Coder from Gallifrey

Jedi Chipmunks - Enough Said

2021-01-04T22:25:00.002-08:00

First hike and dancing robots

2021-01-03T22:45:00.001-08:00

First hike of 2021! 6.18 miles in 1hr 55mins, good light pace, and nice weather.
Your browser does not support the video tag.

Today's highlight - Boston Dynamic's robots dancing to Do You Love Me?

Bye bye 2020, Hello 2021

2021-01-02T20:44:00.002-08:00

So finally we're in 2021... 2020 has been such a disaster and confusing year, some of the highlights being:

Australian bushfires
Black Lives Matter protests
Murder hornets flying into US
Beirut explosion
US West Coast wildfires
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death
2020 US Election mayhem
... and of course COVID-19 pandemic, how various countries handled it and creation of vaccine & its rollout.

Here's to hoping 2021 being a better year and less dramatic than 2020 🤞.

Link unfurling in Slack

2019-02-11T00:45:00.000-08:00

Recently while working on a hackathon, I came across Slack's link unfurling feature. I saw the following screenshot that depicted you can now really customize how the url is unfurled.

An imaginary unfurl for api.slack.com

Previously I had seen the following unfurling that Slack does by reading oEmbed code, Twitter card tags, Facebook open graph tags and HTML meta tags on the page:

Anatomy of an unfurl

While trying to figure out how to code the custom unfurling, I tried to find examples and guides out there that would take me step-by-step through the process, while there were some, none were really clear on the steps and conditions. So I decided to write one up myself, my very first public repository: Slack-link-unfurling

I went through each step detailing what needs to be set so that you can customize the link unfurling via link_shared event fired by Slack. Albeit I used Botkit framework which has the overhead of need a bot setup to fire things properly, overall it was a much quicker process for me to spin this up.

Hopefully someone finds this useful and is able to get link unfurling in Slack done quicker!

Upcoming...

2018-07-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

Finally Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 trailer is out!If you haven't seen the first season, definitely check it out! You have until January 2019!

And Doctor Who Series 11, with staring Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor, has their trailer also out as well!

And of course the next Godzilla movie!!! Prepare the Godzilla breath attack! Also hiya Eleven! Wonders if the movie has Eggo waffles, I'm hungry now...

P.S.: Catching up on over a week's worth of Slack & emails is just plain exhausting!

My Colorado Vacation

2018-07-22T23:29:00.003-07:00

It all started with a coworker, who shall remain anonymous, posting pictures of bunnies followed by nature in Colorado back in early May:


Hanging Lake	Maroon Bells Lake

Just like that I was hooked on taking a vacation and doing a road trip to Denver, Colorado. It was only just about 750 miles away from me, roughly 10-12 hours of driving, easily feasible for me to do it in a day. So, I began hatching my ~~plan~~ vacation:

need to be at least a week, 2 days will be spent driving - yay road trip!
need at least 2 days of hiking
must visit Hanging Lake and Maroon Bells Lake
check out Rocky Mountain National Park
be away from computers and work for the week - aka no Slack!

The optimal time came about to be middle of July. I decided to do the trip between 14th to 22nd of July, right smack in middle of Summer Black Friday extravaganza. So I threw in my vacation request at work and started to plan out where to stay, what to do when, etc.

2-3 weeks before the trip, my plan started forming a coherent shape after looking up Airbnb:

drive out on Saturday morning
do a guided hike on Sunday
tour Denver on Monday
drive up to Fort Collins and check it out on Tuesday
hike at Rocky Mountain National Park on Wednesday and Thursday
do another guided hike at Boulder on Friday
tour Denver again on Saturday
head back out on Sunday

Sweet! Now I had something to work with, while stuff might change with no indiction, having some sort of plan is always nice 😀. Of course plans always change, for example instead of heading out at 5am on Saturday, I left around 6.30am 🙄🤣.

Day 1:
Drive was pretty much straight, I-15 N to I-70 E and voila Denver! Along the way, I stopped at scenic views at: Salt Wash View Area in Utah, Idaho Springs, Silver Plume & Georgetown in Colorado:

Panoramic view of Salt Wash View Area, Utah

Panoramic view of Idaho Springs, Colorado


Silver Plume & Georgetown info board	Look at that green stuff!!!

