A blog where Moazzam … rambles

  • Synthetic alternative to hog bristle brushes

    I will add more brushes as I come across them but here is a line of brushes I have fallen in love with : http://www.dickblick.com/products/princeton-catalyst-polytip-bristle-brushes/ I bought a few of these brushes and had a chance to try the fan brush. It has become my favorite. Their fan brush is almost as stiff as a…

  • A big $1.00 peel off palette for acrylic paints

    I took up painting as a hobby about a year ago which is when my search for the perfect palette began. After having searched for an easy to clean but inexpensive palette, I came across this at my local Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Polypropylene-10-Double-Wall-Dinner-Plate-Set-of-6/44198302 I got 2 of these plates and have been using them. They require no…

  • Some very cool features in PHP7

    I played around with PHP7 over the weekend and I have to admit it has some very cool things I have wanted PHP to have for a while, and then some. Here are some of them (in no particular order): Performance PHP7 will increase the performance of PHP scripts by 50-60%. Nuff said. Anonymous Classes…

  • PHPSpec: Mocking methods of the object being tested

    PHPSpec is very opinionated and won’t let you mock anything of an object being tested. It helps you write better code. This, however, causes issues when you are writing specs for legacy code which (usually) was not well designed. There is a way you can get around this limitation – a child class. Let’s say…

  • Ergodox: Make LEDs indicate the layer you are on

    This article assumes that you are working with the source code downloaded from MassDrop. Open the file lib /key-functions/public/basic.c and add the following line below after all the #define statements. extern uint8_t keyboard_leds; Then go to the push function of the layer you want the LEDs to light up on. Let’s assume we want to…

  • Ergodox – The customizable ergonomic split keyboard

    A few months ago, I got a mechanical keyboard called Ergodox. It is an open source keyboard (which means its schematics are posted online for anyone who wants to build it.) that you need to build yourself. You cannot buy it pre-built. Although, recently people have been putting up Ergodox with Cherry MX blue switches.…

  • My mechanical keyboard

    In my last post, I talked about mechanical keyboards and how great they are to type on. I figured I would show you guys what my keyboard looked like. I have a Corsair K60 with custom key caps (well some of them are custom). Corsair did a great job with the keyboard and the only…

  • Mechanical keyboards

    Between work and personal projects, programmers tend to type 8 or more hours a day and it helps to have a keyboard you can type on comfortably. Something that wont kill your fingers or your hands over time. Mechanical keyboards fill this need. They have taken the gaming world by a storm and a lot…

  • Corsair k60 OSX issues

    I got a Corsair K60 a few months ago and fell in love with it. It is a mechanical keyboard (my first mechanical keyboard) with Cherry MX red switches. There is, however, one problem with it. The caps lock LED is always on and the LEDs for num lock and scroll lock are always off.…

  • You can make PHP extensions in a PHP like language

    I recently came across an article which spoke about a language called Zephir. It was written with the goal of letting PHP programmers write PHP extensions. I was really happy to read this. For quite some time I have dreamed of creating PHP extensions but the fact that I would have to learn C kept…

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