Collection of tools to serve local content on your workstation to the Internet

A quick collection of tools you can use to serve/publish content/applications on your local dev to the Interwebs. Some use cases for these types of tools..

  • Developed a static website and want to show it someone that is not right next to you.
  • Developed an API that you want an app or user to access from the web

List of tools:

  • https://ngrok.com/ : Most popular tool for this purpose. the free tier is enough for most use cases.
  • https://tunnelto.dev/ : Latest entrant in this space. In addition to have a paid hosted service, you can run this for free on your own server. But that defeats the pupose of having a tool to use in a pinch to share content :).
  • http://pagekite.net/ : Been around for 10+ years. Similar to tunnelto.dev, you can run this on you own server or pay (very nominal price) for the hosted service.

June 25, 2020 by Technology Web 1

Fatherhood..

Today being Father’s day, some reflections on fatherhood. I think people go through different stages on how they view their dad.

Admiration ( 0 – teen years) : Your dad is a superhero. He can lift you up (just imagine another human being able to lift you up, throw you in the air and then catch you safely :-).. mindblowing!!). He can apparently conjure ice cream at will. You feel safe in his embrace. He is superman!

Respect (teen – having a kid of their own) : By the time you are in your teens, you are probably stronger than your dad :). Your admiration turns to respect. Your dad is the guy that is always their despite not getting anything in return.

Love (After having kids of their own) : You understand what it means to be responsible for another human being!! All that admiration and respect turns to love ❤️

June 22, 2020 by Family 0

Overheard : Process

Love this quote about process attributed to Tobi Lutke in multiple interviews. He said it in different ways, but here is the gist

There are three kinds of processes

  • Process that makes things that were previously impossible to do, possible. That’s good.
  • Process that makes something that was previously possible significantly simpler, which is also good.
  • Remaining 99.9% of all process that exists in corporate America is the third category, which is actually just telling people to behave slightly different from what common sense tells them to do.

Source :

May 12, 2020 by Management OverHeard 0

HOW TO : Add commas (,) at the end of every line using Notepad++

Thanks for this great nugget from Sumama Waheed

Many a time, you get some data as a CSV file and need to copy some of that data and include it in a SQL statement. For instance one of the rows in the CSV was first name in the format below

employee_id
1234
8765
9808
1235
8734
6723

And you need to put it in a SQL statement as below

SELECT * FROM employee_table
WHERE employee_table.employee_id IN (1234,
8765,
9808,
1235,
8734,
6723)

That’s a lot of adding commas (,) at the end of every line. You can do it quickly in Notepad++ (you can do the same in any editor that supports regex) using the regex capability in search and replace using ($) as the search string and $, as the replace string.

May 12, 2020 by HOWTO Technology Windows 0

HOW TO : Configure nginx to use URI for modifying response content

That was a pretty long title for the post :). I love nginx for it’s flexibility and ease of use. It is like a swiss army knife.. can do a lot of things :).

We needed to serve some dynamic content for one of our use cases. If user visits a site using the following URL format http://example.com/23456789/678543 , we want to respond with some html content that is customized using the 23456789 and 678543 strings.

A picture might help here

Here’s how this was achieved

  • Define a location section in the nginx config to respond to the URL path specified and direct it to substitute content 
    location ~ "^/(?<param1>[0-9]{8})/(?<param2>[0-9]{6})" {

            root /var/www/html/test/;
            index template.html;
            sub_filter_once off;
            sub_filter '_first_param_' '$param1';
            sub_filter '_second_param_' '$param2';
            rewrite ^.*$ /template.html break;
    }

create a file named template.html with the following content in /var/www/html/test

Breaking down the config one line at a time

location ~ "^/(?<param1>[0-9]{8})/(?<param2>[0-9]{6})" : The regex is essentially matching for the first set of digits after the / and adding that as the value for variable $param1. The first match is a series of 8 digits with each digit in the range 0-9. The second match is for a series of 6 digits with each digit in the range 0-9 and it will be added as the value for variable $param2

root /var/www/html/test/; : Specifying the root location for the location.

index template.html; : Specifying the home page for the location.

sub_filter_once off; : Specify to the sub_filter module to not stop after the first match for replacing response content. By default it processes the first match and stops.

sub_filter 'first_param' '$param1'; : Direct the sub_filter module to replace any text matching first_param in the response html with value in variable $param1.

sub_filter 'second_param' '$param2'; : Direct the sub_filter module to replace any text matching second_param in the response html with value in variable $param1.

rewrite ^.*$ /template.html break; : Specify nginx to server template.html regardless of the URI specified.

Big thanks to Igor for help with the configs!!

May 7, 2020 by HOWTO Technology Web 1

Я вас любил – Pushkin

Loved this English translation of Я вас любил by Alexander Pushkin. One of my most favorite poems in Russian. Thought Robin Kallsen did a great job of translating it into English.

Original – In Russian

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

Translation – In English

I loved you once, and love, perhaps, has not
Within my soul yet wholly lost its flame;
But please do not be saddened or distraught -
To trouble you would drench my heart in shame. 

I loved you once, though lacking hope completely,
By envy and timidity worn thin;
I loved you so sincerely and so sweetly -
Ah, may God grant you be so loved again!
April 26, 2020 by Literature 2