Though not related, these are some useful URLs I came across recently

1. Information on when to “Using CLR Integration in SQL Server 2005” by SQL Server team in Microsoft

2. Roadmap on “Windows Forms and Avalon” by Avalon team in Microsoft

3. “TechNet Script Center” gives tons of ready to use Scripts that can automate several system administrators tasks in Windows, by Microsoft TechNet Team.

On Security

4. “Aaron Margosis' WebLog” that talks about running with least privilege on the desktop, by Aaron who works in Microsoft MCS 
A great resource to protect your Windows PC against attacks.

5. “Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator” by Michael Howard from Microsoft Security Engineering

6. Links on “Microsoft Security Education” by Michael Howard from Microsoft Security Engineering

Most of the time I am in front of my Laptop with little physical exercise or relaxation, so I decided to try Yoga. That was 4 years back, when I first met Mr.Shyam. Since then I am learning/practising Yoga under the guidance of Shyam Master, who also trains many of my colleagues at Vishwak in the weekly twice programs we have in the office.

Yoga (if you do it regularly) certainly helps you to feel more enegetic and healthy.

This month Mr.Shyam's NewYogaLife had organized a 10-day 'Introduction course on Ayurveda and Yoga' for a batch of students from Singapore. Last Friday (26th) I was invited as one of Chief Guests for the Awards function where certificates where distributed to all the students who completed the course. I was joined on stage by well-known businessman Mr.Aboo Bucker A., Managing Director of Hotel President-Chennai and President Group.

That's where I received this beautiful metal horse as a gift from Mr.Shyam. I am happy to receive it for two reasons, one it was an honour to be getting a gift from my 'Master', second the “white horse” symbolises my family deity Lord Sri Lakshmi Hayagreeva.

The function also had other notable things. It was scheduled at 5PM and started exactly at 5PM (unlike many such programs in India). The guests on stage (Mr. Bucker, Mr.Raman, Mr.Shyam and myself) spoke briefly and to the point; The whole event got over at 5:25PM - short and sweet.

Last week, while searching on the Internet, I came across the site for “Minix”. Minix is a free Unix Clone, that Mr.Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote in 1987, as an example to his accompanying Operating System book. Since then his book has become the “Bible” for anyone working OS/Kernel design and Minix has hence inspired several Unix clones to emerge, including now popular “Linux”.

ஒன்று - நான் படித்தது (சக்தி விகடனில்):

வியாபாரிகளே, நிங்கள் உங்கள் கடையில்
எந்தப் படத்தை வேண்டுமானாலும் மாட்டுங்கள்
ஆனால் கலப்படம் மட்டும் வேண்டாம்
- கிருபானாந்த வாரியார்.

இரண்டு - நான் கேட்டது (Lion திரு.நடராஜன் சொல்லியது)

"நேற்று" என்பது உடைந்த மண் பானை
"நாளை" என்பது மதில் மேல் பூனை
"இன்று" என்பது அழகிய ஒர் வீனை

இந்த இரண்டு வாசகங்கள் உணர்த்தும் கருத்துக்கள் ஆழமானவை, ஆனால் சொல்லிய விதமோ எளிதானவை. இதை சிந்திக்கும் பொழுது, என்னை அரியாமலே, நான் உணர்கிறேன் "தமிழ் மொழி எத்தனை அழகானவை" என்று.

The Internet Search scene is really heating up.

Microsoft launched yesterday, its new search at Beta.Search.MSN.COM. It has indexed 5 Billion Pages (statiscally this means, there is a web page for every single human being).  Google immediately responded by saying that they have indexed 8 Billion Pages.

I have been using the new MSN Search today for my searches - for doing a hotel booking in Singapore. For all the different hotel names I throwed at it, MSN Search came back with the Hotel's own Website as its first result, almost all the time. Pretty impressive!. While with Google, for the same keywords the result accuracy varied. The MSN Search speed was also good.

Try it and post your comments below.

You can read my July posting on two new search engines here

"Diwali" is celebrated by Indians all over the world today. It is an important Indian festival celebrated with pomp and gaiety across linguistic boundaries. In the Hindu calendar, which is a lunar one, it falls on amavasya, or the new moon, about twenty days after the festival of Dussehra, in the month of Kartik.

Diwali/Deepavali symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. In the South, Deepavali is celebrated to mark the triumph of Lord Krishna over the demon king Narakasura. In North India, Diwali is celebrated as Rama's homecoming to Ayodhya after the defeat of Ravana and his coronation as king.

