Tech Notes

To generate a unique random key in Google Sheets, you can use built-in functions for simple IDs or Google Apps Script for more robust, permanent identifiers.

1. Simple Alphanumeric Key (Formula)

This formula creates an 8-character hexadecimal string. Note that it will refresh every time the sheet recalculates unless you “Paste as values”.

=DEC2HEX(RANDBETWEEN(0, 999999999), 8)

RANDBETWEEN picks a large random number, and DEC2HEX converts it into a 0-9/A-F string.

It is simple but innovative and complicated logic. Movement is in new method by pressing Enter. The indicators in the prompt line, @ [0%]: shows the direction, @ is downward and # is upward. And 0 is movement lock off, LOCKED=0 and 1 is movement lock on, LOCKED=1. % is where input letter is to appear. In this script, the chain of variables acting like toggle and relative switches is the best.

In Sway, swaymsg -m is to monitor (watch) events. For example, swaymsg -m -t subscribe '["window"]' is to watch (monitor) window event in Sway. Sway (5), Sway-ipc (7) and swaymsg (1) man pages are to read.

Based on event monitoring of swaymsg -m -t subscribe '["window", "input"]', the following script was written to implement per-window keyboard layout in sway.

#!/bin/dash

if [ "$(id -u)" -eq 0 ]; then
    exit 0
fi
trap 'rm "$LOGFI"' EXIT
trap 'exit 0' INT
SCRIPTNAME="$(basename -- "$0")"
if pidof -x "$SCRIPTNAME" -o "$$"; then
    pkill -INT "$SCRIPTNAME"
    exit 0
fi
MSHTD=/tmp/minsoehan.msh.9.d
LOGFI="$MSHTD"/mswaykbd.log
KBID="1:1:AT_Translated_Set_2_keyboard"
mkdir -p "$MSHTD"
echo "0:0" > "$LOGFI"
swaymsg -m -t subscribe '["window", "input"]' | jq -r --unbuffered '
    if .change == "close" then
        "CLOSE:" + (.container.id | tostring)
    elif .change == "focus" then
        "FOCUS:" + (.container.id | tostring)
    elif .input.identifier == "'$KBID'" then
        "KBLCH:" + (.input.xkb_active_layout_index | tostring)
    else
        empty
    end' | while read -r EVENT; do
    TYPE=$(echo "$EVENT" | cut -d ':' -f 1)
    VALU=$(echo "$EVENT" | cut -d ':' -f 2)
    case $(echo "$EVENT" | cut -d ':' -f1) in
        "CLOSE")
            TODELE="$VALU"
            ;;
        "FOCUS")
            PREEVT=$(tail -n 2 "$LOGFI" | head -n 1)
            PRECTN=$(echo "$PREEVT" | cut -d ':' -f 1)
            if [ "$VALU" -eq "$PRECTN" ]; then
                PREKBL=$(echo "$PREEVT" | cut -d ':' -f 2)
            else
                PREKBL=$(grep ^"$VALU": "$LOGFI" | tail -n 1 | cut -d ':' -f 2)
            fi
            if [ -z "$PREKBL" ]; then
                PREKBL=0
            fi
            NOWKBL=$(swaymsg -t get_inputs | jq -r --arg id "$KBID" '.[] | select(.identifier == $id) | .xkb_active_layout_index')
            if [ "$PREKBL" -ne "$NOWKBL" ]; then
                swaymsg input type:keyboard xkb_switch_layout "$PREKBL"
            fi
            echo "${VALU}:${PREKBL}" >> "$LOGFI"
            if [ -n "$TODELE" ]; then
                sed -i "/^${TODELE}:/d" "$LOGFI"
                unset TODELE
            fi
            ;;
        "KBLCH")
            CTNID=$(swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -r '.. | try select(.focused == true) | .id')
            echo "${CTNID}:${VALU}" >> "$LOGFI"
            ;;
    esac
done

And the following script is to have keyboard layout id on the status bar:

For me, it took many years to understand trap and signal for immediate updating in status on a bar like swaybar. According to gnu bash manual, it can be understood that sleep [n] & and wait $! is key to implement mechanism of immediate trigger in status blocks. Importantly, wait $! must be right after sleep command with & for going into background, for example, sleep 9 &:

...
sleep 9 &
wait $!
...

