Life, the Universe and Everything

Installing WP7.1 Mango

2011-06-29T23:08:00.003+01:00

Go an invite to participate and update my dev phone to WP7.1 Mango.

Guess what!!! I am installing it as we speak :) another couple of minutes and i should have my HTC Mozart running Mango

:) I am supposed to be a good boy and not start putting stuff on the net... guess what... who has the time :)

Deutsch Slydr 1.0 now in WP7 Marketplace

2011-06-29T20:37:00.003+01:00

Just got a notification of Deutsch Slydr app's publication on marketplace.

Finally :)

We next due for marketplace submission
* French Slydr (hopefully in the next few hours)
* v1.4 for English Slydr (or sliding keyboard) will change logo to Slydr
* v1.1 for German Slydr (mainly bug fixes)

Hermit

WP7 Deutsch Slydr 1.0

2011-06-29T06:08:00.003+01:00

Hello All,

German Slydr 1.0 which is based on Sliding Keyboard 1.3 is currently undergoing testing in WP7 Marketplace. The app contains German dictionary.
The 1.3 features include:
* Auto insert of first match when sliding is complete (when you lift your finger)
* Ability to correct the entry.
* Manual Edit of entered text (using microsoft keyboard)
* Copy to Clipboard for sharing with other apps.

The app should be out later on today.

Others in pipeline include French Slydr, Spanish Slydr and Italian Slyder.

WP7 sliding keyboard v1.2 Published

2011-06-29T06:03:00.002+01:00

Hello All,

Sliding Keyboard v1.2 has been published to marketplace finally.

It contains a better word matching algorithm that should fine better results for tracing.
Default tracing speed is Normal. It you have issues with word matches please try changing the speed to Slow or to fast and that should change the results you get substantially.

I will try to put 1.4 out to marketplace today. It contains various fixes and the ability to remember previous usage. There is also an option for broad search which allows for non precise swipe start (though it becomes slower as it searches 4 / 6 times more data).

Please remember Sliding Keyboard only contains English (American / British Dictionary).

WP7 sliding keyboard

2011-06-28T13:56:00.002+01:00

Hello All,
I am the person who has been working on the standalone Sliding Keyboard app available on WP7 marketplace.

I agree that v1.0 was pretty awful. It was a proof of concept on my part. I did not force any one of pay for it and trial mode was enabled. If however you did pay, thank you - I dont have a single penny / cent out of it yet.

Being called Swype ripoff hurts though it certainly is true. I first used swype on WinMo 6.5 and it was brilliant. Unfortunately nothing like that is available on WP7 Marketplace. In current iteration, 3rd party keyboards are not allowed. I wanted to write something that worked like Swype.

I am however improving the app as much as i can.
v1.1 changed to algorithm to provide better matches. v1.1 also provided ability to auto insert on comma, fullstop or space.

v1.2 has been in testing since last Friday and it includes a much better algorithm for work matching. That update also contains the ability to automatically insert the first match. The user can then change it by selecting correct entry from list or can cancel the last entry by pressing X.
v1.2 also added updated dictionary (both British and American)

Since then i have further improved the app but since v1.2 has not gone live, i cannot submit v1.3/v1.4 for testing.
v1.3 / v1.4 stores existing matches so it builds a list as you use it and next time it detects same input, it uses existing match. It also provides ability to allow for broad match (uses neighbouring characters to ensure a broad search is executed, this allows for a non precise slide action). The broad search does make it slower as it searches for matches in at least 4 times more data. when broad search is off, the start of swipe determines that search range and is therefore faster.

In v1.5 (which will happen in next version not current v1.3 / v1.4), i will add ability to add user additions to list.

I would like to thank many of you who have provided me with useful pointers.
1) v1.0 dictionary was limited.
2) Auto insert / auto space.

Any suggestions are most welcome.

Regards,

Hermit

Beware of Halfords sale - HotUKDeals Forum

2009-05-21T12:17:00.000+01:00

Beware of Halfords sale - HotUKDeals Forum: "Last week i was looking for bike carriers on halfords and i found a high mount 3 bike carrier for £ 56.

Earyly today morning i get an email informing me about 50% sale on all items including bike carriers. I check the item in question and guess what. they modified the details to have retail price to £ 89 and sale price to be £ 56.

What's the point of having a sale if the price remains the same."

mounting skydrive in windows home server

2009-04-30T15:27:00.000+01:00

two days back i finally removed vista from my workstation at home and converted it to become a home server. I was interested in taking some backups to sky drive.

Good search came up with Gladinet which supports mounting cloud based storage and skydrive is one of them (though most people complain about whs not being supported)

Well i installed Gladinet and on running it i got a Port 80 in use error. Which look up suggested that IIS is the culprit (ofcourse WHS exposes itself through web interface too). Opened IIS, modified default website to consume 8008 instead of 80 and that was all.