Day 2:
And totally not according to plan, weather forecast said lightning and thunderstorm for Sunday, cancelling my guided hike at Mount Bierstadt. So Sunday was dedicated to sleeping in and exploring the Denver Botanic Gardens, which by the way was just beautiful! Over thousands of different types of plants spanning across the world, various kinds of desert cactus to cocoa trees in the tropical forests to carnivorous venus flytrap. Also the park had squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits roaming around.

Day 3:
Monday was dedicated to visiting my friend and coworker and then exploring the Denver Nature & Science Museum before heading off to Fort Collins.

Day 4:
Tuesday was dedicated to exploring Fort Collins - getting brunch at the iconic Silver Grill Cafe (opened in 1933, they kept expanding to include more rooms, also their food is just amazing to put you into food coma) with coworker, walking the streets and checking out the shops, especially the Rocket Fizz store (good gosh their soda & taffy selections!) and the Food Truck (and puppy) rally.

Day 5 - Part 1:
Wednesday I drove to Rocky Mountain National Park to do my hikes, finally! Since this is my first solo attempt, I decided to pack everything needed to at least survive a night, if I got lost 🤞. I decided to check out the Cub Lake trail since the parking lot at Park & Ride was full and they were making us turn back. So I found the first parking spot available enroute to the Cub Lake trailhead. Then walked about a mile to the trailhead before embarking on my first hike of the vacation! It was a gorgeous day, beautiful weather and lush greenery all around me. There was a warning of mountain lions being spotted, so I kept a group in front/back of me most of the time. After reaching the Cub Lake (wasn't really all that fancy), I decided to head back taking a different route that dropped me back at civilization at the Fern Lake trailhead. Did I mention I was out of water before reaching the civilization? I only carried two liters of water with me... No filling station on the hike!

Day 5 - Part 2:
After recovering from the hike, I decided to drive up the Trail Ridge Road to get the scenic outlook of the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was breathtaking views from the various vantage points they had set up, while I couldn't get off at the 11,000 ft mark to walk up to the summit (I caught the altitude sickness and was having a bad headache, plus it was really cold up at the top), I drove on hoping to loop back to the entrance. Except the entrance never came just a different exit point... So I flipped a u-turn and drove back the scenic route again to head back to Fort Collins :doh:.

Day 6:
Thursday I went back to the Rocky Mountain National Park to hike the Emerald Lake trail, except this time, I brought with me six liters of water! Mwahahaha!!! Once again I parked at the Cub Lake trailhead and caught two shuttles to get to the Bear Lake trailhead. I dubbed this hike as the Hike of Lakes because of the various lakes I passed along before reaching the Emerald Lake - Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and then Emerald Lake. This hike started off at around 9-10,000 ft and had steep incline, so I was pretty quickly out of breath from high altitude, steep incline and carrying six liters of water! Right before I reached the Emerald Lake, I was able to record a gang of elk crossing my path to head over to the lake to drink water. On my way back, I turned to hike up to Lake Hiyaha (more uphill and then crossing rocky terrain) and then cross the forests to get reach Glacier Gorge trailhead to catch the shuttles back to Cub Lake trailhead. And this time, I only consumed about four liters of water... I really need to have a chat with my body, I mean seriously making me carry all that water up and down the mountain, my legs/shoulders/back complained much to my brain.

Day 7:
Friday was supposed to be my next guided hike that I booked from Airbnb, but again it got cancelled due to something coming up for the guide. So instead I got my friend to drive us to the Maroon Bells Lake in Aspen... about 4 hours of driving... whelp! My bad!!! But Maroon Bells was the most beautiful place I've seen on this trip! Even though the weather was cloudy and it was raining, and despite it looking nothing like the sunnier version of the picture my coworker sent to me, I fell in love with that place. Coding from this location would totally be awesome, I meant there is no connection up there, so is pretty isolated, as long as I don't inadvertently create a psychotic AI while being lost in the charm of the nature (anyone catch the hint of Ex Machina plot?). But yeah, 4-5 hours to get there and then another 4-5 hours to get back, so next time, definitely stop either on the way to Denver or back, but stay at Aspen for a day or two because it is just simply gorgeous!

Day 8:
I decided to head back on Saturday and almost got swept away by rain-hail thunderstorm about 30-40 miles outside of Cedar City, Utah. Mother Nature had found a wonderful time to just test how well my heart could handle cardio level exertion while driving through that tempest.

