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Ali Gajani's Blog
Technology blog featuring articles about Apple products, insights, and tech analysis
Latest posts
I used Cursor AI to make 4 sites in 4 days
A whirlwind week of web development where I delivered 4 complete websites for 4 different clients in just 4 days using Cursor AI coding agent. Here's how I managed this intense sprint and what I learned from the experience.
Statistical Analysis of the Holy Quran (Part 1)
The English and Arabic corpus of the Holy Quran is a rich source for statistical analysis. For instance, the entire test corpora has half a million words and many thousand distinct words. A rich dataset such as the Holy Quran, therefore, provides for an exciting journey of data exploration. In this
HTML Parsing in Python 3.4 using LXML
LXML is a nice little document parser for lightweight and effective HTML/XML parsing without using regular expressions. The module can be installed with relative ease using pip and works for Python 2 and 3. Let's get the token and expire form values from NYTimes site for an example. Installation of
PyMySQL: Pure Python MySQL client, perfect for Python 3+
It took me a while to get MySQL working on Python 3.4. I started with MySQLDB, but figured it doesn't work on Python 3 and above. Then I stumbled upon a nice pure-python MySQL client called PyMySQL. Guess what. It works! Here's a tutorial on how to set it up on your Mac. Requirements Make sure you
Asynchronous HTTP Requests in Python 3.4
I started learning Python last night. I will be lying if I say "it's good". I'll tell you what, "it's f**king good". I am a polyglot programmer and diving in Python was a cinch. It felt as if I knew it already, because "it makes sense". I've been playing around with Python 3.4 and here's an
Understanding the HTTP ETag using Graph API
Over the past week, I have been spending time refreshing my knowledge of HTTP caching. I knew what caching was, but only vaguely. Right now, I'm working on a project which involves implementing a caching layer, for performance and scalability. I am a visual learner, so I did a little experiment.
Study finds the most popular social networks for specific categories
Attention content publishers/marketers/creators. This one's for you. The brainy data scientists at Vinkk have finally managed to validate a previously popular assumption of why a certain category of content does well in a specific social network. It was widely believed that Pinterest is a heaven for
Build a Website the Easy Way with WordPress
Setting up a website with WordPress has several advantages. It is not an expensive option, so it is affordable for most budgets, and it can be used by both small and large businesses alike. WordPress sites also have plugins available that will do a lot of the SEO work for your site on your behalf.
Playing with the Hacker News API using Guzzle
Hacker News released its API to the world a few days ago. Data geeks previously had to rely on web scraping and paginated results to obtain data from the Hacker News site, but things have changed now. With Hacker News' official API, we have a structured way to tap into the data. I've dabbled
Introducing Get STATUS: Use likes as a social currency
Get Status is a social app especially designed for happy and positive people. The premise of the idea is to use likes as a social currency. It's the place where you can chat and make new friends, discover and share wonderful moments and and end up receiving tons of likes. Brainchild of Denis
Geo-targeting your website to a specific country
What if I could show you a way to restrict users on your website by geo-location? With just a few lines of PHP code, you can restrict, or depending on the situation, show, different content to users from different countries. I am sure you get the idea. //get the country code $country =
Revive Childhood Memories With DosBOX
Aladdin, Duke Nuken 3D and Street Fighter 2 . Remember all these games? I bet you do. These titles made our childhood so freaking awesome and wouldn't it be nice to revive childhood memories by playing them 20 odd years later? Of couse, with DosBOX, you can do just that. DosBOX is a DOS simulator
Grammar inspired software: naming things
Writing software is 0.5 art. See, almost anything that allows you to express your creativity is essentially an art form. I personally see software as a canvas for the mind, which makes me an artisan. Since a couple of weeks, an idea has occupied my mind. It's about grammar inspired software and
Hands on with Windows 10 Technical Preview
Windows 10 Technical Preview just arrived last night. I had work to do. Got a university license for VMWare Fusion 7 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro. Installed the Virtual Machine Software. Added a Windows 8.1 image. Booted it up. Downloaded Windows 10 Technical Preview. Upgraded my 8.1 installation to 10
Laravel 4 Pagination with Infinite Scroll using jQuery
This tutorial is born right from the Vinkk code base. I was in the same boat as you a few weeks ago, and when I didn't find out something elegant, I decided to roll up my own solution. Well, in true Mr. Geek fashion, I am sharing with you the "Laravel 4 Pagination with Infinite Scroll using
Using Android Apps On A Mac
Android Apps on a Mac? Yes, you read that right. I'll show how Bluestacks App Simulator makes this process a cinch. At first, why would you want to do that in the first place? Well, the reasons can be plenty, but here's one. You created too many Instagram accounts from your iPhone/Android device and
Hands on with iOS 8: Swift Key and Swype
Android has had third-party keyboards for years, and Apple, as usual, is late to the party. With iOS 8 however, Tim Cook has finally got into the act and changed that. I'll be honest, I love the keyboard on my Nexus 7. It's a treat to type on and I am glad I can do the same on my iOS device now.