Gladinet started up jut fine, connected it up to skydrive and copied 10 gigs worth of pictures :)

Intelligent design vs. Evolution

2005-12-20T17:07:00.000Z

You would have imagined that the place for Intelligent design would be in a schools Religous Education curriculum. Oh well some of the rather stupidly religious and blank minded members of Dover Area School in Pennsylvania, USA changed the rules and made it compulsory for the students to be taught about ID before being taught about Evolution (in a Biology class).

A few days back I even read about Vatican saying that ID had its place in christian explaination of the world and that it should not be taken as a science. I agree there are lot of religions and how far would the board go... accomodate a chapter for each religions version of ID !!! oh well thats a thought... but there's no place for it in Biology class...
In the latest battle, a federal judge said Tuesday that 'Intelligent design is a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory and cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district'

Complete Catalog at Microsoft E-Learning

2005-11-10T17:53:00.000Z

List of courses at Microsoft E-Learning. A lot of these are free ones. Have a look

Oracle coming out with Express edition

2005-11-01T10:51:00.000Z

A few weeks back I read in VSJ magazine that Oracle was coming out with Oracle Developer Tools for Oracle 10g database which would sort of enable use of .net framework in Oracle.

I logged into OTN and I had a sniff around. Over the last few years MSDE which is the stripped down SQL Desktop Engine has gained a lot of support and market because even though it's limited functionality, it still can do lot of shit. The new version of SQL Server is also coming out with new MSDE christined SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. What I saw on OTN surprised me. Oracle wants a piece of it too.

The release 2 supports .net framework 1.0 and above and you can write stored procedures and probably functions using .net. It creates PL/SQL wrappers for the .net code and when called it loads CLR as a seperate process and uses LPC to communicate with CLR. That would sort of do the job but maybe take a little longer. The fact that thats all you can do with .net is the limiting factor.

Even IBM who I consider proponents of Java support .net framework 1.1 in there DB2 UDB 8.2 or something like that. They like Oracle allow only Stored Proc and UDFs using .net languages. The CLR is again hosted in a seperate process.

I think SQL 2005 has the most extensive implementation out there supporting, Stored Procs, UDFs, UDTs, Triggers etc.

Free e-learning courses from microsoft

2005-10-18T17:53:00.000+01:00

I came across these when I was browsing sql developer center yesterday. There are some great e-learning courses for free for the next 6 months on microsoft learning.

For SQL 2005 click here

For Visual studio 2005 & .net 2.0 click here

Currently I am going through SQL 2005 course. It's alright so far. Give it a go.
Good luck coding.

BrowserCaps and other Browser Testing/Detection Resources

2005-10-03T11:40:00.000+01:00

BrowserCaps for ASP.NET machine.config / web.config

Over the last few weeks I have been looking around the net, to find someway, to modify the useragent of IE 7 beta. It would just crash on asp.net application sighting a error converting 7.0b of the user-agent.
Finally today's search lead me to the above site which looks promising.. I will modify the web.config and add new browsers to browscap section.. hopefully it will work.

iPod Nano

2005-09-23T17:31:00.000+01:00

I was just reading how easily they get scratched on The Register. I have seen earlier iPods look absolutely horrendous (due to scratching)... Looks like the 4th Gen Nano's just about the same.

Anyways... I agree apple's fantastic when it comes to design.... Though they are crap when it comes to making it. Oh well the fanboys... Or rather the geeks who just like to show that they are so bloody hip deserve to get slapped... not by be but by the company itself... Hold on.. they already are...

I think everybody should do something... Buy the Nano's and keep them with the rest of the trophies.... Maybe one day sell it off to antics... Oh shit... It just got scratched on the way to the blimey shop...

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

2005-09-23T17:15:00.000+01:00

I am just on verge of finishing this book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. It's a great book. To the point and very right...
I have always been a believer of 'Show me the Money' (from Jerry Maguire) and I have a plan formulating in my brain. I am broke (as he says broke is temporary)... got married last month didn't I %>) but I will keep the advice in mind.

I have also decided to pursue a marketing course at some point. We shall see how that goes.

I have also decided that I am done investing in gadgets. I think it's time for real assets rather than stupid computers and bikes and pocket pcs and shite. Only time will tell.

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

2005-09-19T14:45:00.000+01:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

------------------------------------------

I was going through a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and i came across The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I think I remember it from my school days but it was nice to read it again. It's more inspiring now then it was back then.

The Apple Product Cycle

2005-09-16T17:15:00.000+01:00

I have been following the The Apple Product Cycle for a while and this description just hit the nail... it's so funny and to the point... I bet the poor bastard who wrote this, has been getting hate mail all day long ever since he wrote this.

Adding Custom Search using IE 7 beta

2005-08-11T11:01:00.000+01:00

Its like somebody read my mind... a few days back i was whining about not being able to search Google.co.uk... i like search Pages with UK and about not being able to add other Search providers... I just noticed on IE blog they have given a registry script by which you can add custom search options.
They have shown using msdn search as a part of IE... that is top thinking...
i am going to add that and Google UK search.
Here is post from IE Team

And here is my version of script based on their post.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\MSDN]
"DisplayName"="MSDN Library"
"URL"="http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?qu=%s&View=msdn"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\Google.co.uk]
"DisplayName"="Google UK"
"URL"="http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=%s"

Absolutely fantastic

First Look at Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1

2005-08-01T14:14:00.000+01:00

After a bit of messing around... I downloaded IE 7... there was a surprise to start with it was only about 10 megs for a change... though I haven't worried about file sizes for a long long time.

Once downloaded, I created a System Restore point as I have in past, installed Alpha / Beta software and managed to completely shaft my systems... :) so I wasn't in a mood to reinstall all the shit all over again...

Installation of IE 7 beta was pretty fast... It first needed a genuine windows authentication check ... Oh well it's PC at work.. too bad if it's not licensed... here we go... no nasty surprises... it all went smoothly and IE got to backing up the files and installing itself.... after about 2 minutes I was prompted to finish and reboot the box...
It took a minute to set up personalised shortcuts etc and it was show time...

The main window is slightly modified... I am still getting used to the Menu options being a part of each tab rather than being at the top most level.
There's a search tab on the top right... and it provides the user with a simple way to query the few search engines

There's been a big fuss about toolbars from Yahoo and Google etc not working. As you can see they are working just fine... Don't know what the fuss is all about... Though I have to admit, I pretty much update my software now and again.. it's possible that the people who have had problems probably had old versions...

To open a new tab you click the empty square right most tab. if you are browsing the web and would like to open the link in a tab its pretty hand... right click and just select Open in New Tab

Closing in slightly inconvenient... you have to right click the tab and click Close. Or you can click the X at the right hand side of the Tab Control.

Off late there's been a lot of phishing scams and browsers have been come under fire for not having anti phishing checks etc. IE beta incorporates a Anti Phishing Filter. M$ maintains a black list of sorts and has the option for user submission.

As far as stability is concerned I think it's been okay so far... Though on a colleagues computer its been crashing every now and again... Keep your fingers crossed.

IE 7 is also RSS aware as you might already know... If a page contains RSS the icon lights up (changes to orange) and you can have a look at the RSS feed.

I will update the post when I have more to comment on it. Have fun

Ebuyer Hard Drive Hard Plastic IDE Caddy With 2 Fan + Lock

2005-07-23T20:41:00.000+01:00

Ebuyer Hard Drive Hard Plastic IDE Caddy With 2 Fan + Lock

I would rate this as one of my best ever purchases. I am sick and tired of my machines going down and when they do... i have to go through the nightmare of swapping hard drives to get the data.. This has just made my life so bloody easy.

All i have to do is switch the pc off and pull the caddy out and shove it in the second pc... and off it goes... i have access to my files... couldn't be easier (well it can... but i would need hot swap functionality)... for 3 and half quid..... i can live without it for now.... 5 star ratings from me

The Code Project - Smart Alarm using OpenNetCF and C# for SmartPhone (Windows Mobile 2003) - .NET Compact Framework

2005-07-15T17:40:00.000+01:00

The Code Project - Smart Alarm using OpenNetCF and C# for SmartPhone (Windows Mobile 2003) - .NET Compact Framework.

The folks are code project just moved my arcticles from un-edited user submissions to .net >> .net CF >> Applications section after editing it.

In 3 days and 960+ hits i think it its not too bad (though it could just be the title). Would love for more feedback though i only had one comment (OpenNetCF not OpenCFNet) and one rating 4 of 5.... C'mon people...

Invoke IT Limited

2005-07-13T17:58:00.000+01:00

I just registered my first company using @UK PLC. I first looked up Invoke and Construct and Initialise etc but not much left. So thought what about Invoke IT Limited (IT or It)... after all the first business is going to be in computers..... having thought of that i checked it up and it was available.. so far thinking about it for a day i finally registered the Company Name and i also managed to book the uk domain name invokeit.co.uk

Keep your fingers crossed

The Code Project - Smart Alarm using OpenCFNet and C# for Smartphone (Windows Mobile 2003) - .NET Compact Framework

2005-07-12T15:31:00.000+01:00

My second article on The CodeProject The Code Project - Smart Alarm using OpenNetCF and C# for Smartphone (Windows Mobile 2003) - .NET Compact Framework

Smartphone Screen Capture !!!!

