Abhi Yerra

[tags]rss, tvshows, downloading, democracyplayer[/tags]

RSS is great for so many things! It’s just a wonderful technology. I mean if there is a technology that can make people even more lazy please then RSS is that technology. It makes the downloading experience of tv shows a whole lot better.

1. We need a RSS player that can automatically download tv shows for us. For this I use the Democracy Player.
2. To get the RSS feeds of tv shows go to tvRSS and find the feed to your show.
3. Next in Democracy Player go to the Channels Menu and click Add Channel.
4. Copy over the RSS feed link from tvRSS and click Ok.
5. That’s it. You can tweak the various settings in Democracy Player to tune how the videos are downloaded and etc.

So now you can be lazy like me and download the latest and greatest shows once they are avaiable via RSS. Now if it played YouTube and Google Videos it’d be awesome!

[tags]iphone, apple, phone,[/tags]

People are complaining that the iPhone is not going to run third party apps with Jobs saying it might
screw with the network service somehow. Although, this seems like a big deal I think by the time the iPhone is release in another
SIX months things will ease a bit.

Although, not quite a apples to apples comparison, no pun intended, I think Widgets are cool. They are programmable using
Javascript and HTML and can easily be ported from the Mac to the iPhone. So that takes a major load off from
me because I can basically create an app that can access any web app from the phone.

I don’t think people understand that the iPhone is giving us a whole new way to access the net. The demos of
Safari were quite cool. All we really need are apps that connect to the net and gives us this experience. Therefore,
I personally think that Widgets are going to play a much more important part than installable apps.

Plus with Google and Yahoo partnering up a lot of the phone is going to be net based.

[tags]python, code, blogger, api[/tags]

I am considering a move to the new Blogger since it seems faster and I am getting fed up with the slowness associated with Dreamhost’s MySQL. Anyways, before I did anything drastic like that I needed to create a Python API to post to the said blogging service. So here it is. It’s not done yet as tagging doesn’t work, but I don’t know if that’s the script of Google. I’ll take the fault at this point so until I fix it enjoy. And if you fix it please send me the patch. Thank you.

Update: I figured out how to add tags. New code will be in the repository.

Update 2: Seems like it has been done.

[tags]news, networks, social networks[/tags]

School newspapers are intensely popular because they are so local. This is great especially if you want to form a company around this idea.

Social News hasn’t really caught on for the normal people because it is so grand in scope. That is sites like digg and reddit are great for finding out nerd news, but for the normal person they don’t carry much weight. So what should be done instead?

I believe since newspapers have such a strong readership they should expand into social networks as well. So what would that entail?

• Newspapers continue writing their existing pieces for students to consume.
• Online they open up their services so people can submit videos, photos, news, classifieds, etc. These can be moderated some by dedicated staff who make sure what is being put up is organized accordingly and that there is not spam problem. Also allow the users to moderate themselves digg style.
• Use the new content of the day and publish some of them if they are newsworthy in the daily student newspaper.

Why should this be done? It is a great way to give voice to the students and as with the UCLA Tasing Incident it lets the users write the news as it is happening. This is to make a just in time news possible and give rise to being in the news as it is happening through the voices of students.

[tags]xslt, xml, startup[/tags]

XSLT is pretty cool as it allows the transformation of XML files. This is great for me since I am doing the API first. What this means is I can have my API take it or give out XML and all I have to really do is do an XSLT transformation to output in the other formats that I will be using such as RSS and HTML. It might take a little while to learn all the tricks, but it allows for a nicer output then manually parsing and reparsing the file and its output in XML.

So I will be using XSLT to do the output representation is what I’m saying. And I guess that is all.

[tags]api, startup[/tags]

I’ve decided to start designing my app beginning with the API. Why is this? I think this is a good way to start since it gives me a good foundation to built the other parts on.

• If I want to build other apps (Widgets, desktop app, etc.) all I need to use is the API.
• I can have a place to extensively test my API instead of the more subjective Web testing.
• Gives me a central place to start from so I can do a decent job of have something to work with later on.

