chait.blog

Month: February 2016

Posted by on in Journal1 Comment

About a month ago I tried to swing 32 kg kettle-bell for straight 50 times. And failed at 21.

This evening I swung two rounds for straight 30 with a break after the first round. I literally crashed onto the floor at the end of the second round. It felt wonderful.

It is hard, but I will keep practicing and see how long it takes for me to swing 32 kgs for 50 times non-stop.

Sunrise calendar app

Posted by on in Habits, JournalLeave a comment

Last week I discovered Sunrise calendar app. I loved it at first sight.

Sunrise joins Wunderlist in my GTD tool set.

I connected my work, personal and Facebook calendars and Wunderlist to Sunrise.

Everyday, Wunderlist tells me what to do and Sunrise tells me when to do. This is a great thing. Because a wise man once said, and I can attest from my experience, the things that get scheduled are the things that get done.

Tim Cook’s letter to customers

Posted by on in TechLeave a comment

One of my Facebook friends posted the link to this interesting Tim Cook’s letter to Apple’s customers.

I am shocked by these two paragraphs:

…now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

Despite the NSA news stories, I found it hard to believe any high profile technology company having backdoors in their software. Or governments forcing technology companies to introduce backdoors. I thought all that is blown out of proportion and dramatic.

Now I believe governments can do this and have actually done this.

Hide media in tweets

Posted by on in Tech, TipsLeave a comment

Twitter embeds are cool, just like everything else on WordPress.com. You just paste the link to a tweet and the editor auto-magically embeds the twitter card.

While this is great, WordPress.com does a bit more that I don’t like: it also includes the images in the tweet. I don’t like it because the image increases the size of the twitter card.

When I published my previous post, I wanted to just post the tweet without media.

What I wanted is this:

What I got by default is this:

I wanted a way to hide images in the tweets. But I wasn’t sure if that is possible. So I scouted the Twitter Embeds support guide and found hide_media=’true’ option which hides the media item from the linked site.This is exactly what I am after. Besides its description, this option also hides the media in the tweet like an embedded image.

Here is the shortcode that got me what I wanted:

[tweet https://twitter.com/WPDiscover/status/697842590951931904 hide_media='true']

This isn’t as slick as just pasting the link to the tweet, but with a bit of editing, I get a clean result.

Tips for living a creative life

Posted by on in Advice, Journal1 Comment

I found a post titled Fear is boring, and other tips for living a creative life which is apt for the creative challenge I am going through my life currently.

Via the following tweet:

Posted by on in Journal, ThoughtsLeave a comment

“Man, this weather sucks. This doesn’t feel like summer at all.”

“Looks like you have nothing else to worry about than the weather.”

I am never going to complain about the weather. Never.

Highlights of the day

Posted by on in Fitness, JournalLeave a comment

Nine years ago on this day my sweetheart and I exchanged rings, six months after exchanging our hearts.

I dead-lifted 60 kg for the first time on a 20 kg bar holding a 20 kg plate on its each side.

At 15%, my body fat percentage falls in the fit range. I only need to shed 2% to fall in the athletic fat range.

Today has been pretty awesome.