2005-07-12T12:03:00.000+01:00

I just finished my first Smartphone Application... guess what i wrote... well i wrote a smart alarm application, that allows me to create multiple alarms.
Anyways i wanted to post the code on CodeProject and needed screen shots... look up the next and Mikehall's Embedded WebLog : Smartphone Screen Capture ? contained a link to SmartSS. Downloaded it and installed the cab file in the phone and started the app. Taking screen shots couldn't be simpler. Once app is running in background and you want to capture the screen press * key and it captures the screen and copies the bmp in /Storage/My Documents folder

The Code Project - WHOIS Database query using C# winforms applications - .NET

2005-07-05T12:07:00.000+01:00

My first code project article The Code Project - WHOIS Database query using C# winforms applications - .NET

Almost a Brit now!!! lol

2005-07-01T10:39:00.000+01:00

Yesterday i officially became a permanent resident in the UK. Immediate
advantages:

i can get married without requiring permission to get married from
homeoffice
i don't require a work permit any more
i can start my own business

I am very glad that it happened as it not happening would have almost ruined
my plans of getting married in 2 months time. For 3 hours in all and about 500
quid, glad its over.

WHOIS Database query using C# winforms applications

2005-06-02T11:24:00.000+01:00

Recently i was trying to trace ip address of web clients to valid some query requested from me. I came to a scenario where i had a bunch of ips and times but whether the ips belonged to the same isp or not.

so i started looking up the net for some webservices (well from work everything other than port 80 is blocked) and i found some... they either charged money or where not returning any useful information.

so finally after looking around for an hour or two i set to write it myself. looked up some website that did whois query.... saw one which took a querystring parameter of ip address as string.

anyways it did work.. i did not modify it to work with private ip address. the data passed for private ip address ranges ie 10.x.x.x and 192.x.x.x range etc are different and the code can be modified.. help yourself i you need to do something like that. Here's the code.



if(this.txtIPAddress.Text != null && this.txtIPAddress.Text != "")
{
 this.btnLookup.Enabled = false;

 string LookupURL = "http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=";
   
 NetworkCredential nc = new NetworkCredential("uname", "pass", "domain");
 

 WebProxy wp = new WebProxy("http://networkproxyserver:80");
 wp.Credentials = nc;

 HttpWebRequest hwr = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(LookupURL + txtIPAddress.Text);
 hwr.Proxy = wp;

 hwr.Credentials = nc;

 try
 {
  HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)hwr.GetResponse();

  StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());

  string respData = sr.ReadToEnd();
     
  int startPos = respData.IndexOf("netname:");
  int endPos = respData.IndexOf("country:");
    
  string filteredData = respData.Substring(startPos, endPos - startPos);

  string[] inforeceived = filteredData.Split('\n');
                    
  string netname = inforeceived[0];

  string desc = inforeceived[1];

  startPos = respData.IndexOf("[");
  endPos = respData.IndexOf("]");

  string location = respData.Substring(startPos, endPos - startPos).Replace("[","").Replace("]","");

  lblLocation.Text = location;
  lblNetworkName.Text = netname;
  lblDesc.Text = desc;
     
 }
 catch(WebException we)
 {
  MessageBox.Show(we.Message);
 }

 this.btnLookup.Enabled = true;
}

Need a brothel? Ask Google

2005-05-13T11:31:00.000+01:00

Need a brothel? Ask Google or How about George Bush inspired version of World Map by Google Maps

Open up Google Maps UK
Lets say i want to look at something in Europe. Zoom out a bit and click the -> to move right. Hold on its a bit blank.
Keep clicking and suddenly you notice Alaska looming. What the heck.. Where did the rest of the world dissappear. I think Google's taken George Bush's idea of it.

It that wasn't bad enough. While you are on Google Maps. Click on Local Search. Type in Brothel in E1... lol surprise surprise. Oh well... all in a day's work.

Surprise Surprise

2005-05-12T16:40:00.000+01:00

I have been very lazy off late. Hardly get time to put down a blog. Anyways time for some good news. I am getting married in a few months time :)

Visual SourceSafe VSS 6 - Reset Lost Admin Password

2005-03-18T17:56:00.000Z

Microsoft: Visual SourceSafe - Loss Admin password

I have used this techinique a number of times. Use your fav hex editor... i prefer ultraedit and open up the um.dat in /data dir. Reset the bytes from offset 80

0:80 55 55 bc 7f 41 64 6d 69 6e 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0:90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0:a0 00 00 00 00 90 6e 00 00 a8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00

This information is at YOUR OWN RISK

Save the file and close the editor. Open sourcesafe admin and open the database. VSS admin will behave as if the admin password was never set.

