25
2009
Using PHP to Get Stock Quotes from Yahoo Finance
Few months back I wrote this module for some product which I was working that didn’t work out so I thought I will make it available to people to use.
This is very simple PHP API for fetching stock quotes from yahoo finance. I hope people find it useful. How to use it is mentioned in the PHP file itself. In case you have some queries regarding same ; do let me know.
You can download the PHP file from this link ystock
Any feedbacks are welcome.
23
2009
Subversion Keyword Expansion in Microsoft Office Files
Assuming svn keywords property is enabled on your office files you need add the keywords in the syntax shown below
For the current $Revision:: $
For the checkin date $Date:: $
For Author $Author:: $
The noticeable difference from the keywords expansion in text file is the extra spaces given after :: if you don’t give extra spaces than your file will get corrupted as during expansion the space required for expansion will not be available and hence causing corruption of files.
21
2009
Atlassian Stimulus Package
For this week only, Atlassian is offering a special 5-user “starter” license of JIRA and Confluence for only $5 each. They’re calling it the Atlassian Stimulus Package and it’s a great way of supporting small teams and small businesses in this difficult economic environment. Best of all, they will be donating every penny to charity, so please help them spread the word!
The Atlassian Foundation is donating all proceeds to Room to Read, a charity that helps the world’s future entrepreneurs by building libraries and schools for children in developing nations.
Get all the details at www.atlassian.com/starter. Hurry, offer ends on 24 April 2009.
Please spread the word as much as possible.
I would like to congratulate Atlassian for the great effort.
15
2009
Python Ester Eggs
The Python interpreter contains few ester eggs which expresses sentiments of Python developer by and large I will listing them down if you know more kindly let me know
1. If you open a Python interpreter, and type
, it outputs the following:
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!
2. On python interpreter typing from __future__ import braces
it prints the output as follows Traceback (SyntaxError: not a chance (<interactive input>, line 1)
3. On python interpreter type import __hello__
this outputs Hello world…
Those were few easter eggs which were there in Python pre-3000 release
An antigravity module is added to Python 3.0. Importing the module opens a web browser to an xkcd comic that portrays Python having an antigravity module
Kindly let me know if you know any more easter eggs.
9
2009
How to Add Jira Quick Search to FireFox Search Provider
I am to used to searching everything from Firefox search providers box on the left hand side; I was getting fed up when I type some issue id for my local jira and not getting any results so I decided to develop a search provider for jira quick search and to my surprise it was easier than I expected; hence I put ins some effort in working it out and I want to save effort of people who might be interested in doing same.
We will create an xml file based on following page creating open search plugin for Firefox
<ShortName>Jira</ShortName>
<Description>My Personal Jira</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width=“16″ height=“16″>My Image URl</Image>
<Url type=“text/html” method=“post” template=“http://vishy:8080/jira/secure/QuickSearch.jspa”>
<Param name=“searchString” value=“{searchTerms}”/>
<Param name=“ei” value=“UTF-8″/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://vishy:8080/jira/secure/QuickSearch.jspa</SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>
Edit the fields in bold according to your setup and save the file in your <Firefox installation directory>\searchplugins\jira.xml
Restart your browser and check the list of search providers; you will see a new search provider with name you specified in tag short name.
The above concept can be extended for searching any other intranet side through Firefox.
Enjoy searching Jira issues; post me back if you have some issue getting it working. 
30
2009
My Personal Jira
Before starting on this I would like to than Atlassian team for starting personal licenses for users. I would say its really a big thing for me as it saves me a lot time going to atlassian site and downloading license after every one month.
So now what do I do with my personal Jira installation :
Tracking my own progress on things: My jira Installation has project name learning which I have components as shown below so the differnet sources of my learning has become components of my jira project learning and not forget the title of my Jira installation is Personal life Jira
Personal Jira Components
Similarly versions are quarters of year and I create few Jira issues for each components each quarter like say I have a traget of reading two books each quarter, write ten blog posts each quarter; Jira helps in setting my personal goals.
We all agree that putting down things on paper or in genral documenting it somehwere helps alot especially putting down what we want to do and what we are suppose to do. People might say Jira might be to big application for managing personal taks but in my humble opinion its not about tool its more about the intent.
Developing some plugins and customization for Jira: Being a developer at heart I was not able to refrain my self from trying my hands on Jira’s plugin development environment with so much help available its pretty easy to get started though maven may suck you at start but once set it works as bread and butter.
So Jira as whole as impacted my learning process; I would like to thank Atlassian for providing such a nice tool and great licensing options.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with Atlassian by any means.
6
2009
Subversion 1.5 released Now What ??
Subversion 1.5 is out and its been almost half year to it. Now thought comes to mind where to go from here, Subversion has still a long way to go from here, Subversion developers should not content with accomplishments in 1.5 its still a long way for Subversion to go to be an enterprise software, having said that I would also like to point that penetration of Subversion in enterprise environment has considerably increased but still it has an uphill task and I am sure that Subversion development team is aware of same.
I am big fan of Subversion thats why I sometime ponder about its future, when I see fanatics talking about GIT, Clearcase and Perforce. I was really saddened when Linus trovalds in his speech said “whole point the Subversion project started is wrong” but I have not found anything wrong with the tool, may be I am not as capable as Linus and neither I am into kernel development but Subversion works pretty well for me and so does for my organization, and there are many other Subversion works for them too.
There is a big wish list which people might have for Subversion but I would say to Subversion developer community add the features which are good for tool as whole and keep in mind that Subversion is version control first anything else later.
1
2009
Ballmer Peak
Ballmer Peak
I agree with Ballmer’s Peak; personal experience if you have proper quantity of alcohol and than do coding you are highly efficient but have no comments on whats that quantity as when I try I am not able to reach to that level but some time it happens on its own.
So alcohol is good for programmers; just kidding.
3
2008
Is Google Chrome Just Another Browser ?
Google today released windows installer for windows as stated in there blog. It is available for download from the google’s website.
Many people like me must be having this question is this another browser in the race of already packed crowd or it will stand loud and tall amongst it’s competitors like firefox, Mozilla, Internet Explorer to name few. As per google’s blog we can soon expect the binaries for Linux and Mac as well. Let’s take a first cut look into the browser:
- Downloading the browser is pretty easy you can download it from google’s website; intensity of Google pushing with chrome shows up with the fact that the promotional link for chrome can be found on the google.com page; which has been empty till today; no promotion and ads; break the rules if it serves and I really don’t see why Google should not do it.
- As Google has been adding value to the users with gmail; google suggest to name a few here comes another tool from Google’s arsenal chrome is no exception when it comes to giving the best to users.
- There is something for everyone whether you are end user or a developer
- As an end user you can experience the classic color combination which is soothing to eyes; memory usage is pretty low when compared with firefox; it consumes around 1/3 to 1/4 when compared with firefox.
- As developer you can view source at your disposal; debug javascript and javascript console is also available separately
- It also gives pretty handy functionality called task manager which gives you amount of physical memory consumed by different tabs
- The best thing which I liked is installer asking you to make google.com as your default search engine or choose some other search engine to be made default.
- You don’t need to have separate search box for searching; you can search from address bar itself
If I look at the browsers which I have used Chrome stands a strong chance of success and is a clear winner for me in many aspects; this may embark a new era in browsers history.
Points mentioned above are not exhaustive neither they cover all functionalities available in Google chrome; this is just a first cut look at the browser.
22
2008
Microsoft and OpenSource Nice Comic at xkcd.om
Comic on Microsoft and OpenSource