Hope the year is good to all of you!

I got this from a fellow Avanut, and I thought it was quite hilarious … however a few around me did not think so – they of course don’t have any taste. 😉 A byte walks into a bar and orders a drink. Bartender asks him “What’s wrong?” Byte says “Parity error.” Bartender nods and says “Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off.”

Live Writer’s new 2009 Release Candidate is available for download . I continue to be impressed by this editor and I cannot recommend it enough. 😄

Security is a Social Construction - Andrew Martin

Irrespective if you attended PDC or not and want to get your hands on the ppt’s and/or video of each of the sessions then Mike has a cool post listing each of the sessions including the friendly name instead of the non-helpful code.

Got all my tokens and got all the accounts up and running. Now need to write some code. image

Amazon’s EC2 is now available for Windows – squeaking in just before PDC was to kick off. This is quite exciting as it allows you to scale out and try something at a very low cost on Windows. If you want to manage your EC2 environment, you can use the Firefox add-in called Elasticfox ; there is also a C# library which wraps EC2’s web service API making them easier to consume from .NET. ...

I am going to be at PDC – anyone else I know going to be there? If you are reading this, and are going to be there then it is quite likely you know how to ping me and let me know you going. It also might be a good idea to check out the Devil’s field guide to the PDC . ...

Cray (yep those guys are still alive and kicking – I know, I know I am as surprised as you). In any case these clever guys have released a “ personal super computer ” called CX1 which can have 64 Cores and address 64 GB of RAM and can run either Windows HPC 2008 Server or RHEL . ...

I think this post brings up some interesting aspects of cloud computing and the scenarios within which you should look at to use this. If you are an enterprise then this might be more of a moot point – but the fact is one cannot take things for granted. It is quite timely as I was thinking of syncing up Meenakshi’s calendar from Outlook to Google. Her laptop had crashed and she was without her calendar – interestingly she missed not having access to her calendar more than her emails – but that is another post for another day). ...

Not since the days of NT 4.0 (which stood for New Technology btw) has this happened that Microsoft is calling a Windows version what is really is – so Windows 7 will be called Windows 7 ! I say Yay! It is about time the stop all the malarkey about funky code names and boring “release names”. ...

No, I am not referring to any new codename or product but rather talking about the slew of new products and technologies that are in the works and coming out in the near future from Microsoft. Below is a list of things (in no particular order) which either were just released or in the pipeline. I wish I could talk more about some of these – maybe after PDC when most of these are out in the public domain and the NDA’s are relaxed – until then all the links are only to material already in the public domain. ...

Interesting to see how Amazon Web Services (AWS) has expanded; in addition to SimpleDB now they support Oracle and mySQL – this certainly ups the ante and will make it more enticing for Enterprises to hop onto this. I have been using S3 for a some time now where my WHS is backing up and have been quite pleased. ...

Just what to save up your gadget allowance for – quad proc, 16 GB RAM 1 TB HDD laptop from Dell!

Some people just have too much time on their hands! { via Artcar }

The using statement in C#, seems to be quite useful especially to a developer as theoretically, you not have to do anything to release any memory you might have used and the CLR automatically frees up this memory for you. However, over time, I have had so many issues with it and subtle problems (in certain situations) I am starting to avoid it now. ...

My Nerd Test results … hmm …

I have been using the Screen Clipping functionality for years in OneNote (if you don’t know what I am talking about then press the Win + S key – of course you need OneNote installed). It always copied it to OneNote, from where I would copy the image and paste it wherever needed. I did not know until today there is an option where you can select it to go to the clipboard as well. Duh! Why did I not think of checking this out sooner – bets me. ...

As the Large Hadron Collider is switched on today, the Guardian has a story saying that there are many people calling the CERN to find out if the world ends today? Apparently is completely safe and will not be doing anything that has not happened ‘100,000 times over’ in nature since the earth has existed. ...

Crime Mapping for London – cool. EnvMan – easier way of managing environment variables. Hit Me Later – snooze your email – pretty cool idea; not sure of privacy related issues though. SimplyNoise – white noise generator which helps you find the comfort Zen and either work (blocking distractions), aid sleep, soothe migraines, etc. Pushing the limits of Windows - with 2 TB of RAM running on a 64 proc machine – sweet! I wonder what would the size of Minidump will be on that? Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) – allows you to capture and analyse traces and state transitions to help improve the performance of Windows. I personally am quite interesting in making my tablet boot faster. Cuil – new search engine; though Google might be safe (for now). Not sure how it searches but searching for this blog interestingly does pick it up, but also picks up some obscure links such as my Oxford page . London Free School – hmm … weird! {via Karan } AutoCollage 2008 – MSR project which helps celebrate important events and themes. Pick a folder, press a button, and in a few minutes this presents you with a unique memento to print or email to your family and friends. Moonsus – cool laptop bags – is it good enough to make the wife forget the stupid bags ? 😉 Full of Kittens – showing off how to use Silverlight and DeepZoom – if you not sure what you are looking at double click on the image and shift-click to zoom out. Midori – a componentized non-Windows Microsoft OS; quite interesting reading talking about a asynchronous-only architecture that is built for task concurrency and parallel use of local and distributed resources, with a distributed component-based and data-driven application model, and dynamic management of power and other resources.

You must have heard of Chrome by now – the brand spanking new browser from Google. If you think it was the best thing since sliced bread you need to wake up and smell the fish. For me the main deal breaker is the EULA they have for Chrome. As per the EULA anything you use to upload, browse, etc using Chrome you are giving Google the right a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. ...

Shared View from Microsoft - a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups anytime, anywhere and works across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details. Switcher - gets Expose (from Mac) on Windows very cool! (you need Vista + Aero) VS.NET 2008 SP1 likely to come later this year adds a lot of new stuff. SMS things (only if you are in the US) SMS411 - helps you send SMS to phone’s on specific carriers in the US. Teleflip - goes a step further and automatically figures out the carrier (also only for the US). TFS Admin - seems to do a few interesting things if you admin TFS (I have not used it first hand so can’t say). Many Books - offers thoughts of free eBooks in many formats for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader. Hadoop - is a framework for running applications on large clusters built of commodity hardware; it is effectively a grid application which under the covers uses a DFS and can supposedly scale up to reliably store and process petabytes. Invisible Computing - research prototype for making small devices part of the seamless computing world. It consists of compact middleware for constructing embedded web services applications and a small component based Real-Time Operating System with TCP/IP networking to make middleware run straight on the metal on several embedded processors. Chumby - seems interesting concept - but I get all that on my phone and will it work in the uk? Delta Copy - robocopy on steroids; this on copies the sectors that have changed. So if you have a 2 gb PST file – only the new sectors are copied instead of the whole file. Note – there as issues with Vista! pptPlex – allows you to present PowerPoint using a zoomable canvas instead of slides – quite interesting. ...

job security image Click to open original image.

You might have heard of Photosynth - it was announced last year; but if you ever wondered what the big deal was about Photosynth (or have not heard of it), then check out this video . Also this is open to all now for free. ...

Someone sure loves XP and their progress bar! {via Karan }