I just installed Twitter Notify plug-in on my live writer. This will send an update to twitter when I will publish this post. Let me test this.
This post is simply to test how it works.
August 21, 2009
February 18, 2009
Charting Your Life
Today I discovered Uladoo (pronounced yoo-LAH-doo). This is a nice charting utility which gathers data from twetter. Uladoo converts data from then creates chart and displays in the form of am image. You can use Uladoo to keep track of you coffee consumption or calories taken or weight loss program etc. You need to send a tweet (as many as you like) to @Uladoo and it updates the chart. You can browse the chart going to the Uladoo.com. It generates a URL for your chart which you can share with your friends and family members. You can even share this chart with your doctor.
How Uladoo Works:
You need to tweet Uladoo and it automatically updates the chart, if it exists. If the chart does not exist, Uladoo creates on. For example, I send following tweet to create my coffee consumption chart
@uladoo coffee consumed 3
Then number 3 tells that I have consumed three cups of coffee from morning. Next time, when I will have another cup of coffee, I will tweet
@uladoo coffee consumed 1
and my chart will be updated. I can see this chart here.
How can you make Uladoo work for you:
You can make Uladoo work for you. First decide what you want to chart. It may be your cigarette consumption, number of calls you made to your girl friend/boss/client, lunch expenses, number of calories you take, your wife’s daily expenses etc. Some people track their daily exercise, pull-ups and push-ups.
Happy charting…
July 29, 2008
Microsoft’s New Operating System – Midori
Microsoft is incubating a componentized non-Windows operating system known as Midori, which is being architected from the ground up to tackle challenges that Redmond has determined cannot be met by simply evolving its existing technology.
Midori is an offshoot of Microsoft Research’s Singularity operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code. Midori is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process.
According to published reports, Eric Rudder, senior vice president for technical strategy at Microsoft and an alumnus of Bill Gates’ technical staff, is heading up the effort. Rudder served as senior vice president of Microsoft’s Servers and Tools group until 2005.
“That sounds possible—I’ve heard rumors to the effect that he [Rudder] had an OS project in place,” said Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft. He noted that it is quite possible that the project is just exploratory, but conceivably a step above what Microsoft Research does.
One of Microsoft’s goals is to provide options for Midori applications to co-exist with and interoperate with existing Windows applications, as well as to provide a migration path.
Building Midori from the ground up to be connected underscores how much computing has changed since Microsoft’s engineers first designed Windows; there was no Internet as we understand it today, the PC was the user’s sole device and concurrency was a research topic.
Today, users move across multiple devices, consume and share resources remotely, and the applications that they use are a composite of local and remote components and services. To that end, Midori will focus on concurrency, both for distributed applications and local ones.
According to the documentation, Midori will be built with an 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.
Midori’s design treats concurrency as a core principle, beyond what even the Microsoft Robotics Group is trying to accomplish, said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group.
The Midori documents foresee applications running across a multitude of topologies, ranging from client-server and multi-tier deployments to peer-to-peer at the edge, and in the cloud data center. Those topologies form a heterogeneous mesh where capabilities can exist at separate places.
In order to efficiently distribute applications across nodes, Midori will introduce a higher-level application model that abstracts the details of physical machines and processors. The model will be consistent for both the distributed and local concurrency layers, and it is internally known as Asynchronous Promise Architecture.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)
43 Things Tags: cloud computing,mobile development,.NET,SOA & SaaS,software development,Windows,Microsoft
Technorati Tags: cloud computing,mobile development,.NET,SOA & SaaS,software development,Windows,Microsoft
del.icio.us Tags: cloud computing,mobile development,.NET,SOA & SaaS,software development,Windows,Microsoft
July 1, 2008
Money Manager Ex – SQL Query
Money Manager Ex is a personal finance management software. It lets you manage your personal faineance. You can manage your expenses, investments and stocks using Money Manager Ex. The most appealing feature of this software is custom reports. It lets you run custom queries against its Sqlite database.
In my previous post on Money Manager, I explained its different features. In this post, I will explain how you can get category wise report of your expenses. Money manager manages your accounts in categories and sub-categories. It has many pre-defined categories. Each category is further classified into subcategories. Usually these are sufficient for the general use.
However you can create new category or subcategory easily. One lacking feature of this software is that it does not provide category-wise report of your transactions. You can see transactions summed up by sub-categories however.
