Recent content in Avinash's Blog, Ramblings and JPT on Ramblings and JPT Tech
I spent the weekend vibe coding a ticketing app for our conference, with payment integration and everything. As part of the process, we (me and my agent ;) ) also built a mock server for the payment service since one didn’t exist. It turned out to be a very productive 4–5 hours. By the end of the day, tickets could be bought, QR codes were being generated, and emails were being sent.
Had a small realization on my regular morning-walk today. I was feeling a bit sad that NAS-IT didn’t allow us to put an AI Conf standee at the expo. Especially after seeing the crowd there yesterday, it felt like a missed chance to share something community-driven. Their reasoning was that it’s a professional event and there isn’t space for community. I kind of get it, but not really. (Edit:…
Cloud of Uncertainity 8:00 AM - I’m driving to St. Xavier’s College, my alma mater, where BarCamp Kathmandu 2024 will take place. Its raining cats and dogs. Actually, It’s been raining non stop for the last 2 nights. The streets are flooded and the very little traffic that is out this stormy morning is being re-routed in multiple places. I am wondering how today will go. 8:30 AM…
I’ve been reading the book “The Creative Act” by Rick Rubin for the last year or so. My method of reading the book has been rather unmethodical. Every couple of days/weeks when I feel like it, I pick up the book and continue reading where i last left off. Sometimes when I come across a strong thought (which happens more often than not in this book), I keep that thought in my mind…
Have you seen the following error when using reanimated2 in expo ? Reanimated 2 failed to create a worklet, maybe you forgot to add Reanimated's babel plugin? I have spent quite a lot of hours fixing this issue. The solutions you see online are really random and they don’t always work. Well, you don’t know why it works if/when it works. 1. use yarn 2. reinstall all modules 3. It just…
I enjoy writing apps in React Native because of the amazing community and the ocean of tutorials available online. But, every once in a while we hit a we hit a wall and then we have to go reading the documentation and dig through the typescript types. I had one of those issues the other day. We can easily truncate text using the numberOfLines prop. If we want to show the first 3 lines and truncate…
Ok, so you’ve figured out a workflow with git and use it on a daily basis to get work done. Happily minding your own business pushing things and pulling some other things. I was there some years back when I realized that i could optimize my workflow. Over the years, I have collected number of git aliases which makes me better at git (PS: also i dont have to remember complex commands) .
The problem is clear. Web browsers are resource hogs. They run well on 2G of RAM and run well on 8G of RAM. The side effect being whole RAM is used, and CPU and everything that is available. using cgconfig I’ve spent multiple hours in the last years trying to have a setup where i could limit Memory and CPU of browser processes. I had a decent setup using cgconfig and it used to work well…
I mostly work on the web and haven’t worked a lot with react native. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time learning and building small apps using react native. It gives web developers superpowers to build native (ish) experiences for mobile using the same toolset we are aware of. One thing that seemed rathar odd, especially coming from react web was the use of StyleSheet.create in react…
The Problem I’ve been playing around a lot with flexbox and css-grid in the last days. One of the problem that I commonly run into is when an element group has a wrapper and the wrapper is contained in a flex or a grid block. The easiest way to fix an issue like this is to assign the wrapper a display:flex (or grid). It’s really easy to do that, but whenever I do this, I hear sounds…
I have been helping a friend move his not-so-static php based websites to a static site setup served by GitHub Pages. Perfect opportunity to play around with eleventy and github actions (mostly because I have never liked Jekyll) The idea is to use a Github Action to build static pages using eleventy and push them to the gh-pages branch. The action below does exactly that. It uses the nodejs action…
Having organized various meetups, hackathons and conferences and after speaking on several occasions I have been thinking about this whole process of learning and sharing. As I have been preparing for my talk at WordCamp Kathmandu tomorrow, I realize that there are so many angles that I’d have never thought of, if I were not speaking at the conference. It sounds counter-intuitive but this…
I have been using the i3 window manager for almost 7-8 months now and I really like the peace that comes with it. Its a tiling window manager which (in some way) pushes one to have a more managed workspace. Sharing my i3 configuration is probably a post of its own, but today I want to share my i3lock wrapper script. Generally i3lock locks the screen and puts a white wallpaper (rathar ugly white…
