Mar 2nd, 2007 by kannanmr. Microsoft has come up with a website totally dedicated to getting the programming newbies up and running (Of course, using MS technologies! :p )
BDLC covers both web and desktop applications. The best part is, it doesn’t assume any prior programming knowledge. I am pretty sure this is a great resource and is gonna boost the Windows developer base exponentially!
Some interesting topics from BDLC
I have bookmarked some for my wife to go through, this weekend. I am pretty sure I will be directing her to this site more often from now!!
Posted in: Code, Computers, Tidbits.
Tagged: coding · developer · learning-center · microsoft · programming
Feb 24th, 2007 by kannanmr. 
I bought my first gaming console, Xbox 360, two months back. Though I am not a big gamer, I always loved to design levels and develop simple games (no Unreal or Doom4 from me!). I bought the Xbox360 from Kempfort (now called Kempkids) in Airport road. I got the premium pack. There was a huge price difference between the core system and the premium system, but I preferred the premium as it comes with lots of accessories, which when put together with the core system’s price exceeded the price I paid for the premium. Not bad, eh? The Xbox 360 market price in US is around $400, which is roughly 18,000/- INR. Why then I was asked to pay another 7 – 8K for a premium system, is still a mystery to me.
The premium system doesn’t ship with any game. I was aware of this, even then I didn’t buy any games. First thing – it is pretty costly again – 2500/- per title is kind of expensive for a game. Next thing is, that day I wanted only to check out the interface and if possible connect my PC to the Xbox 360. So, I was not that keen on buying a game that day itself.
Continue reading “My first gaming console!” »
Posted in: Console games, Gaming Consoles, Technology, Xbox 360.
Tagged: bangalore · Console games · Game-Consoles · microsoft · Xbox 360
Feb 23rd, 2007 by kannanmr. This happened during my Chennai visit. When we landed in Chennai, as there were no gates available immediately, we had to wait for ~5 minutes. There was this person sitting 3 rows in front of me, along with his wife and a kid, who also stood up to collect his things. When it took sometime for the aero bridge to be attached, he started murmuring. He had an obvious US accent, looked like some one from the Northern part of India. Couple of minutes later, his tone had become loud.
“What is happening? Why are they taking so long?”, his wife asked.
“C’mon dear, this is not Ontario. This is India”, he said, with the sarcasm turned a notch up! This really irked me. But the next statement was the icing on the cake.
“I thought things would have changed. They are the same and will never change over here”
When we stepped out in to the waiting lounge, I introduced myself to him and asked him casually about his native place in India.
“I am from [so &so place] in Punjab. I have been in Toronto for 1.5years now!!”, he said proudly.
1.5years?? He was out of India for just over an year and already he has started passing comments over how India won’t improve? What do we do with these kinda people around!?
[tags]chennai, india, attitude[/tags]
Posted in: Personal.
Tagged: attitude · chennai · india
Feb 23rd, 2007 by kannanmr. Yesterday I had to go to Chennai, on an official work. The plan was to go there in the morning and return back by night. Morning flight was uneventful, thought the same cannot be said about the returning flight.
I saw the above car when I came out of the airport. Interesting! I have never seen this kind of car before in India (of course, it is not like I know of every car brand available in India!). It looked more like those looong limousines. The car zoomed past us and to add to the wound, my rented Tata Indigo broke down! The car sign looked like a Skoda, and it was AP (Andhra Pradesh) registration. Does Skoda make these kinda cars?
The return flight was scary! Perhaps, not as scary as the one I had from Italy to Belgium (a small Dakota kind of Lufthansa plane, shaking all the way, which practically eliminated all my fear for roller coasters :p), but the landing was terrific. Most probably the pilot misjudged the point of contact or something. Since it was around 11pm, people were sleeping or atleast in a “trance” state, but the jolt with which the plane landed, woke up everyone! First time I saw people screaming in a plane, for real, I mean 
The girl sitting behind me literally grabbed my hair, the person who was dozing off next to me banged his head on the front seat, woke up with a big “Aahhhh”….how I wished I had my camera with me
Posted in: Miscellaneous.
Tagged: chennai · flight · images · india · Limousine
Feb 20th, 2007 by kannanmr. My HP IPAQ started giving me lots of problems 4 weeks back, I guess it didn’t like me dropping it for the 100th time :p.
It’d freeze up, just like that, irrespective of whether I was in a phone call or in the middle of a chess game. very irritating. I tried upgrading the firmware – no use. So, I took it to the nearest HP service center. For those in B’lore, the service center I went to, is in Indira nagar 100ft road, on top of FabMall. To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect them to take it for service, as I didn’t buy this unit in India. As expected, they said they wouldn’t be taking units with International warranty. Mine was APAC warranty, I specifically made sure with the HP Malaysia guys that mine would be supported in India. After some “effective” convincing, they agreed to take it, but, under the condition they could only TRY to fix the problem. WTH? What do you mean “try”?? It seems like HP India is not yet fully equipped to service IPAQ 68xx models. They said they usually replace the unit, instead of trying to root cause. What this “will-try-my-best” terminology basically meant was if they said they couldn’t fix my iPAQ problem, I had to go to Malaysia to fix this or start using this as a costly paper-weight! God!
After 3 weeks of follow up, HP India finally said they would try to see if there is a replacement part available in the Chennai center. Luckily, they have found one! I got a call today from the centre, asking me to collect the repaired unit in 10days time Yahoooo, my 35K is saved! Whew, thanks HP!
Posted in: Computers.
