Category Archives: Blog

New year, new theme.

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After a long time I decided to change the theme of my blog. I had recently changed the name of the blog to Mélange (previously it was called .entrypoint), so I thought it would be good to change the look and feel as well. I was using Classic Beauty, created by esn Studio, for a long time and many people used to tell me that it was a very different one. I liked the simplicity of Classic Beauty, but I think it is time for a change. The new them is Twenty Eleven 1.3 which was created by the WordPress team itself. I love the changing pictures in the header which provides a nice touch to the blog. It also has a light version and a dark version and you can easily switch between the two in the theme options.

Let us see how long before the next change :)

Blogging from iphone

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I bought a new iPhone a few days ago and I am totally loving it. The only complaint that I have is the short battery time. If it could hold battery charge for a couple of days under heavy use, this would be the most perfect gadget I ever used. I am pretty sure Steve jobs have a few engineers working on it.

One of the things I like most about iPhone is the large number of neat apps available from the online store. I have always wanted to track my expenditures and i had made several attempts previously to do that using pen and paper as well as using a spreadsheet on a computer. The problem that I usually face is that I am not able to record transactions immediately. Usually I lose the receipt by the time I get to jot down the transaction or I just forget to do so. After a few attempts I just give up. With the iPhone I can immediately record the transaction using one of the many apps available to track expenses. I have already started using one.

Another good thing is the ability to tweet any time you want, assuming there is enough charge in the battery ;)

There is a wordpress app in the iPhone using which i am writing this post. I am waiting at the Lynnwood DOL with Rija for her knowledge test and I decided to make use of the time to write a blog post. The touch keyboard is a little too small for my liking but it is works well under the space constraints. I had difficulty in typing initially but now I my speed has improved quite well. People with thick thumbs might have a more difficult time. I think most apps have a landscape orientation which allows for wider keys and less typos.

Our number in the queue is getting closer so I will have leave you now, my dear reader, and go to the counter.

Have a nice day !

How to post source code on your blog

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For a long time I have been looking for a tool to help me post source code on my blog. Obviously many people had solved this because we have all seen well formatted source code on many blogs. I did try several solutions including Syntax Highlighter, Copy Source as Html, C# code format from Manoli and even tried posting screen shots of the code (got this idea from Josh Smith’s blog). They didn’t work well for me (as you can see from several postings it did work for others, it is just a matter of personal taste). The screen shot idea is a good one except for the fact that the readers cannot copy the source from your blog and search engines cannot index the code. I had a workaround for this by linking to a text file which contained the source code. This made the process all mucky and cumbersome.

Some time in the recent past I stumbled on Live Writer. It was quite nifty and did a pretty good job with identifying your blog engine and templates and previewing your post. But when you copy pasted code from Visual Studio, it was not so pretty. Thankfully Douglas Stockwell had written a plugin for Live Writer to paste your code from Visual Studio. Together they did an amazing job in formatting source code as you can see below:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Security.Principal;
using System.ServiceModel;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
    static class Program
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// The main entry point for the application.
        /// </summary>
        [STAThread]
        static void Main()
        {
            Application.EnableVisualStyles();
            Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
            Application.Run(new Form1());
        }
    }
}

Happy blogging.

Joel Spolsky in Seattle

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Here are some pictures which I took when Joel Spolsky came to Seattle as part of his FogBugz Tour. He has written about the presentation in this blog entry.

Joel Spolsky in Seattle 1

Joel Spolsky in Seattle 2

Joel Spolsky in Seattle 3

It was a great presentation by Spolsky, who with his characteristic humor entertained the audience with lots of pokes at Microsoft. The presentation was well received by the 200 odd people who gathered. The croissant was tasty too :D .

Comments are back

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While moving from my blog on WordPress, I thought that I had lost all the comments. But actually it was a problem with my theme. I loved the old newspaper theme (Breaking News 1.0) but sadly I will have to move to another theme. I might try to fix the theme on my own but being as lazy as I am, it is very possible that fixing it would remain a distant dream :-D

After I changed the theme, the old comments are back where they should be (under the respective posts, in case you are wondering :-D )

Now that I have shared the good news, all of my faithful readers may rest their worries and enjoy the weekend :P