हिंदी ब्लॉग

एक हिंदी में ब्लॉग बनाने का मन है। क्या कहते हो बना लें?

Too little productivity

Most of the day passed in trying to solve the problem, about which i wrote yesterday, my Mac was facing since few days. It was not loading few website while other websites were loading fine. The problem was not with the network or the router as other devices connected to same WiFi were working fine and loading the same websites well that my Mac was refusing. Even the phone with which i am USB tethering Mac was loading the problem pages fine. So it was the system issue. I was most concerned of the chances that my Mac has caught some kind of virus that is doing all this. Although I have ESET smart security pro installed on the system, not all viruses get caught in the filters.
I tried changing the DNS to all the possible values but to no avail. The problem persisted. I cleared the DNS cache many times but nothing changed. So i searched and found posts with similar problems and the solutions suggested didn't worked for me. I did a lots of trial and error and finally downloaded and installed the newest security update for the operating system Mac OSX Yosemite. Don't know its because of it or because of any of the numerous tit bits i did before installing update my system started working fine and now all the pages are loading nicely.
Clearing of DNS was another issue in itself. Apple changed the commands few version back and then they again switched it back so which command will work and which not was to be found with trying all the commands.
Now what i did productively today is i finished the api then created new project in app engine, uploaded the api to app engine and imported the JSON into the datastore. I did not try to import comments today. Will try it out tomorrow.
While testing the api by updating URLs in my android app i noticed the textviews were jumping when ads were loading and that wasn't looking good so i spent some time in fixing that. Finally managed to get it to not jump.
Also i noticed that when i am pulling data from the datastore to build JSON i need to check that the data is fine before saving it to memcache. Its because if the data is not successfully queried then i will save the empty or wrong JSON in the memcache and all the subsequent request will be served with that wrong JSON. It will spoil the experience completely.
I also added the comment queries to the memcache. There also i need to keep check of the data.
Its 2 am already so
Later..

Lazy day

Today was cold and lazy day.
I wanted to just lay down and not do anything, but you know.. 😔.
So i managed to import the api data to app engine datastore by pulling and parsing JSON from my current api. Actually i have imported 1 table and 1 more yet to be imported but that is not important. Even if i don't import it, it won't effect a thing but i will try to do that just for the sake of learning.
I tested the new api with my app and its working flawlessly.
I imported the data in local datastore, but the script will import it well in production server when i upload the project to app engine. Tomorrow i will be making a new app engine project and upload the api files to test it again.
I also learnt how to use memcache on app engine. Although it was just few line of code but it makes a huge difference in performance and server costs. What you do here is that you check if the data you looking for is saved in the memcache or not. If its there you serve it right away from memcache. If not you pull it from the datastore and save a copy in  memcache and also serve a copy to user. When next time that data is needed you pull it from the memcache and serve it without doing the roundtrip to the datastore. Memcache, as the name suggest is space in system memory(RAM) that is very fast compared to the disk or datastore so performance improvement is very good. And also app engine gives you restricted queries to datastore in free plan so you save that too by using memcache. If you Move to paid plan you will save cost by using memcache effectively.
I think i need to again read the app engine docs. I read it long back and now i have to look up every time i plan to do anything. This looking into is taking too much time and slowing me down considerably. 
Parsing JSON with python was new experience to me. I used simplejson to parse it. That doesn't mean i have learnt it. I found a sample code and adapted it to work by trial and error but afterward when i looked into the code it looked just like java code i wrote in my android app to parse the same JSON. Just a little syntax difference. Will read little more about simplejson. It will come very handy in long run.
As i have never learnt python in the way i should have, i feel little under confident writing the code but as i write it more i find it far more easier to write and way cleaner than either PHP or java. And writing app engine apps using webapp2 is a bliss compared to writing a vanilla PHP code.
In other news ,for some strange reason i am finding that my system is not loading few websites. It just keep on loading and doesn't show anything. If i try same pages from my phone using the same WiFi connection it loads in a jiffy. Don't know what's the problem. Will try to fix it. May be the problem is in the DNS. If it is then its a quick fix. If not then its going to be headache for me. Just chimed in that the problem may be in the host file i edited recently. Will look into it tomorrow.
What more..
Yes I updated more softwares.
Enough typing on phone on this cold and lazy day.
See ya..

Software updates and api testing

Today went by updating softwares which i was delaying for some time.
My shitty internet connection was not allowing me to do the updating. Today i installed a download manager on my phone and downloaded all the updates while doing all other works. When i started my system i had all required softwares to start with updating.
I managed to build the api for my android apps using python and tested it with android emulator. Will try with live api tomorrow.
Tomorrow i will try to figure out how to import the data from MySQL database into app engine datastore. I thing i will be able to write a script that can pull the JSON from my old api and put the data in datastore.
If someone read my last post he will wonder why i am trying to move api from PHP to app engine. Its because i use a VPS from VPSdime to host my websites. Although it's powerful enough to withstand the api along with my websites, I still find it far less reliable to host api. Why i think it's OK to host website on that server and not api? Think it this way, if someone downloads my app and opens it for the first time and my server is slow or down at that moment the person will uninstall the app right away and my app will never going to find space in that phone again. Worst case scenario he will write a bad review and give 1 star. And that's not good. A website visitor may try again visiting the page later in time if it's down but app user has to download whole app to use it again. That is too much friction.
Also learnt how to show/hide hidden files and folders in Mac. In doing so i had my first introduction with bash scripting. Will write a post about it later.

