I have been a long time user of the free version of Pocket . I used it mostly to mark articles to read it later and occasionally get to it when I have the time. After attending the Building a Second Brain (BASB) workshop, I realized I have a significant gap…
First things first, Kindly subscribe to my channel . It's been three-plus years since I published the first YouTube video , and here are my experiences recording the first screencast . Things have changed a lot since then, so I thought of putting this post…
I am always on the lookout for productivity hacks and new systems to improve the way I work. Given my nature of work is in front of a computer, my productivity tool choices have always been digital. However, at the start of this year, I came across an…
Commuting on a cycle to work is one thing that I look forward to every day. The initial inertia to get started is very high - but trust me, do it once, and you are very likely to continue doing it. I try to commute to work on my Giant TCR , three days a week…
Last week I added another 27' 4k monitor to my home office. It's been a while since I have been thinking of having an extra monitor just for the fun of it and seeing if it has any benefits. I had a Dell P2715Q for over a year and was looking to get another…
I have been on and off Pomodoro technique and always wanted to be more consistent following it. A while back I was using Tomighty , a minimalistic Pomodoro timer. However, with Tomighty, I often forget to start the timer and soon stopped using it altogether…
Over the last week, I have been reading the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport . The central idea of the book is about being aware of the various technologies affecting our lives and making a conscious effort to choose those are required and adds value to…
When I started this blog around nine years back, my only intention was to share technical posts. But over period of time I started writing about a variety of things including productivity tips that I found useful, travelogues , random thoughts , personal…
At times you might need to extract data from a large text. Let's say you have a JSON response, and you want to extract all the id fields in the response and combine them as comma separated . Here's how you can easily extract data from large text using…
As a developer, I often end up needing to manipulate text. Sometimes this text can get quite large, and it might take a while to do it manually. If you have a text editor under your tool belt , it often helps in situations like that. Let's looks at one of the…
' I need some undistracted time .' This was one of the things that came up in my team's retrospective yesterday. Having some undistracted time is necessary for getting things done. It's a good practice to have a consensus among the team members on how to…
Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. Chocolatey is a central store of applications, tools, and other packages. It allows you to install them on your computer from the command line. Let’s look at an example to make things more clear. Let’s say I want…
Aesthetics of code is as important as the code you write. Aligning is an important part that contributes to the overall aesthetics of code. The importance of code aesthetics struck me while on a recent project. Below are some the code samples that I came…
The project that I am currently working on using Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) as it's source control. After using Git for a long time it felt hard to move back to TFVC. One of the biggest pain for me is losing the short commits that I do when…
Do you want a one stop reading place to stay current and updated with posts from various blogs of your interest? Feedly is a news aggregator application that compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources Feedly is what you are looking for. You can…
The beginning of a good habit is the elimination of an excuse. And The beginning of a bad habit is the finding of an excuse The ability to pick on something and to make a habit of it is something that is always helpful. This skill helps to create new habits…
Todoist Templates is a simple way to create tasks for any of your recurring activities. Be it blogging, cooking, or any of your activities. With Todoist Templates, you can turn any project into a checklist that you can easily duplicate later. I have been…
It often happens when coding that I skip over some part and want to come back to it at a later point in time. I leave some comments in the code so that I do not miss it. It can be a bit tricky to keep track of these comments themselves. Before pushing up the…
If you spent a lot of time in front of a computer then f.lux is for you. You would have heard that using laptop or mobile just before sleep is bad. It is because of the blue light that digital screens emit. During the day, computer screens look good—they…
A while back I had blogged about my Morning Routine . The routine helps set the pace for the day and in getting things done that matters to me most. During mid of December 2016, I started running once a week to get some exercise into my routine. I got…
Posts on this blog are published automatically on preset dates. I have created a custom workflow for this in Octopress, my blogging framework. If you are interested in the end to end workflow check out my video on it . Publishing to different social media was…
It's about three months since I started running. I just completed my first half marathon and thought of putting together on how I have been going on with my running. I had a lot of questions myself when I started running, so hope this helps someone else taking…
Visual Studio (VS) 2017 improves a lot on Code Navigation features. If at all anything ever attracted me to ReSharper it was code navigation (though I have not been using it for a couple of years now ). Visual Studio lacked behind in this aspect but not…
Tracking is essential for measuring progress. Depending on your area of focus tracking tools differ. If it is a time-based activity that you are tracking a simple watch can suffice the need. But this can soon become an overhead. Rescue Time helps track time…
