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jeongvision · 4 years ago

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nct’s jaehyun’s perfume collection review!!

for part two, please refer to here!

hello, all! so some of you may have already known that in the past month, i have impulsively purchased various of perfumes, some of which are based on jaehyun’s personal perfume collection that he uses as mentioned on various platforms. some of the scents he uses are:

tom ford white suede

tom ford fucking fabulous

le labo neroli 36

jo malone myrrh & tonka

jo malone wood sage & sea salt

byredo bal d’afrique

as someone who loves collecting perfumes myself, this was a perfect excuse for me to buy some to get an idea on how he would ‘smell’ like!

some of you have asked for me to post a review of his perfumes! i will be primarily listing my reactions, experiences, and ratings for each scent, along with pictures of jaehyun associated with each scent and if the scent is masculine, feminine, or neutral. i have purchased all of them except for tom ford fucking fabulous. the byredo bal d’afrique will be reviewed at a later date after it arrives in the mail, so for now only 4/6 scents will be discussed.

disclaimer: this is NOT an advertisement but simply a fun and personal review of his perfume collection! but i wouldn’t be opposed with possible brand deals with any of them

before you buy!! some of the fragrances will react differently on your skin as the scents are based on your body chemistry with certain chemicals listed on their ingredients. thus, you may smell a different scent when sprayed on your body than on mine. not only that, some of the perfumes utilizes synthetic ingredients, which can be a deterrent for those with a sensitive nose. i strongly recommend sampling them out at local stores before purchasing as these brands are expensive.

without further ado, happy reading! please do tell me your personal experiences if you have also tried some of them (or perfumes from other members!) <3

warnings: heavy cursing, some vulgar language lmao (they will be listed as [**] if you would like to skip those parts, especially for minors)

TOM FORD WHITE SUEDE

“The addictive pull of leather and suede is channeled through an elegant musk-derived composition. Musk’s primal intensity is harmonized with saffron and thyme, heightened with velvety rose and warm amber. Warm, supple and sensual, a perfume with an irresistible expression of raw desire.” —Tom Ford

first and foremost, i just want to say holy fucking SHIT HE SMELLS SO FUCKING GOOD WTF ASKJFKLSJ

[**] HE SMELLS SO FUCKING SEXYAJJF IT’S HARD HOURS FOR HIM EVERY TIME I SMELL IT

like?? oh my god?????

i literally CRIED in my car after smelling it bc oh my gOD HE SMELLS LIKE THAT??!?!??

HE SMELLS LIKE A FUCKING BOYFRIEND OH MY GODJSJFJKS

i can never look at him the same way ever again holy crap

“raw desire” sOMEBODY PLEASE SAVE ME I CAN’T—

[**] like honestly it makes me want to eat his neck and choke on his dick whAt

anyways

it has a leathery and musky scent to it with a mix of powdery!!

slightly sharp when you first spray it but once it settles and marinates on your skin and clothing, it’s PERFECT

listen i’m still shooked that he smells like THAT

my friend told me one day to spray it on a big sweater and wear it to mimic wearing one of ‘his’ sweaters and—

i wanted to kith him

and hug him

and cuddle with him

and never let him go aaAAAHHH

[**] oh daddy

masculine or feminine? androgynous

recommend? YES ARE YOU KIDDING ME

rating? “i’m going to name my future kid eleven because he is going to be better than you.” —liu yangyang to ten

LE LABO NEROLI 36

“Neroli is another name for the essence of Orange Blossom. The unique quality of our Neroli is its sunny floral character with an extraordinarily warm, sensual base. Rose, musk, mandarin orange (slightly aldehydic), jasmine and vanilla, among other essences, complete the portrait, bringing Neroli 36 spikiness, ease, zest and heat... Well-being, elegance and charm all in a bottle!” —Le Labo

okay so i purchased this (and many other scents) as a sample (1.5 ml) bc this shit is hella expensive

like bro the price of it as 15 ml costs more than jo malone’s 30 ml

maybe it’s bc they said lab techs compound it on-demand??

not sure

but anyways

this gives me straight flower boy vibes

like i’m in a flower shop and there’s a cute florist behind the counter trimming and tending plants with such careful hands

but the white floral kinds

OHOHOHOHO

WE LOVE IT

if you like those kinds of scents, then this is definitely the scent for you!

seriously it smells like lilies and all the white florals alike

personally i like the sweet floral scents so this one is okay to me

still smells really good!

