Yesterday I took my son and his cousins to this movie - "Ghatothkach". As Sathyam Cinemas website was down I used their door delivery facility for getting the tickets which was very convenient and you had to pay only Rs.75 extra for the service.

In Mahabharat epic Ghatothkach is the son of Bheema (Pandavas). Ghatothkach inherits immense strength from his father and wonderful magic powers which he uses for good. With this one line story from the epic and inspired by the 1957 live action film Mayabazar, Ghatothkach movie gives a clean entertainment for kids. The movie is directed by legendary director Mr.Singeetam Srinivasa Rao.

My kid loved the scenes where Ghatothkach and his pet elephant utters the magic words "Ambilica Bambulica".  Having seen the Tamil Mayabaazar movie and the song "Kalyana Samayel Saatham" (Same video clip in Telugu here) I expected the scene in the movie to be more grand and entertaining, but it was very brief here. The movie ends kind of suddenly before you expect the end. There is nothing for grown-ups in the movie other than the superb animation and music. My wife slept through the 90 minutes film. Good time pass for kids in the summer.

Last few days I had a firewall issue in my desktop that made web browsing irregular. It was a peculiar problem, I was able to browse few sites like Google, Vishwak.COM but not others. I had to keep running the same diagnostic commands many times to take values to be sent to my support team. Finally I ended up writing this handy tool that copies to clipboard diagnostic informations from IPConfig, Tracert, Ping & WebGet commands. This information can be used for further investigation or email to support. I also added features to FlushDNS, Renew IP & Turn Auto Tuning (Vista and Windows Server 2008) OFF/ON.

• Download the Install: EasyTools Web Browsing Test Installer.zip (192.17 KB)
• Visual Studio Solution (Source code): WebBrowsingTestSource.zip (592.62 KB)

While developing the tool over two half-a-days I learnt quite a few APIs and a bit of C# coding. This included how to call a console command like IPCONFIG /ALL and capture the output to a string from a C# application, get the Internet Explorer Proxy settings, Call Network Properties applet, create an install with VS 2008 & how to paste a code snippet in WLW.

   1: private string DoConsoleAndCapture(string sInput)

   2: {

   3:  

   4: string sOutput = "";

   5: ProcessStartInfo pi = new ProcessStartInfo("cmd.exe", "/c " + sInput );

   6: pi.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Minimized; 

   7: pi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;

   8: pi.UseShellExecute = false;

   9: Process p = Process.Start(pi);

  10: p.WaitForExit();

  11: //p.Start();

  12: TextReader t = p.StandardOutput;

  13: sOutput = t.ReadToEnd();

  14: t.Close();            

  15: p.Close();

  16:  

  17: return sOutput; 

  18: }

The experience of using Visual Studio 2008 was interesting as it has been few years since I coded something end to end. I wish the coding surface to become more intelligent in terms of offering help on discovering commands and APIs that the developer is looking for. When VB6 came a decade or so back the help feature that it had was revolutionary and the wealth of information MSDN provided was without par in the industry. Now with Web & Internet Search prevalent the present IDE calls for a complete rethinking and revamp - unfortunately I don't feel the tools have come there yet. What I am talking here is not about wizards, smart tags or even intellisense but about how the tool helps a developer to learn/discover necessary APIs/solve the problem at hand.

I had a good laugh now by watching this video clip of a recent CSI episode that carried a dialog "create a GUI Interface in Visual Basic to track the IP address". I love "Visual Basic" and it was good to hear it getting prime time media attention!

Last month before boarding my long return flight from Seattle to Chennai, I checked out Borders store for some reading material to keep me occupied. I picked this book  - Think Big and Kick Ass by Donald Trump. I have heard about the US TV Reality Show - Apprentice but I didn't know anything about Trump. So I had no expectations and didn't buy the book for Donald Trump's name. I wanted an interesting lite reading book and found this to fit the bill. I finished a portion of it in the flight, but managed to complete the entire book in my vacation last week in Kodaikanal.

