This is a collection of leave letters and applications written by people in various places of India … of course English is not their strong point. 1. Infosys, Bangalore : An employee applied for leave as follows: Since I have to go to my village to sell my land along with my wife, please sanction me one-week leave. 2. This is from Oracle Bangalore: From an employee who was performing the “ mundan ” ceremony of his 10 year old son: “as I want to shave my son’s head, please leave me for two days…” ...

In Haskell the foldl’ function defined in the module Data.List is better than foldl because that does not use a thunk . A thunked expression requires an internal stack. As an expression can grow infinitely large, the runtime imposes a limit on the size of this stack. As the simple example below shows that given a large enough input the stack will overflow. ...

On my machine running all the VM’s at home – one disk has failed. I have not replaced it, instead marked it as OK and am rebuilding the volume now. Second time this has happened – if it happens once more then maybe it is time to actually replace the physical disc. *Sigh* I hate disc failures.

This is pretty cool – saw it on BBC’s One Show, a dog saying Red Rum .

Cloud vs. Cloud – guided tour of Amazon, AppNexus, GoGrid and Google. Azure is missing but given its late-alpha/early-beta state not surprising. SheevaPlug Development Kit – this is a development platform targeted for use as a plug computer , and designed to run network-based software services and has a embedded Marvel Sheeva CPU core ; quite interesting. Office 14 – next version of Office will have “online versions”. Loopa Bowl – the link has all the details; buy it here (in the US). KidsMenu – an OS for Kids - seems to be a shell running on Windows. Boogie – an intermediate verification language. New windows mobile ads – I do feel like throwing the phone sometimes. MachineIP.com – name says it all – pretty cool. Of course nothing new but makes it easy in situations where you don’t have access to the tools or the non-techy friends/families you have out there. Microsoft Web App Gallery – cool, open source tools build on MS stack. Resetting your Admin pwd in Vista – quite scary actually. (via The Dogmatix ). ...

Dave has an excellent post on how to create a bootable USB drive for installing Vista or maybe Win 7. You could also use WinRAR to extract your ISO directly on to the flash drive (after formatting it as NTFS of course). A couple of points to remember though: Make sure you use a “flash” drive (or USB stick) and not a USB HDD drive as some of those have issues with this. Check different USB ports – all of them may not allow to boot up. ...

I am getting DOS attacks from the following IPs at home. Some of these are honeypots . 89.139.84.130 86.151.215.171 And Port Scans from this guy/gal (apparently in China) 61.139.105.163

Windows Home Server (the amazing little box), is finally available on MSDN. I had bought an OEM license soon after it had come out and have been using it for some time at home. This can only be good and allow a wider set of adoption. If you have not used it – I would highly recommend that you do. Here is the screenshot from MSDN: ...

After legal and environmental issues, finally Google has launched street view for UK ! There are 25 cities covered only at this point; I know both London and Oxford are covered. You can check out the Computing Lab at Oxford (where I study) or Avanade’s offices in London (where I work). ...

If you are on Win 7 (any build) you will find quickly that Daemon tools don’t work on that. Even if it was working, I would in any case recommend ditching Daemon tools and recommend using Virtual Clone Drive which not only is free but also works like a champ. I use it on Vista as well.

A fart it is a pleasant thing, It gives the belly ease, It warms the bed in winter, And suffocates the fleas. A fart can be quiet, A fart can be loud, And some often leave A powerful, poisonous cloud. A fart can be short, Or a fart can be long, Some farts have been known To sound like a song…. A fart can create A curious medley, A fart can be harmless, Or silent , and deadly. ...

Receive Window Auto-Tuning is a feature in this version of Windows that improves networking performance when you are using newer networking hardware, but the feature might cause problems with older networking hardware. Sometimes, disabling Auto-Tuning might solve your problem. To disable Auto-Tuning: Click the Start button , and then, in the Search box, type cmd. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to run the program as an administrator. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. At the command prompt, type netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable, and then press Enter. When the process has finished, restart your computer. If this procedure does not solve the problem, you can turn Auto-Tuning back on by repeating steps a and b of this procedure, typing netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal, and then pressing Enter.

