Tag: github

gitignore.io – Generating Complex Git Ignore Files Automatically

My way of generating .gitignore files has evolved over time. First it was just adding files and folder names manually to a empty file called .gitignore. Then as more and more people started sharing their dotfiles, I started using copies of it. One most used resource for me is the Github gitignore Repository. I just grab the raw url of the gitignore that I want and use wget to save in my repository, like:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gitignore/master/Python.gitignore -O .gitignore

gitignore.io

Recently I have started using the online app gitignore.io. The cool thing about this is you can add a combination of things that define your environment and the gitignore is defined based on all of them. For example see the screenshot below:

gitignore_io

This generates a gitignore file that I can use for:

  • Python Django project
  • that I am going to develop using PyCharm
  • in a Linux Machine
  • under a virtual environment

If you thought this was cool, there is also

..etc., In case you are not using it, give it a try.

Thattachu – Open Source Typing Tutor

Typing tutor is a known ancient domain to work on. There are a number of places online/offline, tangible/intangible places to learn typing. But Srikanth (@logic) stumbled on a peculiar problem when worked for the Wikimedia Language Engineering team. The new age Indic input methods involved in computers seem to have no place to learn how to type on them. The only way seems to be – have a visual reference for the layout and begin typing one key at a time. This might be the most inefficient method of learning to input information. So what do we do?

Enter Thattachu

Thattachu is an open source typing tutor. It is built using the tool that Wikimedia Language Engineering Team have developed called jQuery IME. jquery.ime currently supports 62 languages and 150+ input methods. This is a JavaScript library which can be used on any web page. So we (I & Srikanth) set out to build a generic typing tutor which could employ any of the 62 languages or 150+ input methods. The project was conceived in May 2014 and was worked on only by May 2015 as I was busy with my Teach For India Fellowship. Thattachu borrows its tutor style from GNU Typist or gTypist which I used to learn touch typing in English.

Interface

Thattachu has three pages:

  1. Home page – A welcome page for those visiting the site and explaining what it is about.Thattachu_page1
  2. Course Selector – A place where you choose the course to learn. You select the language and the input method you want to learn and it lists the available courses.Thattachu_page2
  3. Workbench – A place where you practice typing. When you select a course in the Course Selector, the workbench loads with the course you selected and you can begin typing with the input method you chose. It remembers your most recent course and lesson so you can continue from where left it the previous session.Thattachu_page3

Course Structure

Each language has a set of input methods – each input method has a set of courses. The courses are classified based on their difficulty as “Beginner”, “Intermediate” and “Expert”. Each course has a set of lessons to complete and and each lesson is a collection of lines that have to be typed.

thattachu_courses

Thattachu Asiriyar

Creating the tool is the easier part of a content dependent system. The real work is generating the content that the tool can be used with. That way we faced the challenge of creating course.JSON files required for the tool. Hence a user friendly tool Thattachu Asiriyar was born.

Thattachu Asiriyar lets anyone author a course and generate a course file. If you want to author courses, go to Thattachu Asiriyar create the course file and mail it to
arun [at] arunmozhi [dot] in -mentioning “Thattachu course” in the subject.

Github savvy authors

Or if you have a Github account and know about pull requests. Kindly

  1. Fork the Thattachu repohttps://ghbtns.com/github-btn.html?user=tecoholic&repo=thattachu&type=fork&count=true
  2. Put the course file into the data/language_code folder
  3. Update the courselist.json in your folder with the metadata and the filename
  4. Send me a pull request.
  5. Feel awesome for helping the humanity learn typing

Developers

Here are a few points for those interested in the code or those who think they can improve Thattachu.

  • Thattachu is a web application written in HTML and JavaScript (AngularJS).
  • It is a completely static site with all the information stored as JSON files and served by XHR requests when requested by the Angular $http.
  • For input jQuery.ime is used.
  • It is a completely static site and can be hosted in any web server.
  • It uses localStorage of the user to track last worked on course and load it when the user opens the page next time.

Unit Testing with CasperJS

Today I sat down to create a JavaScript library. I wanted to do it the way I have long dreamed of – TDD (Test Driven Development). There is no dearth of Unit testing libraries and frameworks for JavaScript, so after some reading on the internet settled on CasperJS and PhantomJS combination. CasperJS is just awesome for functional testing, but Unit testing? Even though it supports Unit Testing, it as such is not a dedicated unit testing framework like Karma or Protractor. Read this for more information on TTD frameworks for JS libraries.

Loading plain JavaScript files in CasperJS for unit testing seems to be completely undocumented. I tend to think it is because it wasn’t meant to be webpage-less. But the note on docs of tester module says:

The best way to learn how to use the Tester API and see it in action is probably to have a look at CasperJS’ own test suites.

Thanks for this quote, I found that using the fs module one can load local filesystem files as modules to be used. Using that now I could write unit tests while developing the library and later on write functional tests while using the library.

Here is the file structure

library
--test
  |--unit
  |--test.js
  |--index.html
--src
  |--livetransit.js

And here is are the two tests – i) uses a webpage based approach; ii) uses module approach
https://gist.github.com/tecoholic/937f51b6889448836db8

Obsession

I have been observing a pattern in my life over the past few months. I am obsessed about something in the evenings and the free time. It was books for a month, Far Cry 3 for another, and has recently turned into Chess.

I am trying to understand the underlying factor which is responsible for this behaviour. After reading through some pages about impact of games on human brain, watching the TED talks like Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world and assuring myself that I am not really going crazy, I think I have a plausible answer.

Like all young people I need to have that sense of achievement.

Being a introvert, the above explanation makes a lot of sense. I am not uploading pics in Facebook, I am not tweeting even an average of 1 tweet/day – other things that could keep me filled with the achievement and appreciation factor I am looking for.

Obsession Hacking

The word hacking is being used in a lot of places where it means “modification” or “change” or “tweak”. I am trying to use it for channeling my obsession into something that could be productive – as in work – as well as supply me the required achievement factor. One activity which I know could do that is – Coding.

Taking a look at what I have done in 2014:

github_dismal

I think I would do what John Resig recommends – Write Code Everyday, starting from today December 1, 2014. Let me see how far the obsession hacking goes.

Update: December 20,2014
Well. This doesn’t seem to be as simple as it seems. Gaming, reading books, chess – all have been entertaining and relaxing. Because that is consumption of content. But coding is production of content, hence has proved to be a much difficult and straining task. I haven’t been able to get to coding at all. The experiment so far has been a big failure.