Knowledge without memory is useless
If you use GitAhead and move to a new computer or reset your machine, you will need to re-open the repositories that were open on your earlier installation and do settings, etc. This post shows how to move GitAhead settings, profile, open repositories, etc. automatically by identifying where the correct keys are in the Windows Registry. Two things to be aware of: Doing anything with the registry…
There has been a lot of discussion around Windows 11, the start menu, taskbar, etc. and I felt that some changes annoyed me more than others. In thinking why, I ended up realising how I have set up Windows when it comes to starting applications. This post documents that thought process. Background I have used Windows 95+ since 1996 even though from 1996 2000, OS/2 Warp 4 was my daily driver. I got…
In previous posts, we have looked at how to use portable PostgreSQL on Windows without installing it. However, one of the advantages of the installation is that it sets up additional things like Windows service. In this post, we show how to register and run the portable installation as a Windows service. Why would you want to do this? Using different portable installations is a great way to try…
I got into a discussion thread on Bluesky where the use of Teams/ Outlook/ Sharepoint and Calendar was being discussed. One of the questions that got asked was about sharing and delegating calendars in Outlook. I was going to reply directly when I realised that it might be easier to write up a short post and share the link rather than post all the screenshots into the chat thread. Outlook lets you…
If you re using Ruby and working with timestamps, there is a chance that every now and then, you need a timestamp converted to UTC or back to some other time zone. In such, you probably expect to do timestamp.utc and Ruby doesn t disappoint. You get the UTC timestamp and you probably continue with something like timestamp.utc.strftime (...) and it seems perfect. This is till you need to use the…
It s easy to add an OpenStreetMap layer in QGIS These are the steps: Open the Layers menu Select Add Layer > Add XYZ Layer In the menu that comes up, select OpenStreetMap At the bottom click Add and Close Feel free to connect or share the post (you can tag me as @onghu on X or on Mastodon as @onghu@ruby.social or @onghu.com on Bluesky to discuss more).
Generative AI, LLMs, AI-assisted coding and such remind me of something I heard when I was learning Japanese almost 20 years ago the word processor syndrome or word processor language disorder . When I was learning the Japanese language, I remember being told about a concept called word processor syndrome or word processor language disorder . The premise was that the rise of electronic devices and…
In 2026, as I hope to use AI coding tools, I am keen to follow a more disciplined approach to collect some data that I may be able to look back on after a few weeks or months to establish what value, if any, it brings me. Here s how I am planning to do that. I ve been a programmer for many years now, and over the years, have moved from using C as my main programming language (when I was actually…
In previous posts, we went through setting up DuckDB on Windows , exploring DuckDB for common tasks involving importing data, aggregate queries and type casting and Part 2 around date and time functions. Now, we look at how we get an AUTOINCREMENT field (usually as a default value for a primary key). Background If you ve used SQLite3 before, you know it s common syntax to create a table with…
Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write (from the Ruby web site). On Christmas Day 2025, as is tradition now, the core team released version 4.0 the next major version with ZJIT (not available on Windows yet) and experimental support for Ruby Box alongside other improvements…