Friday, January 19, 2007

Your ToDo list on the command line.

Are you like me who likes working on the command line? Do you like to put little notes on little text? How about your making a searcheable ToDdo List on your the command line!
Why text files?
Well, beacause it's simple, lightweight, searcheable and can be easily edited. You don't need big programs like MS Outlook or Lotus Notes. You don't need webservers or databases to be up and running just to access your list. Just have the file!
How to do it?
First we need to create our list. It's as easy as this:
echo MY TODO LIST > todo.txt

You'll get a file with the name todo.txt which contains "MY TODO LIST" on the first line. Simple isn't it. So now let's add something :
echo post the todo article >> todo.txt

So, what this line does is it appends "post the todo article" in your file. Neat! Now we want dates! To add the current date to your todo list try this:
echo %date% post the todo article >> todo.txt

You can even use %time% to save the current time. Cool huh? Here's somthing that's a lot cooler! Searching. Lets say my todo list looks like this:
MY TODO LIST
Fri 01/19/2007
@H By some groceries
Fri 01/19/2007 Call Mom on Monday
Fri 01/19/2007 @H Mail the documents to Alner

I've marked those items which have high priority with @H. Make your own markers! @H is MINE! LOL. Seriously now. If you want to find items with @H do this:
find "@H" todo.txt
which means, "show me the lines that contain @H": The result is this.
Fri 01/19/2007 @H By some groceries
Fri 01/19/2007 @H Mail the documents to Alner
There you go! Your quick and easy todo list!

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Google Cheat Sheet

Happy New Year Netizens! Well for this year, I decided to start another blog. For starters I want to share to you some nifty secrets about my favorite search engine in the world. Google! Many don't know that google is packed with utilities to help you in your 'search for knowledge'. LOL. Well here's my list:

1. Calculator : Simply enter the formula in the search box and press enter. You can even use it to convert units. Try the following formulas:

8+9*3
10^100
110 pounds in kilograms
1024 inches / 12 seconds in kph

2. Currency Converter: This one is similar to the unit converter. Try the following

15 malaysian currency in UK currency
100 Php in USD

3. Definitions: Type in "define:" and then the term you want defined. Example "define:World Wide Web"

4. Restriction:

  • site: Restrict the search within a particular website. Example: site:about.com Philippines will find the documents containing "Philippines" in the website about.com
  • allintitle: Restrict the search to all documents having the all the query words in the title. Example: allintitle:google search will return documents containing both "google" and "search" in the title.
  • intitle: Restrict the search to all documents having the query word in the title. Example: intitle:google search will return all documents having "google" in the title and "search" within the document.
    *Differences and Similarities with allintitle: and allinurl:
    allintitle:google search = intitle:google intitle:search - results of this will be exactly the same.
    allintitle:google search <> intitle:"google search" - The latter will match the exact phrase rather then word by word.
  • allinurl: and inurl: These operators work exactly like allintitle: and intitle: except that they match the address of the document rather than the title.

4. Stock Quotes: stocks: followed by the stock ticker symbol will display stock information about that symbol. Example stocks:intc will display stock information about Intel Corporation.

5. Synonym Search: putting a tilde "~" in front of the search term will not only return documents containing that term but also its sysnonymns. Example ~exercise will return pages containing Exercise, Fitness, Walking, Weight Training, aerobics, etc.

6. Refine: using minus "-" before a search term will retun document containing all serach terms except the one with the minus sign. Example if you're looking for "bass" refering to the fish rather than music you can use "bass -music"

7. Music Search: Go to http://www.google.com/musicsearch?q and enter the artist, song title, or album and it will look it up for you.

Well, that's it for now. I'll be adding some more when I find some. Happy Googling!