Posts

📄 Note

STOP Suicide Personal Pledge

I pledge that I will:

tell someone if I need help;
be aware of the suicide warning signs in others;
ask directly about suicide if I’m worried about someone;
listen without judgement and do what I can to keep them safe;

Source : https://stopsuicidepledge.org/stop-suicide-personal-pledge/

📄 Note

NextCloud Cookbook

I found NextCloud Cookbook, and it's so easy to organize my recipes now.

I used to bookmark my recipes. Recently, I am trying so many new recipes from online and didn't like the way I am organizing my bookmarks. Then I found nextcloud cookbook. To add a recipe to the collection, all you have to do is paste in the URL of the recipe, it parses and downloads the recipe to your specified nextcloud folder as JSON.

For the cookbook to parse your recipe, it should follow a schema.org recipe format. In my experience, most of the recipe sites are using this schema.

I used Recipe Crawler to parse all my current bookmarks at once and copied to my nextcloud recipe folder. Now, I can filter by tags, categories, they even have Mobile app which made my life easier.

Thank you, Nextcloud Cookbook!

📄 Note

I bought Kobo Elipsa

I don't want to buy anything unless I feel it's absolutely needed. I believe everyone is trying to sell you something, and it is important to not fall in the trap and become a lifelong consumer (I know I can't avoid it most of the time). This post is mostly to justify myself for buying Kobo elipsa. I bought Kobo elipsa after thinking of buying it for more than 6 months, and it is one of the very few things which did not make me hate myself for buying it.

I like to read, but books are costly and sometimes not accessible to read, maybe due to the size of the book or font. I can buy an e-reader, but I feel my book reading is incomplete if I don't underline the lines I like.

Now, I can download books as PDF or EPUB from Internet Archive, copy to my elipsa and read. Elipsa lets me make notes on my downloaded books, which is not the case for may e-readers out there, which is the reason I picked this.

I have to have a notebook for each purpose, I keep buying notebooks and never feel I have enough. Now, with elipsa I feel so relaxed that I can have a separate notebook for each of my needs, they gave quite few backgrounds for notes which makes it even more helpful.

I think their handwriting to text conversion is good that it was able to convert my bad writing to beautiful notes which is a plus, even though I really don't need this feature.

They have only Dropbox and Google Drive as cloud storage options, I couldn't configure Nextcloud as storage yet.

I got the e-reader, stylus and cover for £299. There might be e-reader with the same features out there, I couldn't find anything cheaper than this. Unless, you have similar requirements, I won't recommend buying it.

I will try to write a complete review of Kobo Elipsa after using it for little longer, as of now, I am enjoying my reading and writing on Elipsa.

📄 Note

Import Outlook mails to thunderbird without Account

I had some outlook backup files and I wanted to open them in Thunderbird. I spent some time figuring out how to do it. So, documenting it here. There might be better ways to do it, but it these steps worked for me.

Convert PST file to MBOX using PST converter tool like libpst (search in your package manager, and you will find it).
Create a folder in your system, this will be used to store the mails.
Copy the MBOX file to the folder you created and if it has a file extension, remove it.(e.g., example.mbx to example)
Repeat the above step if you have multiple .pst files
Add the folder you created to Thunderbird. Settings -> Account Settings-> Account Actions -> Add Local folder

(If you don't see Add Local folder, install LocalFolders Extension).
Close and open Thunderbird, and you should be able to read your Outlook mails.

📄 Note

Best practices for better websites by Darek Kay

I found Best Practices for Building Better Websites by Darek Kay when going through Coding Otaku's Blogroll, which is very useful for someone like me who started learning website building. I started implementing a few things in my website after reading the blog. Darek has many more interesting blogs on accessibility that I have yet to explore.

Now, I am visiting some awesome websites with web rings and blogrolls that I did not see before with search engine results. It feels like a new world unlocked.

💭 Thoughts

Mobile View

When I was developing this website, It was a feat to make my website have the same look and feel in mobile or small screen devices as it is on my desktop. I had to compromise and make a few decisions to achieve it (I hope I did).

One day, when browsing, I stumbled upon Eduardo's website. The moment I saw this website, I fell in love with the styles and the colour scheme. It is so soothing, and the feel of the newspaper made me subconsciously immerse in the site. Then I shared it, and the person opened it on a mobile phone, and he did not understand what I was talking about. The mobile view for this site is good, and it is responsive design, but it did not do any justice to the desktop site. I felt sad as many did not experience what I did and might not even know that other version exists.

That day, I realized that many of us might be missing some wonderful things on the internet when we get stuck with small screen devices.

💭 Thoughts

Organ Donation

I like to believe most people are in favour of organ donation as it can save lives, and if not donated, organs are useless. The fact is, there are always more people waiting for the organs. When I think about it, maybe many support the idea, but because they never got to sign for it, organs are not automatically used to save or improve other lives.

Then comes the debate whether organ donation should be opt-in or opt-out. I might say it should be opt-out, as I can not comprehend why anyone not want to donate after death, but I know there can be reasons beyond my understanding.

So, the only solution is educating and spreading awareness about organ donation and letting individuals decide what is wrong or right for them.

If you support organ donation, not only signing up for it (if you are in a country where it is opt-in), but also talking about it whenever you can, might make a difference that you might not even realize. I wish the government and educational institutes add it to the curriculum so that people can decide early in their life, but as I can not control that, I will do what I can and hope you do what you can.

📄 Note

Story behind my logo

I use my logo everywhere online as my profile picture, and often people ask me about it. When you look at my logo, it might look like it doesn't have any meaning, but it does!

When I tried to design a logo for my website, I spent a lot of time (I am bad at it), and my best was this cute lion made out of letters in "exeami".
I was very proud of it. But wherever I used it, the details of the logo were not visible.
I was back to square one. I wanted my logo to be noticeable, even in favicon, and represent me.

After struggling with my logo design skills, I decided to use symbols instead of writing letters.
Here is my logo.

As you might already know, my name is Amitha which means boundless, limitless or infinite (which can be a perfect symbol for my logo). This is a platform to group my thoughts in one place using code, So the code block {}. Wrapping amitha in code block {∞} is what my logo is. I made some changes to make it look like a person with glasses (maybe it's just for me, as I stared at it long enough and imagined things 😛), I got my logo. I ended up using it everywhere not just in this website :).

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