My Favorite VSCode Plugins Of 2025

Richard Lewis

Yonce Theme

Back in 2019 I wrote a post about my favorite VS Code plugins and here we are in 2025 and I’m still using it every single day. At this point VS Code has become my main IDE for both work and home projects. I still run Visual Studio from time to time, but VS Code has really become the Swiss Army knife for just about everything i run it for work task and home side projects and if i’m traveling i run it on my iPad via vscode.dev.

Exploring Azure Resource Usage and Ownership with Azure Resource Graph

Richard Lewis

Azure Resource Graph (ARG) is one of those underrated tools in the Azure portal. If you’re managing multiple subscriptions or large environments, ARG is a lifesaver when it comes to quickly querying your Azure estate at scale. It’s built for performance and provides fast and efficient access to your resource metadata.

In this post, I’ll share two practical Azure Resource Graph queries I’ve used recently—one to visualize resource distribution by region and another to identify infrastructure managed by Terraform. Both are great starting points for gaining visibility into your cloud footprint.

Why I Left WordPress (And Never Looked Back)

Richard Lewis
WordPress

Back in college on July 9th, 2002, I registered gogorichie.com through GoDaddy. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, driven by the curiosity of owning my own slice of the internet. Little did I know that domain would become my digital home for decades of blogging, experimentation, and tech journaling.

The Breakup With WordPress

From LiveJournal to Blogspot and eventually to a self-hosted WordPress install in 2011, my blog has lived many lives. WordPress gave me ultimate flexibility. I could mold my blog into anything I wanted thanks to its massive plugin ecosystem. Over the years, I posted nearly 3000 blog entries — trust me, a lot of it was garbage — but it was mine, and I loved that freedom.

How I Automated Meeting Presence for My Family

Richard Lewis
ESPHome logo Home Assistant logo

Like many folks post-2020, I’ve been working from home a lot more, and with that came a new set of challenges — one of them being how to let my family know when I’m in a meeting without yelling across the house or hanging a note on the door. I decided to solve that problem the way any tech nerd would — with a bit of home automation magic.

Git vs Azure DevOps vs GitHub: Understanding the Differences

Richard Lewis

From time to time, I see folks confusing the products of GitHub and Azure DevOps with the version control of Git and the practices of DevOps. In this post, I will break down terms like Git, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and DevOps to help clarify what each one does, their relationship with one another, and how they contribute to the software development lifecycle.

1. Git: Version Control System (VCS)

Git is a distributed version control system created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 and actually it turns 20 this month. It helps developers track changes in their codebase, collaborate with team members, and manage different versions of a project efficiently.

How I Stream My Church Service to YouTube and Facebook

Richard Lewis

How I Stream My Church Service to YouTube and Facebook — A Small Way to Give Back

When the pandemic hit, a lot of things changed — including how we worship together. Suddenly, gathering in person wasn’t an option, and our church needed a way to stay connected. I knew I could help. Before all this, I worked as a developer advocate, so I’ve always enjoyed solving tech problems and sharing solutions. This time, I felt it was a chance to use that talent to serve God and my church community.