• August 15, 2007 -- Happy Birthday (0)
  Today India celebrates its 60th independence from the British Raj - Happy Birthday! So 5 more years to retirement? . Over the last 6 decades has had quite a ride. There has been a lot of talk about it lately here in the local media in UK along with many celebrations in London (mostly to woo Indian business, Bollywood, etc). The BBC showed a very interesting documentary called "Partition: The Day India Burned" on the partition of India from the British colonial days in two states - Indi...
• April 14, 2007 -- EU vs Italy? (0)
  Don't get me wrong - I love Italy - the country (whatever little I have seen), the food, the  language, the people but all this is also true for India ...
• March 18, 2007 -- Google New in Hindi (0)
  If you are like me, and your Hindi is crap, what better way to learn it by reading the news via Google News Hindi?...
• October 20, 2006 -- China's reproduction of disputed India/China Border (0)
  While this story is a few months old, I just came across it. Seems like China has accurate reproductions of the disputed Indo/China border down to scale - including accurate geographical features. Take a look below - the image on top is from China's reproduction and while on the bottom is on Google earth. ...
• October 18, 2006 -- In a Twist, Americans land jobs with Indian companies (0)
  Interesting story by the NYTimes on how American graduates are joining Indian companies and going to India for initial training before going back to their offices. They also talk a little about their experiences in a developing country and how some of the most basic things are different....

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 over http.

If Windows is not your flavour of the day, or you don’t want to (or can’t) install an application and want to use a timer in a browser you can of course use something like online stop watch, but I suggest you check out e.ggtimer.com which is way cooler.

If you are like me and when running meetings or presenting tend to get too excited and run over, then maybe NextUp is the thing for you.

And if coffee is your not cup of tea (groan! ) then check out Steep.It which is claims to be the simplest internet tea timer ever – telling you how long to steep your tea to get your perfect cuppa.

And if you are old school and prefer .ini files (whoa! programs still use that?) then check out eggtimer.

• April 1, 2009 -- Interesting Find #18 (0)
  Cloud vs. Cloud – guided tour of Amazon, AppNexus, GoGrid and Google. Azure is missing but given its late-alpha/early-beta state not surprising. SheevaPlug Development Kit – this is a development platform targeted for use as a plug computer, and designed to run network-based software services and has a embedded Marvel Sheeva CPU core; quite interesting. Office 14 – next version of Office will have “online versions”. Loopa Bowl – the link has all the details; buy it here (in the US...
• February 16, 2009 -- Interesting Find #17 (0)
  Been missing in action for a while – been extremely busy. Dropbox – store, sync and share your files online via Amazon’s S3. OAuth – open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a web/fat clients. About time we got the Facebooks and Twitters of the world start implementing this (more details on that another time). Scott’s ultimate developer and power user tools – the name says it all - very cool. Microsoft Tags - transform physical media (ads, billboards,product packages, info...
• September 8, 2008 -- Interesting Find #16 (0)
  Crime Mapping for London – cool. EnvMan – easier way of managing environment variables. Hit Me Later – snooze your email – pretty cool idea; not sure of privacy related issues though. SimplyNoise – white noise generator which helps you find the comfort Zen and either work (blocking distractions), aid sleep, soothe migraines, etc. Pushing the limits of Windows - with 2 TB of RAM running on a 64 proc machine – sweet! I wonder what would the size of Minidump will be on that? Windo...
• September 1, 2008 -- Interesting Find #15 (0)
  Shared View from Microsoft - a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups anytime, anywhere and works across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details. Switcher - gets Expose (from Mac) on Windows very cool! (you need Vista + Aero) VS.NET 2008 SP1 likely to come later this year adds a lot of new stuff. SMS things (only if you are in the US) SMS411 - helps you send SMS to phone's on specific carriers in the US...
• July 13, 2008 -- Interesting Find #14 (0)
  Search of Forever ZuneThings.co.uk - for those in the UK wanting a Zune + Accessories, etc. Cozi - new way busy families stay organized, manage schedules and coordinate with each other. Browsershots - test your site among a host of browsers and see how it prevails; so how well does my blog do? Ask the Admin How to hide an airplane factory? Bill G's history from MS; and his emails. Windows 7, not that far off. CooTek - alternative keyboard for Windows Mobil...

Does anyone know any details of the next version of WHS (based on Win7)? When is it coming out, etc? If it is in a few months then I can hang on and clean up some space and make do. If it is in another year or so then that it too long to wait and I will probably go ahead and look to get something. Any ideas anyone?