In conclusion, my escape to Colorado for a week was just awesome (except for maybe the humidity... 😅💦). Driving to and from was amazing going 80-90 MPH mostly (except for the tempest with rain/hail in Utah on the way back). The lush greenery all around the place is just simply breathtaking (and I made sure to take a lot of breaths, mhmmm all that Oxygen). I got to see one of the two destinations I wanted to check out, only way to get to Hanging Lake from Denver was to drive to Glenwood Springs and then drive back 8 miles to Denver. Plus I found out hiking that one included going up 1000 ft over rocky terrain over 1.2 miles, so ummm saving that for my next visit, same with the 11,000 ft summit view point on the Trail Ridge Road scenic drive. I met bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks, puppies, cats, aggressive elks, marmot, cows, ostrich, goats and was warned about bears, mountain lions, aggressive elks and moose (pretty sure a mountain lion was stalking me on Day 6 during my hike through the forests past Lake Hiyaha).

Doctor Who and College Degrees

2014-05-26T12:13:00.001-07:00

As I progress through the classic series of Doctor Who - still on the 4th Doctor (Tom Baker) and on 17th season - the show is simply amazing if you consider the fact that it started in 1960s and have been going on for almost 20 years now, they really tried to bring out "science fiction" with what was available then for graphics, ideas, and skepticism.

The 16th season was pretty much one giant story - 26 episodes of roughly 25mins each - wrapped around finding the Key of Time scattered across time and space and keeping it from Black Guardian of Time, and its worthy opponent being Moffat's masterpiece with River Song.

K-9 plays a serious role in the classic series unlike the current series, and truly is an amazing companion. Robotic (not Tin - he will shoot you if you say "Tin") dog with sassy attitude? Come on, who doesn't love it?

Ok, not the bad guys...

Also 8th season of the reboot series, starts in August, incoming trailers:

Also want to know what jobs you can find with your major in college? Check this out.

Courtesy:
io9

Post Spring Semester + Link/Video-splosion!

2014-05-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

First semester of Master's program ended on last Friday (16/05/2014). Needless to say, never again take the hardest class of the program during your first semester, it was not pleasant. And moving on, no classes till the fall semester, so entire summer just working at SD + working on projects! Go projects!~ Oh! Also time to catch up on movies + TV series + animus!

So I've been storing these up for past few weeks and now I'm letting it go, enjoy!~

Big Hero 6 by Disney:

Guardians of the Galaxy's new trailer:

Flash (bzzzt......) + Flash (bzzzt......):

Interstellar:

Lucy:

Gracepoint aka U.S.'s version of Broadchurch:

Sound of the Internet:

Internet machine (trailer) from Timo on Vimeo.

Selfie:

Constantine (Don't cancel it NBC!):

Orange is the New Black Season 2!:

Most detailed simulation of the Universe:

Hunt for the Robot Body:

Out of Hand from Simon F. on Vimeo.

Arthur Darvill's Let It Go!:

Some beautiful drawings of Pokémon Mayan style + Modernist Style

The origin of TARDIS's sound + Evolution of TARDIS's key

Robot Bartender struggles with Asimov's First Law

H. R. Giger's creations

Remote Desktop

Frozen - Tim Burton style

College-level Computer Science Education for Free

Gif Party! + Gif Party!

Science Fiction to Science Fact

Code Quality = WTFs/min

Linux features on Windows

Summer Show Guide

Salary Negotiation + 401k Extra Fees + Roth or Traditional IRA

Portable Virtual Machines

2048 Doctor Who Edition (My score):

Courtesy:
Gizmodo
How-To-Geek
io9
Lifehacker
The Mary Sue

Mini link-plosion

2014-04-13T01:40:00.000-07:00

Finally a comic series that explains how Heartbleed works & List of top websites and their status on Heartbleed bug

All the info you ever need on drinks

MySQL tips, debugging, how to-s, optimizations, etc.

A-Z dance styles

New form of matter - "The new particle is about four times more massive than a proton, has a negative charge, and appears to be a theoretical particle known as a tetraquark. The results are still young, but if this discovery holds up it could have implications for our understanding of neutron stars."

Why?! Why must they destroy Hercules?

Dead Link

Much Wife

Mesmerizing...

k, fine, a bit of videos too :P

Another Giver trailer:

Tetris Rock Band - Yet another amazing musician/band I must follow...

