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

If you have nothing to do with Linux you probably can stop reading now. Unless you want to get introduced to a very nice tool in the Linux world. I can say without doubt that this saves me at least an hour every month. In addition it gets you away from doing some mundane “set-up” like things every time to start working. It has a load of features but today I’ll just scratch the surface. But it’ll be enough to start you off and I promise you’ll be glad you found screen.

One of the programs that I love and can’t go through the day without is GNU Screen. It’s like a Window manager, but only for your terminals. You know, like you are working with so many terminals/consoles/terminal-windows all the time (one to the DB, one with vim open, one to run the tests, one to run the program etc., one to watch the logs, a few to prod boxes etc.). And then you disconnect and then reconnect (from home, somewhere else) and you have to set-up all that again?

Yeah screen can help you with all that. My work pattern involves connecting to a screen session (and I get all the windows/context loaded). Whether I connect from work, home from somewhere else, all I have to say is:

$ screen -ls (to see what sessions I have running)
$ screen -R some-session-name

And it’s wicked-easy to switch between different windows, search through your history etc. You can also configure it to do a few “start-up” things every time. For example, at home, I have screen

1. configured to Open 4 windows when it starts up and
2. have window-0 go to my code dir (to teh root of my RubyOnRails part of the site)
3. start up auto-test on window-1
4. show the logs on window-2
5. ssh into the blue host (which hosts my site)

Since the windows are persisted, I don’t have to do all these things every time I connect (for a lazy programmer (and all programmers are lazy aren’t they?) that’s a lot of help). You can even share the screens with someone else (I have not tried that yet though).

Anyway, I hope you are sold by now. Even if you are not, spend some time (shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours) installing/configuring/running screen and you will soon reap the rewards. To get you started:

• The GNU Screen home-page: http://www.gnu.org/software/screen
• A good guide to installing/setting-up/using: http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/09/27/a-guide-to-gnu-screen
• Once you start liking it you’ll need a cheat-sheet: http://aperiodic.net/screen/quick_reference?do=show

A word about configuring: heard that Ubuntu will soon shipping with decent .screenrc (sane default configuration) so you don’t have to. Meanwhile you can configure it yourself (as in the Red Hat guide above) or look at these cool options: http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/gnu-screen-screenrc-configuration-file-p13/. Here is my .screenrc:

vbell off
vbell_msg "Ring"

# detach on hangup
autodetach on

# don't display copyright page
startup_message off

# scroll back
defscrollback 1000

# setup the caption
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{-b gk}%-w%{+b kg}%50>%n %t%{-b gk}%+w %=%C%< "

# right/left bindings
bindkey "^[[c" next
bindkey "^[[d" prev
bindkey "^[[b" focus

# Set the altscreen so that when you quit vi, it will go back to
# what it was before
altscreen on

And finally, my delicious links for screen.