Update: How eerie? Soon after posting this I find (via Twitter) this post from Mary-Jo talking about the next version of WHS codenamed ‘Vail’ is leaked. You can find screen shot here and a short video here. There is no mention of any time-lines though – any ideas?

• July 13, 2009 -- WHS and iPhone (0)
  This of course is not new – just new to me. If you have an HP MediaSmart WHS (Windows Home Server) then you can stream music, photos and videos directly from your WHS to your iPhone – how sweet is that. More details here. Maybe I should look at getting a HP one when my existing 8+ year old WHS dies (touch wood)....
• March 24, 2009 -- WHS now on MSDN (0)
  Windows Home Server (the amazing little box), is finally available on MSDN. I had bought an OEM license soon after it had come out and have been using it for some time at home. This can only be good and allow a wider set of adoption. If you have not used it – I would highly recommend that you do. Here is the screenshot from MSDN: ...
• July 21, 2008 -- WHS Power Pack 1 Released (0)
  This more than a "Power Pack" and fixes a whole host of issues including the (in)famous data corruption bug. If you have been living in a cave then you can catch up here on what the fuss is all about? Here are the highlights of the fixes: Support for home computers that are running Windows Vista x64 editions Backup of Home Server shared folders Improvements to remote access More efficient power consumption Improved performance If you are running WHS I would highly recommend you i...
• January 17, 2008 -- WHS Power Pack 1 (0)
  MS has announced the details of what is new on WHS Power Pack 1 and it seems a collection of things which one would want to add to WHS. It is good to see the amount of testing  gone into this and the fact they have upgrades coming out so soon after RTM....
• January 16, 2008 -- Home Server Domain Name Setup (0)
  Until recently I was running the RC of WHS (being part of the Beta program); but as that was expiring I coughed up for the OEM version. After installing it when I tried to configure the domain name to mychoice.homeserver.com I got an unknown error. I tried both homeserver.com and livenode.com options but neither of them worked. It seemed to get these working you need to open IE on your WHS and go to Tools => Security => Trusted Sites => Sites and add the following two sites and try ad...

Yo mama’s so slow and dumb that she can be emulated on a 286.

• January 29, 2010 -- CNR (0)
  [via xkcd.com]...
• January 11, 2010 -- A Song of Silicon Valley (0)
  Ah, this brings back fond memories of my time in the valley – awesome! :) Credit goes to this post of the NY Times. ...
• December 1, 2009 -- Thought of the day (0)
  Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs. - Anonymous...
• August 18, 2009 -- Pure breed Fauji kid? (2)
  Got this via Megha and it is absolutely brilliant – ah the memories it brings back. I first though of adding links for the “bloody civvies” who don’t get this – but changed my mind as it is not meant for them. :) You know you are a pure breed fauji kid if: You were born in a Military Hospital. Half your toddler years were spent being looked after by Bhaiyas (no explanation here). You went to school either on Bhaiya's cycle or in a Shaktiman. You know what a Shaktiman is. ( No! it is...
• July 12, 2009 -- Geeky Your Momma Jokes (0)
  If you have been following me on Twitter, you will see a few of the following few geeky your momma jokes. Your momma is so fat and stupid, her dress size is int.MaxValue and her IQ is int.MinValue. Your momma so fat, she has her own address space. (this is my favourite) And of course there are loads more....

[via xkcd.com]

• January 31, 2010 -- Geeky Joke #1 (0)
  I am going to start posting the geeky jokes I find as a series. These are more for me to make them easy to find, as I cannot seem to recall any of them when I need to. Here is the first one which I also tweeted: Yo mama's so slow and dumb that she can be emulated on a 286....
• January 11, 2010 -- A Song of Silicon Valley (0)
  Ah, this brings back fond memories of my time in the valley – awesome! :) Credit goes to this post of the NY Times. ...
• December 1, 2009 -- Thought of the day (0)
  Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs. - Anonymous...
• August 18, 2009 -- Pure breed Fauji kid? (2)
  Got this via Megha and it is absolutely brilliant – ah the memories it brings back. I first though of adding links for the “bloody civvies” who don’t get this – but changed my mind as it is not meant for them. :) You know you are a pure breed fauji kid if: You were born in a Military Hospital. Half your toddler years were spent being looked after by Bhaiyas (no explanation here). You went to school either on Bhaiya's cycle or in a Shaktiman. You know what a Shaktiman is. ( No! it is...
• July 12, 2009 -- Geeky Your Momma Jokes (0)
  If you have been following me on Twitter, you will see a few of the following few geeky your momma jokes. Your momma is so fat and stupid, her dress size is int.MaxValue and her IQ is int.MinValue. Your momma so fat, she has her own address space. (this is my favourite) And of course there are loads more....

