JavaScript is Not a Joke

Two recent post of mine were ridiculed on r/programmingcirclejerk: Building a Simple Stopwatch App with Electron – Submitted by someone as Building a 100MB stopwatch app. Compile Node.js to Native Binaries – Submitted by me as Making 60Mb ls clone in JavaScript. I submitted my own post, because I enjoyed the humor in those threads. … Read more

How to install old version of SBT using Homebrew

I’ve recently ran into issue where our projects were expecting to run with SBT version 0.13.12, but the only version that was installing with home-brew via brew install sbt was 1.0.1. Global Setting I’ve Googled and realized that I can install older version with brew install sbt@0.13 but this installed version 0.13.16 which was still … Read more

Latest news headlines in pure HTML, for Irma evacuees

I created a light weight RSS reader for people on poor internet connection to get latest headlines: https://alexkras.com/textnews/ I am kind of away form keyboard, but saw that Tweet from @samccone pointing out that http://lite.cnn.com/ was making users download a lot of JavaScript, … and now it seems down. https://twitter.com/samccone/status/906714941360553986. I wanted to provide a … Read more

Google AMP is Winning or My History with AMP

I’d like to open with the following comment on one of my anti-AMP shares, that I received today. HI I see that you have constant opposition to AMP because it renders badly on iphone. Do you know how expensive is DATA here in 3rd world? Native websites, force people to load trackers + install stupid … Read more

Dear Twitter, Please Make AMP Optional

Two month ago I wrote at length how Twitter was redirecting links on mobile devices to AMP versions of the content. Served not from AMP Cache, but from actual site’s web servers. Few weeks before that, I wrote an article asking to make AMP links optional in Google search result. Based on how well it … Read more

Categories AMP

Some thoughts on AMP at Condé Nast

Yesterday, I read an interesting article titled The Why and How of Google AMP at Condé Nast. I’ll let Condé Nast introduce themselves in their own words: Condé Nast is one of the world’s most prestigious publishers. You may recognize some of our brands which include Ars Technica, Bon Appétit, Golf Digest, GQ, Pitchfork, The … Read more

Categories AMP

Simple Python Threading Example

At my work we have a Python library that interfaces to all our API micro services (that are written in Java/Scala). It is a very useful tool for debugging and working with our platform, so I spend a lot of my time in a Python REPL. Often times I find myself needing to hit multiple … Read more

Debugging Xvfb Server with VNC

Recently I had to debug an issue with Xvfb server. It was hard to debug, because I was not able to “see” what was going on. I was able to reproduce and fix one of the issues by mimicking the build server in a Vagrant box. When I tried the fix on the build server, … Read more

Using Code Snippets in Chrome Developer Tools

Sources view in Chrome Developer Tools has a code snippets feature, kind of like a built-in text editor, that allows to write, debug, save and re-use code snippets. Creating a code snippet To get to code snippets: Open the Developer Tools Navigate to Sources at the top menu Select Snippets in the left menu (see … Read more