As stated in my post titled Back with a Bang! (that title, still, amuses me), I have moved from WordPress to using Octopress on Github pages. I was happy with my new blogging configuration, and I think, I am on schedule with my post updates, till date. However, in making the switch, I messed up my email configuration while setting up custom domain for this blog. And, I was not even aware my emails were bouncing off, silently.

Alright. I seem to be pretty happy today. I think any stupid developer, like me, would be in the given circumstances. If you are aware about the existance of a very nifty witchcraft named Github, then, I am sure you will be equally happy for me.

Github is magic. A protective one.

For those unaware, Github is a code hosting platform. It allows me to write my code and then, keep it safe and versioned in their platform. That way, my code is always there for me. I can share code with other developers, as well as fork their work and modify it, locally. And, so on. The cool thing is that the service is really amazing and free for open-source projects.

I am, often, found creating simple scripts to automate one or the other part of my life. Most of the times, I would use a combination of project managers, task managers, automation tools, and so on to do the tedious work for me. But, at the other times, it is simply so much more easier to give my inner geek a kick in the butt and start writing some code which will explicitely be used by me to handle such one off tasks.

Oh, yes! I am, definitely, back – with a bang! Before, an interpretion is made on the word, you ought to know about !#: Shebang.

First, let me talk about Writing – a habit that I have cultivated over time, and a strong case can be made for the fact that it is one of the rarest recreational stuff that I do and preach to my friends. It can be really helpful, and at the same time, can take you to an n-dimensional hyperspace, where you can imagine nearly anything you want to believe or create. Not only that, for me, writing is a process to jot down those pesky little thoughts (hundreds of them) that roam inside my mind like ants near a sugar cube. I, usually, keep a personal diary where I am able to write these things down, but then, I am craving for some social interaction (online, to be precise) and maintaining a steady blog can really help with that.

Recently, I came across Hubot – the amazing bot from Github, which lets me do nearly anything while talking to it. Some of the examples being querying my site for availability, tracking down how many visitors I had in last 24 hours, updating my twitter status, grabbing tasks from my basecamp projects, and so on.

Currently, I am using Hubot on HipChat and GTalk, but as my team frequently uses Skype, I will be enabling a Skype adapter for it, pretty soon (the Skype adapter, in particular, can not be installed on Heroku). The Hubot instance runs as Edwin Jarvis, as I always wanted to have something close to the esteemed J.A.R.V.I.S. from the movie Iron-Man.

So, past few weeks, I have been really fascinated with the all powerful Vim. And, I often wonder why: I took so much time switching to it? Probably, the steep learning curve! It has to be.

Anyways, so I have really really progressed with Vim this time, as compared to my earlier trials. I am quite efficient with Vim now – even writing this blog post on it. I know how to move quickly, make efficient uses of search and replace, using Vim scripts etc. I have really really found plugins like Gundo, Fugitive, Tagbar, Syntastic, Snipmate, NerdTree, and Powerline to be useful and not to mention plugins like Vim-Rails which make my day-to-day tasks easier with a particular language. Oh, and did I mention the incredible ! and @ operators? They just rock!

But, well. This post is about using Ctags with Vim to make Vim feel more like an IDE and readily use Source Code Browsing within frameworks, large code projects, etc. Here, in this post, I have specified my configuration/process for using Ctags with MacVim for a CakePHP based project.

Recently, I switched to MacVim in order to give VIM another shot. Since, then, Vim has kept on amazing me with its feature set.

Learning from Vimcasts.org, I get to know the Gundo and Tabular plugins. This post is a short excerpt of what they do and how they help me in my day to day editing.

Recently, I have been involved with the 5minutes.to application. This application helps you get up and ready with your next website in 5 minutes or less including email addresses, templates and what not.

In this post, I have posted an introductory video we made for 5minutes.to, and by all means we love it :)

This post details my starting steps with a new Rails project, and is only kept here to remind me of various tasks that I, generally, like to do at this time. Many of these steps might be redundant or even, obsolete by the time you lay yours eyes on this post :)

Okay, so past an year I have been trying to switch into RubyOnRails for various reasons – and yes, they are numerous. I wanted to work less with the how-tos and instead, wanna work more with what-i-want-next when I develop applications for myself. I wanted to make use of those gorgeous little gems that will fit in so nicely with my Ruby code – I wanted to develop business logic instead of behavior (think devise, paperclip, clearance, and so on) and then, I, also, wanted to make use of some of the awesome assistants the rail community has for their everyday tasks (think capistrano, cucumber, and so on).