• January 10, 2010 -- Permalinks don’t support quotes? (0)
  I don't know if this is a feature or a bug or a configuration issue either with WordPress itself or how the web server is configured where this blog is hosted. I just posted something about compiler errors where the permalink had a single quotes in its title like :  'qpainter-painter'-has-initialiser-but-incomplete-type. While this was handled fine by WordPress (I could successfully preview the post as well), once it was published I got the generic 500 Internal Server Error as shown below. So th...
• January 7, 2010 -- WordPress ping list (0)
  I updated the ping list for the blog based on the suggestions from Vladimir which I found via WordPress's documentation site. Not sure if it is of any help or not, but I guess I will find out....
• December 24, 2009 -- Upgraded to WordPress 2.9 (0)
  I just upgraded to WordPress 2.9 and wow what a pleasant experience compared to Community Server 2007! Excluding backing up the DB and the site, the actual upgrade took only a few seconds and was so painless! Such a different experience from Community Server 2007, which was so much more difficult. Loving WordPress and all the add-ins and the goodness of the communities! :mrgreen:...
• December 8, 2009 -- 10 must have WordPress plugins (0)
  If you search online you will loads of 'best plugin lists' for WordPress, however of the lot that I have seen I truly think that this one is certainly one of the best ones....
• December 5, 2009 -- Want Virtual Snow on your site? (0)
  If you want virtual snow (probably nicer than the real stuff as there is no slush left to clean up) then check out Snowstorm: JavaScript snow effect for HTML. Be warned though - this uses a lot of CPU on the computer redendering the page and it will slow things down. Quite cool though....

If you want to copy one string to another, one option can be something like this.

void mycopy(char *p, char *q) {
	int len = strlen(q);

	for(int i=0; i<=len; i++)
		p[i] = q[i];
}

However this achieves the same thing as above and is more efficient:

void mycopy(char *p, char *q) {
	while(*p++ = *q++);
}

Of course why would you write your own version when you have standard string copy fundtion strcpy in <string.h>

• January 10, 2010 -- ‘QPainter painter’ has initialiser but incomplete type (0)
  If you ever got an error something like [some-class] has initialiser but incomplete type, it basically means the compiler cannot understand the type and you need to add the include for it. [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] QPixmap pixmap(20,10); pixmap.fill(Qt::white); QPainter painter(&pixmap); QPen pen(Qt::blue); [/sourcecode] Take the code snipped above when you compile it you might get an error something along the lines of the following for line 4. ‘QPainter painter’ ...
• December 22, 2009 -- Making sense of primary-expression error (0)
  If you are new to C++ then some of the compiler errors can be a bit confusing and daunting at first. For example if the compiler given you an expected primary-expression error (e.g. expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token), at face value it does not make sense. [sourcecode lang="cpp"] void RGBViewer::accept() { QMessageBox::information(this, "Button Clicked", "You clicked OK", QMessageBox::Ok); QColor color = QColor(Ui_RGBViewerClass.spinBoxRed->value(), ...

• December 19, 2009 -- Allowing remote desktop with blank passwords on Win7 (0)
  I finally got the time to upgrade my MCE with the RTM bits of Win7 (was running an old RC build until now). Given this is a dedicated MCE with nothing else on it and an on an isolated part of the network, I don't have a password set for the Account I use to login (of course not a recommended practice). Now, I wanted to RDP to the machine and I realised then that Win 7 does not allow RDP with blank passwords by default (Vista behaves in the same fashion). The workaround is a simple fix - to updat...
• 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...
• October 25, 2009 -- Installing OpenSceneGraph on Ubuntu (0)
  If you use the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu 9.04 to install OpenSceneGraph, by default it will install version 2.4.x. However if you want to install OpenSceneGraph 2.8.1 then you need to do the following in a terminal:Modify the file /etc/apt/sources.list (make sure you run it via sudo something like: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list)Add the following two lines in the end and save the file:deb http://openscenegraph.dachary.org/packaging-farm/openscenegraph/gnulinux/debian/unstable/src ./de...
• June 17, 2009 -- Major Network Attack (0)
  Wow! Looks like a lot of bots suddenly woke up – major attack in progress. Grrr … b**tards!...
• June 2, 2009 -- Image detection – how, what, where – any insights? (0)
  I don’t have much experience with image detection in a video, and wanted to understand what options are possible – all I know it is not as simple as “CSI” makes it out to be – yet. Here is the scenario: Say I have a remote controlled aircraft (a mini helicopter) which among other things has a camera fitted which is filming over a certain area. I use a training set and somehow “train” the camera to look for certain objects and recognise data points of that object and learn it to recognize that...

