Year: 2011

Categories
Personal

Good Bye, 2011! Welcome, 2012! :)

Another year passed – the time has come to look back one more year and set expectations for the next year.

In 2011:

— I enjoyed a lot in Leevio, learned Zend Framework, built DeployNinja and contributed to Kuestions besides other projects.

— I have learned Windows Phone 7 development and some .NET (C#). I built the first Windows Phone 7 application from Bangladesh that made it’s place in the app store.

— I have mainly used Windows 7 as my primary OS all the year long. Switched to Zorin OS in December. Chose PhpStorm as my IDE and Zend Framework as my primary web framework.

— I have spoken at the phpXperts seminar 2011, my 2nd time as a speaker on this annual event.

— I have become a moderator of the phpXperts group.

— I have become the Campus Lead of Microsoft Student Partners, Khulna University.

— Arranged “Imagine Cup boot camp” in KU early in the year.

— Arranged “msdnaa installation fiesta” in Khulna University.

— I along with Hasin vai and Murshed vai created the group “nixers” to promote *Nix in a healthy way. Interestingly the group was created on the 16th December, the Victory Day of Bangladesh.

— I became a moderator in “nixers” too.

— I have learned a lot of Javascript and jQuery.

— Built a WordPress plugin and ASP.NET User Control for Avro Phonetic Keyboard on Rifat vai’s awesome jQuery plugin.

— Learned Git and started using Github.

— Tried some cool cloud offerings – phpcloud, pagodabox, phpfog, epio etc.

— My knowledge in CSS has improved.

— Contributed to “Python programming” chapters in a book published from Ankur ICT foundation.

— Written a few Bangla blog posts on Python but later paused. Also did a few screen casts.

— Learned django.

— Switched to Banglalion from BTCL ADSL.

— Bought a few gadgets.

— Became 2nd in the 2nd year 2nd term, yes, magic numbers 😉

Looks like 2011 hasn’t been that bad for me. Thanks to the Almighty for blessing me with a good year. What do I wish for 2012? Well, seriously, I will put that to the grace of the Almighty. May the Almighty bless me in the year 2012, may I receive the very best of what I deserve.

Plans in 2012:

— Get a Macbook Pro when my current notebook dies.
— Learn a lot of Javascript, PHP and Python. Yes, more focus on JS, then PHP and lastly Python.
— Avoid picking up a new language unless it’s extremely necessary, mastering the available ones should get priority.
— Stay on *Nix, focus on web development.
— More and more community involvement.
— Contribute to the open source community.

May the Almighty Allah grant me success and guide me in the right path. Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous 2012! May the Almighty be with us all!

Good bye, 2011!
Welcome, 2012!

Categories
Linux

Fixing NTFS devices in Ubuntu

I am running Zorin OS 5 which is based on Ubuntu. I had a NTFS drive which was somehow corrupted. This is how I fixed the issue:

Install ntfsprogs package:

Find the drive’s device path:

Unmount the drive if already mounted:

Run ntfsfix tool to fix common NTFS issues:

Now mount again and have fun:

That was simple, no? 😀

Categories
Work

Avro Phonetic Web User Control for ASP.NET

The idea is pretty simple: A web user control for ASP.NET that loads the Avro Phonetic keyboard and binds the text inputs and text areas.

The control can be downloaded from: http://masnun.googlecode.com/files/Avro.zip

How to use it?

1) Extract Avro.zip and you shall get two files in the Avro folder: “Avro.ascx” and “Avro.ascx.cs”. First one is the user control and second one is the codebehind file.

2) Crate a new website project in Visual Studio or open your existing project.

3) Copy the above mentioned two files (NOT the entire directory, just the files) into your project. For better organization you might want to create a “Controls” directory (if you haven’t already). Paste the two files inside your desired directory.

4) Now, we add the controls to a web form. Open a page, say Default.aspx. Just below the Page directives, add the following Register directives to register the control:

Here, Src is the location to the Avro.ascx file. TagPrefix and TagName makeup the custom tag that loads the control. In this case, you now have a <asp:Avro> tag which you can use to load the control.

5) Let’s add the control:

The control accepts two attributes – “Bangla” and “Callback”. Setting Bangla to “true” or “false” enables or disables Bangla by default. The Callback attribute accepts the name of a Javascript function which is called when the keyboard state changes.

6) Let’s test the control by adding a text area and the defined callback function:

Load the web page in your browser. If you have Firebug installed in Firefox, the callback should print out state of the Bangla layout on the console.

For brevity, here is my entire Default.aspx file: