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.

The Global Airport Database

Global Airport Database – Arash Partow

The Global Airport Database is a collection of data about all (???) airports in the world, big and small.  It covers a total of 9,300 airports worldwide.

That’s pretty interesting.  For example, how many airports do you think there are in Cyprus?  Obviously, there is the Larnaca International Airport and Paphos International Airport.  Then, there is one in Nicosia, which is not functioning since the island was divided.  And there is one in Acrotiri on the British military base.  Four, right?   Well, the Global Airport Database has a total of 7 (!!!) entries for the country of Cyprus:

LCCC:N/A:N/A:NICOSIA ACC/FIC:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000
LCLK:LCA:LARNACA:LARNACA:CYPRUS:034:052:030:N:033:037:029:E:00003:34.875:33.625
LCNC:N/A:N/A:NICOSIA:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000
LCPH:PFO:PAPHOS INTERNATIONAL:PAPHOS:CYPRUS:034:043:004:N:032:029:008:E:00013:34.718:32.486
LCRA:AKT:AKROTIRI:AKROTIRI:CYPRUS:034:035:025:N:032:059:016:E:00024:34.590:32.988
LCRO:N/A:N/A:EPISKOPI:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000
LCRR:N/A:N/A:NICOSIA:CYPRUS:000:000:000:U:000:000:000:U:00000:0.000:0.000

Larnaca and Paphos are there. The Akrotiri one is there too. Then we have 3 records for Nicosia. And one more for Episkopi. Hmm …

Fedora 27 and high DPI support

I’ve recently updated my laptop to Fedora 27 and since then I had some issues with the rendering of the desktop fonts.  At first, everything seemed too large and over-magnified.  Resetting the desktop fonts to much smaller sizes helped a bit, but there were still random issues with different applications – Google Chrome, Skype, etc.   I think these much be related to the recent improvements to high DPI support.

A few things helped me a long the way.  Here are the links, just in case I’ll need to find them in the future:

Ultimately, the things that solved my problems were the last link (installing better fonts for Fedora), and adjusting the fonts resolution from 142 dots per inch down to 96.

7 Skills Of An Effective Developer

“7 Skills Of An Effective Developer” is a great article that goes over what it takes to become an effective developer.  The choice of skills is rather standard and has been covered in other articles before:

  1. Communication
  2. Empathy
  3. Planning
  4. Presentation
  5. Documentation
  6. Testing
  7. Git

but I really liked the examples that were used to illustrate them – simple, yet very realistic.

css-purge – CSS cleaner

css-purge is a tool that does the following:

A CSS tool written in Node JS as a command line app or library for the purging, burning, reducing, shortening, compressing, cleaning, trimming and formatting of duplicate, extra, excess or bloated CSS.

What’s the difference between JavaScript and ECMAScript?

Here’s a good explanation on what’s the difference between JavaScript and ECMAScript.  I know I’m not the only one confused.

Chicken or the egg

A confusing bit of history is that JavaScript was created in 1996. It was then submitted to Ecma International in 1997 for standardization, which resulted in ECMAScript. At the same time, because JavaScript conformed to the ECMAScript specification, JavaScript is an example of an ECMAScript implementation.

That leaves us with this fun fact: ECMAScript is based on JavaScript, and JavaScript is based on ECMAScript.

I know.

It sounds exactly like the time-travel trope of people being their own parent — a little wonky, but kind of fun to think about.