I'm, jjk_charles

In my last post, I shared my overall workspace upgrade, including dual monitors and an ergonomic chair. Today, I want to take a closer look at a crucial part of my setup: the KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch. This device has transformed how I work by allowing me to seamlessly manage both my work laptop and personal desktop. Let’s dive into th... Read More

I recently revamped my workspace, and I couldn’t be happier with the upgrades I’ve made! Moving from a laptop and a single monitor to a dual 24-inch monitor setup has been a game changer for my productivity. Dual 24-Inch Monitors Having two 24-inch monitors side by side has transformed the way I work. The extra screen space allows me to multit... Read More

Connection pooling is often overlooked by developers, yet it is a crucial element in solving many application performance problems. I used to be in the same camp, not paying much attention when DBAs complained about one of the applications I was responsible for hogging too many connections and not releasing them soon enough after their use. This... Read More

Majority of our Working hours are spent staring at communication software like Teams, Slack, etc. (this is true at least for us IT Folks since the pandemic) When they have become an integral part of our daily working life, it is important that they provide the best possible experience to not help improve collaboration rather than hinder it. Bel... Read More

Due to the popularity of Postman and it having been very accessible through browser extenstion (in the past), it has become the defacto standard API client within my organization. While I can’t change the choice of API tools used within my teams, as they largely rely on workflows relating to passing around collections etc. I have been for a long... Read More

Ever since Microsoft announced TypeChat library, I’ve been eager to try it. Not solely due to the current hype around Large Language Models (LLM), but because it addresses some intriguing challenges that were previously daunting or unwieldy. What is TypeChat? As per the blog post announcing TypeChat: … how do we augment traditional UI with n... Read More

When I first started this blog using Jekyll, I wasn’t really paying close attention to how remote themes plugin work. I guess I was more interested in getting it up and running, and I probably didn’t care as long as things worked. I was exploring the recently released TypeChat library by Microsoft and wanted to get a draft blog post going for i... Read More

I recently was on the hunt for alternatives to Pocket Casts for my podcast consumption. While Pocket Casts has proven to be an excellent service and I’ve pretty happy with their offering, things didn’t go all that well when I started consuming podcasts through my laptop (earlier, I use to consume them only through mobile). The primary concern I... Read More

Just a couple days after I thought I had it all figured out with my mobile internet situation, I started running into a problem. Calling it a problem might be a little exaggeration though - as it is more of a minor inconvenience than anything else. So, after I started using Cox Hotspots on my laptop, I eventually started using it on my mobile ... Read More

With mobile data plans in US being among the most expensive across the globe, and my recent need to frequently connect while on the go for work, I have been exploring options (other than Android Hotspot). I wanted a solution that will allow me to perform data-intensive work while away from home without causing a significant dent in my wallet. F... Read More

Over the last few months, our team at work has been busy porting an application developed to work on top of MS SQL & Oracle as data stores to work with PostgreSQL as the data store. While porting the code that interfaces with Oracle proved to be relatively simpler, the MS SQL bit proved to be a difficult one - especially with an Update query... Read More

Accessing accurate and up-to-date information about countries is essential for various applications. RestCountries RESTful API offers a pretty good way to access the same, so what else can be better than that right? There actually is - what if you could access them all offline, in a type-safe way from within your .Net code! This is exactly what... Read More

I always have a habit of making a list of things I mark for later exploration - which by default tends to be a pretty huge list (just like my Steam library). This could be a mix of technical things, books I've come across, articles I have bookmarked, showerthoughts I wanted to explore futher etc. Some of these topics I never get futher time to... Read More

I have been blogging since 2008 and been maintaining my own personal site since around the same timeframe - but, those were also the days I wasn't unaware of version control. Couple it with the fact that I was using free hosting options (PHP/MySql) and that I haven't tended to my site/blog for ~2 years - I ended up losing lots of my blog content... Read More