• December 24, 2009 -- Eclipse CDT Blues (0)
  Sigh, why is Eclipse CDT to flaky? Well, there might be a slight exaggeration in that but nevertheless, I did not have so many issues with Visual Studio / VC++. :roll: I have uploaded this particular log file here if anyone is interested. # A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment: # #  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb263d1f7, pid=20331, tid=3085625024 # # JRE version: 6.0_16-b01 # Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (14.2-b01 mixed mode, sharing linux-x86 ) # Problematic...
• December 13, 2009 -- Opening File explorer from a terminal (0)
  In Ubuntu if you want to open File Explorer from a terminal (especially as root) then you need to enter the following command: sudo nautilus If you want this to run as a background process then just add an "&" in the end (without the quotes of course)....
• December 6, 2009 -- Default QT4 path (0)
  If you wanted to know the default path where QT4 is installed (on Ubuntu) then look in /usr/share/qt4/bin....
• December 2, 2009 -- Redirects setup (0)
  After moving the blog to  WordPress, almost all my redirects should work now from the old blog posts to the new one. For example if you click on this old url http://desigeek.com/weblog/amit/archive/2009/10/25/installing-openscenegraph-on-ubuntu.aspx it should redirect you and you see the new and correct url. Overall it was simple to setup via the .htaccess file and some simple regex. The only thing I found the hard way was that I should be using “RedirectMatch” when setting up the regex ru...
• November 26, 2009 -- Linux Hater blog (0)
  Why is there so much hate on the Linux Hater blog?...

Credit goes to this post of the NY Times.

• January 31, 2010 -- Geeky Joke #1 (0)
  I am going to start posting the geeky jokes I find as a series. These are more for me to make them easy to find, as I cannot seem to recall any of them when I need to. Here is the first one which I also tweeted: Yo mama's so slow and dumb that she can be emulated on a 286....
• January 29, 2010 -- CNR (0)
  [via xkcd.com]...
• December 1, 2009 -- Thought of the day (0)
  Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs. - Anonymous...
• August 18, 2009 -- Pure breed Fauji kid? (2)
  Got this via Megha and it is absolutely brilliant – ah the memories it brings back. I first though of adding links for the “bloody civvies” who don’t get this – but changed my mind as it is not meant for them. :) You know you are a pure breed fauji kid if: You were born in a Military Hospital. Half your toddler years were spent being looked after by Bhaiyas (no explanation here). You went to school either on Bhaiya's cycle or in a Shaktiman. You know what a Shaktiman is. ( No! it is...
• July 12, 2009 -- Geeky Your Momma Jokes (0)
  If you have been following me on Twitter, you will see a few of the following few geeky your momma jokes. Your momma is so fat and stupid, her dress size is int.MaxValue and her IQ is int.MinValue. Your momma so fat, she has her own address space. (this is my favourite) And of course there are loads more....

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• January 24, 2010 -- Win 3.1 experience in your browser (0)
  If you ever wanted a Win 3.1 experience in your broswer (why I cannot imagine - despite me running a VM), then check out michaelv.org. The irony of all of this is that there is a modern browser in that which seems to be compliant with the standards (it pases the ACID2 tests; fails the ACID3). :roll:...
• January 7, 2010 -- WordPress ping list (0)
  I updated the ping list for the blog based on the suggestions from Vladimir which I found via WordPress's documentation site. Not sure if it is of any help or not, but I guess I will find out....
• December 24, 2009 -- Upgraded to WordPress 2.9 (0)
  I just upgraded to WordPress 2.9 and wow what a pleasant experience compared to Community Server 2007! Excluding backing up the DB and the site, the actual upgrade took only a few seconds and was so painless! Such a different experience from Community Server 2007, which was so much more difficult. Loving WordPress and all the add-ins and the goodness of the communities! :mrgreen:...
• December 8, 2009 -- 10 must have WordPress plugins (0)
  If you search online you will loads of 'best plugin lists' for WordPress, however of the lot that I have seen I truly think that this one is certainly one of the best ones....
• December 5, 2009 -- Want Virtual Snow on your site? (0)
  If you want virtual snow (probably nicer than the real stuff as there is no slush left to clean up) then check out Snowstorm: JavaScript snow effect for HTML. Be warned though - this uses a lot of CPU on the computer redendering the page and it will slow things down. Quite cool though....