I don't like Copy-Pasting from other sources into my blog, but this time I am making an exception. The below snippet from a comment in Amazon for the book captured exactly what I wanted to write, so even if I had written myself it would appear to be a copy - "...Trump is an egotistical, self-serving man, no doubt. But let's be totally objective, as I was that day: good advice is good advice. And, most writers do not have the courage to dispense such advice in such raw terms as Trump does. This book holds nothing back. Trump lays it all out on the table with blatant opinions, ideas and thoughts about those who've crossed him, helped him, etc. He tells you how you need to be (not just what you need to do - read that again!) to be successful. However - and this is the most important point of my review - there's truth to so much of what he says. It's helpful. You'll look at yourself differently. You'll gain insight, and you'll learn things about yourself that you did not previously know. You might even be vaulted to a new level based on what you read; I don't know - that depends on you, the reader, and your potential application of what Trump discusses. I'm not a huge fan of Trump, the man, but I cannot argue with his success. Forget those who claim he was born into money; that may be true, but he continues to make headlines with regularity..."

For my summer vacation this time I selected Kodaikanal. I booked my ticket to travel from Chennai to Kodai road by Pandian Express in Class 1A. I thought this to be First AC, but we were pleasantly surprised to see a AC coupe (H1 compartment). It was well furnished with wide beds, washbasin, wardrobe, curtains and even toilet occupancy indicators (like in flights). Good comfort provided by Southern Railways for just Rs.1336 per seat. With excellent facilities like this by train, budget airlines have tough competition for them (especially with rising flight prices). From Kodai road, Kodaikannal was about 2 hours drive.

Small and Medium Sized IT Companies (including Vishwak) in India have been enjoying Government of India Tax break under 10A scheme (managed by STPI) where by for their investments on new plant and machineries they get a 10 year Income Tax holiday. Few years back the government set the sunset for the tax break as 31st March 2009. The idea was to encourage movement in to the new China like SEZ (Special Economic Zones) where by more investments and job creations will be done. Unfortunately the SEZ Promoters are only selling spaces in them to large IT companies - the minimum you can buy is 100,000 sq. feet which is way above for any SME to afford. So this was perceived by many industry bodies as an anti-SME move. On top of this, in the last 12-18 months Rupee has been appreciating against the US Dollars by over 10-12% literally wiping off the margins for SMEs. Lastly the Finance Minister in his last budget imposed a 10% (approx) MAT (Minimum Alternate Tax) as well. So the industry was looking forward for the FM to extend some support in the budget but he didn't do it. But on the request of the IT Ministry and PM Office, the FM has yesterday announced for the extension of the STPI (Software Technology Parks of India) scheme for another 1 year till 31st March 2009. This certainly is a welcome move and I thank the Government for the same.

Now it is the turn of the industry to use the extension time to become self sustained by increasing productivity and introducing innovation, they should stop looking for perennial tax breaks.

Both in my home and work I have powerful 8GB Quad-Core Desktops running Windows Vista x64 and I love the machines. I use extensively Windows Live Writer for writing my blog posts and Live Messenger for IM. Now they come as a single install package (Windows Live Suite) easy to install. When you try to install it on 64-bit Windows the installer fails. I then found this article on how to get the individual MSI files and install the programs from C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources.

Recently I bought a XBOX 360 from USA to be used a Media Extender. The AC Adapter was 110V and surprisingly unlike your laptop/mobile chargers this doesn't support multiple voltages. So to connect the XBOX in India I needed a new AC Adapter that works in 220V. I checked in my other XBOX 360 that was purchased in India and that had a 220V rating and Amazon US Store carried the 110V as an item to buy from Microsoft. So I assumed I can buy the AC Adapter locally, but bad luck. No shop (brick 'n' mortar or online) carried the AC Adapter alone separately in India. They redirected me to XBOX service centres, who said only on production of the faulty one they will give me a new one.  I wrote to XBOX 360 support, surprisingly I got a reply from them the next business day. I asked for a new 220V AC Adapter, they replied that XBOX 360 bought in USA won't work in India due to voltage and DVD Region differences. I said clearly I understand that and I take the ownership, but they kept insisting that they don't support voltage convertors (which I never wanted) and they don't support using USA XBOX 360 in India.

We have received your email and as I understand, you would like to know if there is an available power converter that can be used with your Xbox 360 console bought from the United States (110V). I apologize for the inconvenience.