ELLO is crap BUT here are a few INVITES anyway
Ello has clearly marketed their way to 35,000 signups an hour and 'press love'. I got an invite a few hours ago and I am, as usual, fulfilling my duty of informing the public: move on folks, there's nothing special here. Ello is a social network that is simply banking on "privacy policies". I'll
iOS 8: Continuity in action
When Tim announced Yosemite and iOS 8, one of my favorite features was Continuity. I've finally mustered up the energy the write a short review of my experiences. Tldr; it's pretty cool, I'll tell you that. Continuity is relevant if you own an iOS device and a Mac (running OS X Yosemite). Put it
Evolution of Online Gaming: 1970s and today
During the rapid growth of the Web in the late 90s, online gaming came into spotlight. With advancements in computer networking, increasing bandwidth and rapid globalization, online gaming has evolved greatly over the years. At any given instant, there are well over a million players engaging in
An idea for a lightweight PHP CMS with .txt files and query strings
Laziness often helps you figure out funny ways to solve problems. Put it this way. I've found a hack to create a lightweight CMS in PHP that uses .txt files and query strings. Yes, you publish through a URL, and the persistence happens inside a text file. Not a MySQL database. Crazy! It works. I
Data mining 1.5 million tweets for Twitter sentiment analysis
The contents of this blog post are inherited from a short research project by Group 10 of the Information Retrieval and Data Mining module at University College London. Instead of letting it rot in my Dropbox, I decide to free the knowledge and hope someone finds it useful. The research goal was to
Building a REST API using Hapi.js and MongoDB
MongoDB and Hapi.js are two powerful technologies that allow working with REST API a cinch. You may already familiar with them, but let me do a quick review on it. Hapi.js is a very rich node.js framework for building applications and services. Hapi enables developers to focus on writing reusable
Android L Hands On
It’s been quite some time since Google rolled out the Android L Developer Preview for Nexus 5 and Nexus 7. We decided to boot it up and experience what's inside. The device used is a Nexus 7 2013 (Wi-Fi). The first dramatic differences when you boot up Android L are obvious. There is a complete UI
Managing Assets in Laravel 4 using Helpers and HTML Builder
Laravel 4 doesn't have a lot of documentation on managing assets such as stylesheets or Javascript files. Laravel 3's documentation did however, but it seems to have been omitted for the newer version somehow. Today, I'll be showing you some neat ways to manage assets using Helper functions and HTML
Dead simple CRUD in Laravel 4
I feel I've come late to the party. But they say, it's never too late. Laravel's community has matured and it's safe to say the framework has brought the sexy back to PHP. Laravel is dead simple. It's expressive, elegant, and extremely powerful at the same time. CRUD operations are the core of any
FreeMyApps: Download Suggested Apps and Earn Rewards
Wouldn't it be great if a service asks you to download some apps suggested by them, and in return you earn $$ or free items as reward. Freemyapps does just that. Read on to find out more. How FreeMyApps Works Some individual developers or companies that make Mobile apps (iOS and Android
Facebook buys Yo! app for $5 billion dollars
Our team of Silicon Valley insiders have just reported a major development in the area. Facebook has just finished a deal to acquire mobile app Yo! for approximately $5 billion in cash and stock. Yo! will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook. The
What's new in Yosemite OS X 10.10 Beta 2 ?
Cook and Co. just pushed their latest beta updates for iOS 8 and Yosemite OS 10.10. I've updated my Yosemite and here's a short review on what's changed. I am only documenting the visible changes, but I've provided a Pastebin of the full release notes in case you're interested. Wifi bug: The Wifi
How to update Homebrew in Yosemite?
Yosemite uses Ruby 2.0 where as my previously installed Homebrew was set to use 1.8. I did an upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite just last week, but it was today that I set out using brew commands and realized, oh no! But I have a 2 minute fix that works just fine. Step 1 Change the first line of
How to fix the Wifi bug in Yosemite using Keychain reset?
The Wifi bug in Yosemite's current beta release is irritating. I am back on Ethernet now that Yosemite won't let me connect to Wifi. Even when it does, it disconnects in a few minutes. Guess what - I've a bug fix that works. Step 1: Open Keychain using Spotlight (Cmd+Space). Step 2: Go to Keychain
Hands on with OS X 10.10 Yosemite by Mr. Geek
I've just downloaded Apple's OS X 10.10 Yosemite pre-release. You might ask, how did I get my hands on it? Well, as an owner of a Developer account, I have access to beta releases from Apple right from their developer portal. It costs 99 bucks a year but it's worth it. Here's a hands on review of
Improve your Chrome experience with Speed Dial 2
I dislike Google Chrome's "New Tab Page". It's not aesthetically pleasing. Have a look at the image above. Can you see it? That's Speed Dial 2. It's by far the best replacement of the 'New Tab Page". Speed Dial 2 gives you access to your favorite sites with a gorgeous, customizable user interface.
