It has been quite some time since I started to blog. Presently, I have two ‘official’ blogs (Splat, KalaaLog) and a personal blog. And having those blogs means I need to keep writing content for them. Sometimes, it becomes hard for us to come up with topics to write about.
Over these months, I have quite a couple of things under my belt that I use to get topics to write about. I thought I would share it with you all. So, expect a small series of tips on choosing topics to blog about. I will try to give my own examples wherever possible.
There are two main things that make or break a blog – content and visibility. These series of posts would be focusing on the content creation. The other side of the coin, in my opinion, Mayank would be the best person to talk about it.
The following list will be updated as the post of the series are updated.
What are the ways you get topics to write about for your blog?
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This one is a tip I found at Zolved. It is an optimization setting that makes OO.org Writer run faster in Ubuntu. No reason it should not work in Windows.
- Just go to Tools -> Options
- Select OpenOffice.org -> Memory in left panel
- Undo – Number Of Steps: 30 or 20
- Graphics Cache – Use for OpenOffice.org: 128 MB
- Graphics Cache – Memory per object: 20 MB
- Cache for inserted objects – Number of objects: 20
- Select OpenOffice.org -> Java in left panel
- Uncheck ‘Use a Java Runtime Environment
- Click OK and feel the speed next time you load OpenOffice.org Writer
PS: Find more writings of Vyoma at Splat and KalaaLog.com.
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A few days back, I wrote about GIMP, over at KalaaLog.com.
It is a good software that you can get without spending a penny. I have been using it even after getting Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter when I got it bundled with my Wacom Intuos3. The point is that, to this day, there was nothing in GIMP that I could not do.
That does not mean, it has no disadvantages. It does.
- No Pantone color matching system, or spot color
- No color models other than RGB (note that, color selection is different from the output). This is a disadvantage if the end product is aimed for print media.
- No way to group and organize layers
In spite of these, I am able to do quite good digital paintings.
If you want to pursue it, and do not yet want to spend a fortune on Adobe Photoshop, start working with GIMP. It can do a lot more than just minor photo touch-ups and signature banners.
PS: To find more posts by Vyoma, visit Splat and KalaaLog.
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You are a freelancer, or you work for some one, or you are a student, you would have by now created documents – large documents. As every writer knows, we need to organize the document into proper paragraphs under proper headings and sub-headings. And when you want to change the formating, if you had not planned for it, it will drive you insane by the sheer amount of repetitive work.
Let us take an example document. Note that it is not large, but it is sufficient for illustrating the problem.
Just assume that the document is large with several pages as opposed to the short one shown in the example. Now, the person reviewing it, or you yourself, needs to change the font of all the text – one font for the paragraph, and one for the headings and subheadings.
You go about selecting and chaning them all. After you are done with it, and feel you can finally take a break, another request may crop up:
I hope you understand now, when I say it can drive you insane.
So, here is a tip that you save you all the trouble. continue reading »
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Have you ever come across a situation in coding, either at your job or when you are working on your personal project, when you feel that you need to keep on writing the same pattern of code again and again?
Now all you hard core programmers – do not put me on stake. I know it is a bad design in such case, but sometimes you are not at a liberty of designing the code the way you want. This is especially the case when you have to work as a team or even as multiple teams. Also, you may be thinking of writing a generic code to handle all those – but getting at this generic code takes time, which you may not be having at hand. You can even use the trusty copy-paste method, but that too becomes tedious.
Here is a technique that I use to generate the code. I use Excel. Well, I usually need this for my job, and they give me Microsoft Excel, and I work with it. You can also use OpenOffice.org Calc or any other spread sheet to do the same.
Here is a piece of java code, which needs to be written.
...
// Declare variable to hold
// response from WebService
String vAlpha = null;
String vBeta = null;
String vDelta = null;
...
String vGamma = null;
String vZeta = null
...
// Populte the local variables from the
// object returned by the WebSerivce
vAlpha = someObject.get("Alpha").replaceAll("xyz", "abc");
vBeta = someObject.get("Beta").replaceAll("xyz", "abc");
vDelta = someObject.get("Delta").replaceAll("xyz", "abc");
...
vGamma = someObject.get("Gamma").replaceAll("xyz", "abc");
vZeta = someObject.get("Zeta").replaceAll("xyz", "abc");
...
As you can see, a lot of the code or parts of code are repeated. It just does not make sense to type them all.
continue reading »
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