Nifty tidbits!

Coffeescript rocks!

10 Aug, 2012 Coffeescript development Javascript Tips Very Cool

I’ve been absent a few weeks from the blog. Life got taken over by work - been deep in the Javascript jungles and Coffeescript has been a lifesaver. Based on my earlier peek at Coffeescript, we went ahead full on with Coffeescript and I have to say it has been a pleasant ride for the team with over 4.7KLoc of Javascript (with Coffeescript source weighing in around 3.7KLoc including comments etc) that now I can confidently recommend it for any sort of Javascript heavy development.

Media center setup - XBMC-XVBA

3 Jul, 2012 Linux Tips ubuntu XBMC

I finally got my nettop - AMD E-350 based barebones system. Installed 4G of RAM and the plan was to set it up with XBMCBuntu or XBMC-XvBA. Instead of installing the XBMC-XvBA version directly, I figured that I could start with XBMCBuntu, see how it does and then if necessary move to the XvBA enabled builds. I don’t have a hard drive for the nettop - the plan was to have the system run off a 8Gig pen drive.

Avast! trial expiration kills Internet connection - how bad is that!

30 Jun, 2012 avast Rant Troubleshooting

So I use 'free for personal use' Avast Antivirus at home for the past couple of years. It’s been mostly good though I’ve had some reservations about it - namely, nag pop-ups and so on. Some months ago (or maybe was it a year ago?) there was a program update and it wanted me to install 'Avira Internet Security'. Now I had no need for this (I use COMODO firewall which has been quite good) however, there was no way around it.

Media center upgrades - part two

4 Apr, 2012 Linux XBMC

So this is a continuation to my last post on my effort to upgrade the media center at home. While I wait for hardware to come, I’ve been reading up through forums and blogs online and am finding it real hard to get some good advice. So, thought it might help to list down concisely the situation as it stands currently, in the hope that it will server other folks who’re trying to find similar answers.

Compiling Vim again - Cygwin

2 Apr, 2012 cygwin HOWTO Tips vim

Vim installed by Cygwin’s setup project does not have Ruby/Python/Perl support enabled by default. As my list of must have vim plugins has a few which use Ruby and Python, thought that it might be good to build my own Cygwin build of Vim. Turned out a little more work than I thought - but that’s more due to the misleading (at least for me :) ) Make file in the vim source tree called Make_cyg.

Media center upgrades

31 Mar, 2012 hardware ubuntu XBMC

I have a small form factor (SFF) machine on the way to take up duties as a media center machine. After waiting for long, finally pulled the trigger on a Foxconn Barebones Book sized system and 4G of RAM. I haven’t ordered a hard drive - the plan is to run XBMC completely off a USB drive. As it is, media is on a 1TB external disk and the cost of 2.

Moved to bitbucket

23 Mar, 2012 code git-hosting

I’ve been using Git Enterprise for hosting private repositories since github’s free plan doesn’t include any private repos. Git enterprise’s worked - but the UI leads a lot to be desired the few times that you actually have to use the web interface. So the other day while doing something else, I landed on bitbucket. Bitbucket is Atlassian’s code hosting service - and for some reason I was under the impression that it only supported mercurial repositories.

Hey look! A flying pig!

22 Mar, 2012 git windows

:) MS has added git support to Codeplex - who’d have thought that such a day would ever dawn. Kudos to the good souls at MS who made this happen - One can only imagine the kind of conversations that would’ve taken place to get the necessary approvals for this :). Still Git has great mindshare but native windows support is pretty bad. Hopefully this might even help making a good gui for git on windows.

Coffeescript looks promising

13 Mar, 2012 Javascript programming Tips Very Cool

I’ve just ran across Coffeescript… can’t believe what sort of a hole I’ve been living in. It’s a source to source compiler (ie when you 'compile' a coffeescript script, you get javascript source.) So why would you want a source to source compiler for Javascript? Well, as apps become more and more 'front-end' heavy with DHTML/Ajax bling bling, the javascript that holds all that together also becomes more and more complex.

VIM config updates

17 Feb, 2012 vim

Ultisnips has been updated to 2.0. See the video here for the updates and new features. One piece of information - and one that I was eagerly waiting for is that 2.0 works perfectly with auto complete popup. This wasn’t always the case - in fact, the bug on launchpad for the same had been marked as a 'wont-fix'. In any case, I was super thrilled to see that its been fixed.