Ghost

Introduction

This is something new that I’ve come across. Something different from any conventional blogging platform like WordPress or Joomla orDrupal.
This is based on Node.js which is its most earliest stage that is just v0.3.

Simplicity

But cosidering its simplicity you can very quickly get used to its interface. The interface is so simple and so beautiful that any content writer or “Poetry” writer would love it to get their started with their hands.

Features

The Ghost team has come up with the very basic CRUD operational Blogging platform built upon John O’Nolan‘s wireframic inception about a new blogging platform which is based on a concept for a fictional platform that would be once more about online publishing rather than building complex websites. And so far it looks exactly like this.

Another new exciting feature would be Markdown syntax; especially for those who love writing readme’s and lots of technical documentation onGithub or any other framework that supports Markdown syntax.

Themes

Just like WordPress or any other CMS framework Ghost also support custom themes for your blog. You can switch between multiple themes and re-design your blog within a few minutes. Ghost is managing its own marketplace for a variety of themes in a huge number both – free ‘n’ open-source themes and premium themes developed by Ghost & nodejs community. Ghost Theme framework is highly based onHandlebars.

Hosting

Recently Ghost has launched its new Blog Hosting Service for users to use. It has got fair monthly pricing and one month trial usage subscription as well. You can just sign up to Ghost and play around with it.

Geeky Stuff

If you have got your own server that can run Node.js then you are good to go. Ghost is an open source project. You can just download the core framework package, install on the server, configure, setup the mailing system and you’re good to go with your own blog.

So far till now

Looking at Ghost StatsSo far Ghost has been downloaded 99K+ times and counting.
Ghost is backed up by many of the big giants from the industry such asInternet Explorer, envato, Woo Themes, Code School, MarketPress etc.

Support

Ghost is buzzing up 24×7 on its Support Forums and lots of developers are emerging into this new platform to make it a better platform for the blogging community.

At last, I just can say one thing about Ghost; I’m just lovin’ it ! ❤ (Check it out here)

Sixteen – Being classy is your teenage rebellion

Sixteen …. An exciting time … An exciting age … And there’s this strange enigma going around in your mind, in your heart and in soul as well which is sufficient enough to have you live your life on edge. They think they know how this world works and this thought of theirs make them so invincible that it becomes hard to argue with them and they can beat you at any cost with this single zest in their mind. They are crazy; they are smart enough to understand that world is fooling them around. At the same time they are not matured enough to understand the real outer world that is waiting around for them to make their first step out of their shell and till that time it is their gala time, and nobody is able to understand this mind. Even if you try; you don’t get the success at all. Because for that you will need to be a teenager; a sweet sixteen persona that has the right state to understand the flow where the life is taking them; which is not even enough at times. The destiny is not meant to end your teenage just like the way it is supposed to be. Of course, you live after that. But it does leave an impact on the days that are at your door-step for the next phase.

Beats Audio (HP Envy 15) On Ubuntu

The very new HP Envy 15 or any other high config machine with Beats Audio with its 4 audio speakers (2 under the display & 2 below the keyboard in the back panel) and sub-woofer boasting Beats Audio technology which in itself is a tremendous piece of work in the audio technology domain. It has an impressive audio output registering an average 85 decibels on playing Bryan Adam’s Summer of ’69.

But the tricky part is; if you are a Ubuntu Geek and want to run the same machine on Ubuntu with the expectation that it will run perfectly fine just like it runs on pre-installed Windows; then you are mistaken. Ubuntu by default takes the default Intel on-board audio controller instead of Beats’ external one. You will need to explicitly tell you machine to override the on-board audio controller. It is a big turn off if you can’t get your machine working on its full capacity even though it is capable of doing so. Here is a easy to go steps to get that outstanding result back on Ubuntu:

1. Firstly you will need to install hda-jack-retask tool; which mainly helps us to re-task the audio jack pins on our motherboard.
2. sudo apt-add-repository ppa:diwic/hda
3. sudo apt-get update
4. sudo apt-get install hda-jack-retask
5. hda-jack-retask &
6. Open hda-jack-retask
7. Select the IDT 92HD91BXX codec (may be different on other models; but definately other than your on-board controller i.e., Intel-XXX).
8. Check the “Show unconnected pins” box (the internal speakers do not show as connected)
9. Remap 0x0d (Internal Speaker, which is your Front side) to “Internal speaker”
10. Remap 0x0f (“Not connected”, which is the under-display speakers) to “Internal speaker”
11. Remap 0x10 (“Not connected”, which is the subwoofer) to “Internal speaker (LFE)”
12. Apply & test audio output with any media player.
13. Select “Install boot override” to save the settings to apply at boot time.
14. Reboot. When it comes back, you should have full sound from all speakers. Also test headphones. Plugging in headphones should disable sound from all internal speakers.

