Ideas and Coffee at 3.47 AM

A call to all who love Microsoft

2010-09-15T15:58:36Z

I listen to podcasts. I have been listening to them for about 5 years or so now. Perhaps a little over. My first few were podcasts were HanselMinutes by Scott Hanselmann and DotnetRocks by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell . Throughout these 2 have been my favorite. And the single reason is that they enjoy their conversations the most. It shows that they love technology, they love the products and the enthusiasm is all over the show. I love these shows because I share the enthusiasm with them. Microsoft...(read more)

Episode 0: Shabby’s Nightmare

2010-08-05T09:53:54Z

There was a time when I used to hate reading. I still do. But not everything. And thankfully what I like reading, I made a career out of… More here…...(read more)

The Underscore Naming Convention for Private Variables in C#

2010-08-04T06:40:17Z

Many a time you must have come across the underscore naming convention while reading books or articles on any C# based Microsoft technology. Although as per the standard naming convention private variables should be camel case. But you still see they start with an underscore. Such as “_categoryManager”. Have you ever wondered why? The secret lies in the intellisense… More here… Technorati Tags: Geeky , Ramblings , Discoveries , Funny...(read more)

Outlook and live messenger stop working simultaneously

2010-08-02T17:12:34Z

Error Message: “There was an error synchronizing your folder hierarchy. Error: 80041004”. I don’t write such blog posts too much these days. I used to write these “type” of posts till a few months back. By these “type” I mean stuff that we go bump in the dark of the night and can’t figure out a solution over the internet. Silly stuff... I used to post these after I solved them back then. I don’t any more to keep my posts interesting. But this is an interesting discovery and I can’t and mustn’t resist...(read more)

Talking to Master Yoda… or Master Oogway…

2010-07-30T12:03:54Z

“Why do you always start off a project with a database design?”, Vivek asked. It was around 10.30 PM Monday. Vivek had come on Google chat, first time ever. His girlfriend, apparently, wanted him to talk to me. I don’t remember talking to Vivek on any IM before that day. I was telling him about a personal project I was working on. I had told him about 2 more projects that I had started in the past, which are on the verge of completion. And every time he had heard me saying I am working on the database...(read more)

Visual (pronounced as ‘versatile’) Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools

2010-07-30T12:02:21Z

“Only the naive use no tools. The enlightened one knows exactly which tool is to be used”. And behold…!!! the tools just got smarter, more intuitive with the Visual Studio 2010 productivity power tools . I am not going to… More here…...(read more)

Talking the old fashioned way

2010-02-12T10:58:00Z

The internet has given mankind something that could make him an equivalent to the Gods. The easily accessible knowledge repository that it is, is just the tip of the iceberg. There was some research somewhere that the mental development of apes and humans is equal until the human child learns to talk. Internet is perhaps in the communication world what the nuke is in the weapons world. Read More…...(read more)

Knowledge truly is the ultimate power…

2010-01-05T17:55:35Z

They say that knowledge never goes a waste. Although sometimes you might feel a little “not so fruitful” about certain things that you might have done in the past or things that you are doing currently, but trust me, if you are willing to wait a while, you will realize that it will come handy. Read More…...(read more)

Security Essenitials and Defender

2010-01-03T16:23:19Z

Note: I am slowly moving my blog to http://www.dasboard.in/nilotpal/blogs/347 . Please check my blogs there and update your RSS feeds. Thanks. I bought a computer recently and I didn’t have an antivirus software. I was wondering what I would do about that. Microsoft already had a fantastic utility called Defender, to detect and remove spyware and potentially unwanted software (which ships with Windows 7). Well now they have come up with is a new antivirus software. It is called the Microsoft Security...(read more)

My new machine... Beginning of my command stations...

2010-01-02T19:30:00Z

Note: I have a new blog and I am posting more frequently there than I am here. http://dasboard.in/nilotpal/blogs/347 . I remember I had just started working for Microsoft. One day I was going out to help my good friend David. He happens to be working for Microsoft and he is into technical documentation. One thing led to another and I was telling him that some day I would like to write a book and build a "command station" - a room full of computers. A year or so passed by and there was still no computer...(read more)

Wordpress is amazing… Blogger might be overrated…

2009-12-31T05:16:16Z

You are new to blogging… You are planning to start a blog… There is a very good chance that you might end up having a blog on blogger… Or you could have a blog on geekswithblogs or if you are doing something in .Net Technologies, the probability of which is quite high since you are reading this blog (me being on .Net) then you might have a blog on asp.net. But if you are looking for some serious options… I would suggest you guys try out wordpress . It is as easy to create a weblog and there is barely...(read more)

Persistence Ignorance… Why…?

2009-12-31T05:11:12Z

How do you plan your architecture when you are using entity framework? Do you write a data access layer? Or do you just go ahead and start writing queries on the object context. What happens if you want to use stored procedures? Why stored procedures you ask? well a no. of reasons. Some performance, others just a plain ol’ legacy database with existing stored procedures. But that’s a little out of context at the moment. You may go ahead and start using your entities as business objects. But there...(read more)

Joomla… or should it be Zoomla…

2009-12-29T15:13:00Z

I have been thinking of owning a website of my own for a long time. First web space was expensive. Not universally, but at least for me. Always thought, is it worth it? How am I justify the annual cost no matter how little. And then of course my salary wasn’t that big then. Well by God’s grace I am doing pretty ok now. But since the last couple of years, I just didn’t have the time to do it. I bought web space some 1 and a half year back. wrote a whiz bang application that would host a video invitation...(read more)

Disabled...

2009-12-29T04:15:00Z

Never thought I would feel so helpless without a machine. I do have a machine at work, but can’t do much there. It is a work machine after all. Got addicted to the Lenovo T60, the Iron Box (we used to affectionately call it) so much, suddenly I miss it. The most difficult is to pacify the whims of prototyping something or churning out some whiz bang code quickly. It is when you can’t do it, that you realize how often you used to do it. Guess I will have to get my hands on a new machine quickly....(read more)

Visual Studio 2008 Unit tests… Error loading .vsmdi: .vsmdi

2009-09-22T13:01:38Z

I got this error. I got no information on the internet as to how to get around it… 3 hours earlier: I wanted to create a sequence diagram from the code I have already written. Visual Studio 2010 comes with the sequence diagram feature. I decided heck why not use it. It creates some really cool sequence diagrams. I opened the same project in Visual Studio 2010, created the sequence diagram, closed the project. Went for a smoke. 30 minutes earlier: My test cases won’t run. the error I get is ...(read more)