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to improve my focus while working. With running (3 1.5 hours a week) and bodyweight training (3 30 minutes a week) taking a significant part of my morning routine , I have less time for blogging…
While working on large codebases, I want my Solution Explorer to be synchronized with the current working file. With the solution explorer in sync, it makes navigating to other related files, adding new classes in the same location, renaming files, etc. faster…
If you are the kind of person who wants to manage a list of tasks and like checking it off and moving towards a goal then this post is for you. I am a fan of the Getting Things Done methodology by David Allen and found the book and videos mind blowing…
Getting fit is one of the goals that I have set for myself this year. I have started running since mid of December and also controlling my diet. TLDR; Have Parvathy (my wife) support me throughout. Running 1-2 times a week No carbs till Dinner: Smoothie…
I have been using Cmder as my command line for around two years and been loving it. I am not a super user of the command line, but try to use it more and more. Cmder is a software package created out of pure frustration over the absence of good console…
Screencast helps to connect with people in a different way and adds a personal touch (sound and visual). It makes learning new things faster, by seeing it in action. Most of the fine details (which can be missed while writing a blog post) get captured in…
I prefer to use the keyboard to navigate within sites I use frequently. Keyboard enables to navigate faster within site and perform tasks quicker. The Logitech MX Master mouse provides a lot of capabilities to navigate. But I find the keyboard faster to…
If you are the kind of person that likes to listen to some music while working, then this one is for you. Music is proven to have significant effects on improving focus while working. But it is also quite possible to get fully immersed in the music and forget…
I share a lot of information copying and pasting from websites. Most of the times I want to share just the text and not any formatting. To remove any text formatting, I copy it into Notepad and then onto the destination. Yesterday I found that using Ctrl…
The current state of the IT industry demands one to be constantly on the go and learning something new. New technologies, frameworks, languages etc. are getting released almost every other day. It is easy to get overwhelmed with all this information. The best…
Consistency is important in blogging. It does not matter if you are bad at writing, have nothing to write or nobody reads your blog. What matters is whether you write on a predictable schedule - once a month, once a week, once a year, one per day etc. If you…
It's been six months with the Logitech MX Master mouse and I absolutely love it for daily use. I picked this mouse a week after reading Hanselman's review . It feels just as it sounded in his review - Perfect!. Key Features The mouse fits perfectly into the…
Last month I was in Trivandrum (Kerala, India) for a month's vacation. This was also my first trip back to India after moving to Sydney . While in India I chose not to have a mobile connection and be offline on the go (at home I had a broadband connection…
Since the start of this year, I have been trying to blog to a schedule and publish posts more often. The goal that I have set myself with is to post four posts a month, preferably one each week. I have been sticking to it till now, and I hope it continues…
It's been a while since I have wanted to deploy my blog automatically whenever there is a new commit pushed into the associated git repository . I use Octopress as my blog engine and have been tweaking it to my blogging workflow . Octopress is a static blog…
Humans are creatures of habit and things work well if made as a routine. It's what you build as your daily plan that defines what you end up achieving in the day and in turn with life. If you are a late night person, you can read 'morning' as 'late night…
It's been a year since using Git as my mainstream version control system and I am loving it! Before Git, I had used Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) for a very long time and was so used to it that I found Git a bit complex and overwhelming in the…
Freelancing is a good way to learn new technology, get some hands on experience and not getting limited to the technology stack at your full-time job and of course earn some extra money!. There is a great demand for developers out there, so if its 'legal…
A lot of trivial tasks that we do daily on our computer can be automated to make it faster and reduce the number of keystrokes ( as they are limited ). AutoHoykey (AHK) is an excellent tool to automate a lot of these and is one of my favorite tool . I use a…
Over the past month I had thought of migrating this blog to Hugo, a static site generator that is faster than the current one, Octopress. Lack of workflow for creating new posts and slower build times were the main reasons. I am the kind of person when writing…
While working with large code base, that has a lot of tests (unit, integration, acceptance etc), running all of them every time we make a small change (if you are doing TDD or just using build for feedback) takes a lot of time. Organizing tests into different…
Tools are an indispensable part of our daily life and we all have our own likes and dislikes for them. Here are a list that I use (almost daily), most of them influenced from the greater list . Having a great keyboard support is something that I look out for…
I have always been the ' early to bed ' type of person and my day mostly ends by ten thirty in the evening. But the ' waking up early ' part was not as 'strict' as going to sleep part. I have always struggled to wake up at the sound of the alarm, which I…
In our busy lives, with multiple roles to play at home and work, everyone needs to have some kind of system to keep things organized and stay on top - to have control . I've been always amazed on how my father stays organized with all the things with his to…