To overcome this shortcoming, I wrote a simple SQL statement that allowed me to see the amount I spent on different categories.
SQL to view category-wise report:
The SQL statement to see categori-wise report is written below.
select a.categid, categname, round(sum(transamount),0) amount from checkingaccount_v1 a inner join category_v1 b on a.categid = b.categid group by a.categid having transdate >= ‘2008-06-01′ and transdate < ‘2008-07-01′
The above statement displays amount spent on different categories for the month of June 2008 i.e. between 1st June and 30th June (both inclusive). You may need to replace the dates i.e. ‘2008-06-01′ and ‘2008-07-01′ as per your requirement.
To execute this statement, select ‘Custom SQL Report’ from the ‘Reports’ menu on the Money Manager. If you cannot see ‘Custom SQL Report’ option, you may need to expend the Reports section by clicking on the ‘+’ sign.
Selecting the ‘Custom SQL Report’ will open a ‘Custom SQL Dialog’ box that will ask you to type the query. Copy and paste above statement into the white box and click on the Run Query. It will show your desired report.
If you have any problem running the query, please let me know through comments of this post.
If you need any specific query for your requirement, please put your requirement in the comments and I will be happy to help you out.
Note: In future, I will be writing more SQL queries for MME. If you are interested in these queries, please subscribe the RSS.
Related Post:
Money Manager Ex – Described
April 3, 2008
Top 20 Programming Books
1. Code Complete by Steve McConnell – Darn near a bible of software development goodness, Code Complete reminds us of our priorities. It’s essential and everyone who writes code should read this book.
2. The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas – I like to read this book at least every six months or so. It’s clean, clever, clear and full of concrete tips you can use to be a better, simpler, pragmatic programmer. A new classic.
3. Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley – This may feel initially like a C book, but it’s really an algorithms book at its heart. It’s old school with techniques and thought problems that can be applied today, even in language like Ruby and C#.
4. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code -by Fowler, Beck, Brant, Opdyke, Roberts Although the language used is Java, the concepts are universal. This is a very linear, easy to read, learn by example book. If you think you know how to refactor, but you haven’t read this book, pick it up and refresh yourself. You’ll find names for Refactorings you’ve used for years and you’ll definitely not only pick up new ones, but be better able to spot opportunities to use them.
5. Design of the UNIX Operating System by Maurice J. Bach So few programmers today can answer questions like “explain how virtual memory is managed” or “how are Unix processes different from Windows.” How did we get here. Know your history.
6. Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides – One of the comments on Amazon says it best, “It is expected that any professional developer has read this book front-to-back. Buy it, read it, then put it in your bathroom and read it when convenient. Also, when you’re done, spend some time at the Portland Pattern Repository.
7. Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers – The book is highly entertaining and comes across as a conversation with a really sharp, really patient guru developer. Often, it’s a chore to slog through code-heavy books. But Feathers manages to keep my attention with interesting stories, loads of examples, and well-written text.
8 .The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff stoll – A sentimental favorite, The Cuckoo’s Egg seems to have inspired a whole category of books exploring the quest to capture computer criminals. Still, even several years after its initial publication and after much imitation, the book remains a good read with an engaging story line and a critical outlook, as Clifford Stoll becomes, almost unwillingly, a one-man security force trying to track down faceless criminals who’ve invaded the university computer lab he stewards. What first appears as a 75-cent accounting error in a computer log is eventually revealed to be a ring of industrial espionage, primarily thanks to Stoll’s persistence and intellectual tenacity. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
9. Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra – I just started reading it yesterday and it is a really well written (lots of pictures and examples) and is put in terms even I understand. Even so early on I would recommend it to anyone wanting an introduction into design patterns.You may not want to include it is all the examples are in Java although if you know c# you should understand it and even the VB / C++ shouldn’t have to jump to far.
10. From Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software by Gunderloy and Sybex – started very interesting. For someone new to the business it gives a nice overview of what the whole software development process entails and made things a lot clearly for a new graduate like me.
11. Code Reading by Spinellis – is a good read for learning how to quickly and efficiently get to grips with an existing codebase. I’m fortunate enough to have worked on greenfield stuff my last couple of projects, but this is gold when starting at a new company and needing to get up to speed. Also great if you’re looking to join an open source project. (http://www.spinellis.gr/codereading/).
12. Writing Secure Code 2 by Michael Howard – This book provides a great overview of what techniques are important when writing secure applications, and what pitfalls to avoid. The book does a good job at making a point through examples and by explaining possible exploits.