Introduction The Web is more than Facebook and Twitter. It is definitely more than the photos we post on Instagram. Our lives are more than that. Our physical lives are in our own control (in general). But we have been losing control of our virtual lives in exchange for a tine-tiny bit of convenience. We have been losing ownership of our own content (thoughts, pictures and what-not) while others…
🌯 It’s been 3 weeks since Web Weekend Kathmandu and we’ve almost finished all the pending work for the conference. The event was pretty successful and beyond what we had planned and expected for. Facts and Figures ~300 attendees in the whole event Representatives from >55 different companies in Nepal 11 different nationalities at the conference 10% female attendees 😢 8 wwktm…
#TIL I usually like to look at the HTML of web pages that get delivered to my browser window. Today, I noticed that all assets that were loaded relatively came from a different URL. Interesting huh! * OMG!! How did they do thaatt??* HTML has a <base> tag that specifies the base URL for all relative links in a web page. Well thought through, right? Definitely. 1 2 <base href='base-path'> <link…
One could use git for years and not have to hear of detached heads. I came across detached head when I was showing a colleague what git really is. I was showing how to “go back in time” using git; Basically a git checkout <commit-hash>, right? Yes, that is exactly when git goes to a detached head mode. So, what exactly is a detached head? Before that, what exactly is a HEAD?
Reading through HackerNews this morning I noticed this comment, which is something that I have been telling a lot of folks in the past days. For the lazy ones, the thread is about 2018 resolutions and the comment mentions the resolution as ” Less consuming, more creating. Doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter if it’s bad. “ The comment reminds me of something I…
Now that google is pushing AMP a lot, it has been one of the better ways to attract some organic traffic. In one of my recent projects we had to setup a signup form on the AMP pages. We use AMP for WP (a very well done plugin btw) but wanted to try adding the form ourselves, instead of purchasing one of their paid plugins (Which would be the easier way, but one must get their hands dirty to…
Generally, whenever I have to undo a rebase I just reset my working directory to the origin remote and that works pretty well. This one time I didn’t push my changes to the remote and did a rebase. Only then I realized i didn’t really want to rebase. Tough life right? I couldn’t even reset to origin now. That is when I learned about the git reflog command/feature. git reflog is…
Chaos is a Ladder — Little Finger, GoT This is to compare and contrast two worlds, two stories that seem the same but totally different experiences. … sometime in 2014 I don’t remember the exact date, but, in 2014 someone shipped me a piece of gadget to Germany. I got a letter which asked to be present at the customs office in 3 days. I went to the customs office.
Today I want to discuss a simple frustration I have with forms on the web. Half a decade back, I was told that it is nice to have shorter forms. Duh! That’s quite obvious, right? Well, the problem is that short forms generally aren’t enough to get all the data you want from the user. True, so form designers (one could be using google forms or sorts) thought of a nifty hack.
2024 Storyworthy — Matthew Dicks 2023 Invent and Wander — The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos The Making of Prince of Persia — Jordan Mechner 2022 Ikigai — Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia How to live on 24 hours a day — Arnold Bennett 2021 The Midnight Library — Matt Haig Creativity Inc — Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace 2020 The Culture Map — Erin…
Dear Event Organizers, I have been attending dev/tech/art related events for quite some years now. It fills me with pride looking at how far we have come, and how colorful and eventful (ba-dum-tiss) the community has become. There is an event every week or so, community-leaders are meeting often discussing about maximizing community interaction. The best part of it is that the community also feels…
Innovation is a force to bring significant positive change. It’s easy to say one is innovative, but it’s quite an achievable feat to be innovative. It’s a tough job for an organization to foster innovation and reward teams that show signs of being innovative, even though if the results were not positive. That is one risk to take with innovative teams, there are chances that they…
On 12th Nov, I joined the amazing folks from Hike For Nepal for a day hike to Champadevi Hills. It was a great hike with a nice weather accompanied with some beautiful landscapes. Perfect recipe for a good hike. Like every other hikes, this one also helped me think deeply and contemplate about a number of things. Among them, most of my energy was spent on thinking about the hike itself.
