Say Hello to an awesome desktop

Unity Desktop tweaks

So, this is a post for all those looking to skin up their unity desktop with some awesome tweaks to make their desktops stand out.

Let's take a look on what are the things that I have installed to achieve this look:

• Unity-tweak-tool
• Numix theme
• Variety

Lets get started with the first one i.e Unity tweak tool. I will be discussing a way to install it using ppa and then give some customisations which I like.

So here are the steps:

After installing ubuntu 16.04 or 14.04 simply do

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool



These two steps are sufficient to install the tweak tool. 

If all went well you would see something like this:

Okay, so now heading to the second step, we are going to install those awesome looking icons and the numix theme.

Lets add the ppa required:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:numix/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install numix-gtk-theme numix-icon-theme-circle

So over with the above steps, here is the snap of dash on the unity desktop showcasing the awesome icons.

Now the last and final step, we are going to install variety:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install variety

After completing all the above steps successfully, you will have to just go and open the unity tweak tool from the dash or from terminal by the command :


~$ unity-tweak-tool

After exploring the tool for some time you can adjust the number of desktops on the unity desktop.

Many people think that they can only have 4 desktops on the unity desktops but using tweak tool you can have so many that you might forget the number. XD

In the tweak tool , you can tweak the themes in order to apply the numix icon theme.


Have fun tweaking the unity desktop. Drop in your comments for any suggestions, issues etc.
Cheers!

Python and Facebook graphAPI: Do amazing things.

This post is for those who are looking for a bit of fun using the facebook graphAPI and a bit of python scripting.

Believe me, with Python you can do wonders in just 20 lines of code. 

A holy person tells me about the list comprehensions in Python:

l = [anything for anything in some other anything!] #Some joke :P

The above line is just one example of what Python can do in just one line of code, which other languages can't do. Of course the cost is speed. But I'll tell you one thing. We are not doing Competitive programming or any other very time limited things. We have sufficient time for performing the real life interactions with graphAPI and perform all the reading of data from dictionaries and lists and json data.

Okay, so alot of talking above. Let's get back to work.

So wandering over the internet, I read somethings about the facebook GraphAPI and thought why not make something which makes my life easier a bit.

I immediately started looking for the resosurces for using GraphAPI. I was comfortable with Javascript to a great extent, but still on learning about facepy or the facebook-sdk for python I thought, why not keep my hands still dirty with python.

So I went over to facebook-sdk's github page and documenatation page(links below), and was fascinated by the moment when I just logged my 'id' in the console. I knew it will work now.

So i read the docs further and built a simple python script to automatically like Birthday posts on my wall.

I am not mentioning the code here. Mail me if anyone wants to talk further about this.

What I basically wanted to convey was that, we should never limit ourselves to one thing. Go deeper, into unknown and you would come out knowing some great things.

Python and GraphAPI--- Amazing pair.

Do give a +1 if you find it interesting.

Thanks!

Some links:
Facepy Github page
facebook sdk docs

Some great Programming Hacks in C/C++.

We do use so many things to optimise our programs, from good algorithms to good data structures made specifically for that purpose. But, often we tend to write more lines of code which can be saved by using some special features offered in C++. These are known as preprocessor directives.

Till date, most of the people have been using just the #define directive to declare a variable. Most people dont know that they can even define functions in the preprocessor directives.

1. #define REV(a,n) reverse(begin(a),begin(a)+n)

There are so many other templates that people use to make their

programming even faster

One more example of such an hack is the typedef keyword. This thing

particularly is more useful in competitive programming, where you can

save your time by making some typedef statements in the beginning of

program itself. Here's a sample code for the purpose:

While all these things are only a few techniques to reduce your time, here are some links where you can continue to read:

Template in competitive programming

Also I have a github repository where I post some important links actively:

Important-links

Throw in some comments, if you find this post good.

Want to limit your time on facebook? here's a solution

Fb-Script

So, its about yesterday, when I put my hands on the selenium web driver for the node-js.

I was amazed with the capabilities, and to start with I created a script in javascript that allows you to login to facebook and browse there for a fixed amount of time which is set by the user.