Setting up Laravel 4 on OS X 10.9 Mavericks
I come from the world of CodeIgniter, the ailing framework who was once the Zeus of the PHP framework arena. I have written around 20,000 lines of code in CodeIgniter, and developed a marketplace platform back in 2012. CodeIgniter was love at first sight, but with its slow development pace, Laravel
Breakpoint Tester and FlatUI Colors
Wassup folks. Bob here, Mr. Geek's side-kick. I got some goodies for you today. Attention web artisans and pixel perfect designers, this blog post is for you. Over the past couple of years, Mr. Geek has collected links to tools on web design and development. I have finally persuaded him to allow me
How to open large text files (>5 GB) on a Mac ?
A month ago, I downloaded a large dataset from Twitter. The .txt file consisted of around 1.5 million tweets in JSON and weighed at 5.5 GB. I wanted to look at the structure of the JSON in order to design a parser for processing the tweets. I was then working on a Sentiment Analysis project. As I
12 Most Famous PhD Theses In History
I have compiled a very solid list of the 12 most famous PhD theses (plural of thesis) in history. Do realize that this list includes 'PhD Theses' and not books/volumes (so Principia by Newton doesn't count). This list is based entirely upon my general knowledge, so pardon me if I am limited in my
Graph Theory 101: Directed and Undirected Graphs
This is a very short introduction to graph theory. We will be talking about directed and undirected graphs, the formulas to find the maximum possible edges for them and the mathematical proofs that underlie the philosophy of why they work. This is my first use of LaTeX on Mr. Geek. Graph Theory
Getting it Right When Choosing HR Software
People are perhaps the most important element of any business, so it's vital to look after your employees properly. And when it comes to payroll and human resources software, it pays to choose a solution that not only meets your needs but can also grow with your organisation. Assessing your needs
Measuring influence in a group using social network analysis
I have decided to publish the contents of my Complex Networks and Web coursework project here on Mr. Geek. The information contained in this post might be complex to some, but I assure you that this will be a good long read. I have included lots of pictures to make sure you don't get bored in the
These 82 Countries (GDP) are worth lesser than Whatsapp
A bit of data crunching shows the enormity of the number, $19 billion. Yes, 82 countries (and more) have a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) lesser than what Whatsapp is worth. I used Excel and the 2012 GDP data from WordBank's site. The list is shown below. What could have Facebook spent this on? Well,
A few thoughts on the Whatsapp acquisition
Two days ago, we witnessed the second largest tech acquisition of all time, valued at $19.0 billion USD. Facebook acquired Whatsapp. What? A stunner, of the sorts that literally shocked the geek-o-sphere in all dimensions. Here are my thoughts about it. Before I dive further, you might be curious
Why Flappy Bird is strikingly similar to Piou Piou?
A fan sent in us a link of a site that claimed Flappy Bird to be a 'carbon' copy of a 2011 Android game Piou Piou. I set out to investigate this and the results are discussed in this short blog post. The truth is, it is definitely copied, or at least inspired to a large extent. The game mechanics
10 Equations Used In Our Daily Lives
Equations. Don't we all just love them. We find them in our everyday lives. We study them and use them. Now, may I request you to embark with me upon a short journey into the world of equations that rule our everyday lives. Grab a cup of coffee, this is a long 2,500 word read. I come from the
5 Cool Ways To Earn Money With Apps
Everyone loves finding a new way to earn some cash, even if it's just a few dollars here and there to supplement income, or serve as extra daily spending money. And thanks to the mobile phone revolution we've seen in the past few years, there are now seemingly innumerable ways to earn an extra buck
How to disable the slow parallax iOS 7 animation? Faster iOS 7!
The iOS 7 has a lot of great features, but the parallax animation is my least favorite. Why? Well, because it makes everything so slow, at least by a 1.5 seconds. Guess what, you're in for luck. With version 7.0.4, you can choose to disable it. I am serious. You'll love the speed. I'll keep this
Social Networking: A Revolution in Modern Communication
If you take out a newer edition of the Oxford Dictionary and lookup the term “Social Networking,” it’ll say: Syndicated from Monitor.Us Social Networking (noun): The use of dedicated websites and applications to communicate informally with other users, or to find people with similar interests
The 4 Biggest Bitcoin Disasters (So Far)
Bitcoin was one of the biggest stories of 2013, and probably will be the case for 2014 as well. The digital currency rose to prominence this year making headlines from Silicon Valley to Shanghai. It’s not all rosy, peer-to-peer optimism in the Bitcoin community, however, and there have already
Real proof why Dropbox has been hacked, service completely inaccessible
Earlier today, news poured in about Anonymous hacking Dropbox. This was 3 hours ago and Dropbox wrote a note on their Twitter saying this, as shown in the embedded Tweet from their @Dropbox account. Read on to find out why they are lying. Dropbox site is back up! Claims of leaked user info are a