4 posts tagged with "tech-solved-it"

Disclaimer: Works only on mac OS & Linux

When you work with modern and legacy codebases, we have to switch the node versions that fits the project.

Most developers are familiar with nvm aka Node version manager.

While we switch to a codebase which uses a different codebase, use nvm use command. But its not a magical command to analyze the node version requirements.

Make sure to add .nvmrc to the project root with the minimal node version.

v18

The terminal output would be

> nvm use
Now using node v18.15.0 (npm v9.5.0)

Interestingly the global node version across the machine is not impacted. The changes are restricted to the terminal.

Checklist​

• Install NVM
• Add .nvmrc with minimum required version number
• Run nvm use command
• Notice the change in the version in the terminal

1. Input​

Chatgpt - text based dialogue like queries

Alexa - voice based interface

2. Output​

Chatgpt - text based on the input query

Alexa - voice, can perform action and do small tasks

3. Usability at work environment​

Chatgpt - can be used a quick research tool, good at organizing and listing facts.

Alexa - can be used as a timer, Its more of a personal device.

4. UI​

Chatgpt - Its well thought of and you can organize your work within chatgpt. Goto previous queries etc.

Alexa - Its a exceptional tool to manage all things personal/office like music, devices, simple queries, etc.

5. Common drawbacks​

Chatgpt - Good at facts but content lacks personal touch or anecdotes or stories

Alexa - As good as the alexa skills but most specific questions are taken to web search

Summary​

AI tools have entered into our life like a bicycle for a kid. We have to learn to use the bicycle else there wont be much fun. Identifying professional use cases for AI without compromising data security and privacy is a challenge like the kid ensuring not to fall from cycle before his friends while learning to drive it.

We have reached a time in history where one newspaper does not fit all. One music app does not fit all, one form of text communication does not fit all. The same holds good with our efforts to keep ourself updated.

Why feedly​

Feedly has been in the market since a long time. Feedly excels at keeping up with sources emitting their updates over RSS feed. Lets say you visit 5 different web sites or news sites every day. Instead of consuming content on their website, we can achieve from one interface inside feedly.

Feedly free version leaves you behind when it comes with keeping up with other information streams like twitter but I feel its a good trade off.

With a setup like feedly, you are isolated from ads and promoted content that deter your focus

Categories inside feedly​

Before I proceed further, I would like to confess that I had setup feedly before many years and it failed. One of the main reason was that I overloaded the feed with multiple channels. This time I want to keep it simple.

7 categories of feeds for each day of the week starting with financial news on Sunday

Here are my categories

1. Financial news

2. Tech Blogs

3. Professionals

4. Engineering

5. Hackernews

6. Lifestyle

7. Newsletters

Filtering quality content​

If you want quality content, then we need to find quality sources of content. I followed the trusted, reputed and relevant sources only.

Avoid repetition of content which reduces the number of news items to view.

PS:​

On a side note, I am taking refugee from all things social media till Aug 15 this year. I have installed a chrome extension to block all websites that distract us.

Verdict​

Old school method of consuming content with RSS feeds might look so old school but thats one way to avoid click baits, trackers, etc. Lets get focussed and acheieve the goal to keep yourself updated at things you care about.

Though you may argue that the end of the DVD era has already begun, I had run into scenarios where CD/DVD is still a suitable storage device given the read-only nature of the device. The data once written cannot be tampered with or overwritten, though one can scratch a lot and make it worthless.

With this task in hand, I dusted my old LG DVD drive which is ideally built to be assembled inside CPUs but we geeks push their limits. So I replaced the SMPS power supply with an adapter and the SATA cable with a USB portable SATA connector.

Given the two mods, the LG dvd writer can work with any laptop or desktop without an issue. However, on windows 10, the CD/DVD drive icon would not show up on my computer. But what could have gone wrong?

Steps to troubleshoot​

We geeks don't believe in talent but we believe in the process. The process to troubleshoot the strange behavior is as follows

1. Observe if the LG/DVD writer powers on. If yes, press the button to eject the tray. This step worked

2. The second step was to look at my computer to see if any new icon has shown up, but nothing showed up. So fire up the device manager and look for dvd devices

3. Right-click on the USB DVD drive and uninstall the driver. Then reinstall the driver. Even after this step, the icon would not show up.

4. Right-click and goto properties and goto volumes. Click on the populate button. A new name should have been created for this device and the corresponding icon would show up on my computer.

5. Once the icon is available, double-clicking should eject the tray. It works as expected.

Conclusion​

Thanks to the LG website for clarifying that no special drivers are required for the DVD RW device since they are plug-and-play only. That means they would work on any Operating system ideally. Later I found windows 10 just put in an extra step that prevented me from using the drive or rather thinking it was dead.

Pinch of common sense, curiousity and passion can open the doors for you in tech.