Hello everyone! I know it’s February already but I never got to wish you guys a Happy New Year.
So, here you go:
Here’s a quick recap of what I did in 2013:
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The first thing I do every morning immediately after I wake up is, check my mobile for any emails/messages/updates etc. Today was no different. I was skimming through the updates and found an interesting blog post. I was impressed by the post and started scrolling the page to find the usual Like/G+/Save-to-my-swiss-bank-account buttons. That’s when I realized that there was no existing solution that was efficient and needed no authentication.
Dustin Curtis solved this problem by implementing the “kudos” feature in Svbtle. Unfortunately, Svbtle is not Open Source. So I decided to implement the feature myself and make it available as a reusable component that anybody could use by including the corresponding code. As a result, I created hi5!
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I know I am super late but I am going to go ahead and do it anyway,
Happy New Year 2013 everyone!
Hope you all had a wonderful 2012. I myself had a few eye-opening experiences (personally and professionally) and was in a miserable situation for the most part of 2012 but I have no regrets. I’ve learnt a lot last year and I’m proud of it. Let me share my experiences in 2012 with you all:
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It was 1:30 AM yesterday night and I couldn’t sleep. I was trying really hard to sleep but I couldn’t. I gave up after a while and started to think about random stuff and thus, I ended up thinking about the Cloud.
Cloud storage has been one of the best technological innovations in the past few years. Several companies ranging from existing technology leaders to startups, seem to be interested in this field. Companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dropbox etc really excel in this field. Each of these companies offer amazing services. These companies seem to be concentrating on making its users rely more on the cloud.
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You can follow the steps below to repeat a track on Spotify.
Now your song is in “repeat-track” mode.
Update: Spotify now supports repeat track functionality natively.
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Disclaimer: There are other alternatives to this setup by means of gems. But this is how I prefer to do it. Manually. With total control.
I have been working on a Rails application (a side project) and wanted to utilize the power of Twitter Bootstrap 2.0.1 and HTML5 Boilerplate 3.0.2 with Asset Pipelining in Rails 3.2.1.
**Requirements: **
Download Twitter Bootstrap from http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
Download HTML5 Boilerplate from http://html5boilerplate.com/
Setting up the Rails Application
First and foremost, create a new Rails application by using the command rails new app_name.
Once the app is created, navigate into the app folder cd app_name.
Integrating HTML5 Boilerplate
Now let’s first start with HTML5 Boilerplate. Open the downloaded H5BP zip file.
CSS:
Navigate into the css directory in the zip file. Copy the style.css file into app/assets/stylesheets of the Rails application that you just created.
JavaScript:
Once you’re done with that, navigate into the js directory of the H5BP zip archive. You’ll have script.js, plugins.js and a directory called libs. Copy the plugins.js and script.js into the app/assets/javascripts of your Rails application.
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There was a project called “1000 Smiles” and I was lucky to be a part of it. Sweet old memories!
(My pic shows up at 0:26)
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I have been thinking about implementing a lot of ideas that I’ve had since a while but never had the motivation to do so. That was mostly because I always plan on making things in a perfect way and tend to procrastinate a lot. So, perfection in my case can be dubbed as procrastination. To get rid of that, I have planned on hacking on the ideas that I’ve had and will try to complete them ASAP. Starting from today, I will pick up one idea at a time or even multiple ideas if I feel bored and hack on them. I will deploy them without waiting for my innate judgmental self to kick in and decide if the app is really worth deploying or not. The only priority for the deployment of an app would be that It Works™.
I will open source my applications one at a time so that anyone who finds my hacks interesting can contribute to them. I will also write a follow up blog post for each of these apps explaining the technology stack behind the app, the APIs used in the application and the process of building it.
I hope the information I provide helps you, inspires you and I really hope you guys enjoy using my applications as much as I do.
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If you’re reading this blog, then you must have noticed that I’ve changed the theme and the URL of my Blog. Well, those are just the superficial changes. I even changed my blogging platform. I used to use WordPress to blog (Of course, occasionally). But now, I switched to a much more comfortable platform, Tumblr.
Till now, I haven’t had any problems with Tumblr. In fact I like the service.
So, here is a little comparison of the two awesome blogging platforms.
