tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-389053342017-10-07T04:34:02.773-05:00Every now and then I get an urge to learn and achieve something using the magic of computer science. It might be to make my work more efficient, to overcome some issue, to automate something, or just to leverage the power of computer and Internet to achieve some results. Here, I share what I learn in the hope that it might come in handy for someone else out there too. Welcome on-board!Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-87943996633324376712016-09-06T18:02:00.000-05:002016-09-06T18:47:16.594-05:00

If you are just getting starting with AngularJS, then you may find a humongous amount of tutorial and articles on the internet which can help you get confused and lost pretty quickly. If you know HTML and JavaScript/Jquery and just quickly want to see how AngularJS would change your regular HTML vs JavaScript interaction, then perhaps this quick article may help you. In this demo, I will not be

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-77479406399707547232016-08-22T18:57:00.000-05:002016-08-22T18:57:11.100-05:00

So you decide to give the new yet powerful 'Gulp' tool a try and fire up the Visual Studio 2015 IDE. You follow a basic tutorial or document to create a simple Hello World application. Next, you might create the gulpfile.js and define a couple of tasks to automate. Happy with your quick Gulp example project, you execute your project, and get an error. Error 1 If the error you get is something

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-34957364570354160782016-04-04T21:27:00.001-05:002016-04-05T20:34:11.649-05:00

So recently I was trying out a piece of code in PHP, and wanted to hit the Google reCaptcha server, but my curl requests all failed for some reason. I then added an 'echo curl_error($curl);' to my code and was greeted with a "SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate" error. Now this was much more meaningful, than a blindly failing curl request. So here is how I fixed

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-72213601488311143272016-01-26T11:49:00.003-06:002016-02-19T08:01:04.303-06:00

Recently I got myself a Fitbit Charge HR, which added to my new year resolve to do something proactive to improve my health. Let's see how this resolve stands beyond the first few weeks, but that is out of scope for this blog entry. I have an Android Nexus 5 phone where I installed my Fitbit app, and via Bluetooth the app syncs with my Fitbit. The device should ideally last around 5 days with a

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-26127675401445725862015-12-14T12:50:00.000-06:002016-08-02T08:46:09.218-05:00

Recently I was trying to get PHP+MySQL web application setup on Azure. I was excited to see how Azure would play with non Microsoft platforms. It was quite promising to see that Azure gave me a web applicaiton with PHP out of the box. Now I wanted to stretch it further by trying to setup ImageMagick extension. Now installing ImageMagick has historically not been the cleanest process. With

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-7209437758576768422015-09-22T15:09:00.000-05:002015-09-22T23:29:04.829-05:00

My objective for this proof of concept project was to use a regular webcam to scan for barcodes, parse them and transmit the same via a REST service, using Raspberry Pi as the hardware platform. I believe a lot of people have already "been there, done that", but somehow I found no single source of information to help me through all the obstacles I came across while trying to scan barcode using

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-56238047704505016262015-09-10T17:35:00.000-05:002015-09-10T17:47:42.602-05:00

A very common requirement for a developer is to host code on BitBucket, and then use it for version control on his Windows machine. The GIT client chosen, usually is TortoiseGIT. It turns out, that there are more than a few steps required to get this working correctly and I could not find a good first search result to get it working. I had to jump across various articles before I could stitch

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-21988339213377874362012-07-15T09:59:00.001-05:002012-07-15T10:12:40.040-05:00

Short answer is, YES, if you need to shoot apart from a bright sunny day. If you own a camera such as Canon S3 IS, or any of its siblings such as the current emperor SX40 HS, then you may be quite well satisfied with your camera. And this is completely justified and understandable. I have been a veteran user of Canon S3 IS. Rest assured, it has served me very well. I am not a professional 

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-41028783049640033342010-12-24T20:08:00.004-06:002010-12-24T20:16:52.782-06:00

My Samsung Galaxy 3 (GT-I5801) hardly used to get a fix to GPS satellites once a week. Initially I thought it was due to a cloudy day, but even on sunny days, with open sky, my applications like Google maps or Waze could almost never get a fix to GPS.That is when I thought there might be a software issue and upon hunting on the internet bumped upon various settings to fix the GPS issue(yeah, on

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-67685291452966471372010-12-19T11:58:00.006-06:002010-12-20T11:39:43.910-06:00

After years of being immersed in Nokia phones, I got my first dose of the Android mobile operating system on the Samsung Galaxy 3 phone. I sure was in for a pleasant surprise and a whiff of fresh air. True to the spirit of the Google, the Android OS is free, accessible to everybody and revolves around Internet. Need of the information Super-highway I soon discovered that the Android ecosystem

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-22809886624148814732009-09-02T10:05:00.002-05:002009-09-02T10:12:17.995-05:00

Having used GMail since quite some time now, I have come to rely on Gmail for my day to day communication. No wonder then that time to time I myself feel that a feature or two, if added can help boost my productivity, save time or money. Today an idea struck me, which i feel accomplishes all those three points.There are times when we need to send people certain documents again and again for some

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-75757424844027376642009-04-28T06:03:00.004-05:002009-04-28T18:54:52.934-05:00

I installed Mozilla Firefox 3.5 beta 4 latest nightly build from the Mozilla FTP site wanting to test the bleeding edge of the browser. I was hoping that with this release, Mozilla would have made a giant leap with a lot of previous bug fixes in place, specially the resource hogging one. On install, Firefox automatically imported my plugins, settings etc. from my previous 3.1 version to give me a

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-19460226653590901502009-03-03T01:11:00.003-06:002009-03-03T01:57:31.074-06:00

