Bruce's Tech Blog

https://brucebarrera.github.io/Bruce's Tech BlogA blog about coding, tech, and life. 2025-07-16T23:02:23-04:00 Bruce Barrera https://brucebarrera.github.io/ Jekyll © 2025 Bruce Barrera /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png Implementation guide for integrating xAI's Grok API into a C#/.NET application2025-06-19T20:58:00-04:00 2025-06-25T22:20:17-04:00 https://brucebarrera.github.io/posts/implementation-guide-for-integrating-xAI-grok-API-into-C-application/ Bruce Barrera

In this article I’ll show an example of an implementation for integrating xAI’s Grok API into a C#/.NET application, focusing on a practical use case: generating text completions using the Grok API. This article includes setup instructions, a sample C# code snippet, and error handling, leveraging the API’s compatibility with OpenAI’s SDK format. The example assumes you have an API key from xAI’...

Using Azure AI Vision to perform image analysis and gender prediction2025-06-19T20:58:00-04:00 2025-06-25T22:20:07-04:00 https://brucebarrera.github.io/posts/azure-ai-vision-image-analysis-gender-prediction/ Bruce Barrera

This article is an example of a C# .NET program that uses Azure AI Vision (formerly Azure Cognitive Services) to perform image analysis and attempt to recognize whether a human in an image is male or female based on facial attributes. Azure AI Vision provides pre-trained models for face detection and attribute analysis, including gender prediction. This approach is practical for rapid developme...

Simplifying SQL Data Retrieval with SafeGetT Extension Method in C#2025-05-15T19:58:00-04:00 2025-06-25T22:19:25-04:00 https://brucebarrera.github.io/posts/simplifying-sql-data-retrieval-with-safegetT-extension-method/ Bruce Barrera

When working with SQL data in C#, developers often need to handle data retrieval from an IDataReader safely, accounting for potential null values or missing columns. In this article we will implement a SqlDataExtensions static class that provides a useful extension method called SafeGetT that simplifies this process by safely retrieving typed data from an IDataReader with proper error handling....

Zero-shot image classification using C# and .NET with a hypothetical pre-trained CLIP model via ONNX Runtime2025-04-05T20:58:00-04:00 2025-06-27T17:30:19-04:00 https://brucebarrera.github.io/posts/zero-shot-image-classification-using-c-clip-onnx-runtime/ Bruce Barrera

In this article I’ll provide a C# implementation for zero-shot image classification using ONNX Runtime with a hypothetical CLIP model, along with unit tests. Assumptions A pre-trained CLIP model (ONNX format) is available, with inputs for an image (preprocessed to 720x480 pixels, normalized) and text embeddings for labels. The image is a 720x480 RGB image containing giraffes, an elephan...

Harnessing AI APIs in C# and .NET: Common Use Cases and Implementation Guide2025-01-09T20:18:00-05:00 2025-06-25T22:19:56-04:00 https://brucebarrera.github.io/posts/harnessing-AI-apis-C-common-use-cases-and-implementation-guide/ Bruce Barrera

AI APIs are widely used in C# and .NET applications to integrate advanced AI capabilities without building models from scratch. In this article it’ll be shown below common use cases and how they are typically implemented in C#/.NET: Common Usages of AI APIs in C#/.NET Natural Language Processing (NLP) Use Cases: Text generation, sentiment analysis, chatbots, text summarization, ...