reminds me of glade’s fresh linen carpet powder so it unlocked a repressed memory of my childhood LMFOAODA

what a gentleman he smells like uwuuu

honestly if i was getting married to someone and he showed up to my wedding as a guest wearing this perfume i’d leave my fiancé on the spot

this man has quality tastes wtf

masculine or feminine? gender neutral (ish)? more feminine if i have to say

recommend? if you like white floral scents then you would go BONKERS over this!

rating? 7/10 only bc i prefer sweet floral over white floral scents but if i didn’t then i’d rate it 10/10

JO MALONE MYRRH & TONKA

“Rich, hand-harvested sap of the Namibian myrrh tree, mingling with the warm almond and lush vanilla notes of the tonka bean. Noble and intoxicating.” —Jo Malone

oh bitch

BITCH

THIS MOTHERFUCKER SMELLS SO FUCKING GOOD OH MY FUCKING GODDDDDDD

“noble and intoxicating” DAMN FUCKING RIGHT IT IS

[**] I WILL GET ON MY KNEES FOR THIS MAN IF I EVER SMELL THIS ON HIM

my royal liege, jung jaehyun, i am at your SERVICE HELLO SIR WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU TODAY

he could step on my face and i’d thank him for allowing me to breathe the same air as him oh my god—

ahem

moving along now

it has a vanilla and amber scent to it! a very nice and sweet scent to it that’s not too overbearing

usually i’m not a big fan of vanilla or cake fragrances bc they tend to nauseate me

but this one?

ohohoho

this is the good stuff

i didn’t exactly purchase this one; i bought other fragrances from jo malone and they gave me free samples to choose from, and myrrh & tonka was one of them sO MIGHT AS WELL TRY IT OUT

so glad i did omg i don’t regret it

i might just buy a bottle of it

[**] another one bites the dust just RAIL ME ALREADY JUNG JAEHYUN I’M BEGGING YOU—

[**] daddy pls

masculine or feminine? androgynous, but leaning slightly towards feminine

recommend? YES OH MY GOD

rating? CHITTAPHON OUT OF TEN

JO MALONE WOOD SAGE & SEA SALT

“Escape the everyday along the windswept shore. Waves breaking white, the air fresh with sea salt and spray. The mineral scent of rugged cliffs, mingling with earthy sage.” —Jo Malone

yo this shit smells good

like REALLY good

he smells like beaches and lemons hELLO THERE

no wonder this is one of their best sellers wtf this man has IMMACULATE TASTE EYE—

AND THERE’S ONLY ONE (1) OF HIM IN THIS ENTIRE WORLD???!?

HUH!?!!?

life truly isn’t fair, huh

okay god i see you with favorites

now

let’s see here

very citrusy!!

also has that marine type of scent to it making it exceptionally aromatic!

not too much of a boujee scent like m&t where you would use on special events

this is more like a scent you would use on a daily basis going out

but upgraded

like you would smell fresh and expensive

kind of like a lowkey rich kid type of scent but you’re humble about it but lowkey kinda flexing yk?

this smell is BEAUT i love it omg i cant stop sniffing it

i’m a sucker for citrus scents :(

i’d wear this shit to school everyday if i could and have all my friends smell me

damn i bet his sweaters smell hella nice with this perfume :(

masculine or feminine? gender neutral

recommend? yes, yes, and yes.

rating? 10/10

tl;dr— jaehyun has expensive tastes and smells so fucking sexy how is he even real what the fUCk

#jaehyun #nct jaehyun #jung jaehyun #jeong jaehyun #nct #nct 127 #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun fluff #jaehyun angst #jaehyun smut #nct scenarios #nct 127 scenarios #jaehyun imagines #nct imagines #nct 127 imagines

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angelofthequeers · 6 years ago

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Ladybug and Reine Nuit: Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I don’t own ML.

If a chapter does end up being under 2000 words then I’ll double update, so expect chapter 14 to come out a few minutes after this one.

@miraculousl4dybug @livinthebilife tagged as requested :)

Chapter 12 | Chapter 14

“Ella! Etta!” A detransformed Alya bursts out of her room after the Akuma of the Day had been defeated: some whiny guy called Heartbreaker, sulking because the girl he liked wouldn’t go out with him. “I can do the makeover now –”

“No need,” Ella says.

“Nora already did it,” Etta adds. Nora, who’s somehow got red and green nail polish all over her face, screws the last bottle shut with an unamused eyebrow-raise at Alya.

