If you got a fingerprint reader on your machine and are running Vista then think twice before installing SP1! About 7-8 months ago I got a new tablet ( Lenovo X61 ) which is a pretty sweet machine with Vista pre-installed and all was well until I installed SP1 and then the thing won’t even boot. I tried to get into safe mode but no luck; I tried repairing - but no luck. I got in the repair console and tried to manually “fix” the MBR, but not luck. 😲 In the end I was screwed - royally - especially as I did not have a backup. I did have my machine being backed up by WHS which is what I was hoping would save me (more on that later). ...

I am thinking of getting the HTC Diamond. If you are interested in its features then check out these guys who have had it and been using it for a week and have been posting a daily video on what works and what does not.

I think Snap Previews were a good idea earlier but now for me it has just started getting irritating and for my blog I have switched it off.

Wow! What a week - so much talk of the next version of Windows code-named “7”. Of course the multi-touch (see video below) is what everyone is talking about. Now, this is cool because it is the evolution of the Surface which is scaled down to a screen. If you have not seen a Surface - it is quite big and works with five infrared cameras which picks up the gestures and then knows what to do with it (more on Surface at another time). ...

Please be advised that there are NEW RULES and regulations implemented to raise the efficiency of the firm. Transportation: It is advised that you come to work driving a car according to your salary. If we see you driving a Honda, we assume you are doing well financially and therefore you do not need a raise. If you drive a 10 year old car or use public transportation, we assume you must have lots of savings therefore you do not need a raise. If you drive a pickup, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise. Annual Leave: Each employee will receive 52 annual leave days a year they are called Sunday. ...

Macbook Air vs. Lenovo Ultraportal (via Cuan)

My Book on WCF is now available on Google Books - perfect for those of you who don’t want to buy the book to support a few starving authors 😜.

I have been seeing some unexpected application crashes with Visio 2007 and they usually happen when I close the application. I do have Office 2007 SP1 installed but that does not seem to have fixed any of them. The error seems to relate to one the COM add-ins but disabling that does not seem to resolve the problem. This particular error was a new one for me. After doing a lot of work on a Architecture document - when trying to save the document (for the first time) I see this error - not only is it not very inspiring but also scared the living daylights out of me. ...

.NET v3.5 Product Roadmap Information overload in Outlook? Check out ClearContext and Jello.Dashboard Nokia’s nano-technology based Morph Concept - very interesting on where we might be heading! Oh how I am envious of our future generation. 😄 Although SQL 2008 benchmarks are out and quite impressive; if you want to run the CTP before March, it seems you cannot - lol! What is MS thinking? Duh! C5 - Generic Collection Library Visual Studio themes ; I personally like a few of the dark themes. Migrating to gmail becomes easier from Outlook, PST files, etc. However, if you want to backup your gmail (why you would want to do in the first place is besides me), and want want to use G-Archiver , then do so at your own peril!!! Tools galore - check out Hanselman Ultimate Tools List

This stumped me for a while and I was not sure what I was doing wrong. Apparently it seems if you don’t have the <configSections> element in your app config file as the first thing then you get a weird error saying "Only one <configSections> element allowed ...." (see example below). The description is misleading - you will see this error even though you only have one <configSections> element in your config file. To fix this, move the <configSections> as the first element in your app config file and all will be well. ...

Need I say more ? {via thedogmatix }

This is scary! It seems like your printer is spying on you using tiny tracking dots which are automatically printed whenever you take a print out. Of course these dots are unique and can be tracked to your individual printer and are not visible to the naked eye (otherwise you won’t have noticed them, innit?) The US govt. has convinced most of the printer manufacturers to add this to every page. EFF highlighted the issue first and had issued a press release . Since then they have released a decoding guide that you can use to figure out how to find this. They also released a list of printers which either have or don’t have the dots; and also point the fact that just a “No” does not mean there is no forensic watermarking present, it just means there could be some other kind of marking. Make sure you are consulting this list whenever you next buy your printer. ...

