Hari's Corner
Humour, comics, tech, law, software, reviews, essays, articles and HOWTOs intermingled with random philosophy now and thenThe benefits of a VCS for single user projects
Filed under:
Software and Technology by
Hari
Posted on Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 18:39 IST (last updated: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 @ 18:43 IST)
Since I've been programming a bit lately, I've come to understand more and more the reason why version control systems (like Subversion or Git) are useful for single user projects. For a long time, I never understood its purpose or usage and thought it was quite wasteful to use version control for personal projects - code which nobody else would touch anyway. I now realize that it is an extremely useful tool in any programmer's arsenal for any coding project, big or small.
Without going into the advanced features or usage of source control systems or into debates over which is better - centralized or distributed VCS - I'll list down a few of my thoughts here on why every programmer should use version control for all but the most trivial projects.
BiaWeb Qt: Qt version of my static content manager
Filed under:
My software by
Hari
Posted on Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 18:31 IST (last updated: Wed, Dec 1, 2010 @ 16:55 IST)
Update: The BiaWeb Qt home page is now up.
I am currently developing the Qt version of my static website creator/content manager, BiaWeb. This is tailored to content-rich websites with a collection of articles organized by category. The idea is simple, but effective. For a demo of how this works, check my reviews site.
Here are some screenshots at this stage of development.
Main window
Nostalgia with dosbox: Prince of Persia
Filed under:
Bits and Bytes by
Hari
Posted on Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 21:05 IST (last updated: Mon, Nov 22, 2010 @ 21:09 IST)
Ah, the good old days. Prince of Persia was one of the first games I ever played on a PC and I still have fond memories of it. Thankfully I can recreate some of the magic with dosbox today and relive the times when games relied on their playability factor more than shiny fancy graphics.
Here's me playing Level 12 and winning. 
It's not nearly as daunting as I thought at first but Prince is a challenging game by today's standards considering its time-pressure factor.
It's not nearly as daunting as I thought at first but Prince is a challenging game by today's standards considering its time-pressure factor. My thoughts on Ubuntu
Filed under:
Software and Technology by
Hari
Posted on Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 18:28 IST (last updated: Mon, Mar 23, 2015 @ 20:25 IST)
So I've finally switched to Ubuntu (10.10 Maverick) from Debian and I find it not that much different, particularly as I've been a Gnome user for some time now. I am, and will always remain a Debian fan and I really don't feel that Ubuntu is all that different (apart from branding issues and some system tools). Of course one immediate difference you notice is the sudo environment which I don't feel comfortable using. In Debian, I always prefer to log in as root to perform any administrative tasks and log out immediately afterwards. While I have set the root password in Ubuntu, I still want to be able to disable sudo completely and system-wide.
News show anchor creates a stunning record
Filed under:
Humour and Nonsense by
Hari
Posted on Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 10:09 IST (last updated: Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 11:59 IST)
Papa Hari News Service
In an incident that stunned the entire media establishment in the world and millions of people who regularly watch TV news shows, a television show anchor actually allowed a guest with an opposing viewpoint to the network's predominant ideology complete a sentence in full without any interruption whatsoever (phew!). Instead of cutting in with commonly used phrases like "Mr. X, Mr. X, what about your views on the larger issue here...?", "I'm sorry to have to cut you here, but we're running out of time", "Mr. Y wants to answer your allegations. Mr. X, excuse me" or "Mr. X, can you please answer the question directly!" the news anchor actually waited for the guest to complete the sentence. Is occasional swift justice a failure of law?
Filed under:
People and society by
Hari
Posted on Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 17:24 IST (last updated: Wed, Nov 10, 2010 @ 18:18 IST)
The recent "encounter" killing of Mohan, the accused in the heinous case of kidnap, rape and murder of a 10 year old girl and the murder of her brother near Coimbatore has brought forth the usual and expected reactions both from the general public and the human rights groups.
The general public are jubilant about the swift "divine" intervention of justice while Human Rights groups are raising a holy stink over the whole episode calling for heads to roll in the police department. I don't subscribe to either extreme viewpoints entirely, but I do lean slightly in favour of public opinion on this particular episode and I'll explain why.