“…Oh,” Alya mumbles. “I’m sorry, I really wanted to, but – I had to go to the bathroom, then I had to –”

“Save it,” Nora says shortly. “We get it. Every akuma attack, there’s always an excuse for why you can’t look out for Ella and Etta. Or you need to do your homework because you “never have the time for it”. And even if there’s no akuma attack, you still vanish.”

“Vanish? What? Me?” Alya scoffs. “You know me, good old reliable Alya!”

“Yeah, back in Martinique,” Nora says, while Ella and Etta coo over their superhero nails. “What the hell’s going on with you, Al? You’re never where you say you’ll be. Mum and Dad get on my case about it, even though I don’t even know where you are. I end up stuck with the babysitting because you’re never around! You know how many times I’ve had to skip out on wrestling practice or bring the girls along because you’re not around?”

“Nora – I’m sorry –” Alya blinks furiously to hold back her tears. But what can she do? She can’t reveal her secret identity! That’s, like, the first rule of being a superhero!

“Whatever,” Nora says. “Just…go. I got the girls.”

“I can help now –”

“Does it really look like I need your help, sis?”

Alya reels back as though she’d been slapped. Then, before Ella and Etta can notice her losing battle with her own eyes, she turns and bolts back to her room and throws herself on her bed.

“This isn’t fair!” she sniffles into her pillow, then punches her mattress. “This isn’t fair! I’m a superhero, for god’s sake!”

“Yeah, and no one said it’d be easy, genius,” Plagg says. Alya lifts her head to glare at the little shit.

“Unless you have something helpful to say, I highly recommend shutting the hell up,” she growls. “Nora hates me – Ella and Etta don’t need me – Mum and Dad are taking it out on Nora – I’m losing my family, and we don’t even have a single clue who the hell Hawkmoth could be! What if it takes years, huh? What if I have to push my family so far away that they don’t even know who I am anymore, just to take down Hawkmoth?”

For a long time, Plagg says nothing, just floating in mid-air and staring at Alya with his bright green eyes. But the longer he stares, the angrier Alya starts to grow, and she’s just about to grab her pillow and throw it at him when he finally speaks.

“Then tell her,” is all he says. Alya splutters.

“Tell her? What part of secret identities don’t you get?”

“The part where you just spent five minutes crying about how you’re losing your family,” Plagg drawls. “And it’s not the first time a Black Cat’s told someone who they are, especially if they had siblings. Kids without siblings had it easier.”

“If Nora knows, I could put her in danger!” Alya says. “What if Hawkmoth targets her? What if she gets akumatised!”

“Hawkmoth only knows what an akuma tells them,” Plagg says. “You really think Nora would tell him that her baby sister’s one of the people he’s trying to cream, even if she’s akumatised? She’d probably just stop you from transforming in the first place. I dunno, akumas can be weird.”

“How do you know that?” Alya says. “How long haven’t you seen the Butterfly Miraculous, anyway?”

“Blink of an eye compared to how long we’ve lived,” Plagg says. “Look, kid, the Butterfly hasn’t always been the bad guy. Any of us can be used for good or evil.”

“Even Ladybug?” Alya gasps.

“Sure. Lucky Charm can make anything. Especially with more straightforward minds than your Ladybug’s. I’ve fought with and against the Butterfly. And trust me when I tell you that Hawkmoth can’t read akuma’s minds. He can see what they see, but his link with their mind only lets him talk to them.”

“Then…why don’t Ladybug and I just tell each other who we are?” Alya says quietly. Uncharacteristically, Plagg drops down next to her face and nuzzles against her cheek.

“You’re both superheroes, kid,” he says. “What if you already know who she is under the mask? It messes with your focus on the mission. You could out each other’s names, you could be stupid and constantly try to protect them when you don’t need to, or you could already hate her under the mask and that would screw with your dynamic…and it’s her choice to make. This one’s yours.”

Alya says nothing. On the one hand, she could keep her identity safe and push her family away. On the other hand…she could take this risk and potentially not end up estranged from her family because of her admittedly weird behaviour in their eyes. And it’s not like Nora would tell anyone. If she had someone to cover for her…

Before she even knows what she’s doing, she’s heading for her bedroom door and pushing it open. Thankfully, Ella and Etta aren’t in the living room; it’s just Nora, sprawled on the couch and watching some action movie.

“Oh, come on, that’s not even realistic!” Nora complains at the screen when an orange explosion lights it up.

“Nora?” Alya mumbles. “Can I…talk to you?”

Nora’s answer is a grunt. Alya stares at the floor, fiddling with her silver ring, trying to find the right words around the lump in her throat.

“Well?” Nora says. “Spit it out, sis. I don’t have all day.”

“Can we talk in my room?” Alya says. The TV switches off and when Alya looks up, it’s to see that Nora has turned to stare at her with a furrowed brow.

“Is this about all the weird shit you’ve been doing lately?” Nora says. Alya nods. “Fine. But it better be good.”

Once they’re in Alya’s room and the door is shut, Alya once again tries to find the words to reveal the fact that she’s a leather-wearing cat superhero who runs around Paris and gets the shit beaten out of her on a near-daily basis. But just like before? Nothing.

“Alright, seriously, what the hell’s going on with you?” Nora snaps, which is pretty much her version of heart-wrenching care.

Alright. So. Alya can’t just up and say it. But maybe she doesn’t have to. After taking a deep, shaky breath, she whispers, “Plagg…claws out,” and transforms in a flash of green light. “Um…surprise?”

Nora says nothing. Hell, she doesn’t even look like she’s breathing. Oops. Reine Nuit had better not have just killed her older sister, because that would forever cement her place as the Disappointment Daughter after all the times she’s been flaking lately.

“Look, I get it, it’s a shock,” Reine Nuit says. “Your baby sister being a superhero and all. But, uh…say something? Please? I can’t exactly be a superhero if I just up and murdered someone. Accidentally, of course! But, um…yeah! This is why I’m never around. Akuma attacks, patrols, being a disappointment of a sister –”

“Are you kidding me?” Nora springs to life and throws an arm around Reine Nuit’s neck to noogie her. And yes, Reine Nuit has super strength, but what’s she to do against an older sister who takes her by surprise? “You’re, like, the coolest sister ever!”

“Oh,” Reine Nuit chokes. “Good. I was worried that I was a disappointment to the Césaire name. So, uh, can you let go of me?”

When Nora releases Reine Nuit, it only takes a second for her ecstatic face to fall. “Wait. So, all those times Reine Nuit got the shit beat out of her, that was you?”

“Eh,” Reine Nuit shrugs. “Ladybug fixes everything. Claws in.” Her transformation drops and frees Plagg, leaving plain old Alya standing in her place. “Listen. You can’t tell anyone –”

“You think I’m an idiot, little sis?” Nora says. “Yeah, I’m gonna go and shout it on national TV.”

“Ha, ha. Anyway, this little demon here’s Plagg, my kwami. He’s what lets me turn into Reine Nuit.”

“I’d say it’s nice to meet you if I hadn’t been stuck in the same house as you for months,” Plagg drawls. “Now, where’s my Camembert?”

Nora snaps her fingers. “That’s why you stink of Camembert when you hate the stuff!”

“Yep,” Alya says. “So…you’re not still mad?”

“Hell no!” Nora says. “I’m not mad. I’m just gonna madly worry every damn time there’s an akuma ‘cause I’ll know it’s my baby sister out there.”

“Well, your baby sister can take care of herself, thank you very much,” Alya shoots back.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. All the times you’ve jumped off the Eiffel Tower made that super obvious.” With a groan, Nora adds, “This means I’m gonna have to cover for you, doesn’t it?”

“Yep!” Alya says brightly.

“Fine. But on one condition.” Nora flexes her biceps. “I get to arm wrestle with Reine Nuit whenever I want.”

“Sold!” Alya throws her arms around Nora. “Thanks, love ya, big sis!”

“Gag me,” Plagg mutters.

“Shut up, Plagg,” Alya and Nora say at the same time.

#miraculous ladybug #aotq fic #aotq: reine nuit au #chat!alya #alya cesaire #nora cesaire #ella cesaire #etta cesaire #plagg #identity reveal #sir that is my emotional support big sister #nora is the best

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fantasyfandommaiden · 6 years ago

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ML Counsellor AU: Nino Lahiffe’s session

Carmine had met many different types of people in her life, for the most part however, she could usually divide them into one of three categories. Introvert or extrovert, people who hide emotions or people who wore their heart on their sleeves, high self esteem or low self esteem.

Nino Lahiffe was interesting to her because he was an extrovert who wore his heart on his sleeve but Carmine, who could usually pick up on someone’s self esteem level right away, was having a hard time determining if he had high or low self esteem.

“It’s just wasn’t fair to Adrien!” Nino explained to her. He had chosen a blue mug with music notes all over it and was drinking some earl grey tea with Carmine as they spoke about the Bubbler incident.

