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Productivity: Creating a Year Overview Page for 2025 in OneNote
I am not sure where I read it or watched it (in the past 18 months, I have probably watched nearly 100 videos on organisation, productivity and using OneNote), but I think one idea that I find very useful is creating a summarised overview for the full year. This helps me note down in a simple way what the year looks like and it is updated by me as we go through the year. It provides a great way to see what has transpired and what is in play for the rest of the year, as we know it.…
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Ruby 3.4 on Windows: Day 0 - install and Hello World
Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write (from the Ruby web site). On Christmas Day 2024, the core team released version 3.4 with major improvements and new features including a new parser that has been in development for some time. This was followed by a rapid release of 3.4.1 due to a minor oversight. The Windows RubyInstaller site has just added Ruby 3.4 to its downloads, so let’s get it up and running.…
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Ruby: 20 Day Gem Challenge Part 4
Recently on Bluesky, there was a #20DayGemChallenge where we were encouraged to choose 20 Ruby gems that we’ve used time and time again, or have inspired us in some way and post one gem per day in no particular order and with no explanation. This series of posts explains my specific reason for choosing each of these gems.…
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Ruby: 20 Day Gem Challenge Part 3
Recently on Bluesky, there was a #20DayGemChallenge where we were encouraged to choose 20 Ruby gems that we’ve used time and time again, or have inspired us in some way and post one gem per day in no particular order and with no explanation. This series of posts explains my specific reason for choosing each of these gems.…
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Ruby: 20 Day Gem Challenge Part 2
Recently on Bluesky, there was a #20DayGemChallenge where we were encouraged to choose 20 Ruby gems that we’ve used time and time again, or have inspired us in some way and post one gem per day in no particular order and with no explanation. This series of posts explains my specific reason for choosing each of these gems.…
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Ruby: 20 Day Gem Challenge Part 1
Recently on Bluesky, there was a #20DayGemChallenge where we were encouraged to choose 20 Ruby gems that we’ve used time and time again, or have inspired us in some way and post one gem per day in no particular order and with no explanation. This series of posts explains my specific reason for choosing each of these gems.…
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Windows: Use Graphviz without Installation
Graphviz is open source graph visualization software that is incredibly popular. In this post, we see how to run it on Windows without installing the software package.…
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Windows: Setting Environment Variables and Changing the PATH Permanently
Every now and then, you need to edit the Windows system PATH or add an Environment variable. This is especially so if you want to use applications without installing them. This post shows how you can do that.…
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Windows: Exporting Office Apps Customisations
If you use the Quick Access Toolbar in Office apps (and you really should) or customise the Ribbon, you have to redo your setup again when you move PCs or set up your PC again. This post covers the built-in way to make this task easier.…
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Windows: Taming Windows Search
I discovered that Windows Search was taking approximately 139GB (out of the 300GB) on my system drive, and decided to look for ways to tame it a bit. These are my notes as reference (and for future setups).…
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Shoutout to some really useful online JSON tools (2024 Edition)
Just a shout-out to a few great online JSON tools that I use quite a lot when working with new JSON files. This is the version of the post updated in Nov 2024 with a couple of new additions.…
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Notes on Using Licensed and Licensee for OSS Licensing and SBOM: Rails Apps
Have you ever wondered what Open Source Software (OSS) is being using in your product and what licenses apply to these dependencies? GitHub/licensed is a tool that can help to scan your codebase and create a list of licenses for you. Let’s look at how to use it for Rails applications.…
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Rails 8.0 with Ruby 3.3 on Windows: It just works! (and what to do if it doesn't!)
Rails 8.0 was released just a few days back and as a user primarily on Windows, I was keen to see it all works and runs on Windows. I had done this check previously with Rails 7.1 on Ruby 3.2 on Windows and it had worked fine. Thanks to the stellar work of everyone involved, it just works. Let’s see a few more details below.…
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Ruby Tips 14 - Copy a file with a new base name
Every now and then, we want to save a file before we overwrite it. This simple code helps extract the base name, give it a new name, and then copy it to the same folder as the original file.…
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Windows: Set an icon for the Windows Terminal Shortcut
I have a shortcut to Windows Terminal in my Quick Launch bar, but it often does not show the icon, so I set out to fix it. This post documents what is needed.…
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Migrating Sequence Diagrams from WebSequenceDiagrams to Mermaid
Both WebSequenceDiagrams.com and Mermaid support the creation of sequence diagrams using plain text. While the formats are similar, there are some small differences that mean that you probably cannot just paste diagram text from one into the other. This post lists the items that I found recently.…
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Windows: Make the Windows Hotspot Network Private
For some applications (in my case, Spacedesk), it helps to make the wireless network you are on marked as Private (if it is trusted) so that the firewall allows connections. This is a bit complicated when the wireless network is created by Windows using the Hotspot functionality.…
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Rails: Load multiple records by ID (find v where)
ActiveRecord includes lots of handy methods to query data from the database. Sometimes, it can be confusing which ones work in which way and . This post touches on a common need – look up multiple records from a database table given the ID of the records.…
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Hosting HTML, JS and CSS pages simply with GitHub Pages
If you already have a set of HTML, Javascript and CSS pages ready to go and want to host it some place, GitHub Pages tied to a repository may not be a bad way to host it easily. This post explains what I did to achieve exactly that.…
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OpenLayers - Grayscale, dark maps and more with CSS Filters
This week, I needed to render a simple map with some markers on it, and I felt that it would be great to have it shown in grayscale. While looking for that, I stumbled on the weird and wonderful world of CSS filters and how they can be used to style web maps.…
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Quick Notes about Structurizr - Part 1
For the past few months, I have been using Structurizr Lite for documenting my architectures as code. While doing this, I have had to find out some things. This is just a collection of these things.…
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Windows Batchfile Programming Notes - Part 1
I’m converting a shell script to a Windows batchfile and had to search up a few things to fill in the gaps. These are notes for me to be able to find these details again.…
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Portable setup for PostgreSQL on Windows (Pg16 Edition)
The normal method for using PostgreSQL on your Windows machine is to download the installer and then set it up. It’s easy and will do all the necessary things that you need for it. It will also set up services and other things that you might need. On the other hand, if you’re someone who uses PostgreSQL only some times and do not want it running all the time, or if you want to use different versions and want to have them switched on from time to time, or if you just want a portable setup that you can copy to any computer and get it running, then this post is for you.…
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Windows: Name your command windows
If you use Windows and the Command Prompt, you can sometimes get lost in the different command prompt windows/ tabs that are open. This is a simple thing you can do to make it slightly easier to know which window is for what.…
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Rails 7.1 automatically loads lib! Now, what?
All the directories under
appare automatically loaded by Rails in production. Further, since Rails 7.1, it’s quite easy to get Rails to automatically load all the files in thelibdirectory. This is enabled by having this obvious sounding line inconfig/application.rb…