• April 9, 2010 -- Pixels (0)
  Pixels is Awesome! Any self righteous geek has to check this out. :)...
• April 2, 2010 -- Speeding Ticket Fail (0)
  Evolution clearly has been failing us. :roll: ...
• March 29, 2010 -- History of Gadgets (0)
  Need I say anything more? :) (Click on the Photo to see it in it’s original size; via Geek and Poke)...

• June 20, 2010 -- Hardware Chart (1)
  This computer hardware chart is quite cool. Not sure why, where and who would want to use this. But, it does beg the question – can things get any geekier? :) ...
• March 26, 2010 -- Analysis of Algorithms (0)
  If you were interested in algorithms and interested in some mathematical foundations for algorithm analysis? For example if you are interested in proof techniques, probability, Amortization analysis techniques, Case studies and Asymptotic notions (such as Big-Oh, Big-Omega, Little-oh, little-omega, Big-Theta) then check out these lecture notes (in ppt, 224kb) from California State University....
• March 9, 2010 -- Ubuntu on a HTC Touch Pro 2 (0)
  Well this is the phone I have maybe some day I will try this - pretty geeky albeit useless. :) ...

• June 21, 2010 -- What we have learned … (0)
  … the average wife spends nearly 8,000 minutes a year nagging her husband!...
• March 11, 2010 -- Forbes rich list (0)
  Forbes rich list is Slim pickings. Only lack of ability, inheritance and money keeps the rest of us off the Forbes list of world's billionaires. It's not fair?  Here is Guardian's recipe for billionaire success: get born into a rich family, invent something and sell it to Americans. Win. :) ...
• February 14, 2010 -- Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video, stars (0)
  Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video and stars - very cool. Update: The official TED video below is quite cool and in addition to the one above, also adds more interesting features such as video – check it out. ...

1. Speccy – an advanced and very cool System Information tool for your PC.
2. Channeling Earth – Rivers Seen From Space
3. The SSD Relapse – Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
4. Turn off laptop screen – every machine does not have an option to switch off the screen (say at night) and this small app is perfect for those situations – very handy at night.
5. How to save and share ridiculously large files – well the name says it all.
6. SQL Server I/O Internals – if you wanted to know how SQL Server handles I/O then this is a very interesting read.
7. Clustered Tables vs Heap Tables – interesting to understand the comparisons in SQL Server (especially if/when you will be dealing with SQL Azure).
8. Cloud Computing footprint – is it time we started measuring our digital footprint just the same as we have our carbon footprint?
9. Zettabytes – Petabytes is so yesterday; hello Zettabytes! I wonder how one indexes that?
10. Let me Google that for you – perfect for when you get a question from a few lazy people.
11. Let me Bing that for you – same as above, except this uses Bing.
12. 15 RDP Solutions for Linux – good write up comparing the various options you have if you want to RDP to Linux from Windows/Mac.
13. Ninite easy PC Setup – Install multiple apps at once without toolbars or clicking Next. Quite handy if you have less-technical friends/family.

• March 24, 2010 -- Interesting Find #21 (0)
  Next post in the Interesting Find series. InstEd It - an interesting tool that allows one to edit MSI files - handy when you don't want to install the full Windows SDK just to get the Orca editor. (you can also just download the SDK samples and use that instead of the full SDK). WHS backup to LAN - If for some reason you don't want to use WHS's built-in backup option and prefer to back it up to LAN 10 Beautiful Login screen for Ubuntu - very nice themes to change your login screen. Fas...
• February 18, 2010 -- Interesting Find #20 (0)
  The next post in the interesting find series. Top 25 ‘most dangerous’ programming errors for 2009 – interesting read as always. :) The 100 essential websites – from the Guardian. Please Rob Me.com – the dark side of geocoding. SSD Optimisation guide - a must read if anyone is thinking of buying a SSD drive. 37Signals – simple web based apps (instead of bloatware) covering things like managing projects, tracking contacts, organizing your business, etc. (Not free in case you were wonde...
• February 2, 2010 -- Interesting Find #19 (0)
  Wow it has been a while since I posted an Interesting find and instead of the usual list I though I will keep this especially for timers. Timers Galore! So I was looking for a simple countdown timer that I can run on my laptop to keep tracking of a few things and I found a few very interesting things. If you prefer to download an app and run it from your desktop (Windows) then check out Timer from Orzeszek. There are a few other interesting dev projects there such as transferring large files o...

• June 28, 2010 -- Upgraded to WP 3.0 (0)
  Just upgraded the blog to WordPress 3.0 - two clicks and I was done - can it get any simpler? What a pleasant surprise compared to the pile of crap that CS 2007+ turned out to be. Try upgrading that in something like two clicks? Ha! Well done WordPress!...
• March 11, 2010 -- Forbes rich list (0)
  Forbes rich list is Slim pickings. Only lack of ability, inheritance and money keeps the rest of us off the Forbes list of world's billionaires. It's not fair?  Here is Guardian's recipe for billionaire success: get born into a rich family, invent something and sell it to Americans. Win. :) ...
• February 14, 2010 -- Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video, stars (0)
  Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video and stars - very cool. Update: The official TED video below is quite cool and in addition to the one above, also adds more interesting features such as video – check it out. ...

• July 28, 2010 -- Microsoft’s Street Slide (1)
  This is quite cool – now only if MS hurry’s up and incorporated this to Bing Maps. MS Street Slide...
• March 26, 2010 -- Analysis of Algorithms (0)
  If you were interested in algorithms and interested in some mathematical foundations for algorithm analysis? For example if you are interested in proof techniques, probability, Amortization analysis techniques, Case studies and Asymptotic notions (such as Big-Oh, Big-Omega, Little-oh, little-omega, Big-Theta) then check out these lecture notes (in ppt, 224kb) from California State University....
• March 9, 2010 -- Ubuntu on a HTC Touch Pro 2 (0)
  Well this is the phone I have maybe some day I will try this - pretty geeky albeit useless. :) ...

For example I had the following events in my header file:

protected:
    void mousePressEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event);
    void mouseReleaseEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event);

When when I tried to compile gave the following error:
invalid use of incomplete type ‘struct QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent’

This was because the compiler could not find details of the struct and hence the details. To fix the problem I need to include the header.

This of course is similar to the initialized but not complete error but subtly different.

• April 5, 2010 -- Finding an element in a list (0)
  Often you need to search through an array or list to find a specific element and of course you need this search to be as fast and efficient as possible. One of the best ways to do this is using a binary predicate function. A binary function is a function object (which are also called Functors) and is any object which can be called as if it was a function. Depending on your language and platform of choice, Function objects are also known as callback functions, function pointers and delegates (...
• March 1, 2010 -- Printing code and making it look pretty (0)
  If you are on Linux and want to print some code and also make it look pretty then check out a2ps (Any to postscript filter). Of course if you can avoid printing in the first place and saving paper and trees and make it greener that is ideal - however there are times that is not possible. I tried printing from CDT, but the printing options from CDT just looks plain ugly and big fonts and can spread over 10 pages for a simple code file (spanning 293 lines). Sure I can tweak the font in CDT, but th...
• February 17, 2010 -- Ten commandments of Programming (0)
  I came across the Ten commandments of Programming while looking at a question on StackOverflow and I can't believe I have not seen these before. I think every developer, lead, architect, dba, pm, whoever should print this out! 8-) Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production. Fortunately, except for the few of us developing rocket guidance software at JPL, mistakes are rarely fatal in our industry, so we can, and sho...

• April 22, 2008 -- My Book on Google Books (0)
  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 ....
• March 6, 2008 -- P2P Programming with WCF and .NET v3.5 (2)
  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. I discuss the new features for P2P programming in WCF and .NET 3.5 and how things have moved up the stack in being a first class managed citizen now as opposed to you. Although the code was build and run on Vista you can run most of it on XP; however ...
• September 7, 2007 -- My book available on Books24x7 (0)
  I was pleasantly surprised to see the appearance of my book, Pro WCF on Books24x7 today. Below is the screen shot from the email  ...

• July 30, 2010 -- iPhone 3.0G and iOS 4 (0)
  The wife has one of these and can absolutely relate to this! ...
• April 2, 2010 -- Speeding Ticket Fail (0)
  Evolution clearly has been failing us. :roll: ...
• March 29, 2010 -- History of Gadgets (0)
  Need I say anything more? :) (Click on the Photo to see it in it’s original size; via Geek and Poke)...