“My bro has never had a party before! Never! He’s 14 years old!” He continued “And I was really respectful to his dad, or at least I think I was... maybe I shouldn’t have called him dude.”

Carmine let out a small snort, and quickly hide it by coughing “In my experience Nino, most adults with Mr. Agreste...” she paused, trying to think of the right word to discribe the designer, that was also school appropriate “... ego, like to be shown a certain amount of respect. Unfortunately ‘dude’ is not a way they enjoy being address.”

“... well, it’s still not fair to Adrien. I mean, a party is a important part of growing up! Like, you probably had a few parties growing up too right? With all your classmates, and friends?” Nino asked expectingly.

“Not really no.”

“Yeah, so you see... wait what?” Nino blinked, looking at Carmine somewhat confused.

“When I was a child, we didn’t have a lot of money until I was in my first year of high school, so my ‘parties’ were usually just my close family members and maybe one or two friends I had.” Carmine explained to him “By the time we had the money to have ‘big parties’ I didn’t see the appeal in them. The only ‘party’ I ever had was for my 19th birthday because I was going to travel aboard here for university.”

“... dude, that sucks.” Nino said, causing Carmine to chuckle.

“To most maybe, but I’ve never been one for large crowds. The fact that you want this for Adrien so much, however, shows you care a great deal for him, also that you have a big heart.” She said, smiling warmly at him. Nino look d down at his lap, blushing slightly.

“Nah, I just... he deserves it, you know? I mean, I can picture it being easy only having Chloe as a best friend growing up, and his old man isn’t great and.... yeah, I just want him to be happy...” Nino said finally, looking at Carmine “Do you think I’ll ever be allowed into his house?”

Carmine paused, and thought about it for a moment, letting out a low, soft hum. “Hard to say, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Adrien’s father, only Nathalie, and I imagine she would allow you in, but if Gabriel tells her flat out no, than she would have to listen to him.” She said, taking another sip of her tea, only to notice she had none left in her cup.

She frowned at that, standing up and walking to the kettle that she had on a small side table in the room “However, we are here to discuss the Bubbler incident, not Adrien.” She said, turning on the electric kettle to make more hot water.

She heard Nino whined, and looked over at him, seeing him look down in shame “Sorry about that, did you...”

“Get stuck in a bubble?” She finished his sentence, looking at him, he nodded, “Yes, yes I did, reminded me of one of those theme park rides where you going up until you drop. Luckily this ride had no drop.” She said, going back to her chair to sit down Well the water boiled. “I don’t blame you for it though, but how do you feel about the whole situation?”

He continued to look down “... I would rather not talk about it.” He admitted softly “I mean, I was mad about the whole thing, but Mr. Agreste just made me feel so... so small about the whole thing. Like he judged me before I could even state my case... I get that a lot lately it seems.”

Carmine raised a brow at that comment, starring at Nino carefully “Why do you say that?” She asked him carefully.

Nino jaw clenched and released ever so slightly that if you weren’t looking for it you would miss it, and he avoided eye contact with Carmine at all cost. “I mean... well, it’s stupid.”

“Your in a safe place Nino, and I guarantee you nothing you say will be ‘stupid’.” Carmine insisted to him, but he still refused to look her in the eyes.

“... so, before this year, I was a loner. Not that I didn’t want to hang out with people, it’s just, I prefer to listen to make music or make my own tunes and mixes, which is usually a solo job, yea know?” He explained to her slowly “I would have one or two guys I would hang out with, but, we’ll... they were kind of harsh with their critic of my music. Stuff like ‘this will never be popular’ or ‘this sounds too much like so-n-sos your just copying’, ‘dude, no self respecting DJ would play this’, and if it wasn’t my music it was my style of clothes.”

“Are they still at this school?”

“Nah, they transferred to a different school this year, but... their comments hurt. I mean, music is my life! I love any tune that gets you up and moving, make your heart pump, yeah? But they kept dragging anything I brought forward down. I still hear their comment whenever I try to make a new mix.” He said sadly, “Adrien is kind of the first real friend I’ve made in years, and I just wanted to be happy, and all his dad did was tear me down again before I could even really prove myself.”

Carmine leaned back in her chair, deep in though as Nino spoke. So, he was an extrovert who wore his heart on his sleeve but had very low self esteem... this was an uncommon combination but also a dangerous one. Extroverts get their energy from other people and interactions, and added that with showing emotions their more prone spreading themselves too thin trying to please others. Add in low self esteem, and even an off handed remark can shatter any confidence they had built up.