Venkat, I regret to inform you that Microsoft and Xbox do not have a first-party power converter for the console's power supply. Although there may be third-party power converter sold that might be able to address the issue, we cannot guarantee the performance of the said items.  Furthermore, use of third-party or unapproved accessories with your console may cause performance issues which would void the warranty of your Xbox 360 console. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Finally before giving up, I went to Chennai's Electronic Heaven "Ritchie Street" which is a miniature version of Delhi's Nehru Place/Lajphat Rai market or Tokyo's Akihabara. There I found a new XBOX 360 220V AC Adapter for Rs.1600. This was without any warranty, but when connected worked beautifully and my problem was solved (fingers crossed). This was much better than having a separate 220V to 110V convertor, as this was a native AC to XBOX DC Voltage conversion.

About 18 months back I was surprised to find a convenient checking-in process done by Kingfisher (Yes, I know that this was the only item I am in praise of an airline other than my favourite Jet Airways). It is by what they call "Roving Agents" who are airline staff roaming around near the entrance and checking counters. If you just have a hand baggage they check you right there with the help of a PDA and print your boarding pass as well (with the printer connected to the hip belt). I noticed the PDA they use was a Windows CE based Symbol Technologies device, but I was interested in knowing the entire solution story.

In an article that came in CIO India Magazine's supplement "10 Studies in Innovation" I saw the article "Terminal Velocity" which described this solution in detail. The Roving Agent piggybacks on the Wi-fi infrastructure available at airports. Agents carry PDAs (MC-70 from Symbol Technologies) that run a client application connected to the host system. The PDA is also connected to a portable thermal printer (Cameo-3 from Zebra Technologies) via Bluetooth. Read the entire article here.

Agreed that this solution is less appealing now than 18 months before. With most of the airlines allowing you to print your boarding pass online itself it makes Roving Agents less compelling, but from a technology perspective this is a good case study.

I was running Vista Business in my Sony Vaio Laptop for almost a year and I wanted a change for change sake. Going back to Windows XP was unimaginable and felt old. I needed something new.

So about a month or two back, I got interested in trying Windows Server 2008 (WS2008), just few weeks after it got released. I remembered the experiences of running Windows NT and then Windows Server 2000 on my previous laptops, so I thought this will not be so good with drivers and I will lose all the gizmos & UI of Vista. How wrong I was, the installation was nearly the same as Vista and all my Vista drivers that shipped with the machine (OEM Disc) installed perfectly fine including Graphics, Wi-Fi & Bluetooth. The fingerprint driver from Sony CD installed fine, but the application from Sony for fingerprint management didn't work - so that was one device I couldn't use in WS 2008.

When the basics are done Windows Server 2008 installation displays an ultra useful "Roles & Features" Wizard to complete the rest of components based on your needs. Each Roles & Features listed has a good explanation text of what it is, what it does, dependencies, etc. It I guess this shows Microsoft is listening and they took this from the good UX they saw in various Linux Distros. Many of the Linux Distros mainly due to the sheer volume of applications that they ship do a fine job on explaining the various components and help you in selecting them. I wish they included a similar Wizard in Windows Vista that will have various user roles (Home User, Games, Information Worker and Developer) - and for "Developer " it should switch off the annoying UAC, Windows Defender, TCP/IP Optimization, Shadow Copies & Restore Points, Services like Ready Boost, Superfetch, etc. and install by default Visual Studio Express Editions.

Make Windows Server 2008 as beautiful as Vista

Since Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 are supposed to be from same code-base, share most of the kernel files I wondered whether I can make WS2008 appear as jazzier as Vista with UI including Aero Interface. I found this well written, step by step guide (WS2008 as a Super Desktop OS) from a Microsoft Engineer VijayShinva Karnure

Windows Live Suite in Windows Server 2008

After installing all the components & applications like MS Office 2007 and others I tried installing Windows Live Suite (mainly for Live Messenger and Live Writer). The installation refused to install in a WS2008 as it is supported only in Desktop operating systems - how silly. I then managed to find an individual download of Live Messenger from download.com that got installed fine in WS2008. For Windows Live Writer (WLW) no such luck. So I tried copying the folder (C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer ) from a Vista PC that had WLW installed on to this WS2008 PC. Then ran "WindowsLiveWriter.exe" it worked perfectly fine. The same trick didn't work with other Live Applications like Photo Gallery - and that I didn't mind as I don't miss them that much.

Blog post to dasBlog with Microsoft Word 2007

I am making this blog post from MS Word 2007 just as a trail. Configuring Word 2007 for blogging is straightforward. My blog engine dasBlog doesn't show up in the blog type listbox. So you need to select "other", for API select "MetaWeblog" and Blog Post URL enter as "http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/blogger.aspx"