Christmas.NET - Dedicated to all the programmers out there

using Self;
using Self.Emotions;
using Self.Online.Blog;
using Self.Rides.Bike.Pulsar150;
using Self.Offline.GirlFriend;
using Self.Offline.SocialCircle.Dudes;
using Self.Gadgets.Canon500D;
using Self.Gadgets.AmazonKindle;

namespace Self.Life.Experience
{
    public class Christmas
    {
        public Christmas()
        {
            InitialiseComponents(Self.Life.Instances[CURRENT_INSTANCE]);

            GalacticDomination.Thread.Suspend();

            Emotion emo = Chrismas_Start(new System.TimeSpan(48, 0, 0));
            Self.Life.Experience.Add(emo.Summary);
            Self.Life.Components[2009].Vacation.Add("Chritmas", emo);

            GalacticDomination.Thread.Resume();

            var settings = new { Audience = "Public", LevelOfDetail = "Overview", OutputLanguage = "Human, C# v3.5" };

            Blogs[TECH_BLOG].Post(this, emo, settings);
        }

        [System.Serializable]
        [System.STAThread]
        public Emotion Chrismas_Start(System.TimeSpan duration)
        {
            if (Self.CurrentStatus == Status.Married)
            {
                Monotonus.Do("boring, chistmas tree, boring, big dinner, boring, gifts under tree, boring");
                throw new InvalidSystemStateException("maybe try a few linux commands like sudo. If not on mono then no chance buddy");
            }

            Shopping("Gifts", "for friends, family, her");

            WithHer("Bike to Secluded spots, Curvy Hilly Roads", "use lots of breaking ;)");
            WatchMovie("London Dreams", "could have been better movie but only spent half the time actually watching movie");
            WithHer("xoxo", "[censored]");
            WithHer("Dinner", "Chinese");
            if (GiveGift("Her", "Necklace").IsHappy) Self.MentalState.SaveSnapshot();
            WithHer("xoxo", "[censored], snuggle, [censored], snuggle");
            Gadget("Kindle", "Read some more from 'Spin by Robert Charles Wilson'");

            duration.Subtract(new System.TimeSpan(24, 0, 0));

            BikeTo("Mussoorie", "No Snow, still lots of fun");
            WatchMovie("De Dana Dan", "great Hera Pheri like fun");
            Gadget("Kindle", "Catch up on blogs using google reader mobile ed.");

            BikeTo("Back Home", "make too much noise, overspeed, pit stop for beer");
            WithBuddies("Get Drunk", "best part of the day");
            GiveGift("Buddies", "Suspicious dvds, " + Emoticons.EvilGrin.Load());
            Gadget("Canon500D", "takes pics of buddies in wierd and compromising situations");
            WithBuddies("Passed Out", "best part of the Night");

            duration.Subtract(new System.TimeSpan(24, 0, 0));

            return new Emotion(this, "Happy", "Huge Handover");
        }
    }
}

Buying an Amazon Kindle 2 in India? Bollywood estyle!

Scene 0 – The hero spots the heroine. Love at first sight – General Specs

First off, I purchased a Kindle 2 and am very happy with the product. It is what it is said to be and then some!

But acquiring this neat gadget is not so easy if you are in India. It makes for a neat story with a whole lot of bollywood style twists. Read: kicking the ass of the hero(me) for the whole movie and then unite with the heroine (kindle 2 global) right at the end. o-O.

Like everyone else outside the US, The hero went crazy for a few seconds when he learnt about the Kindle going international global :D He simply had to have it. Any science fiction bookworm would agree. Reading about awesome alien worlds and insane time-travel ideas on a comparably cool gadget is boundless fun.

So sit back, relax and enjoy the saga.

Aside from being extremely hot, the Kindle 2 is an amazing device. It’s form factor is surprisingly thin and E-Ink is so clear and easy on your eyes that it looks even better in the sun unlike other displays we are accustomed to. It can show a whole variety of file formats and for those it cant, one can find even more converters to get the job done. The Wispernet is great and covers almost all over the world. Via EVDO and falls back to 3G, EDGE and GPRS respectively based on the cellular service. It can charge via USB too and functions as a pen drive when plugged in.

Scene 1 -  The seduction – Geek specs

It uses a Lithium-polymer battery which does not degrade after each charge cycle. It has a processor faster then the Iphone. It has a Cellular modem that has hidden GPS features. It is extremely easy to use as it follows the minimalism  methodology set by google. It has stereo speakers albeit not a full blown MP3 player. It runs linux! and with some cool software you can easily be looking at the root prompt and happily compiling a custom kernel. It has many experimental features like a browser, picture viewer (manga), MP3 player, audio books and Text 2 Speech in addition to the million and one hacks out there in the wild due to the OS being linux. Oh and did I mention, an internet access is free.

View Full Album

All this in a 290 gram, super sleek, white hot body. The hero yells within ‘just take me. take me right here…’

Scene 2 – First date, her daddy is strict, no dates before marriage - Import fees and ways around

So, The hero trotted of to her home (Amazon.com) all giggly and bubbly and gobble up all the information on the new release and decided to ask her out on a date (check out the payment options).

The large import fees really made me mad and like all desi people couldn’t find it easy to pay the proper fees, need a jugaad shortcut. So I scour google with all the search trick i know. I find a few options like using one of those sites that provide you with a US address where you can ship the item and they forward it to you for a modest fee. The other one was a Chinese site selling Kindle at a much reduced price. However since kindle has a tiny cell phone for its eyes and ears I couldn't risk one of those options due to the fear of void warranty or wispernet not working.

So our hero wastes a lot of time on her from afar and finally succumbed to the Righteous ways. Marriage with the full 7 rounds. (i.e. the displayed $259 become $378.57). That is what girls do a guy’s pocket so the hero shouldn’t be surprised :)

Scene 3 – Family wants NRI - Payment options Credit card only

Soon thereafter the first hurdle comes, You have to have a credit card which I dont have (a whole other rebellious policy I subscribe to but best left out of this post). It wiped the smile off my face. More days pass searching and looking for options. Come up with only two. Either get someone to buy it for you or get someone to buy you a gift card which can then be used to make the purchase. I was a bit worried as, like other mobile devices, they get tagged to the purchaser.

The hero doesn’t want some random NRI to marry her and bring her to him. She is too hot to be trusted with anyone else.

After some talk here and there I find another in the middle option, Get someone to buy it for you as a gift ! In such a case the kindle is unregistered and one can then register it themselves. However, that options is some what hidden and not easy to catch. There is only one option and that is gift wrapping and that costs further more money. God help our hero. However after reading a lot more text in amazon support on the not so easy on eye non E-Ink monitor I find that just select gift wrap and dont select any wrapping method and add some gift message text and you are done. The purchase is made via a trusted friend

The heroine will stay single! All roads appear clear and our hero sings a couple of melodies. But he doesn’t know the mafia (whole shipping industry) is after her. The Mafia sends their minions all over the route. Will the heroine survive? Will they unite? The mafia is sure to be badass, what will the hero do?

Stay tuned for the next episode.

Ever thought what goes on in the mind and life of a scener(pirate)?

 

Ever thought what goes on in the mind and life of a scener(pirate)?  Watch The Scene series and see the first season first.

 

I was(am) a big fan of 'The Scene', a mini series that you can freely download and watch online, and stumbled back to their site today. This series is an awesome creative work about the life of pirates and it started the cycle of thought in me. I have researched this subjects many times and wanted to write a post about it as it is a very interesting world as well as a community of exceptional talent.

‘The Scene’ refers to the online piracy world including the real world aspects of it and the Sceners are the people who make warez(pirated stuff) available to us i.e. the public. They put themselves in real danger and, if caught, are exposed to very real consequences. This is not to be confused w ith hackers as that is a whole separate world and much more evil ;).

 

Organizations and Governments all around the world spend millions of dollars to try and stop piracy both by developing newer and difficult to pirate protection systems and legal teams to catch the culprits but we, the people, still get everything without paying anything. All due to the sceners.

We find it so easy to just go about downloading anything in sight, but the story of how that ‘thing’ found its way to the public sharing sites is a long and interesting one with all sorts of organized crime like aspects to it. Generally speaking, releases(warez) are created by a Release Group. In such a group there are sources and couriers, like someone in a DVD printing factory who will sneak one out to send to the encoders who convert the original stuff and package it into online deliverables via top-sites and uploaders. After going thru all those ranks of the group do the files reach out in the public. There are also the Primes  who are people who donate hardware to the top-sites for access rights on their servers so that they can get the very best releases, post requests for special items and to get the rights of bragging that they are the first ones to enjoy the releases.