I use Google reader to subscribe to Digg feeds, but all the Digg RSS/Atom links are in feedburner format. Unfortunately my internet network blocks requests to feed/rss/atom URLs. This was a problem as I could no longer launch Digg articles directly from the Google reader.My response was to create Greasymonkey script. This script will silently ensure that when you click on any Digg link from the

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-84216880585928310262009-02-22T04:42:00.006-06:002009-03-03T01:48:03.986-06:00

This is a off topic post, but I am staying at the upcoming Indirapuram, region of Ghaziabad. It comes under NCR and its close vicinity to the Indira Gandhi International Airport of Delhi is why a number of times people ask me for directions to reach there. I myself was not clear of the route until recently. So I decided to plot it on Google map for the benefit of myself and others.So, this is the

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-30421221453801716022009-02-05T13:06:00.003-06:002009-02-05T13:11:01.782-06:00

I downloaded the much touted Windows 7 beta just in time, later realizing that the download offer ends on February 10th! The good thing is that the Beta installation would last till August 2009, giving me enough time to test the build.I have a new Dell Studio 15 with 3 GB RAM, all with the integrated webcam and the new LED WXGA+ LCD screen with Vista Home installed. I should tell you that I am

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-43326864087098936682008-12-31T03:29:00.010-06:002009-01-07T07:08:18.232-06:00

Nowadays everyone seems to be taking loans for varying needs such as home, automobile, education etc. We start paying the EMIs per month to pay back the loan as per the bank mandate. Some of us, are tech savvy or nerdy enough to want to keep track of the loan payment by wanting to create an excel sheet for the same. Some time we may want to create an Excel for our monthly EMIs maybe just to

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-58828963316963126022008-12-10T00:06:00.001-06:002008-12-10T00:12:04.299-06:00

Thanks to the Indian Railways, it is proved that a successfully implemented online venture is very much possible in our dear India too! Ofcource well planned logistics and financial muscle would be required but more and more people in India seem to be willing to tread online for their convenience.After the grand success of Online DVD renting(think Blockbuster, Netflix) in America, the Indian

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-32250184905275540982008-10-14T07:06:00.013-05:002008-10-17T00:13:54.293-05:00

More and more websites are waking up to the need of making the interfaces simpler for the end user. Thanks to a trend popularized by Google, websites nowadays try and reduce the steps required to fulfill tasks online. Efforts are also made to lower the learning curve for the user.Having said that, how would you like to let your website administrator or even the end uses to interact with your

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-1603625413013281782008-07-25T11:20:00.011-05:002008-07-25T12:12:43.909-05:00

I have been using free email services since long, but GMAIL was the first to offer me the option to access the mail in a safe and secure fashion, using the https://www.gmail.com instead of the regular http://www.gmail.com. Though I do not have the national secrets to guard, but now I have a choice to better protect my privacy, that too for free. The only thing to keep in mind is that, except for

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-73646961964159938182008-07-22T10:36:00.017-05:002008-07-22T20:40:21.303-05:00

There are a lot of options available to choose from amongst software, applications and tools. One might be tempted and want to try out and play with a lot of them, but at the end of the day, which software do you find yourself coming back to? Here are some software I usually come back to. I use my Windows computer to accomplish a number of tasks such as communication, education, entertainment,

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-65915106971921794732008-01-20T11:52:00.000-06:002008-01-20T12:42:36.895-06:00

Recently I purchased a broadband internet connection from Airtel for my new pad in Noida. The setup at home sure took me by storm, with no less than an army of 8 people coming one after another within 2.5 hours to finish every thing from cabling, ADSL phone setup, line activation, internet setup etc.Soon I had access to always on internet access, but only if I was sitting in the same room and

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-49579758580193808792007-10-26T13:17:00.000-05:002007-10-29T10:00:15.862-05:00

You read it right! You can now be sitting on a flight with no internet connectivity, yet use almost all features of Gmail. You can read new mails, reply to them, sort through old mail, delete unneeded mails, compose new ones, or just sort by size to delete those huge mails with attachments. All this will happen offline on your PC/laptop, and will sync to Gmail server as soon as you next connect

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-62307361709157893472007-07-17T16:43:00.000-05:002007-07-17T20:26:20.221-05:00

I am a big fan of Google Picasa for the simplicity and features offered. I am quite confident using Adobe Photoshop, but still I find doing minor adjustments such as basic levels corrections and Color correction much more easier, and in a non-destructive way.Having used Picasa for sometime now, I have started using some of the extra bells and whistles it offers, such as the "Play music during

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-69761857259262805022007-07-06T22:33:00.000-05:002007-07-06T23:20:05.108-05:00

I must admit that I have always drooled over Apple design and simplicity, but have always been stuck to the IBM PC. I never used to keep track of what exactly is the Apple G5 or the minibook, but then came the effort called Apple Boot camp, which would allow the latest Intel based Mac to run Microsoft Windows too. This made me stop and turn. Should my next laptop be a Mac? That is about when

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38905334.post-28404845571063654312007-05-22T19:40:00.000-05:002007-05-22T19:50:42.222-05:00

Many a times I have faced a webcam. My parents have it, and a lot of my friends have it, but almost always, I do not get half as good a picture from it, as I might have expected. Usually, I appear either too dark, or in various rainbow colors. I see that nowadays webcams provide a plethora of settings to tweak, but usually I do not get the results I expect.Today I came across a nice blog at

Saurabh Kumarhttps://plus.google.com/110267023408671678022noreply@blogger.com0