“Has anyone listened to any of your mixes since the last time you showed these old friends of yours?” She asked, a concerned look on her face appearing as she saw Nino visibly wince again.

“... yeah, when I was the Bubbler.” He admitted softly, causing Carmine to wince. “I guess the only good thing about being Akumatized was the fact I got give Adrien a party and to use the DJ booth.”

Carmine drummed her fingers against her desk, letting out a soft hum as she thought this over. She could tell right off the bat he was fine to return to class, she could tell within ten minutes of talking to him, but the low self esteem worried her. It had yet to be proven that you could get Akumatized twice, but from her findings so far, those with low self esteem would be more likely to get targeted.

So, Nino would have to get higher self esteem, which was easier said than done, first thing would be to get more confidant in his music.

“... Nino, do you know anyone who has a decent understanding of music that you trust?” Carmine suddenly asked him, causing Nino to look up at her finally, although somewhat confused.

“Um... I guess, Ivan? I mean, he’s the only one in class I know for sure plays some sort of instrument, he also writes his own stuff. Why?”

“When you feel comfortable with it, I think it would be a good idea to bring a mix of yours to Ivan, and ask him to give you a critic.”

Nino visibly paled at the suggestion, shaking his head “Yeah dudette, from my experience that is a bad idea.”

“Nino, there is a difference between a critic, and an option.” Carmine explained to him “An option is instinctual. ‘I don’t like this book’, ‘this music is too loud’, ‘I don’t like this food’. They are usually based on an instinct, and no actually base intellectual understanding of the material. An example of this is, I really like books, but I could tell you if a a science text book is well written because I am not a scientist.” She stated as the kettle began to whistle.

She stood up and walked over to the kettle, taking it off of its electric stand, making a new cup of tea. “I could, however, give a critic on tea, because I drink lots of it, as well as I read about different ways to brew it. If someone was trying to brew some tea, I could explain to them what they did right, what they did wrong and how to improve.”

She than sat back down “It’s easier to ask someone for a critic if they have an understanding about the subject. You wouldn’t ask Gabriel Agreste for a critic on a motor engine would you?”

Nino let out a loud laugh at that, no doubt imagining the designer in a garage, his white suite getting covered in grease as he looks inside a car with a confused expression.

“I, I guess I never thought of it like that...” he said smiling slightly “... I have been working on a new mix in my spare time, maybe I could show Ivan...”

Carmine just smiled behind her tea cup “It’s just a suggestion, but I would recommend it.” She said, sipping her tea before placing the cup down, brining out an orange piece of paper, as she wrote on it quickly, stamping it.

“Also, Nino?” She looked at him, smiling mischievously “If you wanted to throw Nino a party, you could have just asked Mlle Bustier to have some time at the end of the day during class to celebrate, I’m sure she would have said yes.”

Nino looked at her for a solid minute before face palming, letting out a loud groan, causing Carmine to burst out laughing.

He was going to be just fine.

#ladybug au #ml au #counsellor au #ladybug #miraculous ladybug #Carmine Regal #nino lahiffe

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simon-frey-eu · 6 years ago

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Working with Microsoft Azure for 20 hours and why I will not use it again

Last weekend I attended a Hackathon at Microsoft. Overall it was an awesome experience and I had a lot of fun, so this post has nothing to do with the event itself and also is not my overall opinion on Microsoft. They do awesome stuff in a lot of fields, but with Azure, they are definitely under delivering.

During the event, I started to get in touch with the Azure platform. Our project Idea was to create a website where you can search for news and then via sentiment analysis this news would be sorted by "happiness". The news search and sentiment analysis are offered via Azures so-called cognitive services that abstract the ML models away and you can simply use an API for accessing that services....so far so good. With this preconditions most of you coders out there will have the thought: "This sounds too easy to fill 24h of programming". Exactly what I thought...already thinking about also coding an Alexa skill and so on to fill the time. With two experienced developers, we thought the backend would be done in about 4h (conservative calculation) as it would only be stitching together three APIs and delivering that info to a JSON REST API for our frontend team. For keeping the fun up and having more learnings during the project we decided to do the backend as a serverless function. But then Azure came into our way...

