Why I still use paper

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Hitesh

and pencil for jotting ideas

Visual Note-taking Conference Call Notes by Austin Kleon.

Try that electronically!

A quick list of advantages of the good old way of taking notes:

When ideas flow, only pencil can keep up with their speed.
Doodling actually helps with the idea flow.
Ideas are random, typing is linear.
You can get away with drawing something on paper to depict a long sentence. Doing the same on a computer will mean sidetracking into finding a clipart.
No pesky distractions, including those from the spelling or grammar checkers.
My best UI design always starts on paper
Easy to create mind maps.
Paper is truly portable, I can take it anywhere.
Only once I have all the thoughts on paper, do i try to organise them and make them electronic

How about you? What do you prefer, electronic or paper based note taking?

PS: I do like freemind when I am in mood for electronic note taking.

Windows 7 shortcuts

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Hitesh

One thing that is clear from the feedback on my previous article on hidden Windows 7 features: we love our keyboard shortcuts. So here are a few more selected shortcuts.

Press this key	To do this
Desktop Shortcuts
	Open or close the Start menu.
+ R	Open the Run dialog box.
+ D	Display the desktop.
+ Spacebar	Preview the desktop.
+ P	Choose a presentation display mode.
Window Management
+ M	Minimize all windows.
+ Shift + M	Restore minimized windows to the desktop.
+ Up Arrow	Maximize the window.
+ Left Arrow	Maximize the window to the left side of the screen.
+ Right Arrow	Maximize the window to the right side of the screen.
+ Down Arrow	Minimize the window.
+ Home	Minimize all but the active window.
+ Shift + Up Arrow	Stretch the window to the top and bottom of the screen.
+ Shift + Left Arrow or Right Arrow	Move a window from one monitor to another.
Task Switching
+ T	Cycle through programs on the taskbar.
+ Tab	Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D.
Ctrl + + Tab	Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D.
Ctrl + + B	Switch to the program that displayed a message in the notification area.
+ G	Cycle through gadgets.
Taskbar Shortcuts
+ number	Start the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. If the program is already running, switch to that program.
Ctrl + + number	Switch to the last active window of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.
Alt + + number	Open the Jump List for the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.
Windows Explorer Shortcuts
+ Pause	Display the System Properties dialog box.
+ E	Open Computer.
+ F	Search for a file or folder.
+ L	Lock your computer or switch users.

If you are interested in drinking from the fire hose, here is the definitive list of shortcuts.

Adding context to your logs

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Hitesh

joysaphine @ flickr

If you have ever worked on a multi-threaded application or even any application of significant scope, one of the unwritten requirement is a log file that helps in supporting the application.

The challenge is to be able to piece together all the scattered log entries that belong together, may be as a single transaction, or a user’s session. So the goal is to have a unique identifier in each log entry that will aid greping. If you have ever faced this, you either did it cleanly as I will detail below, or you had to hack in a ‘context’ to each log entry by appending / prefixing some unique id.

I will talk about the two most commonly used logging frameworks are Apache’s log4j and log4net.

The bad (obvious) way:

logger.info(uid + " I am doing something important");
logger.debug(uid + " I am doing something else");

The problems with this approach are

might not have access to the uid in each function that is called
need to remember to append the uid everywhere
no way to do it in common code, utility libraries, etc.

The good news is, support for such a use case is baked into log4j and log4net.
Continue reading →

Windows 7, hidden features

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Hitesh

It’s been over 6 months, and Windows 7 still surprises me, pleasantly. The last time I felt the same about Windows was in 1995. Let me share a few things I found, which are generally not discussed.

Note: I never used Vista, so if some of these were present in Vista, I wouldn’t know.

The Windows Explorer

I think the explorer has seen the most refinement, there are nice things in all corners. My favourite features:

Pin to Windows Explorer

You might have heard about ‘pin to task bar’, but did you know that you can pin to windows explorer, which adds a folder to the Windows Explorer task bar shortcuts jump list. Wow, those were too many words but still doesn’t explain it right, so here’s a picture instead.

Drag a folder to the task bar

And the folder shows up in the jump list

(right click on the icon)

Continue reading →

Django Flowchart

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Hitesh

Based on my current understanding of Django, this is how a user request is responded to.

Django Flowchart

User requests a page
Request reaches Request Middlewares, which could manipulate or answer the request
The URLConffinds the related View using urls.py
View Middlewares are called, which could manipulate or answer the request
The view function is invoked
The view could optionally access data through models
All model-to-DB interactions are done via a manager
Views could use a special context if needed
The context is passed to the Template for rendering

Template uses Filters and Tags to render the output
Output is returned to the view
HTTPResponse is sent to the Response Middlerwares
Any of the response middlewares can enrich the response or return a completely new response
The response is sent to the user’s browser.

Please leave a comment if I have got something wrong.

Week with python & Django

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Hitesh

Spent the last week picking up Python and Django. Notes to self and anyone else who wants a quick start on Python/Django on Windows. Most Linux flavours already come with most tools needed for python development.

Requirements:

Installed ActivePython 2.6
Installed Komodo Edit
Installed Python Win32 Extensions (not sure why, but was recommended in some blog post and the project itself does not say much of what it does. Stuff like this gives me the heebie-jeebies.)
Installed Pinax, which in turn installed Django.
Installed PyQt4
Installed Eric4 (uninstalled after using it for 10 minutes)

Problems faced:

Pinax installation was a bit flawed, it could not install all dependencies. Worked around by manually installing (pip install else easy_install)
Windows 7 was not passing command line arguments to .py scripts. Had to hack registry and add %* to the end to make it work. See the Key and value below.

Getting started:

Python: Like everyone else, I followed and recommend ‘Dive Into Python’. But more importantly, this page of titbits is amazing extract from the book and quickly brings a Java dev up to speed. I should blog about ‘Python for Java developers’. Time spent 4 hrs.

Pinax: Stopped at the installation step. Will delve further after understanding Django better.

Django: Followed the tutorial, then the Django Book, and finally the Django Docs for a deep dive. Time spent 8 hrs.

Django is surely one on the best documented project and also very straight forward. It suits my style of writing code and I did not feel like giving up in few hours, like the experience I had with RoR. Will surely blog about Django more.

Hitesh Sarda

Thoughts on life, technology, education and entrepreneurship

Category Archives: Technology

Why I still use paper

Windows 7 shortcuts

Adding context to your logs

The bad (obvious) way:

Windows 7, hidden features

The Windows Explorer

Pin to Windows Explorer

Drag a folder to the task bar

And the folder shows up in the jump list

Continue reading →

Django Flowchart

Week with python & Django

Requirements:

Problems faced:

Getting started: