A recent job opening advert (from Aardvark, for a Front-End Web Developers) goes:

Required Skills:
* Fluency in HTML and CSS
* Experience taking mockups and turning them into standards-compliant HTML/CSS
* Expertise in achieving cross-browser compatibility in IE, Firefox, and Safari
* Experience in implementing grid-based layouts in HTML/CSS
* Experience in an agile development environment

Pluses:
* Interest in user experience design and graphic design
* Experience in Javascript and Ruby on Rails
* History of side projects and interest in social media, browsers, and mobile web
* Obsession with new technologies and open source tools
* Experimental, user focused, and iterative
* Previous startup experience

I felt the Pluses section was very interesting, specially (you kinda see the others on Rails related job boards anyway):
* History of side projects and interest in social media, browsers, and mobile web
* Obsession with new technologies and open source tools

Shows how today’s start-ups value people who are really interested in what they do (and not just in for the money). An encouraging view of the world indeed – now I just have to get on it and get those much needed Plusses into my skills bag

Note to my employers, friends, well wishers and anyone else interested: This does not mean I am looking for a job! I love the job I have right now and am just happy to see the importance of “passion” in the world’s view of an ideal employee increasing!

I got a Amazon Kindle DX for a birthday gift! Thanks Ujwala!

And so far I am loving it. It’s better to read on compared to Kindle 1 (which, BTW, Ujwala had gifted to me last year) – and the native PDF support (and the search-anywhere) is awesome! The experimental browser that comes with the DX is much much improved compared to Kindle 1st Gen.

So I was reading more about Rails Routing in the rails-guides. And while I was in the bus today morning I wanted to read that on the Kindle (coz it is a pleasure to read on it). So I fired up the guides page on the experimental browser – it works, but reading a PDF or a Kindle-formatted book is so much better.

So I got this simple idea. Print the web page as a PDF and e-mail it to your Kindle. Here’s what I did:

1. Go to the site
2. Print – (PDF format “saved to file” instead of sending it to a printer). I was on Linux – Mac also has the “Print to PDF/PS support by default, for Windows you’ll need to get CutePDF installed)
3. e-mail it to your Kindle address (I also uploaded it to my dropbox – so I can get it later on) and you are done!

(BTW, dropbox is an amazing thing – if you use multiple computers/OS, you have to try this thing. If you are going to try it out (for free), help me out – use my Dropbox referral link)

So there you go – another easy way to get web-content for free on your Kindle. Go on enjoy the book now.

Blog-Notes

• Amazon Kindle DX
• Rails Guides – excellent info on the RubyOnRails framework
• CutePDF
• DropBox