Not without my daughter

Mon 05 September 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Betty Mahmoody, an American citizen is tricked by her husband, an Iranian national into accompanying him along with their little daughter for a vacation to Iran. A few days into her stay, she realizes that this is a one-way trip and her husband has no plans of returning. She frantically …

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The Magician

Sat 03 September 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Have you ever been uncontrollably in love with a person even after learning of their flaws? "The Magician" by Somerset Maugham is the story of Margaret who breaks off her engagement with Arthur, a successful doctor a few days ahead of the engagement. She falls in love with an ugly …

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The city of djinns

Thu 01 September 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

William Dalrymple and his wife are on a long visit to Delhi, the city of djinns. The book is a tribute to the city and is filled with stories of interesting characters he meets here like his Sikh landlady, the loud-mouthed taxi driver, house keeping staff etc.

While the back …

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Self-signed TLS Certificate in Linux

Sun 21 August 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Today, I had the necessity to embed an iframe on an HTTPS web page and most browsers now won't allow you to embed an HTTP resource on an HTTPS page raising the mixed content warning. Since the code was quite experimental, I didn't want to deploy it out of localhost …

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Elasticsearch autocomplete on related keywords

Thu 21 April 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Recently, I had to work on a client request to add autocomplete to their site's search based not just on a specific list but on related keywords.

For example, suppose you had a list of TV series like Simpsons, Futurama, Tom and Jerry etc. The autosearch had to suggest the …

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Simple Command Line Dropbox Uploader in Python

Sun 10 April 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

I don't use Dropbox frequently. In fact, I would prefer not to use it but work requires me to use it from time to time. My only use case was to upload files onto a shared folder. So for my usage, it makes no sense to run the desktop client …

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Micro

Mon 21 March 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

"Micro" by Michael Crichton (author of "Jurassic Park") is the story of a group of research students who get miniaturized by a company when they get interested in a murder's leads. Does the team survive the world where even insects appear like giants and against time when their bodies succumb …

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Heart of Darkness

Tue 23 February 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

What image would the word 'sailor' invoke for you? For me it would be Haddock from Tintin, an alcoholic captain who mouths expletives when sober but a damn good seafarer. But after reading the "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, it has changed to Charles Marlow.

Set in the early …

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Don't make me think!

Mon 15 February 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Steve Krug is renowned user experience professional and is the author of several popular books in this area. "Don't make me think!" is his most widely read book. I was recommended this book by a designer in response to my query on designing better online experiences.

I picked up the …

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Walden

Fri 22 January 2016 by Thejaswi Puthraya

If you've ever harboured thoughts of retiring to the country side and living off your own small farm, Walden is a book for you. Henry Thoreau, an American philosopher documents his experiences of living in solitude at the Walden lake.

The book lacks a structure but generally discusses a lot …

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