Windows live services

eeks

this is how skydrive partal shows up this morning. Windows live gone
for a toss today.

Back to blog

Breaking silence. As new means of sharing information like twitter, wave, buzz etc.. came out I thought blog is kind of out dated platform. But I am not finding them as a perfect alternative thus thought of resuming blogging again.

Happy New Year 2010

 Wish you and your family a very Happy, Prosperous and Cheerful Newyear 2010.

Its 5 years of blogging

I started blogging since 12 Nov 2004. Probably this is the only hobby that I liked so much for so long. Ofcourse after starting twitter mainstream blogging is reduced.
Anyway it gave me so much pleasure in last 5 years and keeping me motivated to persue it further.

Back on BSNL broadband

End to this long silence. I am back on BSNL braodband at home (Bangalore)
Here goes connection quality.


And to my suprise BSNL gave me a wireless modem WA3002G4. Pretty decent one.
Taking power availability here, I may need to go for a small battery till I decide on Inverter.
Feeling to be connected after long time.

Resuming .....

I chaged my job and relocated to Bangalore. Just settled down and resuming my normal life.

It is 11 years now

As on today my professional career completed 11 years. Longest vacation I ever had was for 11 days.

Somehow I am feeling like that is not enough to reset the garbage that I collected. I wish giving myself a break for couple of months to do something that is close to heart.

I just want to kick start my Bullet and hit roads till I reach a mountain peak where I can live at least a day without having a connection to anything in this world.

Is twitter an alternative for opinion polls?

Looking at http://fixoutlook.org/, I feel it is as another facet of twitter as a tool for collecting opinion poll. Regular radio buttons, checkboxes wont allow you to express your view. They force you to choose from what is asked for. I guess twitter approach is giving better handle to express the opinions. Any idea how to parse live twitter updates in public timeline?

Few snaps from Mudumalai

http://picasaweb.google.com/sriharsha.vardhan/Mudumalai#slideshow/5340572709599702898

Wild west stunt show in Ramoji Film City

Ramoji Film City, the largest film studio complex in the world as certified by Guinness World Records, is an ultimate leisure destination for holidays in Hyderabad. Following photograph taken before the start of the show. It is just a part of complete set.

This particular show is so realistic and really makes you watch again and again.

A Self-confessed Slave

Source

“For people who are stupid, we say that they lack a brain. Figuratively, we associate a condition with an organ and say that that organ is missing. So if someone is weak and pliable, we say that they lack a spine or a backbone. Someone cruel and inhuman, we refer to as heartless. With the lack of courage, we associate gutlessness. Emasculation has obvious connections. So I was wondering: which organ or part of the body is there an association with ethics? If someone lacks all sense of morality and ethics, what part of the body are they missing?”

Though the context of original article is different, these words carry much broader meaning.

In my sense dealing with a cruel person is far easier than dealing with unethical person. Moral consciousness is the ability by means of which we perceive what is good and what is bad. In my opinion those who lack sense of morality are deaf and those who lack ethics are blind.

We we are placed in a situation to judge based on arguments from either side we are expected to show morality. That is why I feel lack of morality is like being deaf.

Similarly ethics are intangible. They are just perceived. But only those with an eye can perceive them. Thus in my opinion those who lack ethics are blind.

Know your polling station

If you are in Cyberabad region, you can get to know the location of polling station at
http://www.cyberabadpolice.gov.in/knowyourpolicestation/pollingstations/

First get your polling station number from http://ceoandhra.nic.in/Final_erolls_2009_II.html then check for polling station number under police station from above site.

Looking for route is a bit tedious task, but the image resolution is good enough. You can zoom in and check for Route number and polling station number

Excellent work done by Cyberabad police.

GMail is 5 year old

On April 2 GMail turned 5. I switched to GMail on 8/30/04. Since then it is serving as my primary web mail ID.

When I started it offered me 1 GB free space and on today it offers 7GB+. I still trying catching up my 1 GB.