Someone recently asked about how to load test WCF - apart from the usual things like LoadRunner , VSTS Test Load Agent , etc a couple of other interesting options came up. One is WCF Load Test and the other JMeter. WCF Load Test generates a unit test taking in data from a a trace file along with the relevant WCF proxy or interface. ...

My article on P2P programming with WCF and .NET v3.5 was finally published on MSDN . This was written a few months ago and has been going through the internal process at MS to get published- finally it is up there - better late than never I guess. 😄 ...

This is probably old news now, but something which has me concerned as it can cause lots of unseen issues. In .NET 3.5 the default ThreadPool count has been increased ten-fold from 25 to 250 per processor per process! ThreadPools as we know are quite handy - not only do they help when an application comes under load instead of adding more pressure in a stressful situation. They also allow us to readily “reach into” a pool of threads and “pick one” to use - saving the costly overhead of creating and destroying threads (in case you did not know creating and destroying threads is an expensive process). ...

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

Squeaky Geek to Silicon Saint ; number 5 is my favourite. Bar da Boa - wait for the flash to finish loading (be patient); enter your First and Last names and click on “Visualizer” - lol. MSR’s InkSeine - which allows you to find stuff with ink, seems quite handy if you use a tablet; some videos here ; you can get it here . TSA is blogging - now you can vent your frustrations! In case you ever wondered, how ASP.NET uses memory ? Especially handy when one started running out of memory. Xperf - a new tool in Windows SDK. Feeling nostalgic? Check out ScummVM . Sony Ericsson’s new Windows Mobile based phone - quite cool. Apparently, multi-functional printers are the latest security threat . Apparently quite a handful of people have had Vista wifi issues whereby a laptop resuming from Sleep/Hibernate cannot connect to the wifi; resetting the wireless card does not help and only a reboot fixes it. It might not be baloney and there is some truth to the matter. Reading these real world examples of online data loss (HA! it was online so you thought you won’t lose it), makes me feel quite smug about my WHS . ...

Of course the assert does not work.

Synergy - one mouse and keyboard to control them all. 50 Tips, Tweaks and Hacks to make the most of Google Calendar . Wayback Machine - Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. e.g. how Microsoft.com looked 12 years ago. Awww … I had forgotten the IE logo. Hamachi remote Wake-on-LAN tutorial . Virtual Wifi - connect to multiple wireless networks at the same time using one wireless card! Cilk is a language for multithreaded parallel programming based on C and is especially effective for exploiting dynamic, highly asynchronous parallelism, which can be difficult to write in data-parallel or message-passing style MSDN Code Gallery - need I say more? Reverse IP Check - see what sites are running on the same web server as your domain. E.g. at the time of writing this there were 305 domains hosted on the same web server as this blog - wow! Airbus A380 Cockpit in 360. London Food Hygiene ratings - don’t concentrate only on how many Michelin Stars the restaurant has, but focus on how clean is it. ...

I did not know until this week that there was something called “Livelock”; Eh? I heard of Deadlock what the heck is Livelock? Well it is kind of the opposite of Deadlock (in some respects). A Deadlock as we know is when say Process A is waiting for Process B to finish or release some resource or something before continuing and Process B in turn is waiting for Process A before it continues - end result neither continues. ...

Wise words from Jim (when teaching CDS ): “Keep it Sequential Stupid”

Do these seem to be the first Window 7 Screenshots or is it Photoshop magic?

Here is how fellow Avanut Wayne describes the “conversation” between Vista and you (the user) when an app. decides to kick the bucket. I particularly like the last one. User: “This thing’s frozen.” [Tries to close program using various keyboard and mouse actions.] U: “Yep, totally wasted.” [Task Manager displays] U: “Kill this program.” Computer: “Hey, uh, did you know that this program isn’t really responding? I think it might be frozen.” ...

I had not heard of this until Karan told me about Erlang which was originally developed by Ericsson and stands for Ericsson Language.