Thoughts on PHP routing strategies
Routing is a tricky business in PHP simply because there is no one standard way of doing it. Starting from the most simple and benign (but inflexible) routing strategy of handling every incoming request in the index.php script to the highly flexible (but arcane and opinionated) routing libraries of Symfony,...
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Working with multi-queries in CodeIgniter
Running multi-queries (a bunch of text containing arbitrary DML/DDL statements) is highly unreliable and not an exact science in CodeIgniter or even PHP for that matter. The Internet is filled with posts like this, this, and this but you can’t depend on these solutions in most situations due to the...
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Troubleshoot the 'Invalid Package' error on Android APK installation
When you try to manually install an Android APK on your phone, you are typically stuck with an error similar to this: Stack Overflow is filled with posts like this, this and this one but apparently, there seems to be no consensus regarding the cause or even a generally accepted...
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Intro to DOMPDF - light and simple PHP library to generate PDF documents
Generating PDF documents from your HTML output is a very common requirement and there are several open source libraries to accomplish this in PHP. I came across this need for my project recently and I evaluated many popular ones such as TCPDF, mpdf, FPDF, etc. But the one that truly...
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We are not creating the "right" kind of AI
Arts, crafts, literature, even things like computer programming have been the domain of humans since time immemorial. Machines were historically meant to do menial tasks where the human couldn’t afford the time or resources. The classic example here is the type-writer, a remarkable machine that helped humans draft letters in...
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Unpopular opinion: desktop GUI is the most efficient and fulfilling way of human-computer interaction
In many ways, the classical paradigm of the “WEB” as a mere portal or information resource was the most likable and valuable one in the utilitarian sense. These were the earliest days of the Internet when most of the actual Human-Computer interaction took place in the form of a Windows...
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Managing drafts in Jekyll while writing blog posts
The conventional wisdom of maintaining draft posts in Jekyll is to store them in _drafts directory. Drafts are posts without a date in the filename. They’re posts you’re still working on and don’t want to publish yet. To get up and running with drafts, create a _drafts folder in your...
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How to allow Ping (ICMP) requests through the Windows Firewall
The ping.exe is a great tool provided by the Windows operating system to check and ensure if we are connected to another computer located across the Internet or even our own local LAN through the ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol). However, it often happens that even if the remote machine...
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How I made my web pages load 10x faster
Update: As of 17th June, 2024, I have also started using font-awesome and google-fonts which goes directly against my principle of “no-cruft”! And while the point of this article still stands in theory, I came to learn that there are pragmatic limits to how far you can stretch minimalism. At...
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The power of minimalism: Why ecommerce and corporate websites need to de-clutter
In the digital age, ecommerce and corporate websites often overwhelm users with cluttered designs and excessive elements. But as consumers gravitate toward simplicity, adopting a minimalist approach can not only improve user experience but also enhance site performance. Here’s why minimalism is the future of web design. Why Minimalism Matters...
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