TalkTalk broadband sucks

2005-02-18T17:22:00.000Z

I consider myself a power user who doesnt necessarily take backups too often.. i just download stuff over and over again :) there's limit to the hard drive space and the cds and dvds you can burn and have lying around...

i used Pipex for over 2 and half years and i moved from pipex to talktalk purely because it was cheaper.. it was offering me 512 k for about 19.99 and 1 meg for 25 quid provided i had talktalk phone billing.... well i moved on to them for a 1 meg account...

surprise surprise... within two months they write to me saying that my usage is causing network load / usability issues... and that they are disconnecting me from the 15th of march... the worst part is that i download hell lot less than what i used to download before....

Carphonewarehouse and their TalkTalk ISP sucks... they don't offer unlimited downloads as claimed in their advert....... I have decided to download a complete set of iso's worth gigs from msdn just to give them more grief..... it was nice doing business with you guys...

Learning to survive as a non geek

2005-02-11T12:15:00.000Z

Learning to survive as a non geek.... i have just started a new blog...

Still alive and kicking

2005-01-13T16:58:00.000Z

Ahoy people... hope life's treating you all good... yes i am finally recovering from excessive social indulgence on my part. yes yes i know once a geek always a geek.. but i am turning into a better geek...
got a girlie and a great social life... even work doesnt seem all that bad... hahaha... had a great time this christmas... was in poland stuffing all the delicious cakes... was back in the country for new years and well its been a great start to the new year...
it can only get better... keep your fingers crossed for me....
ciao ciao

Its almost winter: time for hibernation

2004-11-19T06:29:00.000Z

well i have a very interesting work life... i really enjoy it when i am all stressed out... but as with all the good things... it just don't last forever... so i am done working really hard for just about a month and its time for hibernation... yeah i will i could stuff myself and then sleep for 6 months %>).. what i will end up doing is the usual... listening to music... surfing the web and this time around i will finish my site :)

hopefully will post often from now on.. ciao ciao

MSN Messenger 7 BETA

2004-10-23T23:20:00.000+01:00

Earlier today was randomly going through blogs and i read Cornerit's review on it. Googled up MSN 7 and read stuff about it being leaked into public domain %>) oh well... found it at softpedia.

Its been pretty stable so far... been running for like 6 hours and so far so good... Found a few things like enhanced smiley packs and backgrounds etc... dont know if it was a part of MSN 6...

you have another feature called nudge.. its mentioned at places... if you have used yahoo messenger then you would have given your mates a buzz... sort of shakes the window with Buzz!!! in red bold... nudge is a similar thing except it doesnt look that annoying and the text is not in red :) enough said... find out the rest of the features yourself...

it's worth a look... if its unstable... just use Add/Remove programs to remove it and download the current 6.2 version of msn.com

Burning DVDs off DVB Recording

2004-10-17T23:11:00.000+01:00

I have gigs and gigs worth of recordings things like music videos and Everybody Loves Raymond (ELR) and Scrubs. I sort of stacked them up thinking its worth it till they come out with DVDs of ELR and Scrubs.. the problem is that i need to keep buying hard drives each episode is 650 megs plus... so finally decided to burn them into proper DVDs.. used TmpgEnc's Dvd Author

This is the normal process
Complete recording has adverts etc which have to be removed plus there's a mild audio/video sync which needs to be corrected. This is a great tool PVAStrumento to seperate the audio & video based on parameters like change in audio / video formats... which is great cause Channel 4 broadcasts the adverts at 16:9 but the shows ELR & Scrubs are broadcast at 4:3.. once you get the seperate split audio / video files use bbmpeg to merge the required audio / video streams. finally join the mpeg streams using tmpg's mpeg tools.

That what it takes go get one episode cleaned up... its great quality.. and since there are no plans for dvd release just yet, might as well burn it up... anyways... spend a chunk of this weekend doing just that and guess what... cleaned up 25 odd gigs here and there... not too bad huh ? still plenty more to go...

SpeedDater - UK and London Speed Dating

2004-10-16T11:41:00.000+01:00

Having recently decided that i was done being a geek... a friend of mine suggested i give speed dating a try... well i dont like 3 mins... the next one... approach... so instead went for the Lock & Key Party... it was such a good laugh.... more on it here... SpeedDater - UK and London Speed Dating, Online Dating speeddating

Pull-o-meter - How do you score ?

2004-10-10T19:40:00.000+01:00

Vivek gave this Pull-o-meter link and here's what it had to say....