WordPress: In a word, terrific. It has almost all features a blogger desires. It’s very easy to setup and use. It has a very neat admin interface. Nothing complex. You have a ton of plugins to customize your blog. There’re good themes, not great, good (the free ones). I’ve used WordPress for over two years. I have always loved it.
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Bill Gates (B): Okay. So, shall we begin?
Me (MT): Yeah. Sure.
B: So, what’s the reason behind this sudden blog post?
MT: Sudden? pfft…It’s New Year. So, this is my customary post. Of course, since nobody visits my blog, it’s not a surprise that you don’t know about it. Anyhow, moving on…
B: Then why don’t you blog more frequently?
MT: There are two reasons for that:
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I have been actively looking for jobs since the past few days and I couldn’t find an efficient way to properly keep track of all the jobs I’ve applied and the resumes I’ve used for each of the jobs. I tried using some applications but in vain. None of them suited my needs. I even tried using Dropbox to keep track of all the resumes and the job applications. Even that didn’t go well. All of these had their own problems. I needed a powerful and robust solution.
As a result, I developed a new Web Application as a weekend hack, which does exactly what I need, keeps track of all the jobs that I’ve applied to along with the respective resumes. It’s called “CareerTrackr”. I don’t even know if the name is apt to the product that I’ve developed. The only thing that matters to me at the moment is its functionality. A lot of my effort went into designing the interface for the application. As always, I believe in a good UI/UX.
Currently the project is not open to the public. I am testing the project on my own. If I find any bugs (which I am eventually bound to), I’ll fix them and then open it up to the public. Also, I will Open Source the code once I am done with the testing. Once the project is full-fledged, I will post the link and the screenshots. If that sounds interesting to you, wait for my next post on CareerTrackr.
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WordPress: First off, let me start off with WordPress. WordPress never fails to impress me after launching new versions of its blogging platform. WordPress 3.2 seems to be heavily loaded with awesome. This seems to be a terrific upgrade from the previous versions. There are loads of new features included in the upgrade.
**Google: **Google seems to be going crazy with the release of its new products like Google+, Google Music, WDYL etc. Google also launched 2 new versions of their new Gmail interface. Believe me, they look really clean, simple, minimalist and amazing.
Facebook: Facebook launched its Video Calling feature yesterday along with other updates such as Group Chat and newly designed chat interface. The Video Calling feature seems to be activated but the Group Chat feature doesn’t seem to be. On a lighter note, there has been an image doing rounds on Google+. I really am a huge fan of Facebook and I really don’t appreciate the image. But the image makes me really LOL. Just look at the “f” flip when the girl gets slapped. 😀
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Google at last had launched its new suite of social tools, Google+, yesterday. I think it’s a great move from Google. I’ve actually been waiting since a long time for this to happen. It was rumored that this suite would be named something like “Google Circles” or “Google Me”. Google had its recent failures by introducing products like Google Wave, Google Buzz, +1 etc. Buzz was supposed to be Google’s answer to Facebook but it didn’t manage to even get proper public attention. Apart from Google+, Google seems to have revamped their Web Search interface (which sucks btw. Come on Google, seriously, a black toolbar with white shadows?), a new widget in Gmail that displays information about the person mailing you and some sweet shortcuts, a floating options menu in Gmail and of course, WDYL.com (What Do You Love). Google seems to be trying very hard to get into the game. I like this kind of competition among the top companies. It forcibly creates a need for creativity, speaking of which, I think you should check out the tour and the videos Google has set up on their Google+ website. Let’s see what Facebook has lined up for us.
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It has been 24 days (already) since I’ve returned to India for my vacation and I am totally enjoying my stay here. It’s been awesome all the while. I met all my friends (School, Intermediate, Engineering and WKU of course) and some of my relatives. I had my favorite Chicken Biryani, Chicken 65 and many other foods which are part of the Indian Cuisine. I had been to almost all the places I love here. I may have put on some weight but I seriously doubt it.
There are two things though which bug me here – the pollution and the Internet speed. Both suck big time. Apart from these, everything is beautiful. I am feeling bad coz I’ve to go back to the US very soon. I do like my place back in the US, Bowling Green (Kentucky), but home is always much more fun. The festivals here are the best part. They are very lively, colorful and festive.
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Happy New Year!? Observe the above line carefully. Did you? Good.
I was just trying to play with your attention 😀
Anyways, guys how was your 2010? I hope it was great. Mine was good. Not great. Good. I have learnt practically many things in life in 2010. I am thankful to 2010 for that. I learned that I should not depend on anyone for anything. Do my work myself. And most importantly, not to plan stuff. Planning stuff ruins everything. (In my case) But on an honest note, **FUCK YOU **2010. You literally messed my life up. Absolutely zero productivity, one messed-up head and two B’s to my GPA.
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With Thanksgiving coming up, I am sure most of you out there are desperately waiting for some really good deals. I have come up with an efficient way to shop this thanksgiving. As a matter of fact, this will make your lives much easier, not just for shopping this thanksgiving, but for shopping online in general. First off, you need the Firefox browser. If you don’t have it, install it. If you already have it, use it. Next, you need to install these two Firefox Addons.
In case you don’t know, Add-ons are extensions developed for your browser. They extend your browser’s features/capabilities making it more powerful, useful and efficient. For example, Adblock Plus is by far the most efficient add-on for Firefox. It blocks away the annoying advertisements from all the websites you visit. There are extensions even available for Google Chrome (I will come back to that later). Once you open on the links provided above, you need to click on the “Add to Firefox” button.
Once you click that, you get a dialog.
Click on “Install Now”. Now, Firefox will go ahead and install the add-on. Firefox then prompts you to restart your browser. Go ahead, restart it. When your browser fires up, you are fully armed. Now all you have to do is search for what you want. These add-ons will do the rest. They show you better alternatives available for the product you are viewing.
The product in the image was actually sent to me by my roommate asking me to review it. I just searched for it in amazon and the add-ons did the magic for me. In this particular case Invisible Hand did a poor job, but PriceBlink came to the rescue. As a result, the price of the product came from $101.00 to $29.95 + Free Shipping. These add-ons work on all the major shopping websites and search engines. So go ahead and have fun shopping online. And yeah, I almost forgot, don’t forget to gift me the best you can this thanksgiving 😛 Happy Shopping. Happy Thanksgiving. Tip: Extensions for Google Chrome can be found here: https://chrome.google.com/extensions
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Gmail has rolled out some kewl new themes and I just love the new Android **theme. You can set it by clicking on **Settings -> Themes -> Android in your Gmail account. This is how it looks like:
Also, if you love Google Chrome Web Browser just as much as I do, then you can use a similar theme called Robot Theme for Chrome This is how the combo would look like:
PS: The Robot theme for Chrome was introduced to me by my friend, Venkata Aditya Korada.
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Recently there was an amazing offer from the very famous file syncing service, Dropbox. The offer was that any student who registers for a Dropbox account with a valid “.edu” ID would be eligible for an extra complimentary space of 500MB (to the default 2GB) for every reference (Usually it is 250MB, but for .edu registrations, it’s 500MB). That sounded exciting and I started referring my friends. I successfully could make around 12GB of space. And the best part about it is that it’s absolutely free.
Microsoft SkyDrive offers 25GB of space with every Live ID. But there are no good file syncing clients for SkyDrive. There is a below average client called SkyDrive Explorer, I stopped using it after using it for a year. Same is the case with Windows Live Mesh. So I decided to try Dropbox.
I’ve been using Dropbox a lot lately and in the course, I discovered a new use case for it. Using Dropbox to sync your program code. Let’s say that you have setup your Java/PHP/C# project folder in Dropbox. Now whatever code you write, gets synced with your online Dropbox account automatically. When you use another system, all you need to do is login to your Dropbox account and download the folder Or even better, if you have Dropbox installed on the other system, login to that and everything will be synced automatically. If you make changes to your code on that system, the files will be synced and when you login from your laptop, you will have the latest files ready for editing. How cool is that? If you use Dropbox for any such useful purposes let me know via comments.
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Testing various Operating Systems has always been something that I enjoyed. This enjoyment of mine led me to install and test Operating Systems such as Mac OS X 10.6.2, Chromium OS, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx (Will be trying out Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat soon) and ofcourse my favorite Windows 7. Oh, and all these Operating Systems are installed on my Laptop (Dell Vostro 1320). I have taken the screenshots of all the installed Operating Systems on my laptop along with their default web browsers.
[1] Mac OS X 10.6.2 w/ Apple Safari
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