QPixmap pixmap(20,10);
pixmap.fill(Qt::white);

QPainter painter(&pixmap);
QPen pen(Qt::blue);

Take the code snipped above when you compile it you might get an error something along the lines of the following for line 4.

‘QPainter painter’ has initialiser but incomplete type

To fix this you need to include the header file where QPainter is defined. The updated code looks like:

#include <qpainter.h>

QPixmap pixmap(20,10);
pixmap.fill(Qt::white);

QPainter painter(&pixmap);
QPen pen(Qt::blue);

• January 23, 2010 -- Copying strings in C++ (0)
  Here is a good example on why either you love C++ or hate it with such terse expression oriented code; I think its pretty cool. If you want to copy one string to another, one option can be something like this. [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] void mycopy(char *p, char *q) { int len = strlen(q); for(int i=0; i&lt;=len; i++) p[i] = q[i]; } [/sourcecode] However this achieves the same thing as above and is more efficient: [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] v...
• December 22, 2009 -- Making sense of primary-expression error (0)
  If you are new to C++ then some of the compiler errors can be a bit confusing and daunting at first. For example if the compiler given you an expected primary-expression error (e.g. expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token), at face value it does not make sense. [sourcecode lang="cpp"] void RGBViewer::accept() { QMessageBox::information(this, "Button Clicked", "You clicked OK", QMessageBox::Ok); QColor color = QColor(Ui_RGBViewerClass.spinBoxRed->value(), ...

• January 24, 2010 -- Win 3.1 experience in your browser (0)
  If you ever wanted a Win 3.1 experience in your broswer (why I cannot imagine - despite me running a VM), then check out michaelv.org. The irony of all of this is that there is a modern browser in that which seems to be compliant with the standards (it pases the ACID2 tests; fails the ACID3). :roll:...
• January 10, 2010 -- Permalinks don’t support quotes? (0)
  I don't know if this is a feature or a bug or a configuration issue either with WordPress itself or how the web server is configured where this blog is hosted. I just posted something about compiler errors where the permalink had a single quotes in its title like :  'qpainter-painter'-has-initialiser-but-incomplete-type. While this was handled fine by WordPress (I could successfully preview the post as well), once it was published I got the generic 500 Internal Server Error as shown below. So th...
• December 24, 2009 -- Upgraded to WordPress 2.9 (0)
  I just upgraded to WordPress 2.9 and wow what a pleasant experience compared to Community Server 2007! Excluding backing up the DB and the site, the actual upgrade took only a few seconds and was so painless! Such a different experience from Community Server 2007, which was so much more difficult. Loving WordPress and all the add-ins and the goodness of the communities! :mrgreen:...
• December 8, 2009 -- 10 must have WordPress plugins (0)
  If you search online you will loads of 'best plugin lists' for WordPress, however of the lot that I have seen I truly think that this one is certainly one of the best ones....
• December 5, 2009 -- Want Virtual Snow on your site? (0)
  If you want virtual snow (probably nicer than the real stuff as there is no slush left to clean up) then check out Snowstorm: JavaScript snow effect for HTML. Be warned though - this uses a lot of CPU on the computer redendering the page and it will slow things down. Quite cool though....

I am quite worried about the security and privacy elements of it – or rather the lack of it. Those who know me well (anyone?) know I was not always this paranoid but after attending a few Security courses – I cannot bury my head in the sand anymore.

The main issue I have is the commercialisation of the information and it will just get more as Facebook heads to compete with Google – it is my information after all and I don’t feel comfortable sharing so much of it – even after locking it down and setting the various privacy settings. It is very easy to exploit. Take the example where Facebook changed the settings where Google by default would be indexing a lot of this information. And it is you and I as users who had to login and explicitly change a setting to stop it from doing that. Furthermore, despite all the security measures that Facebook might have in place (and they don’t mention how internally within the company walls is the information protected) all it takes is one disgruntled employee (or soon-to-be-ex-employee) to take it all and walk out the door!

The secondary issue I have is the fact that more and more of the information, friends, contacts, etc is marketing and spam (a lot of what we see on Twitter as well). I personally am (thankfully) seeing much less spam on emails these days; but on the flip side I see a dramatic uptick of spam on social site. Not sure if this is because our email spam filters are finally smart enough to work, or perhaps the spammers found the social networking sites to be richer pickings?

It is good to know that there are others out there with the same concern and with some sites such as Suicide Machine allow you to “all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego” [sic]. Of course, all has not been peachy for Suicide Machine at the same time.

If you are thinking like me and really giving it a go then suggest you seek some help as well to make it easier.

The irony of all of this however is that I will be posting this it to my Facebook wall and also tweeting it.

• December 17, 2009 -- Thought of the day (0)
  Premature optimization is the root of all evil; on the other hand we cannot ignore efficiency.      - Knuth and Bentley...
• November 27, 2009 -- Cloud computing Risk Assessment (0)
  ENISA (European Network & Information Security Agency) – phew that is a mouthful have gotten together with a number of industry leaders and released a Risk assessment for Cloud computing. I have not finished reading this and only eyeballed this, but looks good....
• November 27, 2009 -- Implementing malware with VMs – Subvirt (0)
  Microsoft Research (MSR) along with University of Michigan have an interesting paper that showcases a new type of malware specifically for Virtual Machines and hosts running the VM’s (Hper-V, VMWare Server, etc). This malware installs a monitor underneath the host of the VMs as a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM). All VMM’s run in Ring 0 (kernel mode). Essentially this is similar to a rootkit and they call this a VM based rootkit (VMBR). A VMBR looks to get itself installed underneath the host and ...
• November 22, 2009 -- Goodbye Community Server; Hello WordPress (0)
  Finally moved from Community Server 2007 to WordPress....
• June 20, 2009 -- My New Mobile (0)
  ...

Also given my previous experience with the MCE, the wife is always very sceptical whenever I say anything about ‘fixing’ the MCE. Moral of the story (as I learned the hard way) the MCE is a ‘production’ class machine which does not get touched without adequate planning with fall back options planned.

Of course since I build this in the summer of 2009, I don’t suppose this is “new” anymore.

• December 19, 2009 -- Allowing remote desktop with blank passwords on Win7 (0)
  I finally got the time to upgrade my MCE with the RTM bits of Win7 (was running an old RC build until now). Given this is a dedicated MCE with nothing else on it and an on an isolated part of the network, I don't have a password set for the Account I use to login (of course not a recommended practice). Now, I wanted to RDP to the machine and I realised then that Win 7 does not allow RDP with blank passwords by default (Vista behaves in the same fashion). The workaround is a simple fix - to updat...
• May 5, 2009 -- New MCE (0)
  I build my first MCE a few years ago and since then not looked back – despite a few of my screw ups. In our household the MCE is used a lot and it really has changed the way we watch TV. One starts taking things for granted such as the ability pause live TV or rewind when you did not quite catch the last dialogue. And this was brought more in focus when during the transition from the old MCE to the new MCE (more on that in a second). I decided to build another MCE– mainly as the old MCE had s...
• July 1, 2007 -- Cumulative Update for Vista MCE (0)
  You might have noticed this via your Windows Update that Microsoft has released a cumulative update for Vista MCE! It is supposed to fix a number of issues, though I have not seen any changes (but then I was not having any issues in the first place). You can get details on what this update contains....
• June 19, 2007 -- lifeStation's upgraded to Vista (0)
  If you recall I talked about lifeStation last year and Simon from Passive Technologies posted a comment letting me know that they have upgraded all their machines to MCE Vista from MCE XP. There is also a new lifeServer which boasts 6TB of storage and RAID 5 (though I cannot find out anywhere if this is 6TB of total storage or usable storage). On a separate note, this might be a good candidate to run Windows Home Server. I think these are very cool machines though I don't own one and the fac...
• June 1, 2007 -- Life without an MCE (0)
  I must say after getting used to viewing TV (and Movies) via a MCE - not having one is sorely missed. Recently the machine was randomly hanging and a few blue-screens and as it turns out one of my memory sticks went bad which was causing the issues. Although I had bought the memory from Crucial, over two years ago - they have a lifetime warranty. I called them and they immediately volunteered to change both the sticks (as I was running them in dual-channel). I was running the machine fine o...

• January 24, 2010 -- Win 3.1 experience in your browser (0)
  If you ever wanted a Win 3.1 experience in your broswer (why I cannot imagine - despite me running a VM), then check out michaelv.org. The irony of all of this is that there is a modern browser in that which seems to be compliant with the standards (it pases the ACID2 tests; fails the ACID3). :roll:...
• January 10, 2010 -- Permalinks don’t support quotes? (0)
  I don't know if this is a feature or a bug or a configuration issue either with WordPress itself or how the web server is configured where this blog is hosted. I just posted something about compiler errors where the permalink had a single quotes in its title like :  'qpainter-painter'-has-initialiser-but-incomplete-type. While this was handled fine by WordPress (I could successfully preview the post as well), once it was published I got the generic 500 Internal Server Error as shown below. So th...
• January 7, 2010 -- WordPress ping list (0)
  I updated the ping list for the blog based on the suggestions from Vladimir which I found via WordPress's documentation site. Not sure if it is of any help or not, but I guess I will find out....
• December 8, 2009 -- 10 must have WordPress plugins (0)
  If you search online you will loads of 'best plugin lists' for WordPress, however of the lot that I have seen I truly think that this one is certainly one of the best ones....
• December 5, 2009 -- Want Virtual Snow on your site? (0)
  If you want virtual snow (probably nicer than the real stuff as there is no slush left to clean up) then check out Snowstorm: JavaScript snow effect for HTML. Be warned though - this uses a lot of CPU on the computer redendering the page and it will slow things down. Quite cool though....

I have uploaded this particular log file here if anyone is interested.

# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
#  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb263d1f7, pid=20331, tid=3085625024
#
# JRE version: 6.0_16-b01
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (14.2-b01 mixed mode, sharing linux-x86 )
# Problematic frame:
# C  [libQtGuiCppIntegration.so.4+0x6531f7]  _ZN16QtCppIntegration12QLineControl18removeSelectedTextEv+0x27
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# /home/amit/hs_err_pid20331.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
#   http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp
# The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code.
# See problematic frame for where to report the bug.
#

• January 13, 2010 -- Qt Eclipse Integration (0)
  If you are working in CDT and Qt then the Qt Eclipse Integration is quite handy and in my opinion much better than using the standalone Qt designer. Installation is pretty straight forward as described here....
• December 13, 2009 -- Opening File explorer from a terminal (0)
  In Ubuntu if you want to open File Explorer from a terminal (especially as root) then you need to enter the following command: sudo nautilus If you want this to run as a background process then just add an "&" in the end (without the quotes of course)....
• December 6, 2009 -- Default QT4 path (0)
  If you wanted to know the default path where QT4 is installed (on Ubuntu) then look in /usr/share/qt4/bin....
• December 2, 2009 -- Redirects setup (0)
  After moving the blog to  WordPress, almost all my redirects should work now from the old blog posts to the new one. For example if you click on this old url http://desigeek.com/weblog/amit/archive/2009/10/25/installing-openscenegraph-on-ubuntu.aspx it should redirect you and you see the new and correct url. Overall it was simple to setup via the .htaccess file and some simple regex. The only thing I found the hard way was that I should be using “RedirectMatch” when setting up the regex ru...
• November 26, 2009 -- Linux Hater blog (0)
  Why is there so much hate on the Linux Hater blog?...

Anyways, this is what I intend to cook tonight among other things. I cannot claim credit for this, I found it online some time back and now its stored on my Wiki at home and I don’t know who to give credit for it anymore.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 pound fresh asparagus spears, trimmed

Method:

1. Melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Stir in the olive oil, salt, and pepper.
3. Cook garlic in butter for a minute, but do not brown.
4. Add asparagus, and cook for 10 minutes, turning asparagus to ensure even cooking.

• February 8, 2009 -- Spiced Red Dal (0)
  A Dal (Lentil) is quite a staple food at home – not only is it nutritious and health and full of protein, both I and Meenakshi love it. Now the way we usually make it at home is a little different that the version I came across from Yotam Ottolenghi. I tried it and was excellent – different from what I am use to cooking. The ingredients you need are: 200g split red lentils (Dhuli Masoor dal in Hindi) 1 bunch fresh coriander 1 small onion, peeled 40g ginger, peeled 3 cloves gar...
• April 24, 2006 -- Can an airline get good food? (0)
  Yes at least one of them can, called Jet Airways. I have flown them recently and was pleasantly surprised with the excellent quality of service and food - even in Cattle class. Guardian also seems to agree with me. :) On the other than, their website, well thats another matter....
• November 28, 2004 -- Best restaurants in London? (0)
  Since, I am new to London, I would like to get your perspective on which are the good restaurants in the London area? What gems do you hold dear to your heart and wish to share so some poppers like me can also enjoy them? Sure, I have checked out the usual suspects, in addition to the ones I know from USA....
• September 29, 2004 -- Lucky Dad's 8000 miles away! (0)
  Karan pointed me to this one on Yahoo and the boy am I glad that my dad is 8000 miles away in India! :o) Though I am a vegetarian, this could easily enough be “Paneer”. :o) BLUEWELL, West Virgina - A family meal erupted into a gun battle after a father and son clashed over how to cook chicken. The two men argued Sunday over the best way to prepare skinless chicken for dinner. "It started out as a physical confrontation, but it escalated until both of them were shooting at each other...