Why do they do it. The most common reasons are along the lines like – they can do it so they do it, for the fun of it, for the thrill of doing something wrong and getting away with it and also for the fierce competitive world that The Scene is. Scene lifes are made and  destroyed based on who goes thru the process of obtaining and releasing an item first and in the correct way, leaving the others sulking in the dust behind them.

Despite what you might thing, The Scene is cut-throat and yet self-regulated community i.e. has its own rules and principles which the participants must follow or be removed. Without trust between the members of a group they would be caught easily or simply not live up to the competition. Due to the high risk life of a scener they use sophisticated anonymity and security software to fool anyone looking for them. They spoof, hop, run in circles and spew garbage leaving very little if any trace behind them. To this effect, there are a lot of methods that have evolved to keep some measure of control like release lists, where bad releases are nuked and access controls mechanisms to keep the blacklisted out, most of which the common man cant get a glimpse of.

 

The most hardcore of all sceners live a very secretive life and definitely are not the ones who like fame and exposure. It is extremely difficult to get in contact with such people even though be sure that they live among us. I like to think they live on a separate plane of existence :).

Now that you know a tiny bit about The Scene, next time you download ‘stuff’, take a moment to thank the uploaded and keep those speed limits off.

Cheers. Peace Out.

Links: Wiki 1 2 3 4. I was going to post a bunch of links here but it better to let you search it yourself and there is a whole lot of stuff out there.

Cooler Master Storm Scout Cabinet – Ramp Walk

My cyborg arm has been itching for a few days due to the lack of the modding for an insanely long time. So, solely to satisfy the inner BuckRodger, I decided to dump my previous cabinet and freshen things up.

I am also a photography hobbyist with a Canon 500D and since spending the whole Diwali snapping fireworks, I wanted to do something different. So, I went with a mod that would look the coolest in pictures :D As you may be able to tell, shooting colourful lights is the best kind of photography I like. (Straight LowDown -  See all the pics of this cabinet – slideshow, set)

Enter Cooler Master Storm Scout (see manufacturer page, video review). I purchased one from theitdepot.com along with some neons and internal lighting paraphernalia. I spent the last weekend switching cabinets and installing the internal lighting.

This is my first time with a ‘proper’ cabinet. I was amazed by the tool-free design, the solid steel, wire management, dust filters, wire mesh and side window. The best however is the quality of cooling it provides. My system temperatures went down 10 degrees right away in comparison to the temps in the previous cabinet. The handles on the top are really sturdy and made it very easy to move it around for the ‘photoshoot’ ;)

It is such a shame that I didn’t move to a branded cabinet earlier then now. The benefits are so many and indispensable once you have tasted them.  The stock fans are huge and very well placed. It is also such a wonder that the cabinet is so quite. 

Radical Modes (Green/Red/Blue) - Rear View

Another feature I really love is the small switch on the front panel that can switch ON/OFF the LEDs and attached with the other additions I made works very well when you need it to be dark. In addition I installed a parallel port controllable relay to turn off the chassis fans as well. It is very handy when you want that zero decibel  sound level. I use Win7’s powershell to switch to a quite mode that throttles down CPU and GPU clocks and runs my tiny utility to switch of the fans. When I get time, I am planning to write a full utility to control the internals of a system via the age old parallel port electronics addon method.

Frontal Assault - Mode Green and Red

Other owners of the same cabinet may be really happy to know that the ceiling fan actually has speed control support. The default wireup of the cabinet just attaches it to the +12v rail and we can disconnect it from that and plug it into the mobo. Which will allow us to monitor and control the fan speed. Unfortunately, and this is the only thing I dont like about this cabinet is, the other fans dont have speed control capability. It would have been nice to have a switch like the the ones offered by Antec.

HDD Rack, Read Exhaust and the GPU

This cabinet is a far cry from my last 500Rs one. That one was so old and so modded out that it had become rickety like a UP Roadways Bus. Years ago, I had to mod it out to make it functional(new HDD rack, front exhaust, addition front panel USB etc) to my hardware and was unable to upgrade from a long time as I knew that the other local ones would have the same shortcomings and would required modding. So I am very happy that this cabinet is already functional and so I am free to concentrate on visual pleasure alone!