In the end, it took us ~9h to develop the backend as a serverless function that is mainly a 40 lines JavaScript file we had to develop in the in-browser "editor" that Azure offers as all the other approaches we tried didn't work out and we ended up abandoning them. Once again: 9 hours for 40 lines of JS code stitching together three APIs...that is insane. (Btw. at 3 am we decided to switch to GCP (google cloud platform) and that did the job in about 45 minutes)

So for sure we did things wrong and it could have been done faster, but this blog post is about the hard onboarding and overall bad structure of Azure. Please also keep in mind that Azure is still in a more-or-less early stage and not everything is wrong in there. In the following, I will walk you through the timeline of this disaster and suggestions I would have in mind to fix some of the most confusing steps. Actually, I will try to avoid these mistakes in my own future projects, so thanks Microsoft by showing me a way how not to do things xD

Just a bit more background: My partner in the backend had some experience with GCP and I do most of my current projects with AWS, so we did know how stuff works there...couldn't be too hard to transfer that knowledge to the Azure platform.

Start of the project

So first of all creating a new Azure account, that is not that hard and after entering credit card info you get 100$ of free credit. I actually like how Microsoft solved that here: You have two plans. You start with the 100$ free tier and if you spend all of that money you manually have to change to the pay-as-you-go plan. So that protects you of opening up an account, doing some testing, forgetting about it and then a month later you get a huge bill (happened to me with AWS). So that is nice for protecting new users that just start to test the system. Good job here Microsoft!

After setting up the account I created a new project and added some of the resources we needed. Creating a serverless function I recognized the tag "(Preview)" on the function I created but didn't think more about it...but actually, that sign should be something like Experimental/Do not use/Will most likely not work properly. We created a Python serverless function (apparently Python functions are still beta here) and tried to get some code in there.

There are three ways to get code into an azure function:

Web "editor"

Azure CLI

VS Code

...for full-featured functions. As we selected the experimental/beta/preview functionality Python we only had the latter two options. Not that bad as it is the same for AWS and I am used to deploying my code via the AWS cmd...shouldn't be way harder with Azure.

My suggesting: Do not do publish functionality that is obviously not ready yet. Do internal testing instead of using your users for that task.

Azure plugins for VS code

Microsoft overs a wide range of VS code plugins for Azure. As that is my main editor anyways I wanted to give them a try. So for the functionality of serverless functions, you need the functions plugin and about 9 other mandatory ones that are some sort of base plugins. 500mb and three VS Code crashed later finally the required plugins were installed properly. The recommended login method did not work and I had to choose the method via the browser. Not that big of a deal, but as they recommend the inline method I would think that should work. (Didn't work for the other folks in my team as well...so had nothing to do with my particular machine)

You would think that 500mb should be enough for finally being able to deploy some code...but you still need 200mb more for the Azure cli that is required for the plugins to work properly.

Finally having installed all of it you can see all your Azure functions and resources in VS code. I started to get a bit excited as it looked that the development from now on would be straight forward and easier as I am used to from AWS.

But that 700mb of code did not work properly....the most important function "deploy" did fail without a more in-depth error message...AAAAAAARRRG. Why do I have to install all that crap and then it can't do the most simple task it has to get my code into their cloud.

Keep your tooling modular and try to do fewer things, but do them right

Code templates

A nice idea is, on creating a new serverless function Azure greets you with a basic boilerplate code example showing you how to handle the basic data interfaces.

Maybe also because we selected the alpha functionality "Python" we didn't get Python code here but JavaScript. So your function is prepopulated with code that is not able to run because it is the wrong programming language. We were lucky and recognized that right away, but you could get really confusing error messages here if you then start developing in JS but actually having a Python runtime.

Better no boilerplate code than one in the wrong programming language

But at least it is colorful

So next try with the Azure CLI. The first thing that you recognize is that the CLI has all sorts of different colors...but that does not help if you are annoyed and want to get things done.

That is a thing you also recognize in the Azure web interface...it has quite some UX issues but they do have more than five color themes you can choose from for styling the UI...not sure Microsoft if you set your priorities right here ;)

Also, the CLI did not get us where we wanted....either of our own incompetence or the CLI, no clue. Either way, I would blame Azure as it is their job to help developers onboarding and at least get basic tasks (we still only want to deploy a simple "hello world") done in an acceptable time.

Focus less on making your UI shine in every color of the rainbow and try to improve documentation and onboarding examples

Full ownership of a resource still does not give you full privileges

After finally being able to deploy at least the "hello world" we wanted to go a step further...work concurrently on that project. Yes 'till now we mainly did pair programming on a single machine.