It happens more often than not, I am on a slow internet connection and I have to clone a decently-huge git repository. The most common issue is the connection closes and the whole clone is cancelled. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cloning into 'large-repository'... remote: Counting objects: 20248, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (10204/10204), done. error: RPC failed; curl 18 transfer closed with…
अाज महाकवि लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटाको जन्मदिनको अवसरमा पागल कविता सम्झदैछु। जरुर साथी म पागल ! यस्तै छ मेरो हाल । म शब्दलाई देख्दछु ! दृश्यलाई सुन्दछु ! बासनालाई संबाद लिन्छु । आकाशभन्दा पातालका कुरालाई छुन्छु । ती कुरा, जसको अस्तित्व लोक मान्दैंन जसको आकार संसार जान्दैन ! म देख्दछु, ढुङ्गालाई फूल ! जब, जलकिनारका जल चिप्ला ती, कोमलाकार, पाषाण, चाँदनीमा, स्वर्गकी जादूगर्नी मतिर हाँस्दा, पत्रिएर,…
I totally love how Gandalf is introduced in the book. This line has been so smartly crafted, I feel awe everytime I read it. Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort I of remarkable tale. In the first movie, there is a scene where Gandalf explains why there is a Hobbit with…
You have been warned, do not take this seriously. There are many ways that a website can be hacked, more ways than one can possibly count, more ways than one can keep track of. Technology can be confusing, it can be tough, especially with so many different standards, so many weird languages, useless tooling around them. And on top of that, so many ugly developers, who write code that make them…
I read the news every once in a while, and realize that nothing has changed. Nothing has changed in the once peaceful country. That peaceful country where people are fighting; They are divided, divided by caste, divided by religion, divided by color, divided by reason, divided without any reason. Fight all day long, fight for your ego, fight for the fake pride and then in the end of the day take…
Tell - v. To communicate by speech or writing; express with words: Tell ! If you have an idea, Tell, Tell your friends, Tell your colleagues You want to lose weight? run every morning? Tell me about it ! For the sake of God, Tell someone what you want to do. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, stop thinking for eternity, take a moment, and tell. It’s one of the simplest & easiest hack…
Fun is random, fun is rage, fun is what that takes you out of the cage. Where is Fun? It is so relative I have learned, it depends on how your mind is wired and where your heart it. For some, partying all night long and having an insane night might be the fun that quenches the thirst. But, for some, maybe being able to stick to the timeline might just be the fun that is added to life.
”…our disconnection from what we consume. If we all had to grow our own food, we wouldn’t waste a third of if (as we do now in the UK). If we had to make our own tables and chairs, we wouldn’t throw them out the moment we changed the interior décor. If we could see the look on the face of the child who, under the eyes of an armed soldier, cuts the cloth for the garment we…
What do you think is the right course of action, bringing justice by punishment or forgiving the wrongdoer? Fighting the fight for ego or forgiving? These are tough discussions to have and there is enough philosophical evidence to justify either side of the argument. I have come to believe that there is no “right-way” or “the recipe” that one can follow, one must always…
Just for a moment, think, what would it be like, if governments and countries were open source organizations (mentioned as OSO from here on)? The status quo is that governments are synonymous to big black boxes where no one knows what’s going on until and unless you are part of the big black box. On the contrary, most OSOs are an amazing expression of freedom and transparency. Wouldn’t…
[note: half baked, but posted as i might not work on this in the near future] When I was a school going kid, I used to think that I could change the world, I could bring change in society and as time passed by I realized i couldn’t even bring a positive change to myself. How could i change anything in anyone when I was stiff enough to not be changed.