This brings me to the end of the outside view of the cabinet. I will do the internals next time, when I get time. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Dont forget the view the other equally awesome pics slideshow, set.

PhotoSketch: Simone here I come…

There are times when I am really mad at my chosen field of professionalism (as if.. ). But there are also times when ‘awesome’ doesn't seem to suffice as well, which makes life worth living. Today is such a day. Come along and enjoy the ride..

(: Oh! and btw if you haven’t see S1m0ne yet then jump out of your office window, in front of a truck, grab a gun and point at the guy in the mirror or do whatever preference you have towards suicide. :)

We have all seen a variety of awesome stuff in novels, sci-fi movies, on the web, in computer games, in great software and web applications and in unique project, we as devs, may be a part of (Google OS someone? :p). Some of those transcend and stay as a part of our subconscious. For eg a few things for me are The Matrix, A fire in the deep, Abduction, Chromosome 6,  Windows 7 :D, etc etc. This one is a newest entry in that collection. The ‘think and make real’ kinda stuff.

What if

• you could draw a sketch on a tablet and have it turned into a real image with real people, objects and background?
• you have been going crazy about that wedding photo of yours what missed a crucial item, like a family member, an emblem or ur pet?
• you want to add that special someone in a really nice pic of urs or a missing friend in a group photo ?
• you want to see yourself kayaking or hiking in that dream destination or want to stand next to the president?

Forget photoshop just PhotoSketch.

A group of students in China have created PhotoSketch, a project that does exactly what I just described: it takes a rough, hand-drawn sketch, scours the web for photos that match, and runs them through an algorithm, stitching it all together. Watch this video presentation, you will not regret it:

Now we just need to add another dimension to it (No! my dear Einstein I don’t mean Time.. we already have that in the video progress bar :p ) and -> S1m0ne here I come !!

Discovering Windows 7 – Awesome Explorer

Who would have thought that the work ‘awesome’ could possible be used near ‘explorer’. I mean, no one ever goes “Dude, windows explorer is awesome!”. Ever. I though that those words together should be called a ‘grammatical mistake’ :p

It is totally not the case now. Even after months of using Win7 I, almost everyday, keep discovering new features and ingenuities.

I was trying to fix tag information for the music I recently got from amardeep. He never has neatly organised data. So I was doing the usual. Select a group of files >Right click> Properties > Details tab and fill it up or something similar can be done from Media Player’s library but with only the advantage of a smoother UI. Right?

I then noticed details pane in the lower part smoothly displaying all the tag info. Some elements were missing so I did the obvious (Right Click) and sure enough there as a menu to control the details and a couple options. I chose the large size to see more property elements.



I intuitively moved my mouse over the displayed data and noticed the value getting highlighted as if they could be edited. I was like wow that is great. No need go to the details pane. Just select files and you are a bunch of clicks/steps faster. You dont have to repeat the RightClick>Prop>Details for each group of files you select to edit.



It was great discovery up till now but as soon as I moved to try something more complex it became awesome. Lets take the example of a folder I have called ‘Top Singles’ where I keep the latest hits and add new numbers as they hit the top (pretty great method to only filter and collect the best songs only). In such a folder the tags are hard to manage as you cant group them because they are from different artists/albums etc. This method greatly reduced the effort required in such places.

Earlier I had to create and update a bunch of playlists there to manage updates in single folder. For e.g. if I want to listen to a particular week’s updates hits in the order they were in at that time.. impossible right? Just try it..

Anyway, I started editing some tags with this method and, you are gonna love it, then came the biggest ‘aaaaaah’ from my mouth. Just as I started typing the edit fields came alive with real-time suggestions based on my library! Don’t believe me? have a look -



At the very least this feature completely kills the misspelling mistake (which resulted in really bad looking library like artists would have ‘Kailas’ and ‘Kailash’. Really messing up playback selction. In addition it further speeds up the task and offers us a strong overview in cases where, say, we forgot the artist name/spelling etc.

I wondered what else can we do with this thing.. and it occurred to me -  the search field! I went to the top directory and entered  a search for which I knew the results were spread out in many folders.

Here is a search for “List top songs or music videos since June 2008 by Beyonce or Eminem” :D


This was just a forced complex search. Now imagine this(search, live suggestions tags etc) for all files and documents! Tagging made super easy which in turn makes further searching and tagging easier. It is an exponential relationship. And dont forget Windows media center and other network stream devices that Win7 can attach to. It makes navigating on them many times easier. Even more mind boggling is, try to associate this with the open search filters/addon capability of Windows 7. Like searching last.fm or flickr or even a torrent site in inclusion to you network, Homegroup and libraries!

