Learning by doing has been proven effective and is the same when learning a new programming language. However, it is also equally important that you learn the right things and in the correct manner. Having a mentor or a goto person in the field that you are…
A while back I wrote about PNGGauntlet , a windows application that allows reducing image size if they are in PNG format. If you are looking for something that can handle any image format and available through the browser then check out Squoosh . Squoosh is…
With Azure Pipelines you can continuosly build, test and deploy to any cloud platform. Azure Pipelines has multiple options to start based on your project. Even if you are developing a private application, Pipelines offers you 1 Free parallel job with upto…
It's always hard to keep young minds engaged and fresh. As a parent, it is good to have a few different options to keep your child engaged and also at the same time help them learn. Activity books are a great way of keeping kids involved and help them develop…
A couple of months back Gautham (my son) started playing Reading Eggs . We started off initially with a free trial after it being recommended by our friend Asha . We got a 21-day extended trial in addition to the initial 21 days free trial (i.e a total of 4…
Code Formatting is an essential aspect of writing code, and I did write about this a while back on introducing code formatting into a large code base . It's not about what all rules you and your team use, it's about sticking with the conventions and using…
With more and more data breaches happening it is possible that your personal information and passwords are already compromised. If you have been lazy and reusing passwords (just like me until a while back) across multiple sites then it is good to check if your…
Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is becoming more and more common these days and is a good way to protect your accounts from getting into the wrong hands. SMS and App based 2FA are more common with the day to day services that we use, like Gmail, Outlook…
Of late I have been working for multiple clients at the same time. Different clients have different development environments, which has forced me into using Virual Machines (VM's) for my day to day work. I will cover my actual setup and new way of working…
Often when working with SQL queries, I come across the need to capitalize SQL keywords across in a large query. For, e.g., to capitalize SELECT, WHERE, FROM clauses in an SQL query. When it is a large query/stored procedure, it is faster done using some text…
I recently upgraded to a Garmin Fenix 3 HR from my Forerunner 630 . After a few runs with the Fenix 3, I realized that in Training Mode it does not do auto lap . I have a custom training workout for a 10k with no repeat modes in it. This workout was what I…
I was recently playing around with MessageMedia API trying to send SMS and get the status of the SMS sent . Sending the SMS and getting the status of the last sent SMS always happened in succession when testing it manually. Once I send the message, I waited…
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…
Very often I need to sign forms, receipts, invoices in PDF format and send them across to someone else. Printing the PDF, signing them physically and scanning them back (of course using Office Lens ) is how I used to do this until a while back. Since I don't…
Scanning physical documents can be cumbersome using a scanner, especially if you do not have easy access to one. Taking pictures with the default camera application on the phone might not give the best of results that you are expecting. Also, you will mostly…
' 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…
If you are a .NET developer and looking for some awesome free stuff, then check out Visual Studio Dev Essentials . You get loads of free stuff Free tools, cloud services, and training Get everything you need to build and deploy your app on any platform. With…
We are typists first, and programmers second. - Jeff Atwood If you are like me, spending a lot of time with a computer, it's worth you take the time to learn to type without looking at the keyboard a.k.a touch typing (if you currently type by the hunt and…
If you own a website, then it is good to check their performance now and then. Various factors affect the site speed, and it's better to use some tools to do the job for you. Google PageSpeed is a set of tools from Google designed to check and optimize…
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…
With the blazing fast internet speeds at work (and at home) it might be hard to imagine how sites would work for people with a lower bandwidth. When developing for the Web, it is good to keep in mind that people from various regions across the globe might…
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. -- William Zinsser, On Writing Well…
Merging conflicts can be a pain when working in large teams and code bases change fast. Every time you sync with the main code base you need to make sure that you integrate the updates with your work in progress. It's great when the changes get automatically…
Grammarly is a writing platform that helps you polish your writing. Grammarly scans your text for mistakes based on pre-written rules and suggests modifications. A detailed explanation is given on the suggestions made and helps improve your writing over a…
Fiddler is an HTTP debugging proxy server application and captures HTTP and HTTPS traffic. It is one of the tools in my essential toolkit list . Fiddler allows debugging traffic from PC, MAC, Linux and mobile systems. It helps inspect the raw requests and…
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…
If you are looking to get a case for your phone, then check out cases by Spigen . I have been using Spigen cases for over three years, and I totally recommend it. Spigen cases are made with premium materials and are slim, sleek and simple. Spigen provides…
When I upload images to my blog, I try to keep the file size as small as possible. Reducing image size helps improve the site load time. To grab screenshots I use Snagit and use Paint.net for any editing and resizing the images. To further optimize images…
For my blog's I often have to edit, resize, modify images often. The default paint application with Windows lacks a lot of features while Photoshop is too advanced for my needs. Paint.net is a freely available tool with many advanced features and is…
I try to stay offline for fixed times during the day and often prepare myself up for it . Having things to read is one of the important things to it. Feedly allows to keep track of all the reading sources that I have, while I am online. Some articles need…
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…
First things first; Check if any of your accounts on the web has been compromised in the various data breaches . All you need is enter your email address in haveibeenpwned , and it tells you the rest. My email did show up on multiple breaches, and there is…
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…
IFTTT is a free web-based service that people use to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets. An applet is triggered by changes that occur within other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. An applet may send an…
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…
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…
AutoFixture is an open source library for .NET designed to minimize the ' Arrange ' phase of your unit tests in order to maximize maintainability. Its primary goal is to allow developers to focus on what is being tested rather than how to setup the test…
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…
When accessing Key Vault using Powershell it can be a bit tricky when you have multiple subscriptions under the same account. The Key Vault cmdlets being under the Resource Manager (RM) mode depends on the current RM Subscription. The Key Vault cmdlets…
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…
I have been using Snagit for over one and half years and been loving it. Snagit gives you a way to create and edit screenshots or record videos to show a process, provide detailed feedback, or share information with the people who need it most. It tucks away…
Often when coding, I need to move pieces of code up or down. It could be a group of lines of code or an entire function that I need to shift up or down. In earlier versions of Visual Studio, I had to select the lines of code, cut them from current place, move…
As a .NET developer, I spent the majority of my time in Visual Studio. Knowing to navigate fast within the IDE or quickly find what I want is important. Many times finding specific settings or navigating to individual windows can take a while, especially if…
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…
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…
