https://dewaka.com/ Recent content on Chathura Colombage Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 03 Dec 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/run-commute/ Fri, 03 Dec 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/run-commute/ I recently started running to work and this is a post on my experience and some recommendations which might be useful for others as well. Motivation There are a couple of motivating factors why I thought of start running to work. Getting a morning run done before work It was becoming increasingly difficult to do a morning run before going to work and lately I have been falling behind on my weekly running goals. https://dewaka.com/blog/born-to-run/ Mon, 26 Jul 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/born-to-run/ Born to Run by Christopher McDougall has been probably the most influential running book I’ve read thus far. I was into running recreationally when I first read it a couple of years ago, but the book made me rethink running in many different aspects. The main thesis of the book builds on and popularised the ideas of researchers such as Daniel Lieberman contending that endurance running is one of traits which modern humans (homo sapiens) were optimised from an evolutionary perspective1. https://dewaka.com/blog/running-books/ Mon, 14 Jun 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/running-books/ These are some of the books I’ve enjoyed very much on running. Once a Runner The story of Quenton Cassidy This probably has a lot of sentimental value for me. Again to Carthage - Cassidy's story continued - This is a story of a high school runner Running with the Buffaloes One of the best books on collegiate running I’ve read. This is based on a true story Born to Run This book left a lasting impact on how I approach running from technique to enjoying running. https://dewaka.com/blog/flashcards-in-markdown/ Wed, 12 May 2021 18:02:27 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/flashcards-in-markdown/ Anki is an indispensable tool for studies which aids memorisation through spaced repetition1. Flashcards are really good for learning new languages and any subjects which requires a lot of memorisation. There are other software both free and proprietory for spaced repetition based learning. With its pretty good mobile application, which is free on the Android platform, Anki has been my go to solution for flashcards. Having the ability to use the flashcards on phone was an important factor in my decision to settle on Anki for this purpose as opposed to other solutions such as org-mode based solutions which briefly I explored initially. https://dewaka.com/blog/linux-mint-hibernate/ Thu, 08 Apr 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/linux-mint-hibernate/ I have a Thinkpad T470p laptop with Linux Mint 20.1 (Xfce) installed for personal use and power management is one of the things I dislike in otherwise a pretty good laptop. Compared to my work laptop, a Macbook, the Thinkpad drains battery in sleep mode and I often find the battery completely drained if I happen to not to use the laptop for a couple of days. Since Linux Mint does not come with Hibernation option enabled out of the box, following are the steps I did to enable this option. https://dewaka.com/blog/vim-selection-piping/ Sun, 28 Feb 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/vim-selection-piping/ In this post I would like to show a Vim1 trick I use often to do some repetitive editing tasks in a programmatic way. This is best explained by discussing an example. Think that you have a long list of values with duplicates and your task is to remove the duplicates and get the set of unique values. In my case, this kind of editing requirement is something which frequently comes up at work with data analysis queries. https://dewaka.com/blog/bulk-search-and-replace/ Sun, 17 Jan 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/bulk-search-and-replace/ Following a post on a couple of neat tricks I learned while bulk changing links in org-mode text files. I keep scanned hand written notes in PDF format in the main notes directory with org-mode files. Then I link them as appropriate on daily notes I might keep while working on tasks etc. Scanned notes were dumped in a single directory before the start of this year. This was soon getting quite messy as notes got accumulated over the months and with the new year, I wanted a better organisation structure for the notes. https://dewaka.com/blog/sdkman-to-simplify-development/ Sat, 16 Jan 2021 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/sdkman-to-simplify-development/ Oftentimes you find that there are different SDK requirements for different projects. A classic example would be that your Scala project might be stuck at JDK 8 level1, but Java projects themselves might be using later versions, such as JDK 11. It would be cumbersome to switch between different JDK versions manually, having to make sure to correctly setup JAVA_HOME when you switch between projects. sdkman is there to address this problem and the same class of problems for other types of development setups as well. https://dewaka.com/blog/tiny-habits/ Tue, 15 Dec 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/tiny-habits/ This is a short review and discussion on one of the more helpful books I read on the topic of habit formation - Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Book starts by giving you a framework for understanding behaviour formation with the Fogg behaviour model, as shown below. B = M A P M = Motivation A = Ability P = Prompt -------------- B = Behaviour Motivation, ability and prompt are the parameters which you can tweak to form a new behaviour. https://dewaka.com/blog/iron-gall-inks/ Sat, 