NOTE : This solution will work on Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10 & 13.04. From 13.10 on wards hda-jack-retask has been moved to another ppa repository; and the pulse configuration for the Audio Jack Tasks is changed as well.

As of Ubuntu 13.10, hda-jack-retask is part of alsa-tools. Just install the alsa-tools-gui package from the regular archive and start “hdajackretask”. (Note: if you don’t have a .pulse directory, try symlinking .pulse to .config/pulse – and remove the symlink again when you have closed hda-jack-retask. Solution is not tested with guarantee that it would work on all the machines.)

Wave2Wake – A stepping stone towards a touch-free era

 

With the latest Samsung S4 release, Samsung had made it very clear that it is not going to stand behind in the league of smartphones since Apple is consistently working on its iPhone family. Samsung has a very strong back support of Google in form of Android. So with the passing time; a common man can come very easily under dilemma that which smartphone he should pick from these wind range available in the market.

Samsung has introduced a lot of features in it Galaxy S4 model. Air Gesture is one of the coolest feature among them. You just glide your hand over the phone and you phone acts on your signs. Smartphones have made life easier for us since day-to-day tasks keep playing in our hands.

With these upcoming hardware coming on and on; software world also keeps booming. There are lots and lots of programmers/coders keep emerging with their new ideas embedded in their apps/games. And these guys try to bring in innovation.

What if we get the newest features of S4 in our economical simple Android phone ? Let’s say… what you can achieve if you get the Air Gesture feature in your Samsung Galaxy Ace phone ?? Yes… it is possible. A pair of guys from Pune have come up with this cool app that turns your simple android phone into a cool Air Gesture enabled phone and you can play with your phone with just a wave over it. Just install the app from Google Play and that’s all you have got to do. Download. These guys have released this app recently and they have a strong roadmap to enhance this app. We just have to imagine what is it in future that this app has to deliver.

From the developers:

Use Wave2Wake to awaken(unlock) your phone by simply gliding(waving) your hand over your phone. No touch required. No power/unlock button required. Apart from giving you a touch-free experience, using this app will also reduce the wear on your power/unlock button. If you use a flip cover, you can simply flip it open to unlock(wake) your phone, no button presses required! And more importantly, it hardly consumes any battery–it’s like the app isn’t running at all!
See the video to see it in action.

Why should I use this app?

• To reduce wear on your power/unlock button.
• Use your flip cover to wake your phone.
• Its faster than pressing the unlock button.
• Quickly see the time and notifications.
• To get a magical touch-free experience.
• It’s free.

Try it out and give us/the developers your feedback and suggestions.

Adminer

Necessity : Mother of Invention

I re-phrase it … Necessity : Mother of “Google It” 😛 😉

A great moment where Let Me Google That For You comes handy. Right from the range of very trivial queries like “What is Eclipse Juno ?” to the trickiest job I faced recently i.e. “How do we configure Nginx Server to make it work with WordPress on PHP-FastCGI Process Manager ?”

Anyways … the point is, A mere substitute of phpMyAdmin where you don’t work with a typical XAMPP (WAMPP) flavor Web Environment and where you do not have access to phpMyAdmin directly. Of course; you can always go with MySQL Workbench, but personally I did not find it apealling and user friendly as far as Ubuntu or any other Linux based distros are concerned. (I’m unaware of Mac or Windows environment).

That’s where Adminer comes into picture. A Database management in just a single PHP file. Just download it; put it into the root directory of your web server and hit the url. Your own Web based Database client is ready to serve you.

A very basic UI might raise your eyes but personally it caught my interest and can come handy at times if you want to save up your time configuring the DB client all day long.

Adminer is the gateway where you can find the Downloads and other documentation or support stuff. There’s an API doc also available if you wanna fidget around with the code. Maybe … you can have your own customized DB client.