Remember Nexty, the easy to use to-Do list manager using GTD principles? Well, that is ready for public release.
Nexty is a easy to use GTD tool created in PHP. It can be installed in a local server or in a online web server. The core idea behind this software is simplicity. I wanted to make a GTD tool that is the most easy to use.
The next project is ready - watch this space for its announcement.
Read More...As you already know, I have made my move. Moving from one domain to another is not new to me - I have moved a lot before. Here is a small picture that will show all my 'domain hops'...
http://binnyva.bizland.com/ (Dead now) - My first site.
http://binnyva.tripod.com/ - Started using Tripod when Bizland stopped my free account.
http://www.geocities.com/binnyva/ - Tripod became very slow due to all their ads - so I moved to Geocities.
http://binnyva.blogspot.com/ - Decided that I have to get into this 'blog' thing.
http://www.bin-co.com/ - Finally, got a credit card - thus making it possible to by web space/domain. Once I got the card - I did not stop with just one domain - I bought some more...
Serious articles from the next post...
Read More...Every commenter in the last post agreed with me. As a result, I am moving the blog from http://binnyva.blogspot.com/ to http://www.bin-co.com/blog/. From the next post onwards, the post will be duplicated here and in my Bin-Co site. At the end of this month, I will abandon this blog and focus on the new one.
Abandon does not mean that I will delete the blog or its contents - that will stay. I will stop posting here. I will still carry out some maintenance tasks like weeding out the spam, repling to comments etc. However, from next month, no more new content will appear here.
So the new blog URL is ...drum roll...
Take a look - no contents yet. But still, feel free to look around my Bin-Co site too.
One of my tougher decision was not to import the contents of this blog into the new one. So, the contents in this blog will not be there in the new blog. One major reason is content duplication. I don't want to be penalized for duplicate content.
Please DO NOT update/change the feed URL. I am using FeedBurner - and I will change the source feed when the time is right. So, you don't have to change the feed URL.
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Lately, I am under a lot of pressure to move this blog to one of my own servers. I have thought about this before. I even have moved parts of it - like BinnyVA and OpenJS - but never moved the site entirely. Moving has its advantages and its disadvantages. Before I make the decision, I thought I will ask the site's readers for some feedback. So, what do you think guys? Should I move to my own domain?
I am forced to consider this move because many people have asked my why I am still on Blogger - despite having many sites of my own. Look at the comments on my last post - Benedict Herold has only one thing to say. Can't blame him - he already has made the move - from Blogger to WordPress. He even has a neat picture to explain which is the better platform.
Then there is Ajay. Says he won't comment on my site unless I move to wordpress. When ever I chat with him, he wants to know if I will move to wordpress ;-). So, Ajay, here is your chance to have your say - should I move or not. Comment on this post, OK? Even if you think it is a bit slow for you.
Think of this as a voting system. If enough people ask me to move, I will move. I am sure that many of my readers will have some thoughts regarding this as well.
So, what do you think? Should I make the move? Leave a comment. Do you have any experience to share about moving your blog? Let me know.
Read More...I know I don't put comics in this blog - but there is a first time for everything. A comic from bLaugh...
From now one, I am going to reffer to all my clients as 'Little Flies' *Insert evil laugh here*.
Read More...After two years, I have decided to leave Reubro International. I joined there around March 2005 as a Perl Developer. In the time I spend there, I learned PHP, Advanced JavaScript, Advanced CSS - even a bit about Database designing and server administration.
There is too many things I learned while I was there - too many to list here(two years is a long time). But lately I am finding that instead of helping me to learn new things, my work is negatively affecting my ability to learn new stuff. A lack of time is the formost problem. I have reached the conclusion that the only way to learn new things is to lose the job - and that is exactly what I did.
I have a huge list of stuff to learn - which includes - but not limited to...
So, expect some posts about these subjects here.
I have a lot of entries in my ToDo List - things I never had time for before. Time to get them done. Stuff like...
With all this free time, I should be able to produce more content. So expect a jump in the frequency of posts in this blog and my other sites. Maybe even a new site.
I have a decent income from Google AdSense. I also have a couple of other revenue streams. So I am not looking at freelance projects right now. Maybe after a few months.
In short, I had a great time at Reubro. I met a lot of great guys. I learned a lot. And I understood that Corporate life is not for me. And like many others, I chose unemployment over working at a company.
Oh, and by the way, the 'official reason' for leaving is 'Excessive Eye Strain'. Happens if you spent over 15 hours a day staring at a monitor.
So, what do you think of my decision? Good? Bad? Stupid? Leave a comment and let me know.
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I have just finished updating the backend of my two sites Bin-Co and OpenJS. I have updated the Database Design to make it compactable with my DB Design rules. Also some part of the code base have been altered to make it easier to reuse.
Using a custom CMS has its advantages - but it has a big maintance load. The good part is that a lot of cool PHP code was created - which I will be releasing in my PHP page.
There is a problem with this upgrade - there is a possibility of errors somewhere in the site. If you notice any problems, let me know.
Once that job is complete, I will redesign this blog.
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Nexty is a easy to use To-Do list manager created in PHP. This tool adds a few of my concepts with the generally held concepts of GTD. It can be installed in a local server or in a online web server.
See Demo
This software is in beta stage - so expect some breakages here and there. I will try to release a stable version by the end of this week - by 10th February 2007 - but no promises.
Get the code from the project page of nexty at Sourceforge. Read More...I always wanted to do a 'de-lurking' post. Two of my favorite web development bloggers - 456 Berea st and veerle's blog have done it. So I have decided to join in and create a de-lurking post of my own.
A lurker is a 'person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely participates
'. De-lurking is an operation to get you out in the open. Basically what you need to do is post a comment for this post.
I would like the following details...
I am always on the lookout for new blogs to add to my RSS Aggregator. I figured the best way to do that is to find people who have the same interest as me - if you read my blog, you will be interested in Web Development. And that is the topic I am most interested in.
If you leave your URL, I will take a look at your site. And if you have great articles I will even link to it. So please leave your URLs.
But, please... please... comment. Even if you comment is just 'Hi', post it, all right?
Read More...Happy new year, all! This year I will continue the tradition of highlighting the best posts of the year at the end of the year(or at the beginning of the next - as in this case). The best posts in 2006 in this blog are...
I have created a small program in Ruby/Tk called LocateR. This is a small GUI for the 'locate' command on Linux system. This will search the computer using the locate command and will show the results in that window itself. Using the locate command is much quicker than searching for a file in the traditional way(find).
Download LocateR V 1.00.A Beta - 2.1 KB Tar.Gzipped File
If you know ruby, could you review the code and give me some feedback? I am relatively new to Ruby - and I want to improve in that area. Especially in connection to rails.
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Taking a short break from the regularly scheduled program, I want to announce the IT Expo 2006 at Cochin, Kerala, India. So, if you are not from Kerala, this post is not for you.
IT Expo 2006 will be held at Townhall, Cochin. This event starts at November 30 and will end by December 02. Be there.
IT Expo 2006 will be held at Townhall, Cochin. This event starts at November 30 and will end by December 02. If you are in Cochin, be there. The Cochin LUG, which I am a part of, will have a stall(#41) in this exhibition.
The exhibition time is from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. If you are planning to visit the exhibition, come over and say hi. Just look for the stall named 'ilug-cochin.org' and ask for Binny. I will be there from 3:30 to 8 PM tomorrow and full day on Saturday.
Read more about it and updates on my personal blog. Some posts about this event...
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I have upgraded from Linux Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 5. I still have to not configured it fully, so a complete review will have to wait.
I had a few troubles getting Firefox to work as I need it - and I have great difficulty in believing that they did not include XMMS in the distro. Other than that, I am mostly satisfied with the OS.
More details and a decent review will be posted when I have finished configuring the system.
Read More...After much waiting I finally have a blog in WordPress. So currently I have two blogs - Bin-Blog and BinnyVA. I plan to use this blog(Blogger) as a professional blog and the other one(WordPress) as a more personal one. That blog will have a lower post frequency - around one per week. So from now on, all post that would have been tagged with 'Personal' will be kept in the opther blog - this blog will be used exclusively for professional content.
Another plus side of using that blog is that I can get an opertunity to sudy Wordpress - one of the most succesful PHP project of these times. Knowing what makes it tick will do me much good - I will be able to port my many programs as WordPress plugins. I actually plan to do this with Online Sudoku.
So this post will be the last post in this blog to be tagged with 'personal'. If you want more posts of that genre, go over to my new blog.
Read More...Since it has been some time since the last update, I am thinking that I would post another status update. I plan to do this once every six months. This is basically the current status of my various sites and projects.
Before I start, I want to congratulate Jansan on his new blog - Techno WeBlog. I am hoping that this will encourage Gladwin to update his site. His site has been around for some time now - but the meaning of the word 'content' is still foreign to him.
This is my site about Web Development and Scripting Languages. The primary languages of intrest are...