Beer Monster

You’re no shrinking violet, that’s for sure, and confidence is half the battle in the pulling game, but you’ve still got to take a bit more care of yourself during an evening out if you’re going to stay at the peak of your pulling powers. Don’t want to wake up next to a minger now do we?

----------------------------------

See i know the lines... i am just horrible when it comes to saying them... :) Fancy a shag ? will have to try it some day. as Dawson keeps telling me... it works... though i will have to watch out for the mingers... lol

I am done being a Geek

2004-10-04T19:35:00.000+01:00

I have spend a while trying to figure things out.. and i have made the decision. I am done being a geek... i need social life...

This is my invite to everone out there...
Hi I am getting married next week. See you there. Don't worry about getting me any gifts, Just get me someone i can get married to.

lol... that sums it up... well actually no it doesnt sum it up.. i dont want to get married just yet... i need a full time girl friend... time to divorce the PC(s).

Good News

2004-09-18T10:43:00.000+01:00

About a fornight back I got really really fed up of Smoking and my consistent giving it up and starting all over again. So this time I decided to give up forever (Normally when I used to give up, I used to put it like - till the next time). Anyways I am almost back to normal now. And I have realised that if I do not smoke, my Attention Deficit Disorder calms down a bit. I actually did not know I had ADD untill i gave a psychometric test last year. The results came out excellent but suggested that I have a check for ADD.. lol.

Well not smoking it has its side effects too... But have been there too many times before I always warm people to stay on my good side atleast for the first few months. Wish me luck cause I have been going on about this for a long time.

Off late I have been working on my site again dotnet911.com. You might be surprised with the choice of domain name as one of my friends put it... I am restricting my site to american psyche. The reason being 911 as you are no doubt aware is a emergency number. Its funny when i give my email address out to people.. its hermit at dot net 911.com and they say 9 11.com ? Really winds me up cause i have to go about explaining what 911 & 9 11 mean to me and the population on whole (unforunately i am in london and not many people share my opinion on using 911 instead of 999).

Anyways.. I payed for a SQL server database to my host and once i finish a few bits & bobs I shall upload it. Hopefully every few days I will add an article on to it. Depending on the usage and feedback i will either keep it going or I will remove it in a year's time and save myself some money %>)

BTW don't ask about 70-320... i will come back to it in a few days.

My Perspective on India and the People

2004-09-11T13:08:00.000+01:00

Every once in a while i get on to a newsgroup and i see some really really lame posts... some of them are from indians who do not know who to ask or where to look... which can be really really annoying at times... things like.. i want to do MCAD my email id is blah blah blah.. please email me the details.. this things can be found at Microsoft Certification Site.

And there are people from around the globe... some comment saying that its worrying how people dont know a thing about English or Technology and that a whole lot of work is being outsourced to them... I think it always better to educate people (even the one indians so love to call Foreigners) and i looked up some facts and put them down saying actually its not too bad...

What do i get back ? a reply from a self proclaimed Patriotic Twat... calling me an @sshole and asking me to not belittle my country of birth in front of foreigners... i couldnt believe this... somethings never change... mate... learn to appreciate facts.... do you really know what India is and even being an Indian is all about ?

i have been across most of India.. from Gujarat in the West to Delhi in the North to Assam in (Northeast) to Tamilnadu in the South.. i have seen a lot of india in those 24 years... The only difference between me and a whole lot of Indians is that I think from a different prepecitve.... and that was one of the reasons why i was termed a UBI (Unfortunatly Born in India). Most people who dont like the fact would rather dish out and i got called that a lot because i prefer to live with the facts than boast on false pride.

At the end of the day i am a programmer... i go by "Show me the Money" attitude. And yes i do have Indian morals but hey this isn't a war and I am here to make a living.

And finally you can still dish this as well and say whatever you wish to... yes even if you think a real indian in one who stays in india and makes it big... Only accepting the fact can get you a step closer to making a difference.. in India and everywhere in the world.

70-320 and .net Remoting

2004-09-10T19:41:00.000+01:00

over the last 2 weeks i have been studying for 320 and hell... its bloody extensive... i was told be prepared to think hard for the exams... i am having to think hard well before the exams....

though its been fun most of the times... Amit's Kalani's book gets a very good feedback from me.... Remoting is so much fun... though it sort of reminds me COM programming not even close to it in complexity... we used to have ClassFactory out there... there was even a ClassFactory2... though i only used it to the extent of object creation and returning the object. In remoting we can use it to expose Remotable object as a client activated object by using Class Factory as a bait and making the host think its the Class Factory (usually set as Server Activated) we are after...