13. The Mythical Man Month by Brooks – This is a touchstone book, where by merely mentioning the name, you instantly communicate a body of knowledge on software engineering insight. It’s full of truths about Software Engineering that are still relevant. 30 years later.
14. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler – Noted software engineering expert, Martin Fowler, turns his attention to enterprise application development. He helps professionals understand the complex–yet critical–aspects of architecture. Enables the reader to make proper choices when faced with a difficult design decision.
15. TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1 by W. Tichard Stevens – Even though this book was published in 1994, it still serves as a useful reference and learning tool for the TCP/IP protocol. There are of course changes and additions that have been made to TCP/IP over the last 7 years such as IPv6, but one can still refer to this book as a good source of information about the dynamics of TCP/IP. There are exercises at the end of each chapter, so it can, and has been used as an effective textbook.
16. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug – A practical Web design usability guide, “Don’t Make Me Think!” is based on empirical observation not exhaustive statistics. Steve Krug’s five years of usability consulting and testing are distilled down to this thin yet gem-filled how-to. Krug observed how people actually use the Web rather than how we *think* they use it, gleaning key usability guidelines.
17. The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper – It’s worth reading this book — even despite the painful tone he often takes — just to pick up on the ideas of creating concrete personas and how you use them to develop your product. We do that today at Microsoft (at least in Developer Tools), and it’s a highly successful way of not only building a good product, but also in helping hundreds of developers understand why a feature is ‘in’ or ‘out’, no matter how much they might like it personally.
18. Mastering Reguler Expressions by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl – Regular expressions, a powerful tool for manipulating text and data, are found in scripting languages, editors, programming environments, and specialized tools. In this book, author Jeffrey Friedl leads you through the steps of crafting a regular expression that gets the job done. He examines a variety of tools and uses them in an extensive array of examples, with a major focus on Perl.
19. Test Driven Development by Kent Beck – The book teaches the concepts of TDD by working through two complete sample projects. Along the way, Beck gives the reader valuable insight into the thought process and techniques behind successful test-driven development. When the reader has finished working through these sample projects, he should know enough about TDD to get started working on a TDD project.
20. Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin – The Head First Labs crew has done it again in this excellent into to Ajax. The book really gives a great overview of Ajax for both programmers and non-programmers alike. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to pick this up. Although the book covers more PHP than I care for, and not enough of XML as I would like to see, it does an excellent job of covering their bases in a way that’s easy to understand. I highly recommend this book to anyone with little to no understanding of Ajax. Let’s pretty up the web, people!
February 25, 2008
Google Reader – Keyboard Shortcuts
Google Reader is a great application from Google Labs. This allows you to organize your blogs, manage your subscriptions and share interested posts with your blogs. All this is available online. This means you can access all your settings and blogs from anywhere. You can also access Google reader through mobile device.
Keyboard Shortcuts:
Google reader is popular for its keyboard shortcuts. According to The Official Google Blog “j” key is the most popular key. This is used to move to the next item. You can find a list of popular Google Reader keyboard Shortcut keys here. A complete list of keyboard shortcut is available here. However, the best keystroke is “?”. This is “/” key with shift key pressed. This provides help on all other keyboard shortcuts.
Google reader have a very large list of features. I will discuss these features in the next post.
Technorati Tags: Google+Reader,Keyboard+Shortcuts,Google+Reader+Keyboard+Shortcuts,Blog+Management+Tool,Yanesh+Tyagi
Technorati Tags: Google+Reader,Keyboard+Shortcuts,Google+Reader+Keyboard+Shortcuts,Blog+Management+Tool,Yanesh+Tyagi
October 17, 2007
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Mail is Microsoft’s successor to both Outlook Express and Windows Mail, the latter of which ships with Windows Vista. Microsoft describes Windows Live Mail as a superset of both of these consumer-oriented email products, and they will only actively develop Windows Live Mail going forward. Windows Live Mail is dramatically nicer than either Outlook Express or Windows Mail, and it includes a lot more useful functionality, especially if you’re a Hotmail user. (This applies equally to msn.com and live.com accounts as well.) But Windows Live Mail isn’t limited to just Hotmail accounts: This is a full-fledged Internet communications client, with support for POP3 and IMAP email, RSS feeds, and USENET newsgroups.