GMail made possible easy to archive and label. Also kind of never delete a mail is a reality now.

Search within mail is awesome. Stars, filters, key short cuts. More to that it offers authentication to blogger and many other services. One feature that I feel like having is auto archive the ones that are labeled after configured time span.

Anyway it wonderful journey with GMail so far and I assume that GMail will stay for ever and ever.

Experts Exchange subscription

Online forums are always helpful. But sometimes you end up with paid solutions like experts exchange to get a more closure solution. During last year I was in similar situation and paid for a premium service for a month. And I used my credit card to pay it.

But unfortunately EE stored my cc details and charged my card every month since then. As it is small amount it went un-noticed.

Today I just cancelled. I am sure there is no where I selected for a recurring payment on monthly basis. Be watchful about EE.

Office Communicator Mobile 2007 R2

Today I installed OCM 2007 R2 on my mobile. I guess my organization hosts OCM 2007 server not R2. But earlier I was not able to connect to server using server specified configuration. But with OCM 2007’s Auto configuration feature it just connects in 10 seconds and brings status of contact quickly. I even tried sending couple of messages. I use Asus P320, Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. This is very useful for Windows mobile users.

Visual Studio 2010 to include Wix 3.0

We are using beta version of wix. Though it offers everything that is needed at this moment; we are waiting for Wix 3.0 just to be with release product. According to this post Wix 3.0 will be included in VS2010.

Its a really tool for installation needs where module developers can have closure interaction with packaging team.

And for exclusive packaging teams promising way ahead is Wix.

Parsing comma separated files (csv) in C#

Parsing a comma separated file. This task sounded so simple for this till the time I received couple of bugs.

Initially I attempted with a simple approach as shown below.

        using (StreamReader csvFile = new StreamReader(filePath, Encoding.Default))
        {
            //First line must contain columns
            string csvHeader = csvFile.ReadLine();

            //Comma seperated values
            csvColumns.InsertRange(0, csvHeader.Split(','));
        }

Due to these bugs I educated myself about rules of CSV. I can quote couple of references here.

Wiki Comma-separated values and CSV standard.

Important point to note here is that each value in CSV can contain a comma or newline or quotes embedded in itself.

This simple point changes rules of games very much. Normal stream operations to read line are of no use here. As well split functions are of no use. So only option left out is to parse byte by byte watching for characters to skip and add.

Here is the code using which I managed to parse a Csv and resolved bugs. It is too primitive but works.

namespace CsvUtilities
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Data;
    using System.IO;
    using System.Diagnostics;
    using System.Runtime.Serialization;
    using System.Globalization;

    public sealed class CsvParser
    {
        //constants
        private const int quote = '"';
        private const int comma = ',';
        private const int carrierreturn = '\r';
        private const int linefeed = '\n';

        //File Name
        private string fileName;

        /// <summary>
        /// File name propery
        /// </summary>
        public string FileName
        {
            get { return fileName; }
            set { fileName = value; }
        }

        //shared reader
        FileStream reader;

        //Flag to signal end of line
        private bool endofline;

#if DEBUG
        public TimeSpan timeSpan;
#endif

        /// <summary>
        /// Default parameter less constructor
        /// </summary>
        public CsvParser()
        {

        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Constructor to set file
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="fileName">File name to parse</param>
        public CsvParser(string fileName)
        {
            //Input validation
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(fileName))
                throw new ArgumentException("File name can not be null");
            if (File.Exists(fileName) == false)
                throw new FileNotFoundException(fileName);

            this.fileName = fileName;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Parses Csv and return a data table
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="headerIncluded">If header is not included colums will be named Column(x)</param>
        /// <returns>Data table with rows populated from Csv file</returns>
        public DataTable Parse(bool headerIncluded)
        {
            DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
            dataTable.Locale = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
            DataRow dataRow;