These cover a number of the features and essentially have everything to get a developer quite comfortable with the stack. In some areas they go a little deep as well. I think its an excellent way to come up to speed.

Here is a quick example of the topics covered in some of the tracks:

• Win7 – how to use the Taskbar, Multitouch, Ribbon, Sensors and Location, Session 0 Isolation, etc.
• Azure – Azure Overview, Azure Storage, Deployment, SQL Azure, etc.
• VS 2010 and .NET 4 – F#, ASP.NET 4, Parallel Computing, ALM, etc.

• February 14, 2010 -- Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video, stars (0)
  Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video and stars - very cool. Update: The official TED video below is quite cool and in addition to the one above, also adds more interesting features such as video – check it out. ...
• December 11, 2009 -- Extending WCF Adapters in BizTalk (0)
  I know a little bit about WCF :) but never really used it in anger in BizTalk and also did not get an opportunity to extend the adapter. I was looking for something else and came across this post form Paolo which explains in a lot of detail how does one go about extending and customizing WCF adapters. If you don’t know anything about WCF the first part explains that in general before going in to the BizTalk specific things....
• December 6, 2009 -- BizTalk Flat File schema optional attribute issue (0)
  I encountered this interesting issue and thanks to Colin we were able to resolve it. There will be situations you will encounter when adding additional optional attributes to a Flat File (FF) schema in BizTalk will cause problems. To get around this you basically will need to set the following properties to relax the parsing of the attributes which break. parser_optimization="complexity" allow_early_termination="true" early_terminate_optional_fields="true&qu...

A binary function is a function object (which are also called Functors) and is any object which can be called as if it was a function. Depending on your language and platform of choice, Function objects are also known as callback functions, function pointers and delegates (.NET). Generally, there are three types of function objects:

1. Generators – function with no arguments
2. Unary Functions – function with one argument
3. Binary Functions – functions with two arguments

A function object which takes one parameter (i.e. unary function) and returns a bool are treated as a special case and are  called Predicate functions.

How do we use it? Say we have a simple data structure called ContactData to represent a Contact in an Address book as shown in the code snippet below. We also define a predicate function called FindAContact. Now we need to use this predicate function and define another function called  findContact. The findContact function in turn uses find_if.  find_if takes three parameters, the start of the iterator, the last element and the predicate to use. It returns the first iterator it finds in a given range for which the predicate holds. If no matches are found then  the last element in the iterator is returned.

We also need to ensure we have the relevant includes for this to compile and link properly hence include’s below.

The code snippet below shows all that we have discussed.

#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
#include <functional>

using namespace std;

//Simple data structure
struct ContactData {
	string name;
	string addr1;
	string addr2;
	string addr3;
	string city;
	string postcode;
	string country;
	int workPhone;
	int homePhone;
	int mobilePhone;
	string workEmail;
	string homeEmail;
};

//I am lazy, create a typedef for the vector
typedef vector<ContactData> ContactDataArray;

// predicate function for rapidly searching the Contact data array
struct FindAContact: public std::binary_function<ContactData, std::string, bool>
{
	bool operator() (const ContactData &contact, const string &name) const
	{
		return (contact.name == name);
	}
};

//If a contact is find it returns that; else returns the iterator's last element
ContactData Contact::findContact(string name)
{
	ContactDataArray::iterator it = find_if(addressBook.begin(),
						addressBook.end(),
						std::bind2nd(FindAContact(), name)
					);

	return *it;
}

• April 18, 2010 -- invalid use of incomplete type ‘blah’ (1)
  When you try and compile some code and you get an error along the lines of invalid use of an incomplete type 'whatever type' then in most cases it means you need to include the header file where that type is displayed. For example I had the following events in my header file: [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] protected: void mousePressEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event); void mouseReleaseEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event); [/sourcecode] When when I tried to comp...
• March 1, 2010 -- Printing code and making it look pretty (0)
  If you are on Linux and want to print some code and also make it look pretty then check out a2ps (Any to postscript filter). Of course if you can avoid printing in the first place and saving paper and trees and make it greener that is ideal - however there are times that is not possible. I tried printing from CDT, but the printing options from CDT just looks plain ugly and big fonts and can spread over 10 pages for a simple code file (spanning 293 lines). Sure I can tweak the font in CDT, but th...
• February 17, 2010 -- Ten commandments of Programming (0)
  I came across the Ten commandments of Programming while looking at a question on StackOverflow and I can't believe I have not seen these before. I think every developer, lead, architect, dba, pm, whoever should print this out! 8-) Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production. Fortunately, except for the few of us developing rocket guidance software at JPL, mistakes are rarely fatal in our industry, so we can, and sho...