Originally envisioned as an ad-supported email client for Hotmail users, Windows Live Mail has evolved over time and is now a much more impressive release as a result. The shipping version of Windows Live Mail–now available in a feature-complete public beta–offers seamless Hotmail/MSN.com/Live.com integration, as expected, POP3 and IMAP email functionality that rivals third party applications such as Mozilla Thunderbird, RSS support, USENET newsgroup support, and integration with various Windows Live services. If you use Hotmail and/or other Windows Live products like Windows Live Messenger, you’re going to want to check this one out. Heck, if you use Internet email of any kind, you’re going to want to check this one out.
Windows Live Mail sports the new Windows Live look-and-feel, which is heavy on the whites but with high-contrast bluish-green accents. Like newer versions of Outlook, and like the Web-based Windows Live Hotmail, the Windows Live Mail application is visually split into three mail columnar panes, from left to right: Folders, Message list, and Reading pane. Actually, there’s an odd fourth pane called Active Search, too, but you can and should turn this off: Active Search is a weird front-end to Microsoft’s Live Search service, and its real purpose is to deliver ads and sponsored results.
In many ways, Windows Live Mail works like Windows Live Hotmail, and if you’re familiar with the new version of that Web service, or with traditional email clients like Outlook, you’ll have no problem getting up to speed. Architecturally, Windows Live Mail is based on Outlook Express and Windows Mail, so some UI bits, like the Options dialog, and the files Windows Live Mail creates, like the .eml email files, might look familiar. What’s old is new again.
I am using Windows Live Mail as my primary email client since a few weeks and have absolutely no issues. I like some of the customization bits: You can color-code the folders for each email account you configure and apply a Windows Live color scheme to the entire application so that it matches your other Windows Live applications and services.
Speaking of integration, Windows Live Mail is particularly useful if you’re a Windows Live Messenger user. It can be configured to automatically log you onto Messenger whenever you launch the mail client. On the flipside, if you see an email alert in Messenger and click it, Windows Live Mail will launch instead of forcing you to use the Web client. The Contacts portion of Windows Live Mail, which is also a native Windows application, integrates your traditional email contacts with your Windows Live Messenger contacts list, too. A Blog button on the application’s toolbar lets you publish the current message to your Windows Live Spaces blog.
As a modern email application, Windows Live Mail supports instant search, which works wonderfully. There’s also an Outlook-like search folders feature, though I haven’t found a way save email searches as dynamic virtual folders. Instead, stock saved search folders, like Unread email, Unread from contacts, and Unread feeds, are available.
So why would you want to use Windows Live Mail instead of the Windows Live Hotmail Web service? First, and most obviously, Windows Live Mail works offline. So you can sit on an airplane or in some other disconnected location, navigate through and read your email, respond to emails, write new emails, and perform other actions that would be impossible with the Web client while offline. Once you’re online again, all the pending email is sent and everything is synched up again, just as with Outlook and other traditional email clients.
Windows Live Mail also features email account aggregation, so that you can easily access email from two or more accounts (be them Hotmail/Live.com accounts or any combination of POP3 and IMAP accounts), all from the same location. With Web-based email services, you might need to have a different browser window open for each service.
From a safety perspective, Windows Live Mail also provides protection against phishing attacks, viruses, and other malware. This works for all account types, so even though your Hotmail account may be protected by server-side AV scanning, your POP3/IMAP accounts might not. And if you’re into the Windows Live stuff, the integration pieces are quite interesting as well.
Windows Live Hotmail is free and available for users running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Vista (any version). If you’re currently using Outlook Express or Windows Mail, I strongly recommend upgrading to this product immediately. It is nicer looking, works well with non-Hotmail accounts, and offers much more useful functionality than its predecessors. I like it quite a bit.
October 14, 2007
Edit in Browser
Edit any web page in browser without any other software
This is cool!
GO to any web page, clear the address bar, and paste this:
javascript:document.body.contentEditable=’true’; document.designMode=’on’; void 0
and hit enter.
Feel free to edit whatever you want on the page!
Salary Negotiation
OK. that’s what we all do it for money… not every one right. This is probably the weakest area for techno savvy guys. They are not good negotiators. Many guys at the first instance smile and say “NEGOTIABLE SIR“. So here are some points:-
√ Do a study of what’s the salary trend? For instance have some kind of baseline. For example what’s the salary trend on number of year of experience? Discuss this with your friends out.
√ Do not mention your expected salary on the resume?
