Posts

Why I No Longer Use Twitter To Promote My Services

Val Paliy
As you are probably well aware, Twitter has recently been bought by none other than Elon Musk himself. I don’t know about you, but I am only noticing negative sides of this acquisition. I will try to explain why within following paragraphs. Firstly, I am not talking about the blue stars here, either. It goes deeper. Twitter feels less professional as a whole, since Elon bought it. There had been many lay-offs, many people leaving the company at their own will because of bad management, and so on, and so forth.

Mechanical vs. Membrane Keyboards

Val Paliy
I own a mechanical keyboard for some time now, and I must say - in my opinion it is way better compared to my old membrane keyboard. Mechanical keyboards are gaining popularity as of late. While they were on the expensive side at first, you can buy (and assemble) one for under $100 today. Granted, you might need to get the keys and key caps to suit your needs in addition.

How To Fix DOM Storage (DOM Surrogate) Problems on Windows

Val Paliy
So, today, I ran into a problem. Well, it has been bugging me for the last few days, actually. I started getting the “COM Surrogate has stopped working” error. While Googling did help, not every solution worked for me. What did work is reverting the video card driver (I have a built-in Intel HD graphics card). So this is the first thing I’d suggest you try. To uninstall your current video card driver, first open the Run dialog by pressing Win+R: Windows Run Dialog Type devmgmt.

On Digital Minimalism

Val Paliy
Oftentimes, when you buy a new PC, it comes preloaded with applications. Some of them are essential, like an anti-virus, and some of them are not. Over the years I’ve come to realize that the responsiveness of your device (it doesn’t necessarily have to be a computer, it can be a mobile phone or a tablet, too) depends on how many applications you have installed. It is especially true for mobile devices, where applications are often started at boot and remain in the memory even if they are not used, draining battery power.

Queen's Gambit (The Series)

Val Paliy
I’ve watched “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix, and I must admit - I love the show! And I am not alone, of course. According to this article in “Business Insider”, and I quote: Netflix said last week that “The Queen’s Gambit” was its biggest limited series yet and was watched by 62 million households worldwide in its first 28 days (a view is counted if an account watches two minutes or more).

How To Change Your VSCode Theme Depending On The Time Of Day

Val Paliy
Eye comfort is very important, especially to programmers, who spend most of their day looking at code in their favorite editor. I’ve already mentioned a few themes I like, and today I am going to teach you how to set your editor up in such away that the theme changes automatically depending on what time of day it is. Take a look at the three screenshots above: Cobalt2 Night Owl Light Night Owl The above are the three wonderful editor themes I use throughout the day (Night Owl Light is in effect from 6am to noon, Cobalt2 is noon to 6pm and Night Owl is my go to theme from 6pm to 6am, because it’s, well, perfect for us night owls out there).

Plans For The Nearest Future Of This Blog

Val Paliy
Quick post on my plans for this blog. Basically, I am planning to recommend you, the reader, what I use myself - be it a computer keyboard I use, a book I’ve read or a coffee brand I like. What will be covered (the list is subject to change with time): Programming Coding Books Hardware Software Merchandise Hope you will find my recommendations useful, or at the very least - entertaining.

On Coding And Artificial Intelligence

Val Paliy
AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is big at the moment, and to no surprise. AI can help humanity in many different areas, such as diagnosing an illness at an early stage, or assisting a driver with direction, or driving you to a desired destination. While it is debatable whether or not we should trust AI to take over crucial areas of our lives (have you seen “Terminator?"), one area I found Artificial Intelligence to be particularly useful in is programming.

It Is Time To Ditch Google Chrome

Val Paliy
While it is true that Google’s Chrome holds the largest number of users to date, I have recently switched to Microsoft’s Edge web browser. Edge can now use all the extensions I had in Chrome, and Edge has many great features built in which Chrome doesn’t. Like Web Capture, for example. Edge is also faster and loads web pages when Chrome can’t (this was recently discovered by yours truly when my network connection speed dropped due to technical issues on my service provider’s side).

How To Get macOS Font Rendering In Windows

Val Paliy
Tell me something - are you happy with how ClearType, the default font renderer in Windows does its job? If you are like me and have to look at your computer screen for the most part of your day, you might prefer something better. Let me show you something really quick. This is how the fonts are rendered on my Windows machine: If you would like to achieve similar results, there are only a couple of steps you have to do, and they don’t require any tweaking.