Scotland Trip (15/09/2006 - 18/09/2006)

Before I forget let me capture the events and moments:

15: Edinburgh castle,
Hollyrood House, Edinburgh chapel
Authentic Fish and Chips.
16: Old town visit, dads office search, Royal botanical garden, Rosilln village and
chapel(The DaVinci Code Chapel), Authentic scottish beers and excellent food,
nightclub with champs.
17: Muselborough village and beach, John Muir Walk, Dad old house search,
Portobello beach, BenBradley, Champs discussion, Lots of beer.
18: Champs shopping. Mum shopping. Dad calling,I drinking.

1 year since we finished our Masters Degree

Well its been exactly a year when we finished our dissertation and thus our Master's degree. I just cant believe that time has gone by so fast. I still clearly remember we all working like mad to meet the deadline. Jamie was the first one to finish his dissertation in the whole of the uni i reckon. Ben was struggling to finish his dissertation as well. I remember in the start of august, he was already considering toher options. Writing the actual dissertation (the report) was actually the hardest part for me. Champs and BaoYuan had finished their dissertation early and left Hull. ioulieta was as usual so stressed!!!! We have come a long way from that. Ankur and Rob Miles were cool as it goes with their personality. Ankur i reckon spent equal time in lab and in "Fuel" in July. I partied a lot during July to Aug mid and watched loads of wimbledon. But yeah finally we all got there. Congrats people.

And best of luck for years to come.

Earn or Learn

Though its a saturday, but i had to go to work due to the huge amount of work left to be done with the deadline approaching.

I was chatting to a friend of mine and he said what am i doing in office on saturday .When people get a job, most of them as far as i know enjoy their work for a few weeks and then it becomes routine job for them. The main purpose of job then is to earn a living and be satisfied.

However as i just finished work i was thinking of the difference between the words "Earn" and "Learn". If any of you did not notice what i mean,
Learn = L + earn.
I also need money, i also want to be really rich but......and yes there is a but here.
Since finishing my Masters Degree last year i have been working as a software developer.I see my work as a learning experience through which i earn, and i dont see it as an income source, where i might learn a bit. i am learning every second of my job. i am exploring new ideas and this gives me immense satisfaction.

I thoroughly enjoy my experience of work. What can be better than getting paid for something you like to do for most of the time of your day.
Thus:

Learn = "Earn through what you love to do"
= Loving the work you are doing + earning.

Another thing which i would love to od and get paid for is travelling. Right now iwant to concentrate on my career as a software developer. However in the future it would be nice if somebody paid me to travel all around the world:).

Even better, a job as a professional software developer where i get to travel a lot and meet new people, see new places. That would be a dream come true job.

Web2.0

This picture above shows that I am Web2.0 enabled too....

Passed my driving test

I have passed my practical driving test. Today was my test at the DVLA croydon centre.

Today 15th of August is India's Independence Day. I am missing the Parade in delhi, which iused ot watch on TV.

Came across this quote on TFS team blog:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

IBM PC turns 25. Incredible history on the way

I know, i am a bit late in posting it..but anyway something to be proud of..

It was a match made in computer heaven.
The May-December marriage of a young company called Microsoft and business powerhouse IBM would change the landscape of offices and homes across the globe.
August 12 (today) is the 25th anniversary of the IBM personal computer launch, a pairing of MS and DOS, Microsoft and the disk operating system.
"MS-DOS moved computer access from a community measured in thousands to one measured in millions
"It was a key transition from the hobbyist and 'geek' environment to business applications".

Several popular home computers existed before the 1981 IBM PC launch. But the regimented business world considered Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack's Tandy products "toys."
The IBM stamp of approval on a personal computer changed that mentality for good.
"Almost overnight, with IBM introducing the PC, it became OK to use it for real business applications," said Tycho Howle, CEO of nuBridges in Atlanta, a provider of business-to-business services.
Howle remembers with fondness his first desktop PC."In 1981 I had an IBM PC, two-floppy system," Howle said."To give young people these days a comparison: It would take 10 of those floppy disks to be able to hold the music that is on one MP3 song," he said.
A floppy disk is a thin, plastic disk that was coated with a magnetic substance used to store data. Earliest disks were 8 inches wide, more efficient disks shrunk to 5 1/4 inches, then 3 1/2 inches. Unlike a CDs or DVDs of today, the disks were floppy, or flexible.
IBM, the 800 pound gorilla of the business world at the time, flooded trade papers and television with promises that this new device would provide "smoother scheduling, better planning, and greater productivity."
Early '80s status symbol, the first available PCs cost between $1,600 and $6,000. Little about this early version was user, but that has changed considerably over time and they are much cheaper now.