As I was the owner of that resource I wanted to give my teammate also full access to it, so he could work on the resource and add functions if required. I granted him "owner" access rights (the highest that were available) but still, he was not able to work properly with that function. In the web UI it did work more or less but than again in VS code no chance to do anything (adding a function or deploying it). I ended up doing a thing that goes against everything I learned about security: I logged in with my credentials at his machine.

So imagine yourself now already sitting in front of your laptop for about 4 1/2 hours and you did not manage to do anything of your real work.

Ditching Azure Functions and switching to GCP

That was the moment when we did ditch the idea of doing the backend as Azure function. We switched to GCP and started there all over again. As I also never worked with that platform I expected a similar hard start as I already had in the last few hours with Azure. So about 25 minutes later we achieved more on GCP than with azure 'till then.

A thing both Azure and GCP do better than AWS is they have the Logs of a serverless function in the same window as the function itself. AWS has here a different approach and you have to change to the cloud logs when you want to get info about your function and how it worker. Props to both Google and Microsoft for solving this a lot better!

Actually a hint for AWS: Give your user all control and info at a single place

Cognitive services

The prices you could win at the Hackathon were attached to using Azure and thereby we stick to the cognitive services for doing the news search and the sentiment analysis. Overall the API is straight forward: Send your data and get the results back.

One thing we got told in a presentation and that you should keep in mind when using the cognitive services: You do not control the model and it could change at any moment in time. So if you use the cognitive services for productive use, you should continuously check that the API didn't change its behavior in a way that influences your product in a bad way. But most of the time it is still a lot cheaper and better than building the model yourself

The problem that we did have with the services where again authentication issues. Quite confusing some of the cognitive services (e.g. the sentiment analysis) are have different API base URLs depending where you register that cognitive service and others are not. As I assume they need that manual setting of data centers for a particular (unknown to me) reason. Indeed I would propose to have all the cognitive services bound to a location.

The news search, for example, is not bound to a location and so we had two different behaviors of the API base URLs in our so short and easy application:

One URL for all location.

Only a certain location is valid for your resource. If you point to a wrong API location you get an "unauthorized" as the response

Pointing to the wrong location is pure incompetence on the developer side but it would help a lot if there would be a distinct error code/message for that scenario.

Have the same base URL behavior for all cognitive services

Return some sort of 'wrong location'-error if you have a valid API token but you are pointing to the wrong location

Insufficient documented SDKs

Azure offers SDKs for using their services. We gave the JS SDK for the cognitive services a try. Here we stumbled upon two sides of a medal: First props to the developers coding that SDKs they are straight forward and do what they should. Even the code itself looks good...but why the hell do I have to look into the code of the SDKs to get all the options the functions offer? When you stick to the documentation provided via the GitHub readme or NPM you only get a fraction of the functionality. We were confused that the own SKDs of Microsoft seemed not to be API complete. Looking into the code we saw they are actually API complete and do offer a lot more options then documented.

Please Microsoft: Properly document your functionalities!

IMO there must be deep problems with the internal release processes at Azure. It is not acceptable that an IT company already being so long in the industry allows itself such a standard mistake. You should not release your products (and I see the SDKs as such) without proper documentation.

"Code Examples"

During our try and error period for trying to get the JS SDK running, we stumbled upon the quickstart guide for the cognitive services Quickstart: Analyze a remote image using the REST API with Node.js in Computer Vision

Instead of using their own SDK and explaining how to use it they show you how to manually build an HTTP request in JS. Sure that can be helpful for new JS coders, but if you have an SDK for that particular reason...why are you not using it? Looks like the left hand is not knowing what the right-hand does.

Stick to one way of doing things. If you have an SKD, also use it in your quickstart guides for being consistent

Conclusion

In the end, we did port the code back from GCP to an Azure function (again ~1h of work). We selected JS instead of Python and coded completely in the web UI...that did work. I now know how real Microsoft business developers do their daily business...never leave the web UI and just accept that life is hard.

Microsoft failed to deliver a good enough experience here and lost me as a potential customer. How can it be that I was able to do the same stuff in a fraction of the time in GCP? (And keep in mind: it was already 3am in the morning, I was super tired and I also never worked with GCP before)

None of the three major players is perfect and sure I understand it is hard to deliver fast and keeping good quality in this highly competitive market. But maybe actually going the step further will help to win in the end.

Once again: This is me only rating the onboarding experience of Azure in particular! No general opinion on Microsoft.

Last one: The Azure web UI didn't work in Chrome. So if you have issues with that, Firefox did the trick for us ;)

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