Tried all sort of stuff.. the best part about remoting is that its not complex... and you can set most of the stuff in config file. Had a look at IIS hosted Remoting and just a piece of advice. If you are connecting to SQL Server (with Remotable object) and are using Trusted Connection..
a. Disable Anonymous Access (Keeping it in Windows Authentication mode)
b. set impersonate identity = true in the applications (web application's) web.config

if you want to debug a IIS... start the client and attach to the aspnet worker process...

went nuts trying to figure out what was wrong... then found out it was authentication failure on sql server for NT Authority/Network Service

oh well...

Yukon Developer session

2004-09-01T21:49:00.000+01:00

Went down to Yukon developer session organised by microsoft uk. couple of nice presentations... it so good to be at a developers session rather than one of those sales pitches.

It was interesting to see actually managed code within inproc hosted CLR with yukon. A sort of mix and match of managed code with TSQL. TSQL is still the fastest thing when it comes to relational data. Managed code within Yukon is more for computational intensive task.. conditional.. loops.. string manipulation etc. Saw a brief overview of data.sqlserver namespace overview.. the classes and how they can be used. Use of partial classes and user defined functions. More on it here.

We can even have managed UDTs. the only requirements are that they should take a string as contructor and should implement a method called Parse.

TSQL has a good set of enhancements... stuff like DDL triggers (oh yes on create, alter, delete etc).. use of common data expressions... reminded me of subqueries and how we used to name a resultset... similar in broad terms but CTEs can be used throughout the context of the current query.. not just current TSQL query within a block. they have added things like Try and Catch blocks.. though as the program manager put it.. they keep changing their minds on the exact syntax :)... and absolutely thrilled by Rank and Rownum etc.

The day ended with Analysis server enhancements and DTS.. Me and a friend Leon were talking about what the heck ETL was... i reckoned it was more like eXtensible Transformation Language... not even close... rather it stands for Extract, Transform and Load. More on ETL here

some links refer to beta 1 documentation.. unfortunately.. you will need to check the books online for that. That not all... the next version of MSDE.. its called SQL Express now and its still free is available for download ... you can also get you hands on books online.. check this page

70-320

2004-08-28T16:29:00.000+01:00

As i mentioned earlier i have started preparing for 70-320 and i am using amit kalini's book, its actually a nice book... it was a bit concerned about what i can expect but it's not too bad. already picked up a few things like Xml to Datasets and vice versa. Though i seriously think i should have a physical book instead of an ebook... its painful.

Evolution vs creation

2004-08-28T14:30:00.000+01:00

a couple of weeks back i had two people from watchtower and they talked to me about my religious beliefs and what i think of religion etc. since i didnt know them i was pretty much frank about it.. its not too difficult being an atheist

well today morning i had a knock on my door and it one of the two people who had visited me along with her husband.. since i was uncomfortable last time around talking on the doorstep.. i invited them in... had a nice chat with them.. i showed them a hymn i dug out from Rigveda its the Creation Hymn.

Anyways... it was nice talking to them... atleast somebody has ears to my philosophical side.

about time i got my act together

2004-08-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

been playing about for a while... and i think its enough for now... need to finish my MCAD.... am planning to give 70-320 in 2 weeks time. After that will try and a drastically different route... a friend suggested *nix cert... i am not too sure about the idea though i dont mind hands on *nix....

Refreshing my c++

2004-08-11T17:48:00.000+01:00

This week i have spent time reading up on c++ again... it doesn't look that bad anymore... the first day was horrible... so used to c# now... i would love to move on to c# permanently but i am keeping my options open again after a long time.. and i reckoned that a bit of c++ & *nix won't do much harm ...

it does take away all the play time i had scheduled for framework 2 beta.. but its just this week... hopefully while i am at it.. i will install mono on redhat 9 and i will get rotor implementation as well... just have a look around..

sometimes i think i download and install just about everything... wish i had more hours to actually play with it all rather than having to decide one over the other.

Installing Framework 2.0 beta on 64

2004-08-09T21:40:00.000+01:00

It's funny how both the betas.. beta 1 for Whidbey and beta 2 for Yukon came across in a few days time. I was so seriously hoping that they have the same Framework Beta (or the Language?)..
Wishful thinking. So what do i need to do to get it all working ? well for starters... install Whidbey (for some reason framework takes forever on AMD64).. once you are done with the install... unistall the Framework.. and then install Yukon. that will install another language version of Framework and hopefully this should work :) (atleast that worked on 32bit install)

Oh well another wishful thinking and this time i got bitch-slapped.. yukon won't install no matter what.. i think i am going to call it a day and not bother with yukon on 64... i already have it on 32 and thats the max i am going to go.. 10 trials... with all permutations and combinations and finally got myself on MS "Private" NGs... Jesus... and its a known bug.....
why bother saying
"For the 64-bit Developer Edition (X64):
Windows XP 64-bit AMD Professional 2003, build 1207 or later"

Back to SQL 2k 32 bit for playing with whidbey.