Defiance Season 2 Teaser:

Things just got serious...(more here)

When things go serious, I score high (MWAHAHAHA!):

Finally the best for the last, a long vertical chart that depicts the relative size of stars... its soo long that I can't fit it properly here - Link here.

Courtesy:
io9
Gizmodo
The Mary Sue

Percona Live: MySQL Conference and Expo @ Santa Clara : April 1-4

2014-04-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

April 1st - Traveling and Tutorial Sessions:
Percona Live: MySQL Conference and Expo was held at Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara from April 1-4, 2014. I was selected as one of the participants to attend this (mysterious) event after undergoing many inhumane, excruciatingly painful trials that would put Hercules' 12 labors to shame. Then again I still have doubts as to the validity of the event given it starts on April Fools' Day. What is April Fools' Day?

Google's version of April Fools' Day was Pokemon Hunting, I managed to find 52 of them before saying, "I'm done for the night".

Anywho, March 31st, 2014, one of the saddest day of my life, How I Met Your Mother aired their finale of the season and the show... It was painful and tear jerking an hour long episode. Even then, it is still one of the best shows ever! I'll miss The Couple - Marshall & Lily, The Player - Barney, The Alien (Is Canada even located on Earth?) - Robin and most of all, The Romantic - Theodore Evelyn Mosby. Oh! Of course the poor kids who sat on the couch for 9 years without even a bathroom break in middle of the long and arduous story-telling by their dad....

After that silly moment, here I am after less than 4hrs of sleep, on Southwest flight flying to San Jose and then driving to Santa Clara. I've never been to that part of California before. SD booked us (3 people) flight, rooms and the tickets for the event! I hope I get to learn much at this conference about MySQL and Hadoop and everything about creating and managing them along with other sessions on Database Administration.

On the other hand, it's April 1st, which means the semester ends in less than 6 weeks. And classes for next semester are already up.

Fun thing abt domestic flights, they are hardly ever full during weekdays, at least from my brief experience. I was reminded of this when the captain ordered all of us to sit on the windows seats to trick other flights into thinking we had a full house. And of course the hostess and hosts act less formally, which is nice! Like wearing an oxygen mask as a cap (it ends up looking like a fez, fezzes are cool!)? Or tying the seatbelt around ones head or trying to hypnotizing us.... "You are sleepy.... You are not thirsty.... It is dark outside... Peanuts makes you gassy.... You don't want to eat them.... You are sleepy.... You are not thirsty..."

Southwest flight at the airport as we are boarding, open seat, so I get to pick my favorite position, right next to the wings:

The flight about 3mins into takeoff:

Whee Las Vegas in the day:

Crop circles:

In-flight stats:

Weird stuff on the mountains:

Scary part about flying through clouds is not whether or not another aircraft is heading against you, but whether or not there is a wall in front of you, or predators like sharks are waiting for you or not.... I mean a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean could sent those beasties into the sky... Or the kraken... I hope I could hear the words... "Release the Kraken!" Before it crushes us... Or plays with us....

Santa Clara is supposed to have a wet weather this week! As much I love rain, I hope it's good rain! I mean a torrential storm wouldn't go unappreciated....

In-flight stats about 10 minutes before landing:

San Jose from the sky, what are those weird things... in what I think people call green color???:

San Jose airport:

Santa Clara:

Hyatt Regency:

Of course their magazine selection for me in the room:

Black magic happening right outside my window! There is water falling from the sky!:

First hands-on-tutorial - From Relational to Hadoop - Migrating your data pipeline:

Lunch @ the convention. They served some great choices:

Dinner @ the hotel bar:

April 2nd & 3rd & 4th - Keynote, Sessions, Expo Day!:
Keynotes:

Where are all the attendees from?:

Sessions - By Baron Schwartz (author of High Performance MySQL) [left], Continuent [right]:

Hiring board (everyone was looking to hire!):

Passport - Gather stamps from various booths:

Fusion io was there making buttons for visitors to the booth. Of course, I got some custom made... also got my first restraining order for not following the rules :D :

The fun fusion io folks and the photograph in evidence for the restraining order:

I managed to snag 4 buttons in all (left to right, top to bottom, the order in which I got them):

Among various other swags, I also got a sword (and got it past airport security as well!):

I also got to meet folks from: Dropbox, Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, Western Digital, Micron, and tons of database companies like Blackbird, Maria DB (Skysql), Percona, etc.