To delete such a folder (from a terminal) use the rm -rf command. For example to delete a folder called amitbahree run the following:

rm -rf amitbahree/

• March 9, 2010 -- Ubuntu on a HTC Touch Pro 2 (0)
  Well this is the phone I have maybe some day I will try this - pretty geeky albeit useless. :) ...
• March 7, 2010 -- RDP from Ubuntu (0)
  I did not know until today that there is something called gnome-rdp using which one can RDP to Windows machines from Ubuntu (or any other linux flavour I imagine). Installation is simple on Ubuntu, with it available in Synaptic Package Manager. To start it you can type in gnome-rdp in a console or go to Applications -> Internet -> Gnome-RDP. Once it has started, usage is quite simple - though you might want to change the remote desktop size and colours. Interestingly this also supports VNC...
• March 6, 2010 -- Finding out which version of Ubuntu you are running (0)
  If you ever need to find out which version of Ubuntu you are running (if you have a few machines it is quite easy to forget what is running where), the easiest way is to run the following command in a terminal: cat /etc/issue For example here is the output from the machine I am on now: amit@xps:~$ cat /etc/issue Ubuntu 9.04 \n \l...

• July 30, 2010 -- iPhone 3.0G and iOS 4 (0)
  The wife has one of these and can absolutely relate to this! ...
• April 9, 2010 -- Pixels (0)
  Pixels is Awesome! Any self righteous geek has to check this out. :)...
• March 29, 2010 -- History of Gadgets (0)
  Need I say anything more? :) (Click on the Photo to see it in it’s original size; via Geek and Poke)...

(Click on the Photo to see it in it’s original size; via Geek and Poke)

• July 30, 2010 -- iPhone 3.0G and iOS 4 (0)
  The wife has one of these and can absolutely relate to this! ...
• April 9, 2010 -- Pixels (0)
  Pixels is Awesome! Any self righteous geek has to check this out. :)...
• April 2, 2010 -- Speeding Ticket Fail (0)
  Evolution clearly has been failing us. :roll: ...

• July 28, 2010 -- Microsoft’s Street Slide (1)
  This is quite cool – now only if MS hurry’s up and incorporated this to Bing Maps. MS Street Slide...
• June 20, 2010 -- Hardware Chart (1)
  This computer hardware chart is quite cool. Not sure why, where and who would want to use this. But, it does beg the question – can things get any geekier? :) ...
• March 9, 2010 -- Ubuntu on a HTC Touch Pro 2 (0)
  Well this is the phone I have maybe some day I will try this - pretty geeky albeit useless. :) ...

1. InstEd It – an interesting tool that allows one to edit MSI files – handy when you don’t want to install the full Windows SDK just to get the Orca editor. (you can also just download the SDK samples and use that instead of the full SDK).
2. WHS backup to LAN – If for some reason you don’t want to use WHS’s built-in backup option and prefer to back it up to LAN
3. 10 Beautiful Login screen for Ubuntu – very nice themes to change your login screen.
4. Fast Car Wallpapers – name says it all.
5. Microsoft Pivot – Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun.
6. PlantUML – UML add-in (jar file) for Eclipse. You cannot draw a diagram, instead you describe it using a language.
7. Papyrus 4 UML – another UML add-in (also for Eclipse), which seems to be more professional looking than PlantUML. However this does not support Activity diagrams (yet), which PlantUML does.
8. Spinlocks, page frame number locks (and the meaning of life) – I don’t think any more needs to be said.
9. FlipText.net – write upside down (: sıɥʇ ǝʞıl.
10. Google Goggles – use pictures to search the web.
11. Haystack – very interesting idea which encrypts your data and then hides it in regular http traffic. Mainly used to help out the citizens of Iran, but useful elsewhere as well.
12. BeRTOS – a real-time OS hits a major stable milestone.