Do I have the right build ?

2004-08-08T23:42:00.000+01:00

A few days back when I was having problems installing VS.Net 2k5 on XP 64 I mailed Tim Sneath and Microsoft Staff for Subscriber downloads.

It was kind of Tim to write back to see if I had the version I was looking for. As usual the MS staff were prompt in response and I even had the latest build last week. That sort of thing makes me want to get out of finance and into Software development firm. No bickering... Just do it attitude.

XP Service Pack 2

2004-08-08T18:49:00.000+01:00

Done downloading and installing XP SP2 at home. My personal PC @ work should be patched up first thing tomorrow.

you can download it at Subscriber Downloads if you are msdn subscriber else waitup for a few days

who moved my cheese

2004-08-07T16:50:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine.. Vivek Viswanathan asked me to read this book "Who moved my cheese" by "Spensor Johnson".

Very obvious in what its trying to say and its just got me thinking. Thanks mate.

surprise surprise... atleast someone's listening to me

2004-08-06T15:20:00.000+01:00

Got this mail from MS team last week saying that they are building a new build and that they will release it when done... and guess what... it was out @ subscribers downloads....
hmmm not too bad....

Will get a chance to play with newer build. I am seriously disappointed though... i hardly know anyone other than myself who's actually excited about this.

Another thing that i am very pleased with... i started up far cry on my current config.. win32 on AMD64 and auto configuration told me that i had a 'High End' system... holy cow.... very very pleased with that... and it plays like a top dog...

Can't wait to try out Doom 3... hope its worth the wait.

Problems with 64bit machine

2004-08-02T17:00:00.000+01:00

Having spent my time installing the OS... the next on i went about installing visual studio... kept failing on me with 25008 errors...
god what a grief... anyho... tried the internet and found a few posts here and there.. and i remember reading the readme.htm... it said something about build 1184... apparently the one posted for downloads is v1069... i dont know how you can expect people to beta test the software when they dont have the right build for the OS... wrote to msdn subscriber downloads and they did reply promptly saying that they have forwarded the mail to the concerned department. oh well...

so i thought... might as well just use 32 for now... so put it on normal xp... and not too bad.... the best part is the temperature... the processor is wicked... it does an average of 31-32 degree... if i am using it like hell.... 40-41... almost reminds me of my good old PIII 1GHz dual proc... (27 - 37) as compared to my Shuttle (AMD XP 2500 Barton)... which does a normal stays at 46 degrees with CPU Idle running all the time... if i pump it up... the temperature goes 60 and stays there for most of the time...

Noticed another funny thing... AMD 64 chips come with Cool & Quiet drivers (have to download it from amd site) i looked around and i couldn't find XP 64 drivers... thats a shame considering that that OS is purely geared towards AMD 64 market... still in beta but if AMD dont take the initiative... who will ?

64bit applications

2004-07-28T09:23:00.000+01:00

yesterday evening i spent the whole time downloading stuff.
i already had Visual Studio.net 2004 beta 1 for 64. and i had already downloaded the XP 64 for extended chipset. I reckoned that i should also download Windows 2003 64 bit edition for the heck of it. And so i logged into my subscriber downloads... Guess what... surprise surprise.. i saw Servers section which was not there before.. click on it and i saw SQL Server... interesting... digging deeper i realised that microsoft had given me (or all msdn professional subscribers) access to SQL Server resources. I also found Yukon Beta 2... wohoooo....
so all downloaded and burned... waiting for my kit so that i can jumpstart my 64bit play around.

Also looked up a couple of reviews on 2800+ processor... i know i know i am a bit of a value user... that the end of the day it boils how much one can afford to spend. Anyho... checked out the reviews at pcper.com and anandtech.com

and its not too bad.... for normal stuff... it still comes close to most intel procs... so what the heck.

finally going 64bit

2004-07-27T11:40:00.000+01:00

tomorrow i am going to get my kit off ebuyer. what a nightmare... waiting for the processor caused my other stuff to go out of stock... had to settle for half a gig of twinmos memory instead of my 2x512... oh well... add another half a gig with the next order.
last week also downloaded the xp client preview... but the key was on my local folders on my outlook. the backup plugin screwed up my backup and the machine refused start up after restore. So now i had to register yet again to get the key...
i know that yukon sql express don't work with extended chipset just yet... so will have to settle for good old win32 based sql 2000. atleast vs.net 2k5 has 64bit install.
planning to keep this for home use @work.... atleast a bit of play around will keep me occupied and out of trouble.

The first blog

2004-07-26T11:27:00.000+01:00

It all starts here... and hopefully there will be better ones in future.