The hotel displayed various info and models of things from Alcatraz, the once a lighthouse, then military fortification, military prison and federal prison, for example - the prison cell, photographs, keys, etc.

Also one morning, while waiting for coworker to descent for breakfast, I score my highest on Threes ever:

April 4th - Flying back:
San Jose airport has special seats with power options!:

The flight was delayed by 25mins and with the boarding and it being a full house, took more than 40mins to take off:

San Jose from the sky:

Excerpt/Monologue:

So I have boarded the flight taking me back go Las Vegas or El Paso if I fell asleep and my compatriots were being devious. Well they are devious... Whether they are devious to me is the question... Typically I love return journey, it's always appears fast... Except this time, the flight was delayed abt 20mins and we were fully boarded abt 35mins later. The plane was not cleaned so I got ritz cheese biscuits at my feet. Also the AC is turned on at full blast so basically the basic flight and safety instructions fell on occupied ears of mine....

Las Vegas from the sky:

Whee landed:

So the main question - How was the conference? What did you gain from it?
Answer: It was an interesting conference. I've learned much and lost much. Some talks I understood, some took a while, and some I'll never know.

Mini-link/video-plosion

2014-04-05T13:30:00.001-07:00

tiii.me - A website that counts up the time you spent watching shows... Give me a few days to add all of mine in...

Short Horror Film about a girl's misadventure at a lake:

Richard Hickey - Francis from Not To Scale on Vimeo.

Cheat sheets and free Books on technological stuff: http://slickdeals.net/f/6825056

Doge2048 - Doge version of Threes:http://doge2048.com/

The Oxford Comma:

Crazy Dance Moves

Honest Trailers did their take on Game of Thrones (Seasons 1-3) (NSFW):
Non-spoiler version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK9YjEBM_GY
Spoiler version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVaD8rouJn0

In the words of Lauren Davis @ io9, "what happens when a lonely woman meets a cosmonaut on chat roulette"?

Russian Roulette from Ben Aston on Vimeo.

Loki as Elsa in the Frozen song - Let It Go (Actually it's pretty accurate...):

Netflix has been releasing some of the top series like House of Cards and Orange is the new Black, and now Amazon is stepping into that realm with Bosch:

Binge watching... for those in real trouble, for the rest I say "Meh (shrug)":

Courtesy:
io9
io9
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Gizmodo
Gizmodo

Awkwardly weirdly awesome week? (Awaw)

2014-03-16T11:09:00.001-07:00

Well basically this week has been almost a black-belt leveled hell!

To start off, Monday marked my 1st month anniversary at SD (whee~)

Tuesday classes and work... bleh

Wednesday work and cram for exam....

Thursday cram in all the slides for the exam on Friday.... Also there was π-Day competition (well π day was on Friday - 3/14/14 - which is getting close to 3/14/15 next year!). ACM and Tau Beta Pi decided to host a coding + analytical challenge contest with Qs related to π. 45-mins each for coding and analytical part, and the whole contest was only 45mins long. See how the math works, and you can be by yourself or in a team of 2. Even if you are in a team of 2, you can only work on one problem at a time. Aka, you must finish 1 of them in under 45mins to get the next challenge. The coding problem was sooooooooooo easy I was done with it in under 10mins and won a Raspberry Pi

And after completing the analytical part, I won a Raspberry Pie

So at the end of the day, I had a Raspberry Pi and Pie \(^_^)/ Me is happy \(^_^)/
Note: I was only able to participate since the competition didn't have anything against me or graduate students.... And I was hinted at, that next time there will be explicit rules baring me from it (~_~) honestly... how much damage can I cause? (*innocent face*)... well to be fair, I did walk saying, "Howdy people, I'm here to crush this competition" (*smirk*), but they all survived at the end... no casualties... so I don't see why I should be barred from participating...

Friday go through a 45 page, 4745 points, 61 question exam - took me about 5hrs before I said "Enough!" - It started at 8am and went on for about roughly 6hrs before everyone (11 people) was done. At least the professor provided us with food (donuts, chips, cookies) and half-way through with Hershey's milk chocolate with almonds bar as a sign of victory badge for surviving 3hrs. Honestly it was a bloody battle ~_~

Saturday work! After 10hrs of that, game night at the office! Catan, Tsuro and We Didn't Playtest This Either. My first time playing Catan, and of course people being people, ganged up on me (>_<) And then towards the end they wanted my help to block someone else from winning (-_-") honestly.... Game night lasted till the wee hours. Nonetheless it was fun and gave me some insight into the psychology of my coworkers outside work.

And it is spring break which means an entire week off, no classes.... but... more work~ sigh....

Past 2 weeks summarized...

2014-03-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

With work and classes for masters, I am back to my old schedule despite graduating... It's a shocker! I know... And yes, being a graduate student does give you a lot of time to do stuff like, oh I don't know, play games, socialize, have fun? Add work into that mix and the end result is same as last 4.5 years of my life. Anyhow, I've been saving some juicy stuff to put together in a blog post, turns out this one is going to have a video-plosion (you've been warned).

First of all Vikings is back!!!! With 2 episodes out it is already getting more amazing :D

So is Hannibal, right after Vikings:

Today I watched 300: Rise of an Empire:

It turned out to be more of like Spartacus v2.0, 3D version having blood, arrows, spears, swords and explosions coming at you. 300 vs 300: Rise of an Empire, overall both were good stories with some amount of goriness in each, none near matching those in Spartacus.

And of course the next Transformers movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction:

I don't know, after watching it, it looks more like the first Transformers movie combined with a bit of Real Steel elements.

And next movie I'm looking forward to is Transcendence:

And finally, Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) & Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica & Longmire) is back in a horror movie Oculus. Anyone interested?:

Also there was a moment around Sunday midnight, Monday morning, when TigerDirect, had a price error on their site, roughly $2 for 2-3TB NAS drives... Of course I ordered a ridiculous amount of drives all to be rejected by TigerDirect later during the week... sigh.... Earlier this week, I meet Ace, a police canine, and he was humongous... literally could take down anyone by his sheer mass. Also got Hadoop to finally work on a single-node cluster (guide coming up later on), now to attempt it on a cloud instance and make a multi-node cluster out of it.

Almost done with the Guild Hunter series, and now to pick with series to listen to next... suggestions anyone?

Courtesy: The Mary Sue (for making me aware of the Oculus trailer)

P.S.: My Bachelor's diploma finally came in, whee....

Another mini link/video-splosion

2014-02-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

The movie Gravity summarized in about 60 seconds:

First trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy:

Advance guide to rsync

Fish command line

Online Collaborative LaTeX editor

Courtesy: The Mary Sue, How to Geek, Gizmodo

Linux Mod - Part 1

2014-02-18T01:19:00.001-08:00

A while back, long time ago, I made a post about Sublime Text Editor and apps for Mac that aid with programming environment.

Here on I am trying to fully integrate linux into my coding environment. Well when I say fully integrate, I mean explore more into its potential.

Well first I decided to mess around with the bash prompt on the terminal (I use iTerm2 on Mac) and here is the version so thus far (tested cloning a git directory and creating/adding/committing/pushing file):

and yes, I got a dragon on top of my terminal sprouting words of wisdom or silliness or non-sense:

Now to dive into my config file (.bash_profile on Mac and .bashrc on Ubuntu):

1:  fortune | cowsay -f dragon  
2:    
3:  # get current branch in git repo  
4:  function parse_git_branch() {  
5:    BRANCH=`git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/\1/'`  
6:    if [ ! "${BRANCH}" == "" ]  
7:    then  
8:      STAT=`parse_git_dirty`  
9:      echo "[${BRANCH}${STAT}]"  
10:    else  
11:      echo ""  
12:    fi  
13:  }  
14:     
15:  # get current status of git repo  
16:  function parse_git_dirty {  
17:    status=`git status 2>&1 | tee`  
18:    dirty=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "modified:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`  
19:    untracked=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "Untracked files" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`  
20:    ahead=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "Your branch is ahead of" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`  
21:    newfile=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "new file:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`  
22:    renamed=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "renamed:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`  
23:    deleted=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "deleted:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`  
24:    bits=''  
25:    if [ "${renamed}" == "0" ]; then  
26:      bits=">${bits}"  
27:    fi  
28:    if [ "${ahead}" == "0" ]; then  
29:      bits="*${bits}"  
30:    fi  
31:    if [ "${newfile}" == "0" ]; then  
32:      bits="+${bits}"  
33:    fi  
34:    if [ "${untracked}" == "0" ]; then  
35:      bits="?${bits}"  
36:    fi  
37:    if [ "${deleted}" == "0" ]; then  
38:      bits="x${bits}"  
39:    fi  
40:    if [ "${dirty}" == "0" ]; then  
41:      bits="!${bits}"  
42:    fi  
43:    if [ ! "${bits}" == "" ]; then  
44:      echo " ${bits}"  
45:    else  
46:      echo ""  
47:    fi  
48:  }  
49:     
50:  function nonzero_return() {  
51:    RETVAL=$?  
52:    # [ $RETVAL -ne 0 ] &&   
53:    echo "[$RETVAL]"  
54:  }  
55:     
56:     
57:  ############################################  
58:  # Modified from emilis bash prompt script  
59:  # from https://github.com/emilis/emilis-config/blob/master/.bash_ps1  
60:  #  
61:  # Modified for Mac OS X by  
62:  # @corndogcomputer  
63:  ###########################################  
64:  # Fill with minuses  
65:  # (this is recalculated every time the prompt is shown in function prompt_command):  
66:  fill="--- "  
67:     
68:  reset_style='\[\033[00m\]'  
69:  status_style=$reset_style'\[\033[00;90m\]' # gray color; use 0;37m for lighter color  
70:  prompt_style=$reset_style  
71:  command_style=$reset_style #'\[\033[1;29m\]'01; # black  
72:    
73:  # Prompt variable:  
74:  tt="\[\e[00;31m\][\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;31m\]\t\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;31m\]]\[\e[m\]"  
75:  uh="\[\e[00;32m\][\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;32m\]\u\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;37m\]@\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;34m\]\h\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;32m\]]\[\e[m\]"  
76:  wd="\[\e[00;34m\][\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;34m\]\w\[\e[m\]\[\e[00;34m\]]\[\e[m\]"  
77:  et="\[\e[00;35m\]\[\e[00;35m\]\`nonzero_return\`\[\e[m\]\[\e[m\]"  
78:  gt="\[\e[33m\]\`parse_git_branch\`\[\e[m\]"  
79:  pt="\[\e[00;32m\]\\$\[\e[m\]"  
80:  tag="$tt$wd$et$gt$pt"  
81:  PS1="$status_style"'$fill \t\n'"$prompt_style$tag$command_style "  
82:     
83:  # Reset color for command output  
84:  # (this one is invoked every time before a command is executed):  
85:  trap 'echo -ne "\033[0m"' DEBUG  
86:     
87:  function prompt_command {  
88:    # create a $fill of all screen width minus the time string and a space:  
89:    let fillsize=${COLUMNS}-9  
90:    fill=""  
91:    while [ "$fillsize" -gt "0" ]  
92:    do  
93:      fill="-${fill}" # fill with underscores to work on  
94:      let fillsize=${fillsize}-1  
95:    done  
96:    
97:    # If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir  
98:    case "$TERM" in  
99:    xterm*|rxvt*)  
100:      bname=`basename "${PWD/$HOME/~}"`  
101:      echo -ne "\033]0;${bname}: ${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"  
102:      ;;  
103:    *)  
104:        ;;  
105:    esac  
106:  }  
107:     
108:  PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

cowsay - basically ASCII creatures that think or say your message
fortune - fortune cookie sayings
3-48 - these functions are for bringing up git status in the prompt [ezprompt]
50-54 - this function is for bringing up error code in the prompt (error code 0 = success) [ezprompt + a bit of modification]
57-108 - bash prompt layout I found on emilis' git-page - but I modified it to include my color and content format

Helper sites:
ezprompt - helps with building the initial layout with color
jamiedubs - a nice introduction to bash prompt and various formats
colors - contains various options for text and colors
emilis - contains the config to place horizontal separators after execution of a bash command

next up tmux....

Hannibal - Season 2

2014-02-08T00:23:00.001-08:00

More juicy sneak peeks into the season 2 of Hannibal:

Mini Link & Video-plosion

2014-02-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Funny tennis game:

Yes, I know this is a long video, but it gets better with each serve :D :

Downton Abbey + Cats = Downton Tabbies:

Top 10 uses of linux.

Help find disk systems for NASA.

Courtesy - io9, gizmodo, the mary sue.

Baking Bread

2014-02-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

Sooo.... after a long hiatus, I have resumed baking breads again, whee.... left is banana cranberry, and right is almond banana cranberry :D

30 minutes into baking:

Done baking:

Banana Cranberry bread:

Banana Cranberry bread sliced:

Almond Banana Cranberry bread:

Recipe.

Luther Burger & Waffle Fried Chicken

2014-01-27T17:55:00.003-08:00

Baffling food recipes.... Luther burger and waffle fried chicken... sweet flavor with meat....

Luther Burger - this came up at a game night... Doughnut used as buns for a burger for example Kripsy Kreme doughnuts...

More info here.

Waffle Fried Chicken - this was at Wynn buffet... waffle coated chicken strip with maple syrup spread on top....

More info here.

Suzuya Pastries and Crepes

2014-01-25T21:43:00.001-08:00

Buddy-of-mine (who I/we should totally blame if we become addicted) introduced me to this place - Suzuya Pastries and Crepes a while back....

I'd ordered Banana & Chocolate & Whip Cream Crepes... for just $4.50 it was filling enough for lunch and a slice of sinful Strawberry Shortcake...

Some of their delicacies:

and this is a Strawberry crepes cake...

Menu:

And the only bad thing about this place... it is located at the other end of town from me :\

And here it is...

2014-01-25T11:39:00.000-08:00

I guess it was only matter of time before this came out....

Courtesy: io9

Interesting stuff

2014-01-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

Happy 30th birthday Mac :D

This week I got around to watching Frozen, it is not your typical run-of-the-mill Disney movie in the antagonist department - no evil witch or wizard, just humans, the climax-ending department - its the typical true love's kiss solves all the problem and love saves the day.

Here is a song from the movie sung in 25 different languages:

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord - Highly recommended for those who would be an evil overlord in the future.

Scripts for extracting video and audio from YouTube.

Photographs of volcano Cordón Caulle in Chile going up.

Learn web design - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

Finding cheaper flights.

GeekTool - making Mac desktop more informative.

Week 1 of Graduate School

2014-01-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

So first week of graduate school was pretty much like wizard students after their O.W.L.s, so much free time with few classes! So basically I was like Harry and Ron, snickering at other undergraduates as they rush from class to class.

Here is the full clip from the movie, and no I didn't get cornered by a professor or advisor to take another class.

Multi-Core Computing class is going to be a toughie. Advanced Database class is going to be interesting.

Winter holiday 2013-14

2014-01-21T12:17:00.003-08:00

December 13, 2013 - January 20, 2014

In short, roughly 4 weeks of struggling with viral fever and roughly 2 weeks to catch up with stuff. Fun days include - Graduation on December 17th, company dinner on December 19th, Christmas, birthday/New Years, dinner with friends on January 12th, dev test & meeting DEs (Deal Editors) on January 15th, graduate orientation on January 17th, game night on January 18th, and end of winter break & three-day weekend celebration on January 20th.

Graduation was horrible - aside for taking 3-4hrs, they butchered my name, but I'm done with my bachelors degrees so thats a relief:

And then I got into the Master's program at UNLV for CS:

Christmas was spent with family and Doctor Who special (which was amazing - though tons of questions regarding the Doctor's regeneration....).

Watched the fireworks in town on TV on new year's eve, and then celebrated my birthday/new years at home watching Sherlock live.

By the January 9th I had recovered from the viral fever and as such organized dinner with friends on January 12th to celebration graduation and new year.

Deal Editors at SD came over on January 15th to visit the crew here, so spend the day with them, and turned in my dev test for the full-time job.

Graduate orientation turned out to be 2hr long presentation out of which I learned, as a graduate you got more forms to fill and need to apply for graduation at least 2 semesters early. Also you are officially crazy and will most likely go insane during the coursework.

Fun game night on January 18th with coworkers - iMAgiNiff, insane card game and munchkins.

And to cap the winter break, went for bowling, arcade, movie (The Legends of Hercules - don't watch it, not worth the time, and if you do want to watch it, watch the disney version - more fun) and dinner on January 20th.

Scoreboard (DD is me, guess what it stands for :P): Still keeping true to averaging 100 per game....

Hannibal Season 2 Trailer

2014-01-21T10:53:00.001-08:00

Hannibal season 2 trailer... all the gory in its glories! Again returns on February 28th!