Tell me you are in love, shout aloud “Awesome Explorer” :)

Windows 7 Boot Errors - No More !

How may times have we been plagued by a failed boot manager? Remember ‘NTLDR Missing’ or ‘No OS found’ or ‘Boot manager failed to load…’

Well I got one today, after a long time, on my desktop. It was absolutely fine yesterday night when I switched it off. Something clashed/broker windows was left unbootable.

Earlier one would be frantically running around to find a rescue disk or a windows setup disk to boot from and somehow remember how he had fixed it the last time.

Enter Windows 7. Simply restart the system and the next time you get a sweet screen with the options -



“Fix problems that are preventing windows from starting” Now tell me that isn’t sweet!

I just press enter and it does it’s thing. Kudos to the devs and the leads taking initiative to implement such functions :)

It also goes to show that end user software is now in that phase of crossing over from dumb to intelligent. I wonder what wonder will come next…

Windows 7, Visual Studio 2008 and Sql Server 2005/2008 are made for each other…. well almost.

It is like walking into a field of sunflowers with northern lights above and a bright and happy sun shining warmly on your face. That is what Windows 7 feels like. I got the Windows 7 iso(2.3Gb) floating around on the net and decided to try the 30 days trial ;) on my development laptop which is not even Vista certified!

Note: This is going to be a long haul. Feel free to skip and do what ever boring stuff you do normally.

…Setup Windows 7 without a DVD

Installing is a breeze with a pen drive so do the following and everyone around you will think you are a magician.

C:\>G:\Boot\BOOTSECT /NT60 H: where G is the mounted ISO(using UltraIso or similar) and H is you pen drive. After that copy all the content from the Win7 image to the pen drive as well. You are all set! Reboot and choose to boot from the pen drive. 10 minutes later you will feel the sun in your face :P

…Installing applications

The installation was swift with 3 restarts and all hardware detected automatically. One quick windows later I was up to date. I looked like I was on to a fabulous start. The performance was looking great and it was very stable. I then moved to the real deal stuff and the tedious job of downloading and installing everything. Firefox, Chrome Faststone, 7z, uTorrent, AVG Free, Atomic clock, Google Desktop, Windows live components(which is what I am writing in right now), CutePDF, Skype, Gtalk, Synaptic Touchpad utility and you know all the odds and ends I could remember. My previous XP was loaded and server me well for 1.2 years without fail. I was hoping to stay on the same steady road but with all the jazz of the world :D

…Importing settings and customisations

None of the above mentioned stuff gave any warning or error and installed blazing fast thanks to the Windows 7 installation routine revamping. However then came the crazy task of importing setting and customizations that accumulate with time on one’s PC. I did uTorrent, Media Library(which was going to prove useless against the supreme Windows 7 Libraries function), Atomic Clock, Google Desktop gadgets and Index files, Skype History etc. They all were marvellous and did I say no errors or compatibility issues yet?

…Using Firefox profile from Windows XP

Well the sweet part was over after that and came the crazy stuff. I had to import my Firefox profile, you know with the extensions, history, sessions, passwords and all that, which is usually very easy to do but I hit a mental block for some reason and it would work for the longest time. Firefox profile is something that I would start using Win98 to get it working! What is a guy without his internet history, bookmarks and passwords?

Anyway there were two problems. First, I was putting it in the wrong location. %AppData% in is AppData/Roaming not in AppData/Local Dugh! and Second to make it work you have to use “Firefox.exe –profilemanager” and create a new profile. After that close Firefox and replace all files in the new profile from you precious one and lo and behold you are back!

…Installing SQL Server and Visual Studio

Well I have to say it, this was the toughest. Mainly because there is so little information about Windows 7 (not the RC) on the net. As soon as you start the setup you will be bombarded with a few ‘known compatibility’ messages which were ever so frequent in Vista. If you install anyway you wont get anywhere as the SQL native client wont install and thus the Database service wont install. The simple thing is to download the SP3 streamlined setup of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 from Microsoft and if you cant then extract the SP2 or earlier setup with 7z and manually run sqlncli.exe for the native client. After that It should install smoothly. Just remembered, before all this, remember to setup IIS if you are going to do SQL CLR Debugging and in general Managed debugging using IIS and Visual studio 2008. Follow is very neat guild.

