Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Articles

  • Here is a solution if TP-Link Router is not loading some particular websites

    If you are having a problem loading or browsing a particular/specific website, then you can follow the steps below to resolve that problem.

    Step 01: Navigate to your TP-Link router’s web interface. i.e. Normally http://192.168.0.1/

    Step 02: Log in to your TP-Link router’s Administration Web Page

    Step 03: Go to > Advance > Network > Internet > Click on Advanced Settings

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  • Why typing Devanagari Alphabets (Marathi, Sanskrit, Hindi) on a personal computer is so difficult? And why typing Devanagari in Latin is so easy and preferred by many?


    Introduction & Background

    I have been planning to write this blog post for many years. I have been facing this issue since I had my first Microsoft Windows Operating System-based computer in 2002. After that, it was partially solved on a Mac in 2008. I faced the issue of Marathi on the web when I had my website mandarapte.com in 2010 and then my community Marathi website chitpavankatta.com in 2012.

    The idea of writing this blog post or writing documentation about why we face the problem of typing Marathi / Sanskrit / Hindi with Devanagari Script on a computer got more critical when some category of journalists or people who started false propaganda to tell the Marathi population at large that Devanagari Script for the Marathi language is no more relevant anymore instead we should abandon Devanagari Script Alphabets and start using Latin Script to write the Marathi Language. These people gave an example of the young generation who are writing, chatting, or texting on their mobile phones using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. They use Latin script to write Marathi rather than Devanagari script.

    At that time, I attended a few lectures on Devanagari Calligraphy and Typography, where I met an important person like Mr Mukund Gokhale from Pune, who had done extensive work in building Marathi Typewriter with his two or three seniors in his field. He also worked with famous calligraphers and typographers to bring Devanagari onto the computer, i.e. designing popular Devanagari fonts for Computers. At that time, I was working at IITB as a web designer. After that, I met Mukund Gokhale at his Pune home to discuss why Marathi Typing is so tricky and why it is targeted by anti-nationals with no linguistic background to speak about abandoning the Devanagari script. We discussed it at length. He even showed me software he developed with his developer tech support to design Marathi-based digital artworks and designs. It was his initiative to create an alternative solution to Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator that doesn’t support Devanagari Script in 2014/17. And now it’s the year 2021. Because of these long conversations on the phone or when we met each other personally, I even developed the Devanagari Learning app for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

    When this propaganda started by abusing the Marathi language and falsely showcasing its irrelevance in today’s world, I talked with popular Hindu Orators who were tirelessly working to stop it. People like me were middlemen between famous Hindu orators and calligrapher/typographer Mukund Gokhale to share knowledge and know-how and connect the dots.

    So, I am going to write here my observations that I learned while talking with Mukund Gokhale. Some observations are in my capacity as I am myself a designer and developer who wants to talk and design/develop in Marathi.

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  • Completely uninstall Android Studio from Mac.

    After downloading and installing Android Studio for Mac, I noticed my Mac started heating too quickly with the fan running at full speed, and there was also a performance issue.

    So, I decided to uninstall Android Studio from Mac completely. I used the following command and documented it below if you want to perform the same process for uninstalling Android Studio from your Mac.

    Open Terminal.app from Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app and execute the following commands

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  • My Experience with sexism at the workplace

    I was working with one of my old employers. They hired a person to lead or head the design team in their organisation. And I suddenly started facing odd, arrogant and erratic behaviour from the newly hired design head.

    I completed one massive project, which lasted me designing for more than 7/8 months, and then there was no work for any designer in the Mumbai location. So I and another designer were hoping new projects may be in pipeline and will be assigned to us. But a new design head started telling me or complaining about my efficiency and commitment. He even questioned my ability to be a UX Designer…

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  • Remove ‘Extended Attributes’ from macOS files, i.e. ‘Where from’ property details downloaded online.

    Imagine you have downloaded a file from a website or especially a Google Drive shared folder, and when you select the same file on your local Macintosh HD and use the ‘Command + I’ command on your Mac’s Keyboard, what you see is a long list of gibberish URL the file you downloaded from under ‘Where from’ section.

    It looks something like this:

    Now, you may ask how to remove this Where from section gibberish from your file or all files inside the folder. The answer follows these simple steps.

    To remove specific ‘Where from’ attributes from the file:
    Use the ‘xattr’ command with the ‘-d’ flag and then describe the command to delete specific attributes. Here is ‘Where from’.

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  • How to fix Email DNS related Error called ‘550: relay not permitted’.

    You may encounter this error, ‘550: relay not permitted,’ if your remote email server is misconfigured on your web/email hosting service. You may also encounter this issue when you misconfigured your Cloudflare account’s DNS settings.

    The main symptom is that you cannot receive emails using your email ID.

    So, how do we fix this?

    The solution is simple!

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  • Why food you order online platform like Swiggy is more expensive than eating in the same hotel you ordered from?

    I have been wondering about this for a long time,

    When I eat Bhel Puri for 35/—rupee at Hotel ‘A’, but I order the same Bhel Puri from the same hotel ‘A’ through Swiggy, it is shown as 50/—rupee at the MRP price.

    Why these discrepancies? I even saw Swiggy’s user base repeatedly asking them the same question on Twitter.

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  • Every designer has questions about paying Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) Tax or paying for individual third-party design apps.

    Today, I used Adobe XD for the whole day. I felt it was competitive to use the Sketch app on Mac.

    I have avoided using Adobe XD all these years because Adobe Subscription Tax usually costs me INR 5,000/—here in India. But I loved Sketch App’s payment model, which is almost INR 5,000/year. Then, you can renew your subscription or use it without updates as long as you want.

    I loved Adobe XD’s compatibility and integration with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. It is really smooth and well done. Adobe XD’s prototype tool is smooth.

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  • Best Design Advice that I have ever received.

    The best advice I ever received about designing logos and symbols is to use humanistic elements/curves/lines and avoid mechanical drawings. The computer can handle mechanical drawings.

    This advice was given to me by Shirbhavikar sir and Pawar sir when I was doing my BFA in Applied Arts at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art.

    It seems I don’t totally follow this advice in my drawings/designs and illustrations. Even after four years of graduation, when I met Mahendra Patel sir at his SID office, he told me the same.

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  • User Privacy & Data Protection Standards in new Apple iPhone, iPad and Mac Operating Systems

    I had been planning for a long time but never implemented Google Analytics for my Apple iOS Apps to get accurate data about my app usage. I thought it was more work to implement analytics in the app with a framework using cocoa-pods, which would, in a way, slow down my app performance.

    But with the news that Apple is taking privacy and data collection seriously, with online ads for Safari Browser on Mac and system-wide privacy settings on Apple iOS 14 for iPhone, I am happy that I never implemented a third-party analytics framework or added an ad network to generate revenue from my apps. My apps are already paid, and I don’t want to mess up user experience with impromptu in-app advertisements.

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