The “Copy message” button in the Signal App on iPhone doesn’t show up on the pop-up ribbon (like other messaging apps), but rather in the bottom Tab Bar. An awkward UX miss for such a mature app! Do not override the native OS’s gestures for basic tasks like copying and pasting. There are plenty of… Continue reading Signal App Tip: How to copy-paste a text message
Signal App UX irritation: “x just joined Signal”
I’m trying to convince friends and family to switch to Signal. Opened the Signal App after several months today and I was welcomed with 100+ unread “X just joined Signal” messages. And it irritated me right away! Not for some privacy concern but because looking at 100+ automated, unread messages is simply unpleasant. So many… Continue reading Signal App UX irritation: “x just joined Signal”
Reading and Writing Excel (xlsx) files with Python
Jan 2021 Update: For Writing – xlsxwriter (don’t use xlwt, it doesn’t support xlsx format.)For Reading – openpyxl (xlrd removed the support for xlsx in Dec 2020 due to security concerns.) Openpyxl supports writing too! So you may do everything with a single library. Xlsxwriter is faster in writing though. XlsxWriter creator, John McNamara, is… Continue reading Reading and Writing Excel (xlsx) files with Python
Quick Monitor Buying Guide
Deciding the screen size You ought to consider the right physical size in inches with the screen resolution — deviating too much from the following chart would either make the screen too pixelated or you might find the default font size to be too small.
Google Glass never went away!
Google Glass appeared on the scene 7 years ago. There was a lot of excitement around it — a bit like the excitement for the Samsung Fold phone, but didn’t become an immediate hit. Apparently, the project never stopped and the Google Glass team has been milling along. A new video on the Google AR… Continue reading Google Glass never went away!
A very small Git tutorial
1. Github.com is not git 2. You only need to learn these six commands to get started: clone, status, add, commit, pull, push 3. push is akin to uploading your files to the server (for safe-keeping). Before pushing you’ve to write a comment about what you want to push using the commit command. pull is… Continue reading A very small Git tutorial
Setting up Django on Windows IIS Server
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This post has been built over this very good post by Matt Woodward. The main edits/additions I’ve made to the original article are: Added the section on configuring a MySQL or Sqlite3 database on Windows. Added information on configuring the Firewall to access… Continue reading Setting up Django on Windows IIS Server
Why and When to use Celery with Python Web Servers
“Celery is an asynchronous task queue based on distributed message passing.” Let’s break that down: asynchronous => events happen outside of the main program flow. task queue based=> queues up the tasks to be performed. (The tasks themselves are queued up in a tool like Redis or RabbitMQ.) distributed message passing => multiple processes can… Continue reading Why and When to use Celery with Python Web Servers
Setting up a Python Virtual Environment for Web Development
Virtual Environments help in keeping all the packages required for one project at one place So you can avoid the issues with conflicting dependencies. You may even run different Python versions like 2.7, 3.5, 3.6 on the same system, inside different virtual envs. You can use the following steps when setting up any python project… Continue reading Setting up a Python Virtual Environment for Web Development
Essential Tips for WordPress Admins and Editors
(This post supposes that you have a working WordPress site already and now want to improve the content and design for the site.) You’ll first need a login for your WordPress site. The login is most probably at example.com/wp-login. Most articles on “Getting started with WordPress” begin with setting up WordPress on a server, or… Continue reading Essential Tips for WordPress Admins and Editors