DEV Community: Dilantha Nanayakkara

Interesting Company Blogs

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 08:49:49 +0000

Using the Up bank API

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 08:18:16 +0000

Up is a mobile first digital bank built on top Bendigo Bank, runs on Google Cloud and made in South Melbourne.

Moving Up

I started using Up Bank out of curiosity. I hadn't come across a neo bank before. I was just trying it out. I referred some friends onto it and we would do the lunch money splits on Up.

Later on when I realised Up doesn't charge international transaction fees like the big banks, I moved a few recurring payments over.

Tax Time

I usually download CSV statements from the bank and run a few grep commands to get my claim totals.

This year when I was preparing my taxes I found that Up doesn't have CSV statements. I downloaded the PDF statements for reference but if I was going to move more transactions over I needed my CSV files.

Up bank API

After some digging I found their API. Great, now I can get the exact data I need and do whatever I want with it.

Getting a personal access token was easy as scanning a QR code with the app. I fired up Postman and imported the following OpenAPI file and was off to the races.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/up-banking/api/master/v1/openapi.json

I did not think the day that I could access my banking data through an API will come so soon. Better late than never I guess.

References

Up API
Announcing the Up API | Up - Upgrade your banking
Up | Digital bank | Upgrade your banking
$dilantha wants you to up your banking game -- Referral link. Earns us both 5 bucks if you sign up.
Postman
OpenAPI Initiative

Setapp is an Independent App Store for macOS and iOS

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 21:29:10 +0000

Setapp is a subscription app store that gives you access to over 200 Mac and iOS apps. It's cheaper than paying for each app individually over a year.

I turn it on every few months when I want to clean up my Macs.

Some of my favorites on there are;

CleanMyMac X - clean up unused files and caches.
BusyContacts - link to multiple services and organise your contacts.
Gemini - clean up duplicate files.
Renamer - obviously to rename files.
TablePlus - manage multiple databases.

I'm a regular ForkLift user, which is a nice dual pane file manager. I've bought that separately so I don't have to be on the subscription all the time.

If you decide to sign up for Setapp consider using my referral link.

Keep a Sparkfile

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:51:28 +0000

A Sparkfile is a bit of an old concept that has been quite useful for me over the years. It's basically a notes file about a topic that you keep adding and building upon.

The original rules are

Keep it unformatted
Add to the bottom
Don't change the past
Review for patterns and inspiration
Remix past to come up with the future

Simple enough right?

Use it for anything

Garden ideas
Blog posts
Travel ideas (someday)
Side projects that you never complete 🤭

Go your own way

I've kept one in the Bear app for a few years. I tend to review, edit, format and add to it every so often. Everything is very brief so its packed with ideas I can work on.

Try it out. Start with one and make a few by topic. Use paper or any notes application you have access to.

References

Don't Hold Back!

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 21:38:53 +0000

Sometimes we are our own blockers to progress. We doubt ourselves and play it safe and wish our time will come. We don't try because we don't want to fail.

Steli Efti

@steli

Reigning in your enthusiasm isn’t a sign of experience and humility, it’s a sign of cowardice.

16:44 PM - 19 Jul 2021

Failure is learning. If you don't try you will probably regret it. Even if you fail, you will have a good story to tell. So give it a go, there is nothing to loose.

You can't sustain motivation by doing the same thing everyday. Business as usual rarely leads to innovation. Be creative. Get inspired and to try new things.

Don't hold back. Give it everything you have and then some more.

Don't keep that reserve fuel in the tank. Where we are going we don't need fuel ... or a tank.

Tools for Remote Work

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 04:11:15 +0000

Almost everyone is remote these days. Running online meetings is hard. zoom and slack help but it's tiring to be online all the time.

Video meeting fatigue is a real thing. Sometimes a voice call and a desktop share does the job between a few people.

For bigger teams having a collaborative whiteboard would help. Here is where the Windows touchscreens shine. Mac users trying to draw with (so called) magic mice not so much. 😐

Otter is a nice tool to try. It transcribes your meeting notes on the fly and saves the audio as well.

Now that I've done more digging on this, Microsoft Teams seems to cover most requirements. Might suggest that in the next meeting 😀

References

Developer Friendly Podcasts

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 02:42:00 +0000

I used to commute a lot before the pandemic. Here are some of the best developer friendly podcasts that kept me entertained in the train.

More Lists 😮

Getting Started in PHP

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 04:07:56 +0000

PHP is a general purpose scripting language. It was created to build dynamic web sites by Rasmus Lerdorf back in 1995.

According to the StackOverflow developer survey of 2019 over 26% of developers use it and its said to be used in almost 80% of websites today.

PHP has come a long way from writing flat PHP pages to having decent object oriented features, frameworks, content management systems and command line tools.

If I may recommend a few;

Tools like composer have made package management a breeze.

I would recommend starting with PHP: The Right Way because there are a lot of outdated material out there.

Start with the latest stable version PHP 8.0 at the time of writing. Anything before 7.2 is really should be updated and pose a security risk to keep around.

The New Writing Playbook

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 12:58:00 +0000

Okay so I know blogging is quite outdated so might as well figure out some guidelines going forward.

No comments There were good comments back in the day but these days its too much of a hassle to maintain. A contact form or twitter should be enough. (Does not apply to dev.to, I'm happy to engage with comments here 🙂)
SEO'ish If you use a CMS these days you get this for free. Don't stress too much about it and write like you just don't care, your people will find you.
Minimal tracking No Google Analytics, something more privacy preserving just to see the areas of interest.
No ads never really liked them myself so why push it on my readers. No ads but I might have another plan.

It would be nice to make some money with words ... 🤔

So my evil plan is to make money, so I can buy more plastics and mess up the world (not).

The money would help pay the hosting bill and move to a better platform so I don't have to tweak so many things and just write.

References

Technology Websites

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 12:24:00 +0000

A friend wanted to know some sites to keep up with technology. Here is the list I recommended.

Hacker News is probably my favorite. I find so many gems on there, like this one about Angampora -- Capturing Sri Lanka’s Ancient, Almost Lost Martial Art - Atlas Obscura

A Clean and Simple Internet Speed Test

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 12:09:00 +0000

I like Clouldflare’s Speed Test . Its clean and simple without any ads or cruft. It just starts up and shows your internet speed without a fuss.

More of these please.

Reboot

Dilantha Nanayakkara — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 12:01:00 +0000

In the past I jumped on the blogging bandwagon around 2000, I met some interesting people and maybe got some street cred in the small but interesting Sri Lankan blog scene. Around 2008 having moved for work and started family I lost interest and dropped off.

All of the 20 people who read my blog moved on and that was that.

Looking back my old writing sounded a bit condescending with a hint of ego. It might have been my age talking as well but I didn't mean to sound that way, I was just trying to help.

In my mind I was always writing and rewriting my views of the world. It was kind of boring as well. Also I spent a lot of time picking themes and building blogging platforms over the years that I never came back.

I'm older and tired now, so I'm not going to mess around with tools (maybe a little) and get the words out.

Presently locked down like everyone else, I was hoping and counting the days, months now years to see the end of this pandemic.

These days I'm listening more and trying to sound less condescending and reflecting on better days gone by.

From the dot com crash of 2000, the global financial crisis of 2008 and now the pandemic of 2020 (to 2025?) the good times seem to have a predictable expiry date.

The future is the hard part. No one really knows where we go from here. Whatever the future looks like I can bet you everyone is making plans. We had a lot of home time to think things through.

These ideas will shape the future world we live in and I might have a tiny say in that.