See ya

App engine java python and more..

As i wrote in last post i am planning to use google app engine to host json api for my android apps so today time went into it.
I was using PHP to generate JSON from MySQL database. PHP makes it a breeze to generate JSON. Only few line of code and you are all set. App engine also support PHP but SQL is paid so i am not using it. Not because of the cost but if it can be done with app engine datastore using python or java then why not do it.
I am not fluent in either python or java but have workable knowledge and also know how to find the answers if stuck.
Today i managed to figure how to generate JSON from datastore using  python. Done it with help of django simplejson module.
Reading through the app engine docs i also found it interesting to build a backend using java. Android studio makes it real easy to go through the process but my internet speed killed all the fun. I could have built the whole api with java today but my system spent hours downloading the app engine java SDK and i think that too isn't perfectly working. I tested 2 modules one cloud endpoint and other java servlet. Endpoint one was not running perfectly. The time it took to download java SDK i managed to generate json using python.
Also my Mac(actually hackintosh) was refusing to load the page using "localhost:8080", which is default, as address. So i edited the host file and still nothing worked. When i changed the default port from 8080 to 8888 it started working.
Also genymotion refused to take "10.0.2.2:8888" as address to local api. I had to turn on the android emulator to get it working.
I hope tomorrow i will complete the api and also build the basic app to work with that api. Later i will polish the app.

Again..

Again a big break 😞
Just not getting into the groove.
Good thing that happened in these days is that i continued with all the health stuff.
I managed to loose around 10 KG of weight. Bad thing that came with it is that all my recently purchased clothes are not fitting now😒(but i can now get into old clothes. yay!! 🙌).
Started sleeping early😴. Feeling more refreshed 🙆because of it. Could feel in the morning that i have slept enough which was not the case when i was working late and sleeping even more than what i am at present.
For last few days I switched off the computer to take a break from the work and now getting back into work mode again.
Shifted my desktop to another room to work without any disturbances.
Could write java and android much better now. Planning to launch few apps that does not take much time to build but will earn a penny or two everyday.
Last time i built the JSON api for my android apps on PHP and hosted it on appfog free service. Now as appfog has shut down this time I am planning to write the api in python and host it on google app engine.

Lets see how it goes.

Health First

If you want to bring some positive changes to your life then you should always start with health.

With all the online activities, learning and reading new things I have acquired all the wrong habits regarding health. Mainly what I am doing wrong is I am sleeping late and sometime I even sleep after the morning sun has started shining. That making me rise late and that in turn making me skip breakfast and directly having lunch. So the gap between dinner and my next meal is about 15 t0 16 hours and that’s very bad for the health. This habit was making me feel tired all day.

I was rarely doing my regular exercises and also doing only desk job is not helping me with getting physical activity that in return making my body weaker everyday.

When I thought of changing my habits I thought of joining gym but as I suffer from chronic backache since my college days I thought I should first check whether my body is able to handle the stress of heavy exercising. I downloaded few apps on my phone with some daily exercises one can do without any gym equipment. I am doing 10-12 different kind of exercises for last 8 days regularly. It was very difficult in the beginning to do all those sit ups and crunches and I thought it will take a long time for my body to get use to it but I am getting surprised everyday that how quickly my body is adapting to all these exercises and now I am already thinking about either adding more exercises or increasing the number of sit ups and crunches.

Doing all the internet marketing things has taught me whatever I do I should track as much as I can. So I purchased this Xiaomi Mi band which tracks my daily steps taken and also my sleep pattern. Its not perfect but at least its giving me something to categorise my daily activities. What I have tracked till now is telling me if I continue with all those bad habits I have acquired my body is soon going to be screwed.

What I have in mind now is One, I have to change my diet both in terms of timing and quality. An app I have downloaded says I am already taking less calories than the required, still my weight is above average so I need to change the quality of food I am eating. I am taking too much carbohydrates and very less proteins. That need to be fixed.  Secondly, I need to gain enough muscle strength quickly so I can join the gym and start with some exercise routine.

Lets see how things folds. Will update soon.

Google Materialize: I’m impressed

Wandering on the internet I came across this front end web framework called Google materialize and I find it impressive.

You can have a look at it here.

I have been experimenting with twitter bootstrap for some time and currently I am in process of porting my website CouponIndia to bootstrap as my website is not currently mobile friendly.

I liked Google materialise as it looks like the new material design that google has introduced in newer android versions. I always believe that if your target audience is not too tech savvy you should stick to the designs your users are familiar with. As Indians use android phones more than any other platform chances are they will find websites built with Google materialize familiar to use.

I am here not saying that bootstrap is not user friendly and I myself find it very well polished and awesome product with lots of features. I only think Google materialize can be used as its alternative.

Dead

Most of my blogs and websites have gone dead.

Need to rejuvenate few.

This time need to be selective.

Too many blogs and websites are making things difficult.

I am letting few domains expire even though they have great potential but time is not on my side.

Lets see how things fold now.

Definitely need a new plan.

Too much learning, too little implementation.

Too much hunger for knowledge is holding me down.

I need to break free.

Why couldn’t I write here more often.

Why can’t I write a tiny post daily even if its a single line.

Let me start with that.