How to sync thunderbird with icloud calendar

If you're one of those Apple users who want to use the open source Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client, you might feel that the calendar is one thing you're missing.  There are two general methods to sync the calendar to Thunderbird.

One is something which is widely popular and involves subscribing to a read-only view the iCloud calendar and the other is a bit involved but gives you Read-Write access to the calendar. iCloud calendar supports the IETF standard known as CalDAV which is all really nice but it doesn't provide users an easy access to it's URL, which can then be added to Thunderbird.

Start off by creating a new app (or skip if you already have one) from this URL - https://appleid.apple.com/account/manage

Then click on: App-Specific Passwords

[OFF] Essex Team Blitz and Lightning 2024

It was the 31st of June, 2024, the last day before the first half of the year is officially over. It was a Sunday and was remarkably sunny, in what is supposed to be the wettest summer in over a century in England.

For those of you who are aware of my shudderingly preposterous skills in chess, let me warn you that this post is about a chess tournament titled "Essex Team Blitz and Lightning 2024" which was hosted by the Ilford Chess Club which has unwittingly accepted me as a player over the past couple of years, during my stay, here in Essex, England.

This year the event had a with a time-control of 7 minutes per-player with no increments, I'm not sure about it's past but in 2023 it had the same time controls as well. It has been organised since 1993 and we are in the 28th edition (there we no events in 2020-2022) in 2024. The winners list (pre-COVID) can be found here: https://www.essexchess.org.uk/archive/team-blitz/ and the winners in 2023 were "Barking A", referenced from "https://www.essexchess.org.uk/activities-archive/activities-2022-23/essex-team-blitz-2023/".

Barking A won it this time around too, but it was a close fight between them and Wanstead Dynamos with tie-breaks deciding the championship. The team standings for this year follows.

Share mouse keyboard between Mac and Windows without KVM

Here's a problem that really got me flustered for some time. I was using a Mac OSX Ventura (13.x) from work and also a personal Windows 11 but I wanted to use them at the same time - when I'm taking a break from work - for example. However I wasn't aware of how to get my input streamed to both of them and switch between then whenever I like. After a lot of research I was able to find something that worked and that was free and open source!

I could have bought a KVM switch, but why spend money when technology and FOSS can solve my problem.

[OFF] Settling down in the UK (England) from India

It was quite a whirlwind ride for me to get settled finally in the UK after being offered to do so around in late November 2021. My employer, Apple, helped me a lot and frankly it has been so smooth for me so far since the 4 months that I landed here. The VISA process took around 1 month and after coming here I was able to get a rented apartment, bought a car on finance, got a credit card, setup my apartment and got my booster COVID-19 shot!

Some of the absolute essentials that folks who have moved to the UK with a job must have and are different from how it works in India -

1. Renting an apartment. The process of renting here is very transparent and the deposit is held with a Deposit Protection Service, so it's never a unilateral decision of not paying back the deposit held. I'm looking at you Bangalore land-lords!

2. SIM card - Of course, one of the first things you need to survive in the UK is phone number. You can get one from the airport, unlike in India, you don't need to provide your Adhaar or Voter ID card for this (or any form of ID, you can get it in a vending machine)! Any provider is fine, do check if they have 5G.

share keyboard mouse across 2 or more laptops

 In my last work place - ClearedIn, I had a strange problem of having too many laptops. Initially I started off working on a beautiful Acer Laptop (Aspire 5) with Windows 10 installed but then soon realized the laptop is of no use when doing a lot of computation tasks, i.e., joining a video call on teams when chatting on slack and simultaneously working on code. So I got another laptop - hp Pavilion this time, which was way better than the Acer one. However now I had a problem, I had 2 laptops and I wanted to use both at the same time.

I was using 2 keyboards and 2 mice. It was a pretty messy situation, but I did feel very important! Now when I had to take a break on my personal laptop, which is by the way a Lenovo Thinkpad p52 running Windows, I had another set of keyboard and mouse. Now don't forget the monitors too. I was in a mess.

[OFF] 2022 - for good or for worse

It's 2022, two years since the outbreak of COVID-19 global pandemic, which has now subsided into an endemic in various countries.

There is a lot that happened in the last 2 years that hasn't happened in a 100 years, and there's something else that we thought would never happen in a long long time, especially after World War II and the massive repercussion that had on the world. Well, Russia, one of the super-powers of the world, invaded Ukraine - a neighbouring country that was created after USSR was broken down in 1991. The term that Russia uses as a replacement of invasion is "Military Operation".

Amidst all of the terrible news going around the world, 2021 / 2022 hasn't been too bad for me personally. After a brief period of joblessness post COVID in 2020 I got a job with an US based startup, ClearedIn, such that I was able to work from home for the next couple of years.

Screenshot editor cum manager in windows 10

The default screenshot tool in Windows 10 is a lot better than the older ones for sure, but it doesn't really provide the kind of usability that other 3rd party screen shot editors provide.

Today, I'm sharing my favorite tool for screenshot management in Windows 10 and it's free to use and easy to use: GreenShot

Here's some of the reasons why I love this tool so much.

