category: Tools

The humble ‘cmd’ in Windows is good enough, but who ever can be satisfied with stuff that is ‘good enough’? tl;dr: Use cmder I am a Windows guy through and through, but had been an active user of Linux on my main desktop and servers. While servers are largely managed through SSH or even CPANEL today, I switched to Windows only after experiencing multiple issues with boot loaders. It also helped that most of the programs I used were on Windows - thanks to my day job. ...

“Be a teacher to become a better student”, said none. But it is true to a large extent. It certainly helps the guru, if not the student :) While I have created a few short courses in my lifetime, there was nothing substantial. I had been trying to investigate available options for an immediate requirement and my deep PhD level research is outlined below. Trends of the Day Structure your courses - students today are exposed to some really good platforms (Udemy, FreeCodeCamp, Datacamp, Coursera, Salesforce Trailhead etc.) ...

There are two primary things of interest from a communication perspective - One to one/many collaboration with team One to many collaboration with the world The tools outlined here are great from both perspectives, but choose your poison carefully. 1. Team I am sure you have a bunch of tools from your organization - but let’s be honest. Most of the “org approved” tools are redundant by the time they get approved by the security team. ...

I worked with Oracle DB for a long time. Later I switched to MySQL, MariaDB, and a tiny bit of MongoDB. All the SQL databases I worked did not quite boast about exciting developer experiences. Oracle had SQLPlus, which was foresaken by everyone but a few diehards. Fortunately, we also had SQLDeveloper or Toad (to those who could afford that). Unfortunately, Oracle was actively used at my work place. MySQL and friends were not. ...

Backing up has been historically a pain. Most of the times I lacked the resources - either I don’t have the hardware or could not quite setup everything seamlessly. Previous Setup Create Synchronicity Light-weight, backup and synchronise. I include any folder that needs to be backed up to CS. Schedule the program to run every fortnight or so. The files are backed up an attached hard-drive, some folders go to OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive folders. ...

I am a developer (or an imposter who thinks he is a developer). A developer has to figure out solutions to problems, and sometimes carry the rest of the humanity along for the ride. I am unique in that - rest of the developers do that 99.99xxx99% of the time, and I fill in the gap. For that communication to be effective with my fellow humans: I prefer to structure the information, use any means within my reach and in general, not be known as a snob. ...

I have written less than five eBooks in my life. I used Amazon to self-publish the book and have it for sale for two weeks now. The above statements by themselves should be a good indicator of how much I know about the topic of selling eBooks. But, I being me, cannot really “not write” about my fantastic research in the two weeks hence. I go deep in all kinds of useless topics, and this as “mildly interesting”. I see a ready-invite to invest my time in such topics - find stuff people say, write about, and what folks end up using. ...

I had been a fan of LeanPub. The platform promises easy book authoring using Markdown, and distribute the book to a hungry audience. However, I am not a big fan of how Markdown is processed in LeanPub. Markua, the flavor (created &) preferred by LeanPub, is not completely aligned to how GitHub and others process the Markdown. I encountered a few problems including images and could not do a lot of experimentation since LeanPub limits book previews / generation to 20 times a month in the free plan. ...

If you are like me: you will be creating dime-a-dozen websites that no one is going to read. .. or, care about. If you are like me, you would want to do that anyway. because.. why the hell not? All my websites (almost, all) have a logo associated. I am no designer and creating logos is a pain in the neck. If you Google, you will be inundated with many “free” logo creators that just ask money at the very end. You created the logo for free, but that does not mean you don’t pay for the download. ...

I was setting up content for a professional training company that I consult for. We have to do “something different” as compared to many others in the space. One such idea was to setup a closed user group for the course students. The said forum will enable students to discuss the course, ask questions, and connect with other students/faculty. The company is profitable but bearly and had its share of expenses lined up. Being a small, bootstrapped company has its advantages, but strong finances is not one of them. ...