Category: Ideas

Compress PNG images using PNGGauntlet | Best Settings

~ ayushraj1024 ~ Leave a comment

Hello, today I will tell you how you can use PNGGauntlet to compress PNG images. PNG is a lossless image compression format and that is why it is very difficult to compress them to a great extent (especially if they have alpha channel). PNGGauntlet is a free program using which you can compress as many PNG images as you want without losing any quality or alpha channel. It will compress the images as much as they can be compressed using the tools and libraries currently available.

You can find PNGGauntlet here: https://pnggauntlet.com

PNGGauntlet is developed by Ben Hollis. Visit his website here: https://benhollis.net

I have written text instructions here but I have also made a small (5 minute approx) video telling you how to use PNGGauntlet. You can find the video below. If you don’t like watching the video you can read everything here as well.

This is a video I made. Everything I want to tell you is in the video as well in this post.

I will tell you the settings for this program which I found to be the best. First if you download and install PNGGauntlet and you open it you will see a screen like this:

How the PNGGauntlet window looks like if you maximize it.

Then you must go to Tools -> Options and you will be presented with many a small window with many tabs as shown below:

Now you must click on PNGOut tab and do these steps

  1. Set ‘Bit Depth’ to ‘Minimize’
  2. Set ‘Color Type’ to ‘RGB+Alpha’
  3. Set ‘Filter Type’ to ‘None’
  4. You can leave rest of the options to their default values.

In the end it should look like this:

Next go to OptiPNG and do this:

  1. Click on ‘Enable OptiPNG’
  2. From the ‘Optimization Level’ dropdown choose ‘7 (Most)’

It should look like this:

Now you must go to ‘DeflOpt’ tab and do these steps:

  1. Click on the checkbox ‘Enable DeflOpt’

It should look like this:

That’s it. These are the settings which I found to be the best. Now you can drag and drop PNG images in this program and click on ‘Optimize’ to compress them.

Also, if you choose ‘Overwrite original files’ then it will overwrite the images you have dropped in it. If you don’t choose ‘Overwrite original files’ then you can enter a location where you want to save the compressed files. Generally when compressing pictures we choose the ‘Overwrite original files’ because we want to save space. So, there may be very few scenarios where you will have to keep the original file and write the compressed files somewhere else. You should not worry while overwriting your original files with it. It will not degrade the quality of the pictures.

I hope this information will help you in some way. Thank you for reading. 🙂

Ideas and Implementation

~ ayushraj1024 ~ Leave a comment

A lot of us have many different ideas on new things and processes which we want to implement and bring in front of the world. Many of us also have the skills to do so. However, not all of us are able to do this. That is, bring our ideas from our head into reality. Why is that you ask? Let me give you my perspective on this.

Anime: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The image is not mine. I found it here: http://dailyhdwallpaper.com/beautiful-girl-anime-desktop-1920×1080-wallpaper.html

To think about new ideas is easy for the imaginative person. But in order to implement these ideas you need patience, hard work and perseverance. Nothing gets implemented if you have a lot of skills and know how but don’t put in the time and effort to put your ideas into action. When you are working on your ideas then you have no one else to depend on other than yourself. Your idea may fail and you may have to take a lot of sh*t. But, you still have to pursue it knowing deep in your heart that it might fail. This takes courage people. If you can muster this much courage then you can bring great things in the world.

So, be careful when you are trying to start the next big thing and leave your regular job. First think about this, are you ready to kill yourself for it? Because you may need to with all the hard work you will be doing. Sounds morbid, I know. But anything worth doing is a struggle.

Inner Voice

~ ayushraj1024 ~ Leave a comment

Inner voice is that voice inside your heart which tells you if what you are doing is right or not. It also guides you in your life.

Image is not mine. I found it here: https://wallpapersmug.com/w/download/1400×1050/kitchen-anime-girl-thinking-07cc18

Today I learned that, if that inner voice of yours is starting to hurt you then its probably a voice that somebody else kept in you. That person may have a very big influence in your life and the things they said and thought about you have manifested themselves in the form of your inner voice. If that voice is malicious to you, you must stop listening to it. That’s right, I just said that.

Also, look at what Gary said in this video. This inspired me very much to write this post because I feel that this is goddamn true.

watch at 3:04 to 3:25

Words to live by friends.

Where should you register your domain name? And the truth about nameservers! O.O

~ ayushraj1024 ~ Leave a comment
Google domains logo

There are mainly two domain registrars which offer great service. One is Amazon Route 53 and Google Domains. Which one of them should you choose?

Amazon Route 53 logo

I will recommend that you go for Google Domains. See, the thing is that when you get a domain name then you also need to get nameservers and these nameservers also cost money. Google domains offers you domain name registration as well as their nameservers for a fixed yearly price. And boy, are their nameservers amazing! 😀

Amazon Route 53 has a separate fee for registration of domain name (which is around $12) and a separate monthly fee for using their nameservers. This gets expensive really quick and it makes you feel somewhat uneasy that you need to pay every month as well as pay a $12 yearly fees for your domain name. Also, Amazon Route 53 interface is really scary. :O I will only recommended it for professional web developers who want to host their websites and apps on Amazon’s infrastructure only.

Google offers everything in a fixed yearly price. Their price for domain names as well as nameservers are also around $12. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU GO FOR GOOGLE DOMAINS! 🙂

There are many more registrars out there and they offer you ridiculously low prices for domain names. But be warned, after an year or so they will again charge you a high/standard price for your domain and if you don’t know how to transfer domain to some other registrar then you are stuck with them.

Also, they do not tell you what type of nameservers they will be using. Generally, their nameserves are really low performance. That is where they cut their prices and this detail is always hidden from the customer. In my opinion they should tell upfront that this cost also includes a low performance nameserver. Don’t go for these low selling domain registrars, they will get you one way or the other.

Thank you for reading. I hope it helps you. :3

How to choose a web server?

~ ayushraj1024 ~ Leave a comment
This is a simple flowchart for you to decide which web server you should choose. Veteran web developers may already know what works best for them. This is for beginner web developers or people just wanting to try web development.

If you are having trouble deciding which web server to choose given all these options then this is the chart for you. I admit that there are many more services out there for example Google cloud, Microsoft Azure etc. But I am mentioning those services here which I have tried myself and can tell you that they are worth your money and time and that they will get the job done.

Notice that many veterans and experts will tell you to go for Amazon Web Services. I will not recommend this if you are hosting a website for the first time or if you are unsure what Amazon Web Services really is. If you are not comfortable with FTP, SSH and Linux terminal then AWS (Amazon Web Services) is not for you.

Heroku is good for hosting web apps and you do not need a lot of configuration to get your web app up and running. You need to do all the work using command line and git so be ready for it. And, if you are serious about web or software development then you should definitely learn git. Heroku offers some virtual machine instances for free if they use resources within a certain limit. The major resource which they monitor is CPU time. How much CPU time is your web app consuming? If it is less than a certain limit then you can host your web app on their infrastructure for free. There is more to it and you should really visit their website to find it out. http://www.heroku.com

If you want a good, out of the box service then go for Cpanel. Cpanel is user friendly and it gets your website up and running within minutes. You can choose any hosting service mentioned in the chart to use Cpanel. I have personally tried Godaddy and Milesweb and I found that Godaddy servers were a little slower compared to Milesweb. You can try whatever service is best in your country.

Happy hosting. 😉Â