void RGBViewer::accept() {
	QMessageBox::information(this, "Button Clicked", "You clicked OK", QMessageBox::Ok);

	QColor color = QColor(Ui_RGBViewerClass.spinBoxRed->value(),
			Ui_RGBViewerClass.spinBoxGreen->value(),
			Ui_RGBViewerClass.spinBoxBlue->value(),
			255);

	qDebug() << color;

	QBrush brush(color);
	brush.setStyle(Qt::SolidPattern);
	ui.graphicsView->setBackgroundBrush(brush);
	ui.graphicsView->backgroundBrush();
}

When I compile the above code snippet, I get the following error from the compiler:

rgbviewer.cpp: In member function ‘virtual void RGBViewer::accept()’:
rgbviewer.cpp:19: error: expected primary-expression before ‘(’ token
rgbviewer.cpp:19: error: expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token
rgbviewer.cpp:20: error: expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token
rgbviewer.cpp:21: error: expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token

All this means is that I need to initialize the type ‘Ui_RGBViewerClass’ as the compiler does not understand it. In other words, I need to use a new.

Here is the ‘fixed’ version below of the same code snippet.

Ui::RGBViewerClass ui; //Defined in the header; shown here for completness

void RGBViewer::accept() {
	QMessageBox::information(this, "Button Clicked", "You clicked OK", QMessageBox::Ok);

	QColor color = QColor(ui.spinBoxRed->value(),
			ui.spinBoxGreen->value(),
			ui.spinBoxBlue->value(),
			255);

	qDebug() << color;

	QBrush brush(color);
	brush.setStyle(Qt::SolidPattern);
	ui.graphicsView->setBackgroundBrush(brush);
	ui.graphicsView->backgroundBrush();
}

• January 23, 2010 -- Copying strings in C++ (0)
  Here is a good example on why either you love C++ or hate it with such terse expression oriented code; I think its pretty cool. If you want to copy one string to another, one option can be something like this. [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] void mycopy(char *p, char *q) { int len = strlen(q); for(int i=0; i&lt;=len; i++) p[i] = q[i]; } [/sourcecode] However this achieves the same thing as above and is more efficient: [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] v...
• January 10, 2010 -- ‘QPainter painter’ has initialiser but incomplete type (0)
  If you ever got an error something like [some-class] has initialiser but incomplete type, it basically means the compiler cannot understand the type and you need to add the include for it. [sourcecode lang="cpp" toolbar="false"] QPixmap pixmap(20,10); pixmap.fill(Qt::white); QPainter painter(&pixmap); QPen pen(Qt::blue); [/sourcecode] Take the code snipped above when you compile it you might get an error something along the lines of the following for line 4. ‘QPainter painter’ ...

• January 15, 2010 -- Geek moment of the day (0)
  (: ¿ɥǝ sıɥʇ sı looɔ ʍoɥ...
• December 31, 2009 -- Media Centre Pictures (0)
  Sorry this took so long (been extremely busy lately), but as promised here are pictures of the media centre during the various stages of being built. Clicking on the thumbnails below, will show you a larger version of the photos. Also given my previous experience with the MCE, the wife is always very sceptical whenever I say anything about 'fixing' the MCE. Moral of the story (as I learned the hard way) the MCE is a 'production' class machine which does not get touched without adequate planni...
• 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...
• October 25, 2009 -- Installing OpenSceneGraph on Ubuntu (0)
  If you use the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu 9.04 to install OpenSceneGraph, by default it will install version 2.4.x. However if you want to install OpenSceneGraph 2.8.1 then you need to do the following in a terminal:Modify the file /etc/apt/sources.list (make sure you run it via sudo something like: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list)Add the following two lines in the end and save the file:deb http://openscenegraph.dachary.org/packaging-farm/openscenegraph/gnulinux/debian/unstable/src ./de...
• June 17, 2009 -- Major Network Attack (0)
  Wow! Looks like a lot of bots suddenly woke up – major attack in progress. Grrr … b**tards!...