More about Deepavali here

எல்லோருக்கும் என் இனிய தீபாவளி நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்

It is generally said that in a complex software product like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Visual Studio, etc., 80% of people use only 20% of the feature. I realized how true it is yesterday.

I have in my Laptop, MS Office 2003 installed, loaded with all the bells and whistles, including the new OneNote application. Though I have been using OneNote for sometime now and find it convenient to put down quick notes, audio clips, etc,  I didn't know it had a good screen capture funtion.

In my one of my earlier blog entry, I have written about how I use Zabgrab to mark and capture a portion of the screen. Yesterday, I accidentally pressed “Window Key + S”, the screen flashed and I got a “+” as mouse pointer. I was able to move my mouse, mark a region and get it captured in OneNote instantly. WOW, this was cool. This means, I don't need to have ZabGrab installed in my machine and I also have a better way to do my job.

If you have more such rarely known jewels of MS Office, please post it in the comment section below.

India's bandwidth consumption is growing by the days. But most of the traffic goes to servers outside the country (primarily the US). One of the ways, to reduce the broadband cost is to increase the traffic within the country. ISPs in India instead of going outside the country to exchange traffic, instead do it internally. This saves Foreign Exchange for the country and also helps in reducing the cost for a consumer. In this direction, Govt. of India (GOI), couple of years back established NiXi (National Internet eXchange of India). Unfortunately, so far its impact was not felt by consumers.

This week, GOI announced that .IN Domain (the top-level Country specific domain for India) will now be made easy to register online. NiXi will be made the nodal point for the registration. This hopefully will improve the number of registrations with .IN Domain and also help NiXi with much needed cash.

When you are writing technical articles or a spagetti blog (with general, travel and also Technical entries) like this, you will need to use screenshot images.

The problem with screenshots (especially with today's high-res displays) is that the saved image files are huge in size. To solve this, you will generally resize the images. With reduction in size, Screenshots becomes unreadable.

While doing such a screenshot today for an earlier entry,  using Adobe PhotoShop Elements (PSE) and Zabgrab (the free utility I use to capture a portion of screen) I came across a nice option in Photoshop elements. It is called “Adjust Blacklighting” available under the “Enhance” menu option in PSE.

1) The original screenshot  I started looked like this (753x688)
2) I resized the image to 400x365. It looked like this, with unreadable text.
3) Next I used the Adjust blacklighting option like this
4) Finally with Auto Levels and adjusting Contrast, I got the final output like this. This definitely looks readable even at the 50% reduced size.

I guess this entry will be useful for non-photoshop pro's like me. Did you find this tip useful, post your feedback below.

Download ZAPGRAB2.zip (9.41 KB)

Spywares are irritating and outright waste of resources.

The first step towards fighting Spywares is to get a good detection and fix tool. Apart from the tools I mentioned in my earlier post on spywares, I recently found a free anti-spyware tool SpyBot-Search & Destroy. This tool has been around for sometime and is famous on the Internet for its effectiveness, but I discovered it, only recently

The next step against spywares, if you are using Windows XP, is to install Windows XP SP2. Among the many enhancements of Windows XP SP2 the one I simply love is the “Manage Add-Ons” menu in IE Tools menu. This option (finally) allows me to View/Disable/Enable all the IE Add-Ons and ActiveX controls loaded by IE.

(Read here on what I learned while doing this screenshot?)

HTTP Trace
When you are doing some HTTP upload or download development, like in a Web Client it is useful to do a HTTP Trace. A HTTP Trace basically dumps on screen or in a file the entire dialog that takes place between your client (typically your Web Browser) and the server (Web Server).

One handy HTTP Trace tool I use is called Fiddler. Fiddler is free and is developed by a Microsoftie. The good thing I like in Fiddler is that it works without any configuration. You just browse from your favourite browser or client application as normal, and fiddler is tracing it in the background. In fact, Fiddler doesn't even have an options dialog box!.

There is also an useful Page in Fiddler website that links to useful HTTP/HTML Resources on the Internet.

Web Service Trace
If you are programming SOAP/Web services, it is useful to have a SOAP Trace utility. A SOAP Trace tool is a specialized HTTP Trace tool that understands SOAP messages and displays them accordingly. If you are programming with Microsoft WSE 2.0, then a good free tool is available from Mike Taulty. Once you have downloaded the application, you read the example.config file. It has a small portion of XML Configuration code, that you need to insert in your web.config or app.config files for tracing to begin.

Mike's WSE 2.0 Tracing Utility is written in .NET Framework 1.x. I loved this tool so much I used in my WSE Security session in this India Tech Ed 2004.