Software jobs in Kolkata West Bengal

 A few days I witnessed the re-election of the local state government in my country. The fight was as usual brutal and crass, with the main opponents being the currently ruling party, headed by the nation's only woman chief minister of a state, against the party that is in power at the national level, headed by a new entrant leader with a promise of change and development. The state has been marred with accusations of not being able to provide infrastructure to facilitate jobs for the youth for a lot of years now. I, being a computer software engineer, have faced similar issues as well. I have had to travel cross country to get a job that I thought I deserved doing. Scarcity of Software jobs is a reality to me in this state of West-Bengal and for many others who have migrated outside the state even though they would rather stay at home.

Post-COVID-19,  the situation has changed and I'm at my home state, working from home which is incidentally, a luxury that few can afford in these testing times, outside of the IT-sector. I'm part of a new young start-up, ClearedIn, where we're trying to tackle online spammers and make the web a safer place. It's been more than a year I'm working from home, at Howrah (a town near the major city Kolkata), which is where my roots are from. For the past few years I've been trying to find a job near my home town, and I've never been successful but it seems like from those failures, I've learned quite a bit. This post is dedicated to those who are still trying and I'd like to list out companies that hire IT professionals.

In completely random order here some that I have compiled.

Microsoft Windows Linux

Linux on Windows

It's 2021 and we've seen the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic.. and now I discovered Windows Sub-system for Linux, yes, Windows support for Linux. Guess it took a global pandemic for Microsoft to get Linux run on Windows!

Well, it's not really Linux, and for purists, this is more of an emulation, kind of like docker, but for Windows. However it feels fast and almost native. Good enough to support most user-mode programming languages out there. The support started from Windows 10 version 20262, so to get started, install Windows 10 and keep upgrading until this version is reached.

2020

The year 2020 is at it's mid way with today being the second week of August. There's been a lot going on this year and as a departure from the usual technical posts I decided to write something about what is going on with my life. I do that occasionally but haven't done for quite a few months now (or years?).

I'm at home, with my parents, the place of my birth, and I'm here now for around 4 good months. Since 2011, when I left home to go to NIT Durgapur, for doing my Masters in Technology after getting a disastrous score in GATE (the entrance examination), I have never spent more than 2 weeks living with them here. Here in Howrah. The twin city of Kolkata.

The Techgig C Skill Test

I used to consider myself to be pretty good in C, so I decided to try out the world's biggest programming contest platform, TechGiG (Look here: https://www.techgig.com), or so they claim to be. I wonder why I hadn't dabbled in this platform all this years since the platform seems to be existing for quite some time now. I do remember some 5-6 years ago I had dabbled a bit in the website and then stopped, I wonder why, can't really recall.

So I decided to give it a spin. I decided to try out the TechGig Skill test. Here's what I found while attempting the test.

There were 25 questions and I got 6 wrong and 19 correct. I wonder which ones I got wrong. Also considering some multiple choice answers didn't really answer the question. Also, I really wonder what a Java Question was doing in a C Skill test! Take a look:

Being the Java n00b, I might have messed that up. Moving on to one of the brilliant CHTML Questions in recent times.

That's an amazing blend of HTML and C. Amazing HTML coding skills are the feature of the tests in TechGig, since this sort of goof-up is pretty common.

Let's move on to the wrong answers now. I got this wrong apparently:

Well, I do pride myself in such questions, but seems like I have forgotten how printf handles the parse string! Well, what does ideone think?

Dear! O Dear! Ideone might have got it wrong too! Wait, maybe TechGig was wrong? Dare I say that!

Let's move to the next incorrect answer by me. Here we go:

Well, well, well. Seems like I've forgotten the basics of pointers! :( What does ideone think then ?

I think I've caught on by this point. I'm quite a C n00b also. Shall we see the next incorrect answer by me ?

This was quite tricky, so it's possible I might have messed up here. But really ?

By this point I'm convinced that the compiler used by ideone is perhaps broken. Or maybe it's TechGig that sucks?

I'll leave it to you, the reader to figure that out.

Open numbers in whatsapp without saving as contact

Whatsapp Number Opener

Say you want to make a whatsapp conversation with someone for temporary purposes but in order to do that you need to add that person as a contact first. Now adding someone as a contact is by itself a security risk as you can potentially expose your display picture and status to that person. If this is someone with whom you are involved in a transaction, then you'd not want to save this contact just for one time communication. Well, then what is the solution? How do you text this person without saving their number first?

Multi-protocol Google Talk, Facebook Messenger on Pidgin with App passwords

With the new control in privacy across the social media websites, multi-protocol chat clients like Pidgin have had some tough times. This post aims to solve the problem with tools from this new era of the privacy conscious Web. For those who are unaware, Pidgin, is a chat client which aggregates most social media protocols like XMPP (Gtalk), Jabber, Facebook, ICQ, IRC, into one compact interface.

 

We'll go through this blog, the process to add app-passwords in Google and Facebook so that it works with Pidgin.

