Nifty tidbits!

Vimgrep on steriods - even on Windows

25 Jul, 2013 vim vimscript

So I was looking at this vim tip for finding in files from within Vim - while it looks helpful, there are a number of possible improvements: Why a static binding? being able to tweak the patterns or the files to search is quite common - so much more value if you could have the command printed in the command line, ready to be edited to your heart’s content or just go ahead and execute the search with Enter.

Downloading over an unreliable connection with Wget

16 Feb, 2013 HOWTO Rant Tips Wget

This is a part rant, part tip - so bear with me… My broadband connection absolutely sucks over the past week. I upgraded from 2Mbps with a download limit to a 4Mbps with unlimited downloads and since then it has been nothing but trouble… Damn BSNL!! I’ve probably registered about 30 odd complaints with them to no avail. If there was a Nobel for bad customer service, BSNL would probably win it by a mile.

Single Page Apps

3 Feb, 2013 Angular Knockout Scheduler SPA

We released the Scheduler service(cloud hosted cron that does webhooks) on the 18th of Jan. It was our first release (still in beta) and you can sign up for it via the Windows Azure store as an addon. Upcoming release will have a full portal and the ability to register without going via the Windows Azure portal. We’ve been building the user portal to the Scheduler service as a Single Page app (SPA) and I wanted to share a some background and insights we’ve gained.

Rewriting history with Git

13 Dec, 2012 git HOWTO Tips

What’s this about rewriting history? While developing any significant piece of code, you end up making a lot of incremental advances. Now, it’ll be ideal if you are able to save your state at each increment with a commit and then proceed forward. This gives you the freedom to try out approaches, go in one way or the other and at each point have a safe harbor to return to. However, this ends up with your history looking messy and folks whom you’re collaborating with have to follow your mental drivel as you slowly built up the feature.

Nexus 7 - First impressions and tips and tricks

3 Oct, 2012 Android Nexus7 Review Tips

So I got my Dad the 8GB Nexus 7. This is an awesome tablet - exactly what a good tablet should be. The UI is buttery smooth and things just fly. The hardware is not a compromise, excellent price point and overall a superb experience. Of course, there are some things to deal with like 8 GB storage,lack of mobile data connectivity, lack of expandable storage and no rear camera.

Websocket server using Jetty/Cometd

26 Sep, 2012 Java Web

So I just wrote up a Websocket server using CometD/Bayeux. It’s a ridiculously simple app - but went quite a long way in helping to understand the nitty gritties with putting up a Websocket server and CometD/Bayeux. Thought that I’ll put it up for reference - should help in getting a leg up on getting started with CometD. The sample’s up on github at https://github.com/raghur/rest-websocket-sample Here’s how to go about running it:

Android WordHero - product lessons

21 Sep, 2012 Android gaming mobile product development

So, yesterday I figured that now I’m an addict.. fully and totally to something called wordhero on my phone… it’s one of those games where you have a 4x4 grid of letters and you need to find as many words as you can within 2 mins. Nothing special… and there are tons of look alikes and also rans on the Google Play store. Even installed some of them and then removed them…

Google Maps Navigation enabled in India!!

6 Sep, 2012 Android google maps news Tips

Just came across an awesome piece of news - Google Maps now has turn by turn, voice guided directions officially in India!! Uptil now, I used to get the Ownhere mod for Google Maps that enables World navigation - It used to be available on XDA-Forums but got taken down once google frowned on it! No more of that hassle - just go to Play store and install Maps.

Converting xml to json with a few nice touches

21 Aug, 2012 browser json programming XML

During my recent outings in heavyweight programming, one of the things we needed to do was converting a large XML structure from the server to JSON object on the browser to facilitate easy manipulation/inspection. Also, the XML from the server was not the nice kind - what I mean is that tag names were consistent - but the content was wildly inconsistent. For ex, all of the following were recd:

Microsoft Releases Git TFS integration tool

21 Aug, 2012 git tfs Tools

Microsoft released a cross platform Git TFS integration tool Git TF!! It’s definitely a good step and acknowledgement about the mindshare that Git has. I took it for a spin - the integration is supposed to be cross platform - so that it should work on cygwin also. However, the first time I tried, it did not and had to tweak the script a little. In the script <install folder>/git-tf