Note: $! is process id (pid) of previous command.

The awk utility interprets a special-purpose programming language that makes it possible to handle simple data-reformatting jobs with just a few lines of code.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web apps built and enhanced with modern APIs to deliver enhanced capabilities, reliability, and installability while reaching anyone, anywhere, on any device, all with a single codebase.

Reads

https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0
https://web.dev/learn/pwa/
https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/bubblewrap/tree/main/packages/cli https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps

Steps

1. Make Website PWA Ready
2. Build PWA using bubblewrap
3. Signing the App

1. Make Website PWA Ready

Create /app.webmanifest file with the following content:

{
  "name": "MGMAemp",
  "short_name": "MGMAemp",
  "start_url": "/",
  "scope": "/",
  "icons": [
    {
      "src": "/favicon/web-app-manifest-192x192.png",
      "sizes": "192x192",
      "type": "image/png",
      "purpose": "maskable"
    },
    {
      "src": "/favicon/web-app-manifest-512x512.png",
      "sizes": "512x512",
      "type": "image/png",
      "purpose": "maskable"
    }
  ],
  "theme_color": "#ffffff",
  "background_color": "#ffffff",
  "display": "standalone"
}

Suggestion Online favicon generators like https://realfavicongenerator.net/ generates not only favicons, but also site.webmanifest file with PWA basic content:

Image processing became essential part of web development nowadays. It is my way of image processing in Arch Linux with following steps:

1. Resizing big image before optimizing using ImageMagic or FFmpeg
2. Optimizing image using:
   • jpegoptim for JPG
   • pngquant for PNG or
   • optipng for PNG or
   • oxipng for PNG or
   • Squoosh or Squoosh GitHub of Google for JPG and PNG
3. Convert image to webp format using cwebp of libwebp

Install Required Software in Arch Linux

pacman -S jpegoptim pngquant libwebp libwebp-utils

Resize Image

Using ImageMagic

JSON import type errors

When we do:

import mpps from "../../../content/members/documents/pps-myan/pps-myan.json";
import epps from "../../../content/members/documents/pps-eng/pps-eng.json";

VSCode/TS will show red underlines because:

• By default, TypeScript doesn’t always know how to type *.json imports.
• Unless you have "resolveJsonModule": true in your tsconfig.json, VSCode/TS will complain (red underline), even though Astro’s bundler (Vite) will run it fine.

Fix:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "resolveJsonModule": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true
  }
}

Combining Layouts, Astro and Md

You may want unify them into a single layout by detecting whether the props come from *.astro, an astro page or *.md, a Markdown/MDX page.

At any point, you may want to completely reset your local project so it matches the remote repo exactly (discarding any local changes, extra files, etc.).

Here are the safe ways depending on how “hard” a reset you need:

Option 1: Reset branch to remote (keeps untracked files)

git fetch --all
git reset --hard origin/main

• Discards local commits
• Resets all tracked files to the remote state
• Leaves untracked files (stuff Git doesn’t know about) in your working directory

Option 2: Reset branch and also delete untracked files

git fetch --all
git reset --hard origin/main
git clean -fd

• -f means force
• -d means removing untracked directories too
• After this, your working directory (local project repo) matches to the remote repo exactly.

Option 3: Really start fresh (nuke & re-clone)

cd ..
rm -rf your-project-folder
git clone https://github.com/your-username/your-repo.git
cd your-repo

• Above is simplest and cleanest
• This guarantees no leftover files or configs
• Useful if you’ve had a lot of messy local changes

origin/main vs origin main

origin/main is a ref name (a branch), single argument.