त्यो एकलाई जान, जसलाई जानेपछि जान्न बाँकी केही रहँदैन । – शिवसुत्र Know the one, after which there will be nothing remaining to be known - Shivasutra I’ve been reading “Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson and this is just an archive of the quotes and parts-of-text that touched me the most. In some cases I have also added the reasoning or the idea that is being sent across…
Pantone just announced a new Pantone Color named as Minion Yellow. Now, I am very excited to use it in several elements in this website. It does add an identity to the website, doesn’t it? Makes it look more fun. “Just as the sun’s rays enliven us, PANTONE Minion Yellow is a color that heightens awareness and creates clarity, lighting the way to the intelligence, originality and the…
Today was my first BarCamp (ever) and I have to say it was quite unconventional. I left in between the event as it didn’t rise up to my expectations. I always thought that BarCamps are an open event with an open platform for people to learn and share their thoughts and hacks, atleast that’s the impression one gets when they read about other BarCamps or its wiki. Since I didn’t…
I have been a long time open source user, fan, contributor and all that’s possible to be. At one point of time I was very involved in open source, contributing to the likes of firefox or CI-Bonfire. It was fun and I was learning a lot but at one point of time I was not satisfied. I knew that I had my contribution to the web, to move the web forward and to make things easier for the next new…
The Problemo Yesterday I was checking deployd and wanted to try it out. Doing as the docs said, when I to started deployd It stuck on starting deployd v0.6.10... ##The Fixo After going through the issues on github i finally found this old-ish similar issue which was still unresolved. To solve it start monogd as a seperate process and run deployd as dpd -P 27017 -H localhost -n testing-deployd -d
I have been tinkering quite a lot with the osx dashboard lately and was curious how could one write a widget. I went digging online and found most of the apple links ended up in a 404. Luckily I found this article, which is a little outdated, but so is the dashboard. To my surprise, dashboard widgets are written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Yes! right, those web technologies that we’ve been…
Recently while i was working on a dashboard widget, I planned not to use any JavaScript library but just plain ol’ vanilla JavaScript. At one point I had to check if an element was shown or not. This was controlled using a CSS class and all that the basic API had returned a string of the classes of an element and one had to control it using string manipulation. Having read stuff about the…
Note: This has come back from the archives and was written way back on 03 May 2011. [Back from the Grave] Disclaimer : This article is a compilation of my say about four years of college, things that i wish people told me, things that people told me and helped me make a difference and yeah, of course things that i want to say :). It would also be a a lot biased towards computer engineering…
TL;DR : This is mostly going to be a post about how things have fucked up recently and how my plans of doing an internship this summer went into the dump and some extensions and pre-post thought process to that. The master-plan My ideal summer would be an internship at one of the best tech companies working and learning with/from the most talented people of the industry. Contrary to the fact that…
Flappy bird has been one game that i’ve been playing/fighting with quite a lot recently. If you have not played it yet, maybe its already too late as the author has taken it down from all the app stores, but a quick google search will give out a lot of recent clones. It might be quite obvious from the game, but it tells one, how important it is to be in the perfect zone.
A little Context (is always better) It all started with me getting very used to the spotify web player and for some weird reason never using the desktop player. For some reason, if I can do something (effectively) in the browser, I try to do it in the browser. I must say that the browser based web players are getting really sophisticated and amazing but very quickly I started missing the ease of…
I have been working on a backbone based project recently and had a situation where i wanted an event to emit only once that too with some restrictions. The way I thought to do it was to do it with an dealy and clearTimeout when required by the state of the application. Everything was fine untill i figured out that the function passed to _.delay doesnt bind to this like the rest of backbone…
Part 1 : Mozilla Summit 2013 To make things less confusing, lets start from the beginning. It all started back in mid-2013 when my twitter stream and facebook newsfeed was filled with status-es like “It’s official, you’re invited! Yay!” and there in my mailbox was an unread email with the same subject. Yes, It was official and I was invited too :D. It was an invitation to…