I plan to add other languages like Ruby and Python soon.
This site has not picked up yet. I still have a lot of time to fill it up with content. I recently posted a published a new version of jx Ajax library there. Be sure to check out the explanation page - I put a lot of work into it.
Going steady at around 50 unique visits per day. Not much improvement over the last two months. May be because the posting frequency went down. I try to post once every three days.
My new site - I plan to use this as a personal site. I will be porting the BinnyVA site to it. I will be able to make some subdomains for all the sub sites. Also, I plan to implement my old idea of moving to WordPress here - I am thinking about using a WordPress blog at, say, http://blog.binnyva.com/(don't exist right now). My plan is to use it for more personal blogging - about my life, Kerala, etc.
The old sites like my geocities and tripod sites still exists. The geocities site still gets a lot of traffic - most of the google SERPs are still pointing to these old pages.
Read More...I was not able to blog for the last week - I even had to break my sacred 'at least one post every three days' rule. This was because I was sick - very sick as a matter of fact. I was bedridden for the last one week. Now I am alright - although a bit weak.
I will be continuing the Web Development in Linux series from the next post. I am not creating a serious post now. Although my body is alright, my brain is still unsettled.
Read More...I have already talked about my new venture - OpenJS.com. I created the design and the backend myself. I thought long and hard about using third party tools like Mambo or Drupal or even WordPress. But at the end I decided to make one of my own.
The advantages of using a custom CMS tool are many...
It is the third point that convinced me to create a custom CMS tool. I could not create a page with a lot of JavaScript content in WordPress - it is primarily aimed at creating content. Yes, I know that Dustin Diaz does it. But could you include a JS file for just one post? Could you attach a CSS file to just one page? Could you write some JavaScript code in the HEAD section of a content page? I don't know - maybe you could. Maybe there is a plug-in that could do everything I said. But I know one thing - I could do it all using my system.
Another more pressing problem is content entry. I will have to depend on a Web based WYSIWYG editor to create my content. I hate WYSIWYG editors - I hate WYSIWYG editors - even if they have a lot of features. I don't have to tell you how much I hate an online WYSIWYG editors with just limited features. I don't mean that I hate using them - they are very useful for people who don't know HTML - but there are very limiting for a web developer.
Yes, I know that I can key in the HTML code from these editors - but I want more. I want my editors - I want Kwrite. I want Quanta Plus. I want syntax highlighting, auto complition and more. I want all the features available in my desktop editor.
So now I have a backend that don't store the contents of a page in the Database. All the modern CMS does that - but not mine. My CMS tool stores all the details of the page - like title, description etc., in the database but the actual content is in a file - so I could use a editor when editing the file.
So I have most of the advantages of storing the data in the Database - like easier retrieval of data from other page - like for creating the RSS feed for the site - and still keep the advantages of a file based content system. It is a bit clumsy - having to juggle the static files and the dynamic backend, but I got what I wanted.
But I have to admit that there is many advantages to using a third party tool...
Have you ever encountered a similar situation? How did you solve it? What do you think of my decision - good or bad? Why?
Read More...As you probably know, I have reached the 100 posts milestone. It is traditional to make a 'Best of 100' post at this point. So here it is - 5 best content pages and 5 best scripts...
A few mini-tutorials that many found useful.
I created many small functions - JavaScript, PHP, CSS, Perl and published it in this blog so that others could use it too. The best among these are given below...
An year after the first post, I have reached the 100th post milestone. So a best of 100 post is traditional - that will be my next post. But before that, my experiences with blogging...
I listed number of reasons on why I started a blog in the first post. Over the course of time, the list was improved - some reasons were removed and some were added. This is the new list(in no particular order)...
Some of the statstics associated with this blog...
In the last year, I did something right and some things wrong. I have learned a lot on what to do - and even more on what not to do. I am hoping to reach the 200 post milestone using the lessons learned in this year - maybe my figures will be better then.
Till then, keep reading the blog and writing down a few comments(another area in which this blog is lagging).
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I have been working on the design of OpenJS.com. I have often said that most of my 'designs' look like a 4-year old kid's mis-adventures with a crayon. But once in a while I do something that amazes even me. And this is the case of OpenJS - the design part went great.
I tried to give it a Web 2.0 look - reflections, fades, shadows etc. Now I have to make some rounded corners and some cool looking icons for the home page. I have not yet finished the work on the homepage. Only the layout and the logo is finished.
Some things to look out for...
If you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know.
Just one more thing - I want to thank my friend Gladwin for suggesting the domain name openjs.com.
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