Google Talk App Password Generation:

Sign in here: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords

Step 1, select the app

 

Step 2: Use Other (custom name)

 

Step 3: Give a name,  I already have pidgin, so used this, for you, use "Pidgin" and click on generate.

 

Step 4: After generating you will get this window, copy the app password

Step 5: Use the generated password in Pidgin with your Gmail username as usual.

Now for Facebook App password generation.

Step 1: Open facebook settings

 

Step 2: Go to security and Login

Step 3: Scroll down to App Passwords under Two-factor Authentication and click on generate an App Password

Step 4: Apply similar steps and use a name for this after entering your password for additional authentication, if any.

 

Step 5: Use the generated password in Facebook app in pidgin.

Enjoy!

Clipboard Manager for Windows - Ditto

After my post on Clipboard Management here, which was basically clipboard managers on Linux and Unix-ly operating systems, here's one on Windows.

This cheeky sounding software is named Ditto and is a blessing for all Windows Users.

 Here's a screenshot:

So what this does, is keep track of your last copied items! Works with images as well.

Download ditto from here or from the Ditto Project page: https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/

Enjoy!

ConEmu - A better windows command prompt

So this is a little article and a software review for one of my indispensable Windows Utilities, that is still relevant in the Windows 10 world - ConEmu. The terminal emulator, which is a large improvement over the Windows CMD, is a must have utility for anyone working on (or stuck on) any of the Microsoft Windows based operating systems. Whats even better, is that, this is Open Source.

So if you are looking for an alternate command prompt, take a look here:

 

Cool features include, multiple tabs, configurable history and of course the animation when it opens or closes!

For more screenshots go here. 

To download a binary go to the website: https://conemu.github.io/en/Downloads.html

[off] a poetry in the lovely city of bangalore

It has been a while I have had the heart or the mind to write some rhyming lines comprising of a poem, not that I have been particularly busy but maybe I was just fighting some battles that made me feel so. Bangalore, the silicon valley of India, the Garden City as they say it, is a beautiful city. The weather pleases me like no other city of this country, it is remarkable that I have to come back to the city from where I had started my professional journey.

So on a lovely rainy night I decided to try myself and type down some words in random order. Trying to sound lyrical and, to understand the beauty in words and expression.

So here goes, a poem untitled, as below

Its 4 am and the perfect time to get lonely,
As the world sleeps it comes to me very clearly
the silence wasn't meant for the deaf
the darkness wasn't meant for the blind
it is but the feelings inside of us
that we are destined to find.
Of course does that mean we can?
Is it so easy and effortless a task,
Sometimes senses fail us, comprehension we lose
The life in our blood from the bruises ooze
drop into the darkness we cannot see
fly into the noise we cannot hear
drown into the depths we cannot swim
nobody is here nor will be, my dear.

Logging PF Firewall on Mac OSX

Steps to enable logging for pfctl utility on newer osx like Yosemite, Sierra:

Firstly,

Add "log" to all rules in "/etc/pf.conf" or which ever PF configuration file you have.

Also set the logging interface with:

set loginterface pflog0

on the top of the PF config file.

Create a virtual interface with:

sudo ifconfig pflog0 create

Now start viewing packets which match the rules you logged with this:

sudo /usr/sbin/tcpdump -lnettti pflog0

At the end do:

sudo ifconfig pflog0 create

Fast download with Golang

Hey all, people keep saying about how great the concurrency is in golang. To be honest, I am pretty much a novice in this.

So just wrote a download accelerator in golang using it's much awesome parallel feature, the source of which can be found here: https://github.com/rghose/go-parallel-downloader

Here are a few results:

URL Downloaded	Time taken by wget	Time taken by Golang
http://get.videolan.org/vlc/2.2.5.1/macosx/vlc-2.2.5.1.dmg	1m3.375s	0m26.609s

This was with GOMAXPROCS=2, threads = 5  with Chunk Size = 10 KB

So well, the chunk size of download did make a lot of difference, since the number of connections to download the thing would decrease, too many connections does not help in speed up

Get brightness levels on jailbroken ios devices

One liner:

idevicediagnostics ioreg IOPower | grep -A7 'brightness' | tail -n1 | egrep -o '\d+'

Explanation:

idevicediagnostics ioreg IOPower

This gives a lot of hardware info!

ADB Disable bluetooth on non-rooted devices

Here's a script to disable Bluetooth from non-rooted devices:

adb shell <<__eof
  input keyevent KEYCODE_WAKEUP;
  wm dismiss-keyguard;
  am start -a android.bluetooth.adapter.action.REQUEST_DISABLE;
  is_open=`dumpsys window windows | grep -E 'mCurrentFocus|mFocusedApp' | grep 'com.android.settings/com.android.settings.bluetooth.RequestPermissionHelperActivity'|wc -l`
  if [ $is_open = 0 ]; then exit; fi
  sleep 1;
  input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_RIGHT;
  input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_RIGHT;
  input keyevent KEYCODE_ENTER;
  exit;
__EOF

No warranties!