#32. Google reader closure. Hail Feedly

After many years already using Google reader to follow blogs and websites, thanks to their update tracking capabilities, I want to dedicate this small post to this fallen product. As you may know on the 1st of July of this year (2013) is going offline, and after waiting a few weeks if Google reconsidered their decision and with no change at all, I started looking for alternatives.

After trying the most renown readers that promoted themselves to occupy the place of the falling king of readers, the winner IMHO is Feedly, which initially I discarded because it needs to download an extension to work and is not completely web based.

That made me try Pulse, but the magazine interface did not convince me at all, I wanted something similar to the old reader, and after finally trying Feedly I am pretty convinced that is the best alternative I found until now. It lacks some features that I miss, and I expect that some day they will implement, like a search bar for posts, to find something that you read some time ago and you want to read again. It helped to do a seamless change that they imported all the data from reader in your first login, so if you are still stuck with Google reader it is the time to change and let it die as many web products have already disappeared. Bye-bye reader.

Thanks for reading!

#30. AppHarbor is the best hosting for beginning freelance .Net developers

AppHarbor is a cloud computing service where we can create web applications in .Net, those applications can be continuous integrated with our github or bitbucket repository. The service downloads our newest revision in the hooked repository and executes all tests in the solution before publishing the new revision.

AppHarbor is free of charge with some limitations, but with enough possibilities for starting freelancers, like me.

So, if you are starting your freelance career as a .Net developer you should check it out. I am just promoting as a satisfied user, nothing more.

For example the homepage of Wishlist Manager is hosted in AppHarbor.

#28. Migrating to Disqus

I have started to migrate to Disqus the comments on my blogs putinyourbasket.blogspot.com and shoppingforcharity.blogspot.com, as currently are the ones that I post more on, Disqus has a good integration with Blogger and really looks like a great community.

It's really easy to integrate, just create an account and add the Disqus gadget to your layout, maybe you can find that it does not add to your blog and maybe it is because you have a modified template, then you will need to add the widget manually, following the instructions of disqus website is relatively easy.

#20. Sorry tumblr, ifttt rules

I’ve been thinking of changing the blog to try another blog management site, currently I don’t want to host it myself so one of my options was tumblr, it’s a simple and easy to manage blogging site but as I was going to try couldn’t use windows live writer with it, searching for a solution found out that they don’t use a standard API, so I won’t be using their site directly, I’ll probably use ifttt a service to post indirectly through conditions.

#18. Renew TOR identity in python with vidalia bundle to automate worldwide testing of your website

First of all you need to have the Vidalia Bundle, and configure the torrc config file, find the value HashedControlPassword and uncomment it, next you need to create the hashed password, to do it, you can execute in a command line "tor --hash-password {pass}"
Copy the hash and save it in the config file. Restart Vidalia.
Taken this code from Moshe Basanchig, I've written this code wich authenticates against TOR:



Be careful, you should pass to the function the password you created the hash for, not the hashed string!. Also check out this book, it is a good and fast read:

#17. Data analysis in detail

If excel can’t satisfy your needs in data analysis you can have an online MySQL database ready in 2 minutes, create a DB in www.freesql.org and download the portable version of HeidiSQL. Two thumbs up!
Edit: After using freesql DB for a while found the limitation of 1600 operations....well now just one thumb up ;)

#8. To do lists. Options. Part 1

I'll continue with the last post about to do list, next is:

4. online todo lists: I've been trying many of them for now (todoist, toodledo, gtasks, taskbin, etc.)  the only I keep for the moment is rtm and gtasks, more like a container of ideas to be processed and classified than a real todo list. All of them have some ideas that the others don't have, some have a slick interface and are optimized to work with only with the keyboard (which I find great!), but all of them have some shortcomings that I find hard to work without 'em.
5. desktop apps: I haven't tried many of them because some are paid software, and the ones that I tried can keep up with the goodness of the online ones. Almost all of them doesn't have a good interface and working with can be a real pain and a real lose of time and overhead. Two that I save from the burning are tasque and milkify, the two integrate with rtm so many of the shortcomings of the other options can be salved, tasque is simple but nice, but recently I discovered milkify and looks great, I'll keep looking into it.

The idea of this post was to  think over the many options that we have to keep ourselves organized, the problem is that all of us have a diferent way of organizing, and from these options some might find that none of them can cope their necessities, or it can but with a drawback, a big overhead to keep organized. So, soon I'll post about some of the needs that I find indispensable to keep a good to do list.

#7. To do lists. Options. Part 1

For some time I've been trying some of the available free applications to keep track of tasks, normally for private use, I'll try to enumerate some of the available options we have:

1. Pen and paper: clearly a prioritized to do list, not appropriated for many tasks, it's a good option if we write down tasks to do in the day and enumerate the steps to resolve a more complex task.
2. Notebook: I separate this one from the last because I assume that the last one is a simple page to do list, this one is more suitable for a large project so we can track all the process of the resolution and the steps taken. I only find one drawback, it's the fact that if we don't want to lose the track of some tasks we have to drag uncompleted tasks or ideas to the next pages of the notebook, although one of my favorite options, also it has some glamor if you choose a good notebook.
3. todo.txt: It's a good option, for a non overhead to do list, we don't lose track of tasks and can keep it synchronized online, but we only can have a list of items and it can get cluttered easily, like the notebook. Here, the major problem I find is the lose of a history.

For not extend this post I'll continue with more options soon in part 2.

#6. Config Cisco vpn client on windows 7 x64 without dying trying

I had to connect to my work's network from home to be available for a deploy this weekend, at work we use the Cisco vpn client in a windows xp environment without major problems. When I tried using it at home, my windows 7 machine exploded in a BSOD, so I looked for other options:

1. In my laptop I use Ubuntu so I tried vpnc without success, it showed a message about some tunneling unimplemented option so I discarded
2. I decided searching at google for a solution and I found much posts on cisco forums about the problems on 64 bits boxes, finally found that last version had a version for 64 so
3. After installing it when I put my pc to sleep hanged on another BSOD about a ndys.sys, and this time i found this posts where it explained how to solve it:
   http://weblogs.asp.net/bhouse/archive/2009/01/15/how-to-successfully-install-cisco-vpn-client-on-windows-7.aspx
   http://jjcoolstuff.blogspot.com/2009/12/cisco-vpn-with-windows-7-ndissys-bsod.html
   
   I tried for now and the system doesn't crash, but I couldn't connect because seems that that I wrote an incorrect IP of the host to connect.

With all this process I lost 3 days of free time, nobody wants to lose time doing tedious tasks, my reflection today is why so simple things in computing take so time? We can't we make some processes more easy?

#3. Wave

S'ha acabat veient al final que google wave ha fracasat, l'adopció per part del públic ha estat mínima. Segurament ha influit el costum que ja te la gent amb certes eines i poques ganes de canvi, a les quals tambné li sumo les ganes que te google de ser el totpoderos, segurament va ser un intent massa prepotent el voler substituir altres eines ja adaptades i a la qual el públic ja està acostumat.
Actualment segueixen intentar fent una xarxa social tipus mur, amb el buzz pero vist la poca adopció que també té, no li hauguro un gran futur. Ja veurem com acabarà. No crec que ho pugui colar com a proposta per a la feina :)