This is probably not new, but I was not aware of it until recently. To launch an application as an administrator you press CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER when using the Search box – instead of just Enter. Pretty cool if you are a keyb guy/gal.

MIT’s Media Lab has a prototype of a wearable 6th sense - pretty damn cool – initially seems to get you thinking “what is the point?”; but sit it out and it will all make sense! Of course the whole “6th sense” is glamorizing it a bit, it is more JIT info. I wonder what happens if your phone is not in a 3G/HSDPA coverage and what the battery drain on the phone is with the data connection always on and how big is your phone bill (most people don’t have unlimited data options on their mobile). ...

Although I have had an account for some time on Twitter, I just have not been bothered until now. Anyways, that is changing – am tweeting now . You can follow me there if you choose to – though not sure if I am going to make any more sense there than here.

This is a cool Surface demo build my a few colleagues which showcases a hospitality demo. We build this and got it up and running out of our Avanade London office. :)

I am using Community Server 2007 for my blog. I originally started in .Text (which some of you ‘old timers’ might remember as being open source) and had modified the code a fair amount to something I wanted. Over the years stuck with that and then CS 1.0, 2.0, etc as .Text was ‘morphed’ into Community Server (CS) from Telligent. While overall I have been happy with CS 2007 off late I have been quite put off with it due to a few reasons: ...

The BCC hosted a “secret” and surprise gig for U2 where they played on the roof of the BBC Broadcasting House on Regents Street in London. I heard about it in the news and then watched it via the Red Button . It was only a few songs but it was awesome. Of course, you can catch it again on iPlayer (for those of you in the UK). Those who cannot get to iPlayer can watch the whole thing on YouTube . ...

If for some reason you are curious to know which DC (Domain Controller) you logged on to then all you need to do is use the LOGONSERVER environment variable. Of course this means your machine is already part of a domain. The easiest way to see this will be to type the following in a cmd prompt: echo %logonserver%

I guess since we are all alive , it will be good to understand what that Cern thing really is (pdf). 😄

Been missing in action for a while – been extremely busy. Dropbox – store, sync and share your files online via Amazon’s S3. OAuth – open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a web/fat clients. About time we got the Facebooks and Twitters of the world start implementing this (more details on that another time). Scott’s ultimate developer and power user tools – the name says it all - very cool. Microsoft Tags - transform physical media (ads, billboards,product packages, information signs, in-store merchandising, video images, etc.) - into live links for accessing information and entertainment online. Cucku – another service which backs up your data to the cloud. I personally use WHS + Amazon’s S3 – got about 40 GB on it now. 😄 App Store – view Apple’s app store in your browser instead of iTunes. Quidco – an ad-free cash-back cooperative that passes on all referral commissions in exchange for keeping £5 a year as an admin fee. Seems to be quite cool. CloudBuddy – extend you desktop to the cloud (Amazon S3) – in addition to documents you can also use this for Outlook including your calendar, tasks, etc. Cool Machine Names – I will certainly be looking at this whenever I get my next machine. gScreen – dual screen laptops; it sure is cool, but is too heavy to be a “portable”. Maybe vaporware as well? If you are skeptical like I am, maybe MaxiVista is the way to go? ...

I love music – not only it enriches my life and helps me relax (especially when I am cooking), but I can think clearly and much quickly (for reasons I cannot frankly explain). So, finally I am scrobbling on last.fm – feel free to reach out to me there.

A Dal (Lentil) is quite a staple food at home – not only is it nutritious and health and full of protein, both I and Meenakshi love it. Now the way we usually make it at home is a little different that the version I came across from Yotam Ottolenghi . I tried it and was excellent – different from what I am use to cooking. ...

A good example of what not to do.

I was looking for something else and stumbled upon this post from Joe where he lists the qualities that makes up a “good architect” (despite the feelings that have been expressed to me in the past ). I have to agree with him and am quite pleased to see that a “typical” Avanade architect would fit the bill. 😄 ...