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Ankur in Snippets

Behind The Scenes: The HJKL Keys

If you are a Gmail user, with keyboard short codes enabled then you might have noticed that you can use j and k keys for navigation within GMail. You can use J key to navigate to previous (older) message & K key to navigate to the newer message from your inbox. Even the navigation using J and K keys is quite popular in others website also such as makeuseof.com , Google Reader and even at tumblr also. This J-K key combination may be found at many blog sites also. Even many developers use this keys in their applications for navigation purposes. Now the question is why J & K only. Why not others ? Let's discover the interesting answer of it.

1 min read
Ankur in Archived

Turn Your Facebook Timeline Into a Movie

Just a few months ago, Facebook launch it's brand new feature called Facebook Timeline. Facebook Timeline allows you to display your profile in Timeline view. Many of you might have activated it and also using it. Many of you liked it and many of you are not. But we are not here to talk about what you like about timeline and what you not, instead of that we are here to discuss about a great website. If you have activated the Facebook Timeline then you may consider to try it. While stumbling upon the Web I found something interesting. Timeline Movie Maker a collaborative project of Facebook and Definition will transform your timeline into a beautiful video. This video will create a good flashback of your life. Just a simple click, and you will be a filmmaker. That's all.

1 min read
Ankur in Snippets

Starting With Oracle SQL

Note: I wrote this guide back in 2012 for Oracle SQL Express Edition 11g. While the command prompt steps are still valid for Oracle databases, the specific software versions and setup screens will look completely different today! Today, I'm going to show you how to connect to and interact with Oracle SQL directly from your Windows command prompt. You might be wondering why we don't just use the built-in Run SQL Command Line tool from the Start menu. The big issue with that tool is that it doesn't support basic copy and paste functionality—something that developers like you and me desperately need! So, let's look at how to properly connect to your database using the trusty standard command prompt. First things first, you'll need to have Oracle SQL installed on your PC. If you don't have it yet, you can grab it right here: Download Oracle SQL Express Edition 11g Oracle SQL Express is completely free to use, but Oracle does require you to log in before downloading. If you don't have an account, just hit the sign-up button—it's free and only takes a minute. The download is fairly hefty at around 350MB. Once it's finished, extract the ZIP file and run setup.exe. The installation wizard is pretty standard. If you've installed Windows software before, you can safely just click "Next" through most of the prompts. During the setup process, you'll eventually hit a screen that looks like this: This is an important step. You're being asked to set the password for the SYS and SYSTEM users. In Oracle, these are your master administrative accounts. If you're just setting this up on your local machine for development and learning, I highly recommend using a simple password like admin. It's easy to remember and quick to type. Of course, you can use whatever password you prefer. Once you've typed it in, click Next. The installer will now begin copying files and setting up your database. Just sit back and wait for it to finish.

2 min read
Ankur in Archived

Folder Colorizer: Change Icon Color Of Any Folder In Windows

Folder Colorizer is an application which enables you to change the colors of folders in Windows Explorer in just two clicks. After installation this application will add Colorize! menu in your context menu. From there you can choose different colors, so that you can apply to your folders. To change the color of a folder, right-click it, open Colorize! menu and select the color of your choice. The choices available by default include Yellow, Lawn Green, Red, Blue, Silver, Violet, Sandy Brown and Aquamarine.

2 min read
Ankur in Snippets

Getting Started With Google Web Fonts

Google Web Font, a free and open source font collection provide by Google. It contains thousands of free fonts which are always free for download and can be used anywhere. Learn how to use them in your documents or in your work. Just have a look on them. You might find something interesting.

2 min read
Ankur in Archived

UMPlayer: Play Anything

Note: I originally wrote this post in 2012. UMPlayer is no longer actively maintained. Today, I'd highly recommend using VLC or SMPlayer instead! Windows Media Player comes built into Windows, but it's notorious for not being able to play every media format out there. That's why so many of us have shifted to VLC. VLC is a fantastic, free media player that handles almost anything you throw at it. But what happens on that rare occasion when even VLC struggles to play a file? Let me introduce you to UMPlayer (Universal Media Player), another free and open-source alternative. The most impressive thing about UMPlayer is that it comes packed with over 270 built-in audio and video codecs. It handles nearly every media format imaginable, including AAC, AC3, ASF, AVI, DIVX, FLV, H.263, Matroska, MOV, MP3, MP4, MPEG, OGG, QT, RealMedia, VOB, Vorbis, WAV, WMA, WMV, XVID, and a whole lot more. Plus, UMPlayer is portable, meaning you can drop it onto a pen drive and run it anywhere without installing it.

1 min read
Ankur in Archived

Page Snooze: Hide Tabs & Schedule Them To Open Later [Chrome Extension]

Note: I originally wrote this back in 2012. While Page Snooze was a cool concept at the time, browser capabilities and available extensions have changed a lot since then! If you're a hardcore web surfer, you've probably run into this problem: you've got dozens of tabs open across your screen, and you don't even know which one to look at next. All those open tabs chew up your system's memory, which inevitably leads to a browser crash. And if you run into a system fault, a blue screen, or a power outage, you risk losing all of them. Or, more simply, you just don't have the time to read through all that content right now. Even if your browser doesn't crash, the sheer clutter of that many tabs is pretty irritating. If you're using Google Chrome, I found a neat little extension that helps solve this called Page Snooze. So, What Does Page Snooze Actually Do? It's a pretty clever concept. Page Snooze takes a tab and hides it away for a specific amount of time. Once that timer runs out, the tab automatically reopens in your browser window, right when you're ready to deal with it. You can grab the extension directly from the Chrome Web Store: Download Page Snooze Once you've installed it, you'll notice a new clock icon sitting right next to your address bar. Using it is super intuitive. Just right-click anywhere on the page you want to hide, and you'll see a new "Page Snooze" option in the context menu. Select how long you want to snooze it for, and poof—the tab vanishes. It'll automatically spring back to life when the time is up.

2 min read