31 Oct 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/iron-gall-inks/ A bit of history Iron gall ink is a purple-black or brown-black ink made from iron salts and tannic acids from vegetable sources1 As a fountain pen enthusiast, it was pretty interesting to learn about the history and modern incarnations of this particular type of inks. Both Leonardo’s notebooks and Isaac Newton’s notebooks seemed to have contain writing primarily with iron gall inks, such as the following image from a Leonardo’s notebooks2. https://dewaka.com/blog/chrome-nvidia-ubuntu/ Sun, 18 Oct 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/chrome-nvidia-ubuntu/ Dithering in Chrome after resuming I have had this annoying problem with Chrome on latest Xubuntu LTS1 installation on my Thinkpad T470p laptop where Chrome would get dithering artefacts after resuming from sleep. Installing the latest versions of software didn’t really solve the problem. Following are the system configurations I observed this issue. Xubuntu 20.04 (Linux 5.40.0-51) NVIDIA driver 450.80.02 Chrome 86.0.4240.75 This problem has been bothering me ever since I started using Ubuntu 20. https://dewaka.com/blog/fountain-pens/ Fri, 02 Oct 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/fountain-pens/ I have always been a fan of fountain pens from my school days and throughout the university years. But recently I haven’t been writing all that much and consequently my fountain pen usage went down. However, discovering some really nice fountain pen inks recently rekindled my interest in fountain pen writing along with taking written notes. Since I liked these inks so much and given that I learnt about them only recently, I thought of writing a short blog post on how they look on paper and other fountain pen related things I tend to use or have used in the past. https://dewaka.com/blog/emacs-custom-compilation/ Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/emacs-custom-compilation/ One of the convenient things I quite like about Sublime Text is the easy to setup build system1. It is pretty easy to add a custom build setup with Sublime Text, to compile a single C++17 source file, for example. Once configured it is very efficient and keyboard friendly to compile and run a C++ program with a single key press, F7 with default key bindings. This blog post is about how to configure Emacs in a similar vein. https://dewaka.com/blog/bookmarking-with-org-mode/ Wed, 08 Apr 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/bookmarking-with-org-mode/ I thought about writing a short post on how I tend to capture bookmarks using org-mode1 these days. Capture template I have following org-capture template2, defined in my Emacs configuration file based on the Doom config3, ;; Capture template ("l" "Daily Bookmarks" entry (file+headline (lambda () (personal-note 'daily)) "Bookmarks") "** %(org-cliplink-capture)%?\n" :unnarrowed t) ;; Utility function (defun personal-note (ntype) (cond ((string= 'daily ntype) (concat org-directory (format-time-string "/%Y/%B_%-e.org"))) ((string= 'work ntype) (concat org-directory (format-time-string "/work/%Y/note_%m_%d. https://dewaka.com/blog/digital-minimalism/ Wed, 18 Mar 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/digital-minimalism/ Minimising digital footprint and reducing distractions has been a topic I am interested in for a while now. In that backdrop, I recently came across a book which resonated with me, Digital Minimalism, from Cal Newport. What is digital minimalism? Cal Newport defines digital minimalism as follows1, A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else. https://dewaka.com/blog/rust-cookbook/ Sun, 09 Feb 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/rust-cookbook/ Rust is quite an exciting programming language from two points of views for me. On one hand there’s strong influence from functional programming lanugages, such as OCaml, in Rust to feel like an expression oriented language with pattern matching1, algebraic data types2 etc. Then there’s also the focus on zero cost abstractions3 in Rust which makes it possible to be competitive with C/C++ when it comes to performance4. Even though C++ is no longer a stagnant language, Rust is increasing a very good option already where former is dominating currently, at the very least for greenfield projects. https://dewaka.com/blog/semantic-patching/ Sat, 25 Jan 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/semantic-patching/ Changing existing code in a software program is one of the most common things software programmers do in their day to day jobs. For a well maintained piece of code such as the Linux kernel the frequency of changes could be quite high, and pervasive changes touching a more than double digit source files are not that rare. Patch1 is a set of changes to a program. Patches, as shown in the following example, contains + indicating lines which are to be added and - indicating lines which are to be removed. https://dewaka.com/blog/new-year-resolutions-2020/ Thu, 09 Jan 2020 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/new-year-resolutions-2020/ I thought of putting a bit of pressure on myself by making a list of goals public. Some of the goals, such as the reading target, I’ve already managed to reach last year, but some, like writing, I’ve found quite difficult to stick with in the past. Those are the kind of goals which I want to do better this year! Reading Books I’m tracking reading progress in Goodreads Reading Challenge. https://dewaka.com/blog/notable-discoveries-in-2019/ Tue, 31 Dec 2019 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/notable-discoveries-in-2019/ Notable Books I had a pretty productive year when it comes to reading. Following are some of the notable books