Its all open source and the source code is available on Github and the steps for using is given in the Readme file included in the source code.

Here's the link for Github:

Click here: Fb-script

On the way next, I plan to make this more interactive by taking the code to python and then implementing some more features.

Throw some comments for hugs and bugs.

Enjoy!

Github: Student pack gets unlimited private repositories

Cheers to all! Busy with the things in the night and suddenly an email comes on your phone. Check your inbox, you see that's from Github. After reading, I just remember of writing this blog. The news is so exciting.

You now get unlimited private repositories in your student plan account and all of it for free.

Thanks to the amazing people at Github who are encouraging the development in young students.

The email reads:

"

Welcome to unlimited private repositories

Good news — your plan now includes unlimited private repositories. Whether you're using private repositories to learn new things or flex your creative muscles, you can keep all of your projects in one place without worrying about how many repositories you're using (if you need help migrating, we’ve got a tool for that). We hope this new plan will help you work on as many ideas, experiments, and projects as you can think up.

We’ve automatically updated your account to include unlimited private repositories. As part of this change we also updated our pricing, but since you’re using the Student Developer Pack, your plan remains free. 

"

So are you excited about this? Go on check your email.
Don't have a student account? 
I have a video on that: Here
Still not clear. Comment on Youtube or here on the blog for any queries.

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 LTS noticeable feature changes

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04LTS

Yakety Yak

 

So, Finally the Curtain was unveiled from the official stable LTS(Long Term support) version of Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 on May 1 , 2016.

The new version hasn't got any  considerable changes right from the  desktop like Windows 10, yet you will start noticing the difference in every instance you use it.

 The list of new changes in the version are(more features will be added):

 

• First of all a new blank desktop created dynamically can now stay open between two full desktop windows unless previous versions where this was a serious con. 

•   Second there has been some addition to the default backgrounds and lock screen wallpapers.

• You will notice some small changes here and there with the UI in context menus.

•   One major addition is the Gnome software application which replaces the ubuntu software center. Gnome software center also has a very good UI when compared with the ubuntu software center.

• In the search itself now you will get suggestions from the software center, which is something similar to what unity offers.

   

  Head over to comments section

  to add new features you notice! 

     

Getting started with MEAN stack

MEAN stack

MEAN stack which is the short form for MongoDb , ExpressJs AngularJs and Nodejs is the stack that is currently gaining a lot of popularity among the Web Developers.

The best thing which I personally feel in this stack is that all of the development happens in only one language i.e JavaScript.

Since all the above standing for MEAN are JavaScript libraries hence the development environment is very lightweight and doesn't require learning many things. You master the complete stack at once.

Taking the stack's components individually, let's start with Nodejs:

Nodejs is the server side language. This is the language that you will be using on server to handle the requests which your angular app will be sending to you. Its completely in Javascript and also comes with a package manager called npm(Node package Manager).

NPM is very helpfull in setting up your project.


Going over to ExpressJs:

    ExpressJs is a very lightweight framework for NodeJs that helps you in shortening the entire code you write  by giving you inbuilt functions to perform the tasks. Also this is the part you will rely on for routing and other such tasks.

AngularJs:

AngularJs is what I would regard as the best thing that any developer could do with Js. Talking about it , from the ground up it feels so powerful. With the MVC architecture its data binding between the controller and view is so awesome. There is so much to talk about Angular that this short intro is not enough.

MongoDB:

MongoDB is a no SQL database designed to be used with the MEAN stack. It is no SQL means that it doesn't store the data in the form of tables and rows but stores them in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) compatible form. Also it has enhanced features like data sharding which lack in mysql.

Some links to start learning Mean Stack:

• First of all, have a good grip on HTML,CSS and JavaScript.



• Start by learning basics of angular by reading the docs on the website of AngularJS



• Here are some tutorials from youtube that I found good: MEAN stack Intro



• This is the link for a series of 5 videos that will teach you to make a very nice contact list app : Part (1/5) Building a Contact list App

For any further questions please leave in the comments section below. Have a great MEAN time.