I was signing up for Google apps just to see what the fuss is all about and could not think of a domain and thought to give geek.com a try. Of course I knew it is not available, but I am quite offended by what Google thinks of Geeks - especially the whole damn company was formed and staffed by geeks.

I got this via the Ava communities - John Lee created a Wii Whiteboard Marker - very cool. Now the only thing to figure out how the heck to get a projector. 😄

If you want to get Windows Vista using Windows Update then copy the following in a bat (or cmd) file and run it in an admin console (if you have UAC switched on); then run Windows Update. Also the SP1 is a Release Candidate and not the “final” version so use at your own risk! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 @echo off reg delete HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\WindowsUpdate\\VistaSp1 /f > NUL 2>&1 reg delete HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\WindowsUpdate\\VistaSP1 /f > NUL 2>&1 reg add HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\WindowsUpdate\\VistaSp1 /v Beta1 /t REG\_SZ /d da2ba4db-dedb-437e-8e7e-104643454bb6 /f IF NOT %errorlevel% == 0 ( goto ERROR) :SUCCESS @echo. echo =========================================================== echo Windows Vista SP1 registry key has been set successfully. echo Please check for updates in Windows Update. echo =========================================================== @echo. goto END :ERROR @echo. echo =========================================================== echo FAILED to set Windows Vista SP1 registry keys. echo Please run this script by right clicking and selecting echo "Run as Administrator". echo =========================================================== @echo. goto END :END pause

Love it or hate it UML is important for anyone involved (Architect/Developer/Whoever) - either you need to create designs based on UML and you need to understand that someone else has. Sure it has its challenges and for some specific things there are better solutions (DSL’s - more on that some other day). I am “old school” and over the years have used Rational Rose (or whatever IBM has renamed it to since buying Rational out). ...

With all the modern systems using multi-core and multi-processor systems, tapping this new power is an interesting challenge for developers. It also fundamentally starts the shift on how your “average Joe” interacts with a computer and things that he/she expects to be able to. First, check out the “ Manycore Shift ” paper from Microsoft. Second checkout the Parallel Extensions to .NET 3.5 which is a programing model for data and task parallelism. It also helps with coordination on parallel hardware (such as multi-core CPU’s) via a common work schedules. There is also a new Parallel Computing Dev Center on MSDN. Before you download the December 2007 CTP, make sure you have the RTM bits of the .NET 3.5 runtime. There are also a number of bugs fixed in this new CTP. If you want a quick introduction then check out a few videos available . ...

At work we had an issue where our sql performance (SQL Server 2005) was very slow - much slower than we needed and everything looked OK but in the production environment (to which we don’t have access - rightfully) things were not ticking as they should be. We had a requirement to be able to process ~200K / hour and we were barely managing ~ 44K / day! Ouch! As it turns out, the solution in the end after a lot of digging and flapping around was changing the type of one of the columns which was defined as a nvarchar(MAX) to a nvarchar(400). The data we were storing in this column can easily fit within 400 characters and we don’t need the MAX. The reason this helped is because a MAX is not indexable. The database was flagging this as warning but this was missed. Changing this increased our perf. from the measly 44K records being processed in 24 hours to processing 410.0K records in 16 minutes! Sweet! ...

Fellow Avanut, Barry , created the most evil pumpkin in Linuxland.

I think we need something like Rotten Neighbors for the UK ! 😃 What is it? If you have a rotten neighbor then you can tell the world about them. You can browse to your neighborhood and plot your own marker with a complete description Here is an example from in the neighborhood where I use to live in California. ...

Avanade in Netherlands went on a campus recruitment drive and seem like they are having too much fun ! In case you are like me and do not understand Dutch, then what it says is “Food for IT guys” and essentially was a marketing drive on various campuses where prospective interns for Avanade were offered some food (looks like chips) in exchange for their emails. I think the whole idea is just brilliant! We should do something similar in other regions. ...

Megha send me this one; I had never heard of these guys but I do recognize the music from the new iPod Nano advertisement.

<rant> I was trying to install the Vista SDK and due to my network card having some issues I wanted to reboot. However, before doing that, I had to cancel the SDK setup (as it downloads the bits during the setup process). Now I understand the need to warn the user not to do “close” the setup as the installations is rolling back to previous state - but the need to have a topmost window is very irritating and not required. It is not like that the SDK would be installed by a “average user” with the need to have this constant reminder “in the face”. ...

WCF’s configuration is somewhat complex and the first time you start using it can been daunting. Below is an image of the schema published by Microsoft. You can print this out on a A3 or something and use it has a handy reference.

If I bought an expensive gadget, I own it and can do anything with it (as long as it is legal of course). So if an update deliberately bricks the gadget how is not bullying? Also is it legal (obviously I am no lawyer). Phht … and people say Microsoft acts life a bully! I think it might be time to boycott Apple and take my business elsewhere. ...

Pretty hilarious (and probably true) - how the loo/restroom/bathroom signs should be . 😄

Anywhere.FM can be thought as iTunes for the Web. It allows you to upload your music (yes including those songs bought from iTunes), so you can get to your music from anywhere. You can also “share” the music with friends like a “radio station” and of course browse other user’s radio station. Sweet! 😄 If you travel a lot and need a decent solution to manage the various expense receipts (or are just plain lazy then check out Neat Receipts Scanner . Fauxto - think Photoshop for the web. If you really want job security, then check out how to write unmaintainable code . 😄 Search Lab - free Science search tools - just want you needed for any science-related-research. PsExec is a light-weight telnet-replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems, complete with full interactivity for console applications, without having to manually install client software. Splog and sploggers - what? Central Desktop - another collaboration tool. Top 100 Alternative Search engines - alternate to google - worth a spin. Free disk imaging software (as long as you own a Seagate or Maxtor drive). Laptop lid cooling - where the industry might be heading. The daily green - a consumer’s guide to being green. I personally like the weather watch gallery such as sitting on the edge of the world

As Mr. Kale so eloquently puts it (and of course 100% correct): If you think you need multi-threading, you’re wrong If your specification says “you need threading”, see Rule 1 (For advanced users only) If you think you need multi-threading, you’re probably wrong.

You must have heard of the perpendicular storage now coming out - but how is this any good. To understand this listen to poor HDD sector explain it - pretty cool.

No, there is no typo in the title of this post - there is a .NET “Micro” Framework (which is a Microsoft stack in case you were wondering). I had not heard of such a thing until today (but then I have not done any embedded stuff for a while). ...

I was pleasantly surprised to see the appearance of my book, Pro WCF on Books24x7 today. Below is the screen shot from the email 😄

I have been playing with some of the P2P stuff in .NET 3.5 and seems like to have missed the plot along the lines somewhere while debugging …. 😄

To laugh or to cry … that is the question.

Seems like many others are following the MS route in releasing Betas - which might not be the best thing in the world. Telligent has now released the CS 2007 Service Pack 3 (Pre-Release) with a long list of fixes and “new features”.

If for some reason you wanted to know what version (and possibly license) of TFS were you running (as a fellow Avanut did in the communities), then check out this tool by Jeff . Speaking of TFS, Brian has published the “final” feature list of what to expect in TFS 2008 including compatibility with VSTS 2005. ...