from the ones I read this year. Poetry Mary Oliver’s poetry was one of the best discoveries for me this year. I ended up reading about five poetry collections from her and I liked all of them. Among the collections, Felicity, House of Light and Red Bird contaied some of the favourite poems by her. https://dewaka.com/blog/a-poem-in-prolog/ Tue, 01 Oct 2019 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/a-poem-in-prolog/ For Want of a Nail I thought it would be fun to translate a poem, For Want of a Nail which has an interesting history1 which I came across while reading about The Five Whys2 technique. The version of the poem reproduced in this post is attributed to Welsh poet George Herbert3. This is a poem which illustrates The Five Whys analysis to find the cause-and-effect relationship underlying a problem in an easy to remember form. https://dewaka.com/blog/starting-a-personal-wiki/ Wed, 21 Aug 2019 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/starting-a-personal-wiki/ I have been keeping org-mode1 notes on a daily basis for a couple of years now. I started keeping journal notes with Evernote around 2012, but soon got disillusioned on proprietary formats for keeping notes, especially given that I pretty much hate to use any text interface without good Vi key bindings. After learning about the power, flexibility and simplicity of org-mode with Emacs, which does have a pretty good Vi mode2, I transitioned to use org-mode for journal notes exclusively. https://dewaka.com/blog/customising-ideavim/ Sat, 27 Jul 2019 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/customising-ideavim/ Vim in IntelliJ IDEA IDEA is one of the IDEs with relatively good support for Vim with the IdeaVim Plugin2. Even though one can come close to functionality offered by IntelliJ with either Vim or Emacs Plugins, I find that IntelliJ IDEA is a must have for Scala development, in my experience. However, with IdeaVim Plugin you can still get the best of both world’s by leveraging your Vim editing muscle memory via IdeaVim plugin. https://dewaka.com/blog/fish-shell-configuration/ Sun, 01 Apr 2018 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/fish-shell-configuration/ I have been eyeing to change the default shell from Zsh to Fish shell for a while now, but never made the transition because I missed a couple of power tools and configurations which didn’t work in the quite the same way on fish. After giving fish shell configuration another go, I found that I could configure fish to match the functionality of my current zsh configuration with some new features and niceties which comes with a modern shell. https://dewaka.com/blog/vim-global-commands/ Tue, 20 Feb 2018 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/vim-global-commands/ Global command1 is a very powerful, and a little under-utilised command from my personal usage. Global command offers a powerful, composable alternative to macros. Use cases Usefulness of global commands is best explained through some practical examples. Using Vim global command to increment numbers <inventory> <item> <name>Coffee</name> <price>230</price> </item> <item> <name>Sugar</name> <price>280</price> </item> <item> <name>Tea</name> <price>120</price> </item> ... </inventory> Let’s say you have an XML file which looks as above, and you want to increase the price of the items by 100 each. https://dewaka.com/blog/fasd-for-navigation/ Wed, 07 Feb 2018 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/fasd-for-navigation/ Changing working directories is one of the most common operations you do while working on the command line. While tab completion can help make path completion more efficient, it is still a chore to do things manually, especially when moving back and forth between commonly worked on project locations. fasd is a tools which can help improve the efficiency of navigating the file system. Fasd tool is a shell tool which integrates with shells to remember directories and files you have worked on recectly. https://dewaka.com/blog/linux-git-credentials-helper/ Sat, 03 Feb 2018 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/linux-git-credentials-helper/ Typing remote repository passwords for Github and the like quickly becomes tedious when you are working on a couple of repositories on a daily basis. To help that case, modern git comes tools integrating with keyring implementations on various platforms. A credential helper integrates with system installed keyring to securely store username/passwords, so that you do not have to type them everytime you want to interact with a remote repository. Popular keyrings include gnome-keyring, which is the one I use on both my Linux installations - Arch and Fedora. https://dewaka.com/blog/books-read-in-2018/ Fri, 02 Feb 2018 14:38:19 +0100 https://dewaka.com/blog/books-read-in-2018/ These are the books I have read thus far in 2018. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell. This is a great book to read in times like ours where political climate so polarised and driven by partisan frenzy. This books sheds light on different modes of thinking between traditional Liberal vs. Conservative political ideas. Artemis by Andy Weir. I got started reading this book because of the more famous book - The Martian, even though I haven’t read it yet. https://dewaka.com/about/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://dewaka.com/about/ About Chathura Colombage. This section details what he does & everything else you might want to know about him. https://dewaka.com/projects/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://dewaka.com/projects/ Chathura Colombage’s projects https://dewaka.com/cv/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://dewaka.com/cv/ Chathura Colombage’s Resume