So three reasons to start with the API.

[tags]project management, startup, activecollab, basecamp[/tags]

Alright, first thing I did today has been to install activeCollab. It doesn’t support everything I want yet, doesn’t have an API so I can write Vim Scripts for it, but it’s getting there. Right now it does what’s important so it’s cool I can live with it. I just wish DreamHost was a bit faster with the database.

Why is a Project Management important? I realized that it’s next to impossible to do anything without writing it down and having a plan on how to implement it to a certain degree. That is at my job I need a level of knowing what needs to be done and a level of creativity. Project Managements lets me manage the former. That is to say I can organize what needs to be done and the relative time that it should be done by.

So What’s so special about activeCollab and why didn’t I go with Basecamp? I actually was looking into Basecamp and it has the cool features that I want like an API and Writeboard and seeing the changes between the two. However, I really want to manage more than 3 projects which I have to pay 12 bucks for. I mean I’m not going to be actively doing more than three things, but it’s nice to know that I can have that capibility. I also can store unlimited files which is good to know. Also, activeConllab is actively being developed so I want to see where it is going.

If I could go with the $25 dollar plan, but that’s $25 dollars a month and I just don’t see myself paying that much for a Project Management software.

So I hope that activeCollab comes out with an API soon cause I really don’t want to be filling out things outside of Vim. Yes, I know Vim is like an addiction for me.

[tags]startup[/tags]

I am joining the legions of others and doing a startup. Yes, yes, a startup? What am I going to create? Well I’d like to keep it down for a while before I start mentioning what I’m doing. I will let you guys know soon enough.

Why am I doing this startup? Well I have basically decided to withdraw from Berkeley for this semester which is going to mean that I will have a lot of free time to work on various projects and such. This includes my startup.

What will I be doing to get money? Well recently I attained a job at Boalt Law School writing web apps for them. So I will be working for them to gain some income. I also am consulting at UC Press since I recently quit there. So I have a steady source of income and am not totally relying on my parents for this. This is important because I don’t want to be dependent on them for my adventures.

Will I have partners? I am thinking about it as I have some people in mind. I will decide soon enough.

Why does me starting a startup matter to you? I will be documenting my experiences the forms I filled out what I had to do to get through this ordeal. Will I succeed? I don’t know. We shall find out. So let us start this new world of business and coding.

I have started using Google Docs and I must say it is quite nice and does exactly what I need and want. There are a few quirks, but I hope those to be worked out as time goes by. Revisions is a feature to die for and having your docs wherever there is Internet is quite nice. Just don’t put any docs there if you have secrets to keep. Crappy college essays are fine. Also, I love the tags feature. I never ever got folders right. I mean I’m a messy person and can’t think of one place to put things I don’t know how I lived without tags. And tagging my docs instead of just putting them in random folders without any names or random names frees me from such torture. Nonetheless, I still copy the doc to Word and format it there before I print so it’s cool. Maybe collabrative LaTeX would be a good addition to Google Docs?
I also started looking at Google Reader and it seems that has gotten better as well. I mean I’m not afraid to say it, but the old interface sucked ass. I couldn’t find anything and it had a confusing layout that wasn’t quite intuitive. Now it’s quite better and I like it quite a bit. I don’t know but Google is taking over my world. I just wish GMail was a Desktop Application because I like having mail on my computer to read in the future. It saves me a lot of hassle when I need to find something when I’m not online. Maybe, that is why I’m using Thunderbird.

Anyways, time to sell my soul to Google.

[tags]vim, macros[/tags]

I learned how to use Vim macros yesterday well some of them anyways. Here is what is to be done:

• In the ESC mode press q then a letter to assign the macro to a variable.
• It should say recording at the bottom and you can do whatever you want.
• Get into ESC mode and press q to stop recording the macro.

Now to use that macro do the following:

• Press Shift-2.
• Press the letter that you assigned the macro to.

That is the basics of it.