            //Input validation
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(fileName))
                throw new ArgumentException("File name can not be null");

#if DEBUG
            Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
            stopwatch.Start();
#endif
            using (reader = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open))
            {
                string value;
                int idx = 0;

                //Header handling
                while (reader.Position != reader.Length)
                {
                    value = GetValue();
                    if (headerIncluded == false)
                    {
                        value = "Column" + idx++;
                        if (endofline)
                            reader.Position = 0;
                    }

                    try
                    {
                        dataTable.Columns.Add(value);
                    }
                    catch (DuplicateNameException dnex)
                    {
                        throw;
                    }

                    if (endofline) break;
                }

                //Initialization
                dataRow = dataTable.NewRow();
                idx = 0;
                endofline = false;

                //Row handling
                while (reader.Position != reader.Length)
                {
                    value = GetValue();
                    dataRow[idx++] = value;

                    if (endofline)
                    {
                        dataTable.Rows.Add(dataRow);
                        dataRow = dataTable.NewRow();
                        idx = 0;
                        endofline = false;
                    }
                }

            }
#if DEBUG
            stopwatch.Stop();
            timeSpan = stopwatch.Elapsed;
#endif
            return dataTable;
        }

        private string GetValue()
        {
            char currentByte; // Current Byte
            char nextByte; // Next Byte

            Boolean withinQuote = false; // Is current position within a quote

            List<char> bytes = new List<char>();

            long position = 0;

            //If stream is null throw exception
            if (reader == null)
                throw new ArgumentException("CSVDataset: stream can not be null");

            if (reader.CanRead == false)
                throw new ArgumentException("CSVDataset: Can not read stream");

            while (reader.CanRead)
            {
                currentByte = (char)reader.ReadByte();

                position = reader.Position;

                //If at last position terminate
                if (position == reader.Length)
                    break;

                //peek next character
                nextByte = (char)reader.ReadByte();
                //As ReadByte moved cursor ahead bring cursor back
                reader.Seek(position, SeekOrigin.Begin);

                //Current character is within the quote
                if (withinQuote)
                {
                    //Is this character a terminating quote
                    if ((currentByte == quote) && (nextByte == comma))
                    {
                        reader.Seek(position + 1, SeekOrigin.Begin); //jump comma
                        break;
                    }
                    if ((currentByte == quote) && (nextByte == quote))
                    {
                        continue;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        bytes.Add(currentByte);
                        continue;
                    }
                }

                if (currentByte == quote)
                {
                    withinQuote = true;
                    continue;
                }
                if (currentByte == comma) break;

                if ((currentByte == carrierreturn)  (currentByte == linefeed))
                {
                    if ((nextByte == carrierreturn)  (nextByte == linefeed))
                    {
                        reader.Seek(position + 1, SeekOrigin.Begin); //jump CR+LF
                    }
                    endofline = true;
                    break;
                }

                bytes.Add(currentByte);
            }

            //Reading value completed. Return
            return new string(bytes.ToArray());
        }
    }
}

Hope this is useful to start with. Advanced parsers can be found at codeproject http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/CsvReader.aspx

Mcshield delaying system boot up time

Of late I am observing that my laptop takes long time to boot up. I am hunting in event log to to find probable reason.

One thing that I observed today is about vmware disk images. Because these are huge file Mcshield takes long time to scan those file for virus.

 

Actually I got these files in D drive. But still upon boot up these these files are being scanned causing delay in boot up time

“A thread in process C:\Program Files\McAfee\VirusScan Enterprise\Mcshield.exe took longer than 90000 ms to complete a request.

Build VSCORE.13.3.2.128 / 5300.2777
Object being scanned = \Device\HarddiskVolume2\xxxxx-x86.tar.bz2”

 

Any ideas on how to overcome this issue.

Technology Predictions for 2009

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/cloudtalk/2009/01/five_technology_predictions_fo.php

Happy New Year

Hello 2009

Happy New Year!