Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Avoid ESC in Vim

OK, this is one of those times when I’ve been humbled again.  I’ve been using Vim for over a decade now, and once in a while it occurred to me that using ESC to exit to normal mode is NOT the most efficient thing ever.  Maybe my little finger is too little, or maybe my keyboards are too large.  But reaching ESC with while in the middle of crazy typing session broke my concentration a few times.  But somehow I just thought that it is one of those most natural Vim things that I had to get used to.  Today, I came across something genius that told me that I don’t have to.  If you have the same problem, edit your .vimrc file and add the following lines:

" exit to normal mode with 'jj'
inoremap jj <ESC>

Once you load your new configuration, typing ‘jj‘ in insert mode will be equivalent to press ESC key.  Brilliant!

Mustachify.me web service

Mustachify.me web service

Here is a nice little web service that, given an image, recognizes faces and adds mustaches to each face on the picture.  Appearing as mildly funny and mostly pointless at first, it actually packs some impressive technology.  I’ve thrown a whole bunch of different images at it, and all the faces were recognized correctly.  Not only that, but the mustaches were tilted appropriately to match the face angle.

GitHub’s free alternatives

Personally, I love GitHub.  And I try to promote it as much as I can, and I’ve even got a few organizations setup their repositories there.  However, I am still asked once in a while for a good alternative.  These work either for people who don’t have the money to pay for GitHub’s private repositories, or who are required to keep their code in-house.

Here are a few alternatives to the GitHub hosting service. There are two types of software: locally installed software and hosted.  These are decent for smaller companies that don’t have the budget for licensing a hosted service.

Free Local Install

  • gitlabhq.com – this project looks really good, with new releases every month.
  • gitorious – solid, free alternative to GitHub.

Free Hosted

  • gitorious.org –  open source projects are free, like github.
  • bitbucket – unlimited free private repositories for up to 5 users. The pricing model is similar to the other Atlassian products.

Also, have a look at Sourcegraph, which you can host yourself or pay for a hosted service.

hack {cyprus} *12

I’ve heard the hack {cyprus} *12 announcements for a few weeks now, but unfortunately was too busy with my own projects to attend.  If you missed all the noise, hack {cyprus} *12 is a hackathon-type event, where a bunch of people get together decide on a few ideas they want to implement and jump into coding.  They usually go at it non-stop for approximately 24-48 hours, after which they present the results.

These are quite common in all the countries where programmers live.  Now, we can proudly say that programmers live in Cyprus too.  The picture above is from a few minutes ago.  Just for the record, it’s Saturday night, after 1:00am!  That’s nothing but impressive.

The event seems to be quite well organized, with its own website, Facebook page, Twitter, and more.  (Have a look at their live stream page for latest updates.)  It is also being sponsored by quite a few companies, including Microsoft, Cyta, and Cyprus University of Technology.

As I said, unfortunately I was preoccupied with something else to book my attendance for this event.  However I am planning to go see the presentations tomorrow (care to join me?).  According to the schedule, some time around 5-5:30pm the teams will show off what they have managed to achieve in such a short time.