Long live the PC........

Windows Live Writer

I just came to know from MSDN blogs that "Windows Live Writer" Beta is available from today 14th August. Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.
Teh cool feaure about writer is you can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it.Writer makes inserting, customizing, and uploading photos to your blog a snap. You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page.

Croydon Life

Police looking for human remains are preparing to begin a finger-tip search of the former home of a convicted paedophile in south London - croydon.
Detectives began an investigation after receiving an anonymous letter last year which claimed human remains linked to events 35 years ago were buried there.

Now that is scary..

Blogging from PDA

Police looking for human remains are preparing to begin a finger-tip search of the former home of a convicted paedophile in south London.
Detectives began an investigation after receiving an anonymous letter last year which claimed human remains linked to events 35 years ago were buried there.

Friend Assemblies

I havent been able to blog, because the internet connection at my place is screwed up. The BT line has been disconnected. And i am not allowed to access blogspot at my workplace.
Recently i worked with friend assemblies in .NET framework 2.0. In some cases we need to limit the use of some classes to the assemblies in wihch they are defined. The "internal" keyword in C# allows us to do that. It hides the specification of these classes even when you refer these assemblies in a project.
But in some cases we might need to use these classes in some other assemblies. But on the other hand we do not want to declare these classes as public. here comes the sweet part of the .NET framework. We can use the "InternalsVisibleToAttribute" to specify as to which assemblies can use the internal classes.


The usage would be something like:

[assembly:InternalsVisibleToAttribute("MyFriendAssembly”)]

This attribute when applied to an assembly indicates that all internal types in that assembly would be visible to another assembly, whose name is specified in the attribute constructor.

GooglePages

Today i came across Google Page Creator.

It is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish web pages in just minutes.

- No technical knowledge required.
Build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software.
- What you see is what you'll get.
Edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way.
- Don't worry about hosting.
The web pages will live on your own site at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com

And the best part is that you can use the "Edit HTML" link to view the HTML code behind your page and even tweak it futher

Check out my Googlepages.

.NET vs Java World on Google Trends

Recently, I came across Google Trends. I have been playing with it for a while analysing the various trends.

It just popped in my mind, "why not try google trends to see as to what it reveals for .NET and Java".
The result was bit of a surpirse to me because i thought was .NET was much closer to Java in terms of usage for especially enterprise software development.

25 Things I Learned on Google Trends

i came acroos an entry on Micro Persuasion (Steve Rubel's) blog.

To give you a sense of its tremendous power for tapping into the world psyche, here are 25 things I learned on Google Trends.

1) Almost all of the ten biggest US markets for MySpace are on the West Coast

2) There's more interest in Bluetooth than in Wifi

3) PR is starting to come close to catching advertising. AdAge still bests PR Week

4) David Hasselhoff's popularity in Germany is declining

5) Jerry Lewis's popularity in France is rising

6) Blackberry is widening its lead over the Treo

7) Zacharias Moussaoui finally beat OJ Simpson in searches

8) Hockey is starting to surpass baseball in popularity, but they fall way behind football (no matter which way it is defined)

9) New York still tops LA!

10) The Kryptonite Lock got more PR from the blog blow-up than any other event during the past two years

11) TV is kicking the movies butt

12) Dogs are by far killing all other pets while cats and fish battle for second place

13) Democrats vs. Republicans? Yup, they're neck and neck and on my screen red and blue!

14) YouTube is huge in the Philippines. Call it the Mike Abundo effect.

15) Blogs have caught up to newspapers. Boing Boing and Gizmodo are close to catching the WSJ

16) The beach is more popular than the mountains

17) Wikipedia is huge in Eastern Europe and it started to lead Britannica, Encarta and Webster's in 2004

18) Digg is still way behind CNET but it caught up to Slashdot. MySpace speed ahead of AOL last year

19) Interest in blogs and RSS is much higher than in podcasting and wikis

20) Flickr is the king of tagging, followed by del.icio.us and furl

21) Web 2.0 is huge in Korea - even bigger than in San Francisco

22) Elvis and The Beatles are in a dead heat

23) Word is more popular than any other Office app. Outlook and Excel are in a tie, followed by Powerpoint.

24) Bill Gates is slaughtering Steve Jobs in searches

25) Google is bigger than God?

Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now

While going through previous MSDN magazines, I came across a list of must-have tools for a developer using Visual Studio.

Ten Essential Tools

It would be a day to remember for lots of people.

Spurs & Arsenal face Euro destiny - It is probably the biggest game of Martin Jol's managerial career. Manager Arsene Wenger believes West Ham could do Arsenal a favour

The final salute - Arsenal will end 93 years at Highbury with a closing ceremony after todays game against Wigan Athletic. if you don't have a ticket for the game you can watch a live stream of the post-match celebrations on Arsenal TV Online.