• June 25, 2010 -- Interesting Find #22 (0)
  Next post in the interesting find series. Speccy - an advanced and very cool System Information tool for your PC. Channeling Earth - Rivers Seen From Space The SSD Relapse - Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD Turn off laptop screen – every machine does not have an option to switch off the screen (say at night) and this small app is perfect for those situations – very handy at night. How to save and share ridiculously large files – well the name says it all. :) SQL Se...
• February 18, 2010 -- Interesting Find #20 (0)
  The next post in the interesting find series. Top 25 ‘most dangerous’ programming errors for 2009 – interesting read as always. :) The 100 essential websites – from the Guardian. Please Rob Me.com – the dark side of geocoding. SSD Optimisation guide - a must read if anyone is thinking of buying a SSD drive. 37Signals – simple web based apps (instead of bloatware) covering things like managing projects, tracking contacts, organizing your business, etc. (Not free in case you were wonde...
• February 2, 2010 -- Interesting Find #19 (0)
  Wow it has been a while since I posted an Interesting find and instead of the usual list I though I will keep this especially for timers. Timers Galore! So I was looking for a simple countdown timer that I can run on my laptop to keep tracking of a few things and I found a few very interesting things. If you prefer to download an app and run it from your desktop (Windows) then check out Timer from Orzeszek. There are a few other interesting dev projects there such as transferring large files o...

Forbes rich list is Slim pickings. Only lack of ability, inheritance and money keeps the rest of us off the Forbes list of world’s billionaires. It’s not fair?  Here is Guardian’s recipe for billionaire success: get born into a rich family, invent something and sell it to Americans. Win.

• June 28, 2010 -- Upgraded to WP 3.0 (0)
  Just upgraded the blog to WordPress 3.0 - two clicks and I was done - can it get any simpler? What a pleasant surprise compared to the pile of crap that CS 2007+ turned out to be. Try upgrading that in something like two clicks? Ha! Well done WordPress!...
• June 21, 2010 -- What we have learned … (0)
  … the average wife spends nearly 8,000 minutes a year nagging her husband!...
• February 14, 2010 -- Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video, stars (0)
  Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video and stars - very cool. Update: The official TED video below is quite cool and in addition to the one above, also adds more interesting features such as video – check it out. ...

• July 28, 2010 -- Microsoft’s Street Slide (1)
  This is quite cool – now only if MS hurry’s up and incorporated this to Bing Maps. MS Street Slide...
• June 20, 2010 -- Hardware Chart (1)
  This computer hardware chart is quite cool. Not sure why, where and who would want to use this. But, it does beg the question – can things get any geekier? :) ...
• April 4, 2010 -- Deleting folder on Linux (3)
  If you are a newbie to Ubuntu like me (or any other Unix distro) and you tried deleting a folder which is not empty contains files or subdirectories then you get the annoying error "Directory not empty". To delete such a folder (from a terminal) use the rm -rf command. For example to delete a folder called amitbahree run the following: rm -rf amitbahree/...

{via Geek and Poke}

• July 30, 2010 -- iPhone 3.0G and iOS 4 (0)
  The wife has one of these and can absolutely relate to this! ...
• April 9, 2010 -- Pixels (0)
  Pixels is Awesome! Any self righteous geek has to check this out. :)...
• April 2, 2010 -- Speeding Ticket Fail (0)
  Evolution clearly has been failing us. :roll: ...

• April 4, 2010 -- Deleting folder on Linux (3)
  If you are a newbie to Ubuntu like me (or any other Unix distro) and you tried deleting a folder which is not empty contains files or subdirectories then you get the annoying error "Directory not empty". To delete such a folder (from a terminal) use the rm -rf command. For example to delete a folder called amitbahree run the following: rm -rf amitbahree/...
• March 9, 2010 -- Ubuntu on a HTC Touch Pro 2 (0)
  Well this is the phone I have maybe some day I will try this - pretty geeky albeit useless. :) ...
• March 6, 2010 -- Finding out which version of Ubuntu you are running (0)
  If you ever need to find out which version of Ubuntu you are running (if you have a few machines it is quite easy to forget what is running where), the easiest way is to run the following command in a terminal: cat /etc/issue For example here is the output from the machine I am on now: amit@xps:~$ cat /etc/issue Ubuntu 9.04 \n \l...