Visual studio and ASP.NET MVC install without hiccups. Remember to install the newest service pack though. It is also very easy to import your previous visual studio settings file and keep you visual studio theme too. And most important don’t forget to install Monaco font! :)

…IIS 7.5, SQL Server, Debugging Quirks

I ran into a couple of problems that you might too. I had to dig around the net for a loooong time and do a lot of trial and error to fix the solutions.

1. Create a Application under default website and run into a wierd problem. The default page doesnt load. For Eg. http/localhost/MyApp/ will give a 404 where as http/localhost/MyApp/Default.aspx will open file. After a lot of trial and error I found out that creating a Virtual Folder and then right-clicking to convert to application solved the issue.

2. Server Error in '/' Application.

Cannot open database "<Database Name>" requested by the login. The login failed. Login failed for user 'IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool'.

There are other, some will say better, ways to fix this problem but the simplest and fastest to get it out of way is to change the. Go to IIS Manager>Server>Applications Pools> DefaultAppPool>Right-Click>Advanced Settings>Change Identity to LocalSystem. This will allow debugging.

3. Cant find the right process in ‘Attack to process…’ Just check ‘Show Processes in all Sessions’ and select w3wp.exe. If you still cant find it then open your browser and open some page on one of the local applications or virtual directory hosted apps. IIS service is efficient so it terminates fairly quickly on idle. Reopen the Attach to process and you should find it there.

4. Debugger terminates debugging after a few seconds into break points etc. This one is out from the help pages in case you were too lazy to click the help button. This is another one of the performance enhancements in IIS. Click here for the fix. :)

…Development tools

I use a whole bunch of tools around my Visual Studio and wont list them all. Here are few of the prominent ones. I installed Web Deployment projects addin, TortoiseSVN, Codesmith, netITers, Code Rush, Refactor pro, Red Gate SQL Toolbelt, ANTS Profiler, SQL Profiler, Sql Server Business Studio, MS Charts.. etc They all worked fine without any error or compatibility issues.

…Library and Home group

It is a revolution! These two features alone are enough to tell you something good is here. I was able arrange everything in my Laptop and my Gaming PC in less then 30 minutes. Which I was unable to do for the past years!! This will be awesome to the extreme when they release some kind go installed for earlier OS and I able to use it with the new NAS I am planning to buy for a 4TB+ storage.

However there was a problem that will possibly hit half the users. I spent 2 hours trying to connect both the PCs together in a home group. The process is very simple, you enable home group and are shown the password. Just click join on the ot

her systems and enter the password. All done… Not. They say a rotten apple can spoil all the others in the basket. That rotten apple is the team lead for the home group feature. They don’t tell anywhere that the time on both the machines have to be accurately matched! At the very least when you enter the password it should report and ‘Dude correct the time’ instead of a lame ’ Wrong Password’ message. Just enable internet time sync or do once to fix it.

...Windows Media Center

Probably the only thing keeping me sane. I love windows media center. I only run vista on my PC just to watch movies. internet radio, Music and what not. Especially with the Logitech s510 Media Remote makes is home theater heaven. The one in Win7 is quite imporved and fast like everything else. I detected my Pinnacle i110 right off the bat and download the TV Guide in a jiffy. After that I was surfin' the tube.

…Conclusion

I have been using Windows 7 for 3 days will all the above and a lot more. Win7 increases productivity a lot as well by making everyday things easier. I tried a lot of other stuff like ReadyBoost with 8gb pen drive, BitLocker and the revamped accessories like Programmable calculator and MS paint. Some benchmarks actually are much better then XP like in graphic intensive or multitasking software. The XP emulator is also apparently to die for, I was not able to try it since it requires a large amount of ram, disk space and virtualization capable CPUs. The upcoming Visual Studio 2010 and .net 4 are also being tailored for Windows 7.

It is quite possible I am in love…. ….again. Ciao.

Ever wondered about programming in Hindi !!

Sounds crazy and completely useless, doesn't it? But I am sure I will be able to change you mind about that but then end of this post. However it wont be feasible in the real world as we all work in teams and English remains the primary programming language.