Tagged: firmware · hp_rw6828 · indira_nagar · Upgrade
Feb 19th, 2007 by kannanmr. Though WordPress provides TinyMCE and the code editor, which are more than enough for me, I decided to check out the offline/desktop posting utilities available out there. I used to use w.blogger, but a quick check showed that it was not currently being updated (or probably, I was looking at the wrong place). So, I decided to check out the Windows Live Writer, which everyone was writing so much about. Windows Live Writer promises integration with WordPress.com and custom hosted WordPress sites too. “Great!”, I thought and downloaded/installed the tool in my WinXP Sp2 box. I don’t know about WordPress.com integration, which I doubt will have any problems. But, custom WordPress integration needs certain tweakings from your side.
When I tried setting up the Live Writer with my WordPress it gave the following error – “Invalid Server Response – The response to the blogger.getUsersBlogs method received from the weblog server was invalid“. A quick Google search brought up this link. I also found another post in WordPress forums, suggesting disabling all the plugins. After lots of trial and error, I hit upon a solution that solved my problem.
Live Writer makes use of XML RPC protocol to talk with WordPress. XML RPC makes use of XML for encoding the communication part. So, if the XML parser at Live Writer end is not able to make sense out of the XML response from WordPress (xmlrpc.php), it complains. This is what happened in my case, as the XML response from my WordPress site started with TWO newline characters followed by the XML starting tag. I don’t know why, but these characters at the beginning of the XML stream choke most XML parsers out there. I have seen this problem with Firefox 2.0/1.5, Feedburner etc.,. Here is a BKM of what I learnt regarding this.
How to fix the error – “Invalid Server Response – The response to the blogger.getUsersBlogs method received from the weblog server was invalid“
- First step is to check the security part. Make sure your xmlrpc.php in the WordPress root directory is given Read and Execute instructions for you. Check with your hosting service people to see if this is properly set. Most probably your host should have given you a control panel for managing your webspace, you should be able to do this from there. For WordPress.com hosted websites, I guess this should have been already taken care of. Continue reading “Windows Live Writer problems with WordPress – How To fix?” »
Posted in: Computers, HowTo.
Feb 16th, 2007 by kannanmr. Welcome back! I have finally found a hosting service and took time to move my blog out of Blogspot. Also, I have moved to WordPress 2.1. I have to say, it is the best personal blogging solution I have ever worked with (Not that I am a web/blog expert 
). The extensability options provided by WP are, simply, amazing!! Do check it out for your hosted blog, if you are in search of a blogging solution.
I am trying to learn about the various plug-ins available and the various customization options provided by WP, pretty time consuming, I’d say. Also, seeing so many plugins is kinda motivating, in a way; who knows I may write one over this weekend! Actually, I am looking for some mass-DB editor kinda plugin. If I dont find one, I will try to put together my own. This will be a good learning experience for me, in WP/PHP.
Next step is to move my Tamil Chess blog (Chathurangam) in Blogspot over here. Ohh, I am pretty excited!!
Posted in: Personal.
Tagged: blogger · blogs · hosting · site · Wordpress
Jun 7th, 2006 by kannanmr. I have always wanted to own one of those cute O2 XDA Atoms. I was holding back, because of the Atom’s notorious stability and the numerous bugs in the software bundle + motherboard. But, when I went to Malaysia recently, I decided to buy one anyhow, because the latest ROM update seemed to make Atom more stable and also I could not stand my wife reminding me daily to get more organized!
I was staying in Penang. I checked out Bukit Jambul complex, did not find a decent enough deal or store. So, I went to Prangin mall in George town. The fourth floor, in the interior wing, is full of computers / electronics stores. Boy, did I have a great time there! I saw the Rw6828 there for the first time, though I have read online a lot about it. It was just released in APAC one week back, not anywhere else!
Basically, HP rw6828 is Quanta’s offering to O2 + HW/SW fixes + some cosmetic changes + more SW bundled + HP’s great aftersales service and customer support. The shop owner also offered me a 1GB miniSD + 1 leather pouch + 1 screen protector free. I went for it immediately
I got this photo off Pocket PC addict. I will update this with my phone soon.
I also picked up a Jabra BT-800 in Changi airport, on my way back home. Had no problem pairing this with rw6828. Works like a charm. The DSP for noise cancelling really works! There seems to be a firmware upgrade for this. I need to do it this weekend.
Some links:
- Rw6828 features
- HP official page for RW6828
Posted in: Computers, Personal, Technology.
Tagged: Computers · hp_rw6828
Feb 6th, 2006 by kannanmr. I have a Dual processor Xeon machine (HT enabled in both the processors) with 2GB of RAM. Windows XP effectively sees 4 execution pipelines. Yesterday I had to move some 10GB of data from this machine to my laptop. I decided to zip it up first and fired open Winzip 9.0. It was painfully slow! I checked out the Winzip process using Sysinternals ProcExplorer and was surprised to see Winzip doing things (compressing/reading/other operations) in ONE thread!
Continue reading “Why no threads?” »
Posted in: Technology.
Tagged: Computers · Development · dual-core · multi-threading · Software · windows
Jan 31st, 2006 by kannanmr. [Sorry, Dilbert image no longer available]
This reminded me of my conversation with one of my customers (internal) last week. I was trying to sell him my teams tool. I setup a meeting requesting him to give us what his generic requirements are (basically what he is looking for!), so that we could make a detailed presentation of our tool geared towards his req. He declined that meeting request asking how he could give me the requirements with out knowing what my tool can do. It took a long time to convince him to tell us what he was trying to do and why he approached our group in the first place!
Posted in: Miscellaneous.
Tagged: Customer · Customer-Visits · Development · dilbert · generic-requirements · Meeting · Office