√ Let the employer first make the salary offer. Try to delay the salary discussion till the end.
√ If they say what you expect ? , come with a figure with a little higher end and say negotiable. Remember never say negotiable on something which you have aimed, HR guys will always bring it down. So negotiate on AIMED SALARY + some thing extra.
√ The normal trend is that they look at your current salary and add a little it so that they can pull you in. Do your home work my salary is this much and I expect this much so whatever it is now I will not come below this.
√ Do not be harsh during salary negotiations.
√ It’s good to aim high. For instance I want 1 billion dollars / month but at the same time be realistic.
√ Some companies have those hidden cost attached in salary clarify that rather to be surprised at the first salary package.
√ Many of the companies add extra performance compensation in your basic which can be surprising at times. So have a detail break down. Best is to discuss on hand salary rather than NET.
√ Talk with the employer in what frequency does the hike happen.
√ Take everything in writing , go back to your house and have a look once with a cool head is the offer worth it of what your current employer is giving.
√ Do not forget once you have job in hand you can come back to your current employer for negotiation so keep that thing in mind.
√ Remember the worst part is cribbing after joining the company that your colleague is getting this much. So be careful while interview negotiations or be sportive to be a good negotiator in the next interview.
√ One very important thing the best negotiation ground is not the new company where you are going but the old company which you are leaving. So once you have offer on hand get back to your old employee and show them the offer and then make your next move. It’s my experience that negotiating with the old employer is easy than with the new one….Frankly if approached properly rarely any one will say no. Just do not be aggressive or egoistic that you have an offer on hand.
Top of all some time some things are worth above money :- JOB SATISFACTION. So whatever you negotiate if you think you can get JOB SATISFACTION aspect on higher grounds go for it. I think its worth more than money.
October 9, 2007
Redirecting to new window in c#
As a developer, many time I wished to redirect user to a new URL into a new browser window। I wanted to use response।redirect at server side and open the new web page into a new window। But the way redirection works makes it impossible to open a new window from server side. The common solution to this problem is to use java script’s window.open statement at client side and then fetch the new URL into the new window. To me, this is totally unacceptable while I am writing server side code. So I decided to write some code to do this. But before writing, I googled for the same.I found a good solution for the problem. I would like to give proper credit the author, who choose not to publish his name. As they say a code worth one thousand words, here is the code
ResponseHelper Class:
The ResponseHelper class does all the magic. It adds a client side script to the response which opens the new window. Use this class in place of response class if you want to open new window.
public static class ResponseHelper{ public static void Redirect(string url, string target, string windowFeatures) { HttpContext context = HttpContext.Current; if((String.IsNullOrEmpty(target) target.Equals("_self", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) && String.IsNullOrEmpty(windowFeatures)) { context.Response.Redirect(url); } else{ Pagepage = (Page)context.Handler; if(page == null) { throw new InvalidOperationException("Cannot redirect to new window outside Page context."); }
url = page.ResolveClientUrl(url); string script; if(!String.IsNullOrEmpty(windowFeatures)) { script = @"window.open(""{0}"", ""{1}"", ""{2}"");"; } else{ script = @"window.open(""{0}"", ""{1}"");"; } script = String.Format(script, url, target, windowFeatures); ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(page, typeof(Page), "Redirect", script, true); } }}
Using Response Helper Class:
ResponseHelper class’ static Redirect method is used to redirect into new
window.ResponseHelper.Redirect(“default.aspx”, “_blank”, null);
The Rediect method accepts thee parameters:
- Redirection URL: The URl which will be opened into the new window.
- Target Frame:
- Use “_Self”, if you don’t want to open new window. Null means “_Self”.
- Use “_Blank” to open into new window.
- Window Feature: Window features can be added like width, height, scrolling etc. using this parameter.
Notes:
- If you use it outside the context of a Page request, you can’t redirect to a new window. The reason is the need to call the ResolveClientUrl method on Page, which I can’t do if there is no Page. I could have just built my own version of that method, but it’s more involved than you might think to do it right. So if you need to use this from an HttpHandler other than a Page, you are on your own.
- Beware of popup blockers. New window is a popup. So it will not work if popup is blocked.
- Obviously when you are redirecting to a new window, the current window will still be hanging around. Normally redirects abort the current request — no further processing occurs. But for these redirects, processing continues, since we still have to serve the response for the current window (which also happens to contain the script to open the new window, so it is important that it completes).