I started, as always, with google and ended up here on my blog which rarely meets anyone (including me).

Anyway I started a new project in Visual Studio 2008 and voila! Magic happens -

public class myClass
{
   public void MyHindiTextFunction()
   {
       प्रबंधक<कंपनी<int>, List<कंपनी<int>>> प्रबंधक१ = new प्रबंधक<कंपनी<int>, List<कंपनी<int>>>();
       प्रबंधक<परियोजना<Guid>, HashSet<परियोजना<Guid>>> प्रबंधक२ = new प्रबंधक<परियोजना<Guid>, HashSet<परियोजना<Guid>>>();
              
       प्रबंधक१.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.AddRange(new List<कंपनी<int>> {
           new कंपनी<int>(1, "company1"),
           new कंपनी<int>(2, "company2"),
           new कंपनी<int>(3, "company3"),
           new कंपनी<int>(4, "company4"),
           new कंपनी<int>(5, "company5") });

       प्रबंधक२.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.Add(new परियोजना<Guid>(Guid.NewGuid(), "project1"));
       प्रबंधक२.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.Add(new परियोजना<Guid>(Guid.NewGuid(), "project2"));
       प्रबंधक२.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.Add(new परियोजना<Guid>(Guid.NewGuid(), "project3"));
       प्रबंधक२.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.Add(new परियोजना<Guid>(Guid.NewGuid(), "project4"));
       प्रबंधक२.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.Add(new परियोजना<Guid>(Guid.NewGuid(), "project5"));

       //Select company where company id is in the Product's guid as string 0-o
       var क्वेरी = प्रबंधक१.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां.Join(
                     प्रबंधक२.प्रबंधित_इकाईयां,
                     क => क.संख्या.ToString(),
                     क => क.संख्या.ToString(),
                     (क, ख) => ख.संख्या.ToString().Contains(क.संख्या.ToString()));

   }
}

public class प्रबंधक<इकाई_प्रकार, सरणी_प्रकार>
           where सरणी_प्रकार : new()
{
   private सरणी_प्रकार _प्रबंधित_इकाईयां;
   public सरणी_प्रकार प्रबंधित_इकाईयां
   {
       get { return _प्रबंधित_इकाईयां; }
   }

   public प्रबंधक()
   {
       _प्रबंधित_इकाईयां = new सरणी_प्रकार();
   }
}

public class कंपनी<कंपनी_संख्या_प्रकार>
{
   public कंपनी_संख्या_प्रकार संख्या { get; set; }
   public string नाम { get; set; }
   public कंपनी(कंपनी_संख्या_प्रकार _संख्या, string _नाम)
   {
       संख्या = _संख्या;
       नाम = _नाम;
   }
}

public class परियोजना<कंपनी_संख्या_प्रकार>
{
   public कंपनी_संख्या_प्रकार संख्या { get; set; }
   public string नाम { get; set; }

   public परियोजना(कंपनी_संख्या_प्रकार _संख्या, string _नाम)
   {
       संख्या = _संख्या;
       नाम = _नाम;
   }
}
}

I know I know.. Mad Scientist at work :) But is stands to reason that Generics and crazy LINQ is always fun and allows getting more hindi then you could otherwise :)

Further:

• SKTN - You have to watch his videos. I went LOL+ROLF
• add en2hi@bot.talk.google.com to GTalks :D

Observations:

• VS2008 is not complete in supporting Unicode unless the underlying OS is. So Kick you XP and pirate Win7 (Tooltips, Intellisense etc are just square blocks)
  
• You can use the hindi transtation of numbers (१, २, ३..) as vars. That are still numbers :[
• Go to Control panel>Language Ops>Add Hindi keyboard and enable the Language Bar. After that start>Accessories>Accessibility>OnScreen Keyboard. Who the hell owns a hindi keyboard anyways
  

Note: XP goes crazy with hindi file and folder names and no one want to set Hindi as the primary language. Vista and Win 7 are much better if you rally want to try this.

Windows 7 RC1 - Ready to plunge in

Well it is that time again. Another new windows version is about to be unleashed upon us. So, be good little geeks and dive headon. Worry about the breathing gear later.

That is how it is always with windows, but there is a bit of hope this time. may be we can dare to have a good feeling..

Check out an article on engadget on this.

Personally I am interested in the Windows Media Center. i hope it has received a generous amount of jazzing up :)