Brilliant!

So you have a team (somewhat like mine right now) which is inexperienced with TFS and not very sure about this whole branching, merging, shelveset thinggy and extremely nervous when using it. So, what will you do? Well you might try and train them, show them how to use it, write documents showing how to use it, have processes in place, try and use some tools to help, etc. But, what do they do?...

I had a need to dump some data I am getting from a real-time sensor network to a database and I choose MySQL - just because it is cheap and cheerful and will fit perfectly with what I am looking for. Now, I have never programmed for MySQL though I have used it in the past as a consumer (e.g. the backend of this blog). MySQL does expose a C API that one can use, but it seems quite arcane to use and does not quite conform to the C++ style (especially when using STL)....

If you are running Ubuntu and want to modify the services running on the OS using the GUI, the way to do this is via System → Administration → Services. This is all very good, but in my case on one machine the Unlock button on the Services window was greyed out. Sure, I could use the shell to modify this, but when this is something I use quite rarely I need to go and look up the exact command and it can get a pain....

Happy that recently my running has been consistent and the weather has been helpful too. Last few days it has turned cold with the temperature down to 4 degrees C. It helps me relax and de-stress and clear my head. Below is a screenshot of the workout profile from this week thanks for iMapMyRun free app for my Android Wildfire (which is small and light enough for me to carry in my pocket when on my run)....

I was thinking of getting the latest version of the Kindle, but one of the factors in the decision will be the number of techy books available for the Kindle. Anyone owning one has any ideas? Are there far and few or is there a good selection with more being added? I do read novels, but not as many and if there are not enough techy books for the Kindle right now then that might be a deal breaker....

First post from my brand new Android phone and the Wordpress app. Quite impressed with it so far. I sure do miss the keyboard though. Suggestions for any apps? My phone is HTC wildfire and nothing fancy so the apps should be able to run on this phone.

It continues to surprise me that people who write software for a living these days (i.e professional developers) have no understanding of what byte order marks are and how they relate to different encodings. Most developers I interact with have no clue - including of course how EF BB BF differs from FF FE. Also so few of them have a understanding of linefeeds and how that differs from Unix to Windows....

Boolean logic explained

I think many of us can relate to this - including my current project. :roll: Project Management - how to test

Need I say more? Race condition explained

Unfortunately (or fortunately), depending on your perspective, this is so me! Still no sleep

The wife has one of these and can absolutely relate to this!

This is quite cool – now only if MS hurry’s up and incorporated this to Bing Maps. MS Street Slide

Just upgraded the blog to WordPress 3.0 - two clicks and I was done - can it get any simpler? What a pleasant surprise compared to the pile of crap that CS 2007+ turned out to be. Try upgrading that in something like two clicks? Ha! Well done WordPress!

Next post in the interesting find series. Speccy - an advanced and very cool System Information tool for your PC. Channeling Earth - Rivers Seen From Space The SSD Relapse - Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD Turn off laptop screen – every machine does not have an option to switch off the screen (say at night) and this small app is perfect for those situations – very handy at night....

… the average wife spends nearly 8,000 minutes a year nagging her husband!

This computer hardware chart is quite cool. Not sure why, where and who would want to use this. But, it does beg the question – can things get any geekier? :)

When you try and compile some code and you get an error along the lines of invalid use of an incomplete type ‘whatever type’ then in most cases it means you need to include the header file where that type is displayed. For example I had the following events in my header file: 1 2 3 protected: void mousePressEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event); void mouseReleaseEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event); When when I tried to compile gave the following error: invalid use of incomplete type ‘struct QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent’...

Microsoft is giving away a free eBook on SQL Server 2008 R2 for free. It gives you insight into exciting new implementations in the DB such as complex event processing (CEP) and StreamInsight. You can check out the Table of Contents here and download the book in either pdf format or xps format .

Pixels is Awesome! Any self righteous geek has to check this out. :)

Channel 9 has a number of free technical courses on a number of emerging MS technologies covering a wide range such as Azure , Win7 , Identity, SQL Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0 , Silverlight 4 , MOSS 2010 , Office 2010 , etc. These cover a number of the features and essentially have everything to get a developer quite comfortable with the stack. In some areas they go a little deep as well....

Often you need to search through an array or list to find a specific element and of course you need this search to be as fast and efficient as possible. One of the best ways to do this is using a binary predicate function. A binary function is a function object (which are also called Functors ) and is any object which can be called as if it was a function....

If you are a newbie to Ubuntu like me (or any other Unix distro) and you tried deleting a folder which is not empty contains files or subdirectories then you get the annoying error "Directory not empty". To delete such a folder (from a terminal) use the rm -rf command. For example to delete a folder called amitbahree run the following: rm -rf amitbahree/

Evolution clearly has been failing us. :roll: