Background Any software that has ever been built has had a bug or problem of some sort. Generally, these bugs might be silly things that aren’t of any major concern - like a button looking odd or only clicking when the mouse is at a certain part of it. Some bugs, on the other hand, could have serious impact on the users of the software or those that are indirectly affected by the software - e.g. a problem with the billing system in an energy billing platform, could potentially impact the amount the customers have to pay - what if the bug resulted in final amount being multiplied by a certain arbitrary number! Imagine the reputation of the energy company who are clients of a Billing SaaS provider if such a bug were to happen. ...

I was recently re-reading, actually, listening to Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s path. In one of the chapters, Camille talks about some questions to ask when hiring managers. One of those questions was — What is your management philosophy? This took me by surprise. I hadn’t thought of it myself. How would I have answered that? What is my management philosophy anyway? Philosophy By definition, Philosophy has several meanings The study of nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning system of thought based on or involving such study an underlying theory or set of ideas relating to a particular field of activity or to life as a whole In this question’s context, it is the third definition that we are looking for from the prospective managerial candidate. ...

Background In my previous role, while working in the Insurance domain, we provided a mobile app to all customers who bought cyber insurance. This had some cool value added services that helped small enterprises check if their employees’ knowledge of cybersecurity is good enough to protect the organization from being compromised. Thus, we implemented a one-click phishing campaign solution, which enabled users to click a button and initiate a phishing campaign for the organization. This was a really fun thing to work on. This was when I invested some time looking into how email really worked. ...

This post is more of a note to self. PaperMod Update So last week, after a very long time, I actually spent some time doing some housekeeping on this blog. I decided to check Hugo versions and what’s new on paperMod. Found that there were many new things. Pulled in the latest and built the site only to realize it broke! How did you get the latest version? git submodule update --recursive --remote So some of the features introduced in the latest version of PaperMod weren’t supported in the version of Hugo that I had running, which was v0.109.0. I am not aware of what features exactly, so can’t really tell you. I didn’t have the time to explore. ...

By now you are already aware that at this time, this blog is using Hugo-PaperMod as its theme. This theme, as I have repeatedly mentioned, is pretty minimalistic yet full of necessary features. One such feature is search. As this is a static website, search is implemented on the client-side. When Hugo builds the website, it generates a certain index.json that is indexed for this very purpose. PaperMod uses Fuse.js for its search. You can read all about it in the GitHub hosted documentation. ...

Before I used PaperMod as my website’s base theme, I had it using Hugo-clarity. Both these themes couldn’t be further apart from one another. When I look back today, I still wonder why I chose Clarity, maybe it was the fact that it came with an abundant feature-set, of which I probably only used like 50% or less. But it was my first experience with Hugo. Back then, I used Disqus to enable users to comment on my posts. It was easy to get started with in that theme, there was built-in support. All I had to do was link my Disqus account, which I created just for this purpose. ...

If you are reading this post, you might already be wondering what theme I use. It is not a secret. I use Hugo-PaperMod for this blog. It is a minimalistic looking theme which just so happens to be pretty feature rich at the same time. Hugo-PaperMod offers you three modes in which you can display the landing page of your blog. Regular Mode Home Info Mode Profile Mode I appreciate these modes as they are. But I wanted something different. If you have seen my landing page, you already know where I am going with this. ...

I wanted to give a shout-out to a GitHub Repository that I came across, which hosted some custom CSS for modifying the look of PaperMod by a tiny bit. I thought I’d try it and hence the shout-out. Checkout hugo-PaperMod-Mod. The styles include: thumbnails sidebar table of contents wider posts on landing page

So you have started using Hugo for your website or blog or whatever you have built, and you came across something called a Shortcode. If Hugo were a programming language, shortcodes would be sub-routines, or reusable units of code. - Eakan But the truth is, Hugo is not a programming language. It is a static site generator that generates content based on markdown files. Markdown syntax is pretty limited. So how do you make your website as attractive and engaging as any other modern website with these limitations? ...

Background I have been wondering how to simplify the concept of handshakes - not the human handshakes; I’m talking about the computer ones, like the ones that happen between a server and a client when establishing a connection over HTTPS. So I went reading online to see if the content was digestible for everyone - including beginners. I couldn’t find a simple diagrammatic representation, so I thought maybe this is my chance to draw them and help others understand it at a glance. To be fair, it isn’t that straightforward to jump into discussing TLS handshakes, without learning about a few key terms. So I am certain that I will update this post with more information later on ...