category: Tools

I continue to be amazed by the depth of tools created by Sysinternals even after all the tools I have used over years. Zoomit is certainly one of them. Now, how many times have you wondered about making things a weebit exciting by drawing something on the screen while you are presenting stuff. Not taking screenshots and pasting in other programs, not using Powerpoint tools and not using video tools - just plain old do things live and switch context, quickly. ...

It is no secret that I am a fan of Vue and Vuetify / Quasar. While the styling libraries get stuff done real quick, I often do demo projects or throw-away sites that do not need the heavy hitters. While the project development may be quick and all they enjoy is a couple of hours of show-time, I cannot quite afford to show an app without some basic styling. Here are a couple of my favourite CSS libraries to the rescue - ...

Redirection can be easy enough on Nginx. Let’s see how we can utilise that for our single page applications coded in Vue, React, etc. Nginx and Redirection Nginx configuration is simple but powerful. All we need is a couple of lines to setup our server. Add the below lines to the Nginx configuration files (e.g. in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/domain.com.conf in Ubuntu). server { listen 80; server_name domain.com; } Start the Nginx server, and lo and behold - our web server is ready to serve magic at port 80. Go to domain.com in browser and see your beautiful app. ...

I switched to Caddy recently on one of our servers to host multiple applications and am super happy about its simplicity and ease of use. Here’s how I use Caddy with Quasar. What is Caddy? Caddy is a web server much like Nginx. It calls itself “a new kind of extensible platform for server apps”. Features include - Easy configuration (super readable config. files - we will get to this in a bit) Configuration is exposed as APIs (JSON files can be used to create/change configuration) An extensible plugin system Automatic https using Let’s Encrypt Caddy does all this with a single executable, and a single configuration file. ...

WSL2 was released yesterday along with Windows10 May 2020 update (v2004). WSL2 enables to work with Linux kernels within Windows, and it brings some crazy possibilities for those of us who refuse to dual boot or switch over completely to Linux. I am assuming that you already have installed Windows v2004 through the normal Windows update channel, or through the update assistant. Once you are on Windows10 2004, here’s how you can setup a cool WSL2 development environment. ...

Here are the list of tools that I use in my developer life 🔥🔥. Almost all of the tools are free, or reasonably priced. We live in exciting times - a developer in a “developing country” can do business globally by using the most amazing tools that humankind has produced. Note before you scroll - This will be a WIP post in perpetuity I am writing the post in mid 2020 and call it 2021 edition. If that does not convince you to stop reading, I am sure nothing can The list is focused on platforms and tools to make a developer’s life easier - I code mostly for the web (so YMMV) I consider programming platforms and languages “tools”, but they are covered at the very end so that you can rage quit this page after scrolling all the way down This is not an ad and I will gain little from you agreeing with me (maybe affiliate income to make me a millionaire by accumulating pennies - but those will be clearly suffixed with afl, which stands for affiliate link) You may not share my love for these tools and that is ok. Don’t waste your precious time to review, comment and try to justify why Pluto is not a planet (it is) Also - there is little of pretty pictures and marketing talk. ...

Here are a few simple ways and powerful tools to test your email functionality when you are developing your awesome application. The Case for Email Testing After working in CRM and dealing with millions of records, and dozens of fragile’ly built systems, I have been through imagined (and a couple of real) scenarios of email fiascos - Sending out emails with wrong templates or to the wrong audience Sending emails in bulk from the wrong environment (good luck explaining that to an infuriated CTO) Wrong configuration that breaks tracing and you are left wondering whatever happened to the last email blast which did not record a single click While many of the systems I deal with are on cloud and we have to figure out intelligent ways to manage emails like domain forwarding, custom whitelisting, or outright ban emails - there are many custom systems that can provide better tooling. We can do quite a lot with free, simple-to-use services that can be deployed locally on a developer machine to fast-forward development. ...

Excel is the only program you need to survive in IT. So, how about a template for tracking tasks in an Agile Scrum project? Why Scrum? If you are looking for the answer on why agile / scrum - You are in the wrong site That is well beyond the scope of this post In short: Scrum is a framework to run your project using Agile methodologies. Scrum’s objectives are - Self-organise Learn by doing things and through experience Continuously improve Read more on Atlassian’s site. ...

VestaCP is an easy to use control panel. You just need to know where to go for what! The Problem SSLs are de-facto standards for web applications of today. How can you enable SSL for your own web app, preferably for free? The Solution I am no Unix Guru and for the life of me, cannot enable domains, mails, etc. using just the command line. Well, I could some monkey typing to get everything up and running. But that is a lot of typing, Googling and going back and forth. And, as previously mentioned, I am still not a guy comfortable using Ansible and such. ...

Aren’t you following the right way to git? Are you frustrated with the message “There is no tracking information for the current branch”? Keep calm and read on. The Problem I create new Git repositories all the time - just like any other developer. I am too stupid to notice the small things and learn my lessons - unlike any other developer. Often I mix up creating repositories on the GitHub website and in local computer, thereby confusing Git. I happily create a repository with a README, add remote URL, try to do a pull.. ...