Alonso beats Schumi to Euro pole - World champion Fernando Alonso won a battle with Michael Schumacher for pole position at the European Grand Prix. But Schumacher is anticipating an exciting race in front of his home fans. Best of luck schumi.

Pattern for resolving Association classes many - many relationship

On Thursday, i had one of the most satisfying coding expereinces since i started working. Not many people have heard of IAA , but i tell you it is becoming the de-facto standard for Architecting the Insurance Applications.
My designer gave me the class diagram and sequence diagram for implementing a particular part of Payment use case. There was a situation where we had a many to many assosciation relationship between two classes Payment and PaymentDue. These two classes are derived from an abstract base class called FinancialTransaction.
Now we had to establish the relationship between each payment made again a particular paymentdue. Thus a paymentdue can have multiple payments associated with it and also a payment can have multiple payments associated with it in case of Direct Debit transactions. So in orderto uniquely identify each payments association with a paymentdue, i created a link entity called financial transaction relationship and represented it as a class with attributes as amount and settlement date. In financial transaction class i had two lists as attributes of type financial transaction relationship called relatedTpFinancialTransaction and relatedFrom FinancialTransaction. Thus i was able to attach each unique payment against its corresponding paymentdue and vice versa.

The master strategy by Microsoft

Really good article i read today.

The master strategy by Microsoft

(Mis)Uses of Technology

Recently came across an article on Techdirt regading the (Mis)Uses of Technology. The following scenario came to my mind, which has been recreated from that article.

Someone asked me how I could possibly read the screen on the mobile device I was using. It never really seemed that difficult, but apparently I (and many others) are doing quite a bit of damage to our eyes. At least that's what a new article is claiming, saying that the nation's obsession with reading things on mobile devices is generating new levels of eye strain, going beyond the typical eye strain found by people who are simply staring at a computer screen all day. To blame, of course, is the tiny text combined with the quality of the screens. Apparently, doctors are finding that people are coming in and asking for prescription glasses just for the sake of reading email on their Blackberry devices.

This isn't the first time, of course, that mobile devices have been called out for creating potential health problems. We've already heard too many stories about texter's thumb,

But even considering all these, i just love reading mails, appointments,calenders and other documents on my device. It is jsut so convenient to browse and read while on the move. There are times when conveniene matters most. Please note that i am not denying the fact that convenience should come at the cost of health, but there is a thin line and we need to maintain that line. I would like to know as to what do you feel about it. Let me know your views.

When Your Need Is Speed

Came across a recent article form MSDN magazine (The Performance Benefits of NGen.). I have been really intersted in these CLR nitty gritty's, and Ngen is one of my favourite discussions with my CLR crazy freinds.

Typically the methods in managed executables are JIT (Just in time) compiled.The machine code generated by the JIT compiler is thrown away once the process running that executable exits; therefore, the method must be recompiled when the application is run again. Moreover, the generated code is tied to the process that created it and cannot be shared between processes that are running the same application. This can be a performance drawback.

But When Your Need Is Speed Ngen can be the answer.NGen refers to the process of precompiling Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) executables into machine code prior to execution time. This results in two primary performance benefits. First, it reduces application startup time by avoiding the need to compile code at run time. Second, it improves memory usage by allowing for code pages to be shared across multiple processes.

Mind you, ngen is not jsut another traditional static back-end compilation tool.Unlike statically compiled binaries, NGen images are tied to the machine where they are created and hence cannot be deployed. Instead, the application's installer needs to issue commands to create native images for the specific assemblies on the client machine at setup time. Also unlike traditional binaries, NGen images merely form a cache-managed applications will continue to run correctly even if all the NGen images are deleted. Of course, there will be a performance hit if that happens, but there will be no correctness issues.

NGen typically improves the warm startup time of applications, and sometimes the cold startup time as well. Cold startup time is primarily dominated by the number of pages that need to be fetched from disk. The improvement in cold startup time while using NGen can be attributed largely to the fact that pages of MSIL that need to be touched during compilation no longer need to be accessed at execution time.

Improvements in warm startup time come from reusing pages of the NGen images that were brought in when the application had been running earlier. This is especially beneficial to large client-side UI applications where startup time is critical to the user experience.

NGen also improves the overall memory usage of the system by allowing different processes that use the same assembly to share the corresponding NGen image among them. This can be very useful in both client and server scenarios in which the total memory footprint must be minimized.

Cool Designer event in London

For all of my design programming friends Ben, Ioulieta, Chang and all others who are currently working on designing. This is a really good one. Check it out

Cool Designer event in London