Object `
    -Property @{Name="Version";Expression={$_.orchestratorVersion}} `
            , @{Name="Default";Expression={$_.default}} `
            , @{Name="Preview";Expression={$_.isPreview}} `
            , @{Name="Upgrades";Expression={$_.upgrades.orchestratorVersion -join ", "}}

$versionTable = $data | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment 
$versionTableString = $versionTable | Out-String
$html = New-Object -ComObject "HTMLFile"
$html.IHTMLDocument2_write($versionTableString)
$tables = $html.body.getElementsByTagName("table")

$rptString = ""
ForEach($table in $tables){
    ForEach($row in $table.rows){
            $cellCount = 0
            ForEach($cell in $row.cells){
                $cellCount++
                if(($cellCount -eq 2) -and ($cell.innertext -eq 'True'))
                {
                    $row.className = "OkStatus"
                }
                if(($cellCount -eq 3) -and ($cell.innertext -eq 'True'))
                {
                    $row.className = "WarningStatus"
                }
        }
    }
    $rptString += $table.outerHTML
}

$reportDate = $(get-date -DisplayHint DateTime) | Out-String
$fileTS = $(get-date -Format "yyyyMMdd") 
$fileName = "aks-versions-$fileTS.html"

$rptTitle = "<h1>AKS Kubernetes Versions</h1><p>$reportDate</p>"
$report = ConvertTo-Html -Title "AKS Versions" -Body "$rptTitle $rptString" -Head $header
$report | Out-File "$fileName"

It creates an HTML report of currently supported Kubernetes versions in AKS along with their respective upgrade paths. Here is an example of the report generated by the script referenced above :

AKS Kubernetes Versions

Sunday, November 8, 2020 8:47:42 PM

Version	Default	Preview	Upgrades
1.16.13			1.16.15, 1.17.9, 1.17.11
1.16.15			1.17.9, 1.17.11
1.17.9			1.17.11, 1.18.6, 1.18.8
1.17.11	True		1.18.6, 1.18.8
1.18.6			1.18.8, 1.19.0
1.18.8			1.19.0
1.19.0		True

Reference: How To Create An HTML Report With PowerShell

Ethereum Blockchain-As-A-Service in Azure Cloud

Ethereum Blockchain (EBaas) as a Service provided by Microsoft Azure and ConsenSys allows for enterprise customers and partners to play, learn, and fail fast at a low cost in a ready-made dev/test/production environment. It will allow them to create private, public and consortium based Blockchain environments very quickly in Azure. In this session, you will learn how to get started with prototyping building blocks of a decentralized application using EBaas in Windows Azure.

Venue: Triangle Azure User Group

Slides : download.

KeyNode with Node.js and Microsoft Azure

KeyNode is a application to issue and verify software license keys. Technology stack for KeyNode is Node.js, MongoDB and Microsoft Azure.

I had built this functionality with C9.io (a cloud-based IDE with a built-in source code repository and debugger), mongohq (MongoDB as a service – now part of compose.io) and appfog (Cloud PAAS built on top of CloudFoundry). It used SMTP/gmail to email license files. That was the version I created a couple of years ago to issue tamper-proof signed xml license files for CodeDemo (a code snippet tool for developers, presenters and instructors).

For KeyNode (open source) I switched to a different toolset : Visual Studio Code and Windows Azure, simplified the code to remove signed xml file and open-sourced it on GitHub. Signed xml allowed offline verification in CodeDemo (a Wpf/Desktop app). Removing signed xml requires verification to happen online. I am working on adding the web endpoint for verification of license keys. This version uses SendGrid to email license keys. KeyNode is deployed as a Windows Azure Web App. The Azure Web App is on Continuous Deployment feed from the source code repository on GitHub.

I created and tested this Node.js application locally without IIS and deployed it as an Azure Web App without making any changes to the code at all. Node.js applications are hosted in Azure under IIS with iisnode. Iisnode is a native IIS module that allows hosting of node.js applications in IIS on Windows. Read more about iisnode here. Iisnode architecture also makes it significantly easier to take advantages of scalability afforded by Azure.

KeyNode is a work in progress. My plan is to use this as the basis for further explorations in the following areas :

DevOps, Docker and Microservices (at miniature scale of course!)
Create a Web UI with Express (a Node.js web application framework)
Integrate with Azure Storage/Queues
and more…

I invite you to check out the live site on Azure and fork it for your own experiments : KeyNode on GitHub.

Resources :

Photo Credit : Piano Keyboard (www.kpmalinowski.pl)