Server Move
November 23rd, 2006 // 6:11 pm @ Amar
I will mostly be shifting this blog to its new home next week. So there will a bit of downtime while the actual domain transfer and a server shift happens. If this blog disappears for a bit, don’t worry, I am very much around, and will be back online as soon as the domain names gets transfers from yahoo and gets setup on the new hosting server.
Category : General
A new milestone for the Web
November 2nd, 2006 // 1:11 pm @ Amar
Just started the day with Techmeme and was plesantly surprised and nostalgic with this article over at CNN. The Web reached 100 million domain name sites. I built my first website in 1995 when the internet first came to India in a mass scale. Have gone thru various websites and projects during this time and it is really nice to see that the web has grown to 100 million. But sadly, most of them are registered by link popularity and domain name sellers. There seems to be 50% active sites out of them, and the rest are all owned by people who either want to get rich quick by selling good domain names at a premium, or fool google into making their active site popular. Somehow all these have made the web experience a bit painful. Has anyone tried to register a domain name and found that it is near to impossible to get a decent domain name free. And most of the names do not have active websites under them. It takes me less time to ready a small website than to find a good active domain name for my website. It took me over a month to find www.reviewlibrary.com and i can tell you that the experience is not at all very pleasant.
Anyways, congrats to each and everyone who participated in making the web a phenomenal success, and bring it from 1200 bauds to super fast broadbands.
Category : General
Forms Authentication with SharePoint 2007
August 25th, 2006 // 2:08 pm @ Amar
Would like to take this opportunity to introduce Jason Flowers. He is my colleagues at Trinity, and has recently started blogging. He already has some nice MOSS 2007 stuff out there. If you are struggling to enable Forms Authentication on your SharePoint 2007 site, then this article will help. Welcome Jason to the world of blogging 
Category : General
Where to start with MOSS
August 21st, 2006 // 6:08 pm @ Amar
I know this has been posted all over the internet by now, and I have been a bit slow in learning MOSS realted stuff, but I have been devoting my spare time in learning .NET 2.0 and related technologies. Figured, that I should first focus on .NET 2.0 and related framework technologies and enhancement before jumping to learn MOSS. So that’s where I had disappeared. Stopped learning SharePoint since beta 1.
Just like anyone else, when I decided that now the time is right for me to start with MOSS, I was faced with a overload of information available on the net and did not know where to start with. Found this very nice resource at Steve Sofian blog and would highly recommend it as a starting point. I am starting with the WSS tutorials, as having deep knowledge of WSS will be of great help when I start with SPS.
Category : General
Virtual PC is now free.
July 13th, 2006 // 1:07 pm @ Amar
Just heard that Microsoft has made Virtual PC free. Download Virtual PC 2004 SP1 here.
Edit: If you are installing on a laptop, make sure you get the laptop patch here.
Category : General
Light a Candle for victims of the Mumbai Attacks
July 13th, 2006 // 12:07 pm @ Amar
Please visit the CNN-IBN site and light an e-candle for the Mumbai Victims. For every candle lit – CNN-IBN channel is giving 1 Rupee to the victims. Thank you for you time and efforts.
Category : General
What I learnt about Nvidia Device Drivers
April 26th, 2006 // 4:04 pm @ Amar
Recently Nvidia updated their Forceware drivers with a new version, and I wanted to update the drivers for the Nvidia Geforce FX 6200 Go chipset on my laptop. Nvidia claims that their drivers supports a Unified architecture and it was strange that their latest Forceware drivers failed to update my laptop saying that it did not find any compatible hardware.
Thus I began to research on the topic to find why an Nvidia driver failed to detect the 6200 Go chip in my laptop. To sum up my findings in short, the Nvidia unified architecture is actually valid. It means, that for all Nvidia chipsets there is just one single device drivers. So the latest Forceware drivers are bound to support my Geforce 6200 Go chip. But the installer is configured not to install on any mobile version of the graphic cards, thus allowing the laptop maker to support the mobile driver and bring out a customised driver for their laptop. The downside is that I have to wait till my laptop manufacturer releases an updated driver.
However, there is a way to bypass the wait for a manufacturer and install the latest Nvidia drivers. You will loose out on any customisation ( if any ) by your laptop manufacturer. But you can get the latest updated device driver from Nvidia itself to run your graphics chip. The decision on which cards the driver installation will support, is in an INF file which contains definitions of all the different manufacturer customised chips. The downloadable drivers from Nvidia do not contain these definitions. All you have to do is find your laptop manufacturer codes and put it in that file by hacking the installer. And you are all set.
Seems to complicated and too much of a hassle? No worries… Just head over to http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ who release a modded version of the driver as soon as Nvidia releases a new version. This site has definitely been a great help in getting Oblivion up and running on my laptop and getting my system to support the latest Nvidia driver.
Category : General
Oblivion
April 20th, 2006 // 1:04 pm @ Amar
If you are wondering where I have been, I have been battling to get Oblivion to play on my laptop and it just keeps crashing. Thankfully a new Oblivion patch is in the works and so I guess I will hold my Oblivion adventures till the patch comes. So hopefully you will see some good posts from me soon.
Category : General
Where has spring gone???
April 12th, 2006 // 3:04 pm @ Amar
I reached Coventry on 8th April thinking that I will be greeted by the whiff of spring air. Far from giving me a taste of spring, the weather gods decided to greet me with a cloudy and rainy day. To top it off, it snowed on the 9th night.
Am currently sitting in London since yesterday and the weather was predominantly rainy. Today it is cloudy and windy. Makes one wonder, where have all the seasons disappeared?
I was in Calcutta, India between 12th March and 8th April. Generally spring weather in Calcutta is very pleasant and temperatures are around 25 – 30 degree celcius. But it was completely reverse of UK. Temperatures touched 43 degrees which is generally one of the highest temperatures in summer around end of May. This was end of March. Average temperatures hovered around 35 – 40 throughout my stay.
I also made a short 2 day trip to Bangalore around end of March. Bangalore climate used to be cool and pleasant with temperatures around 12 – 20 degrees. It was around 25 and above there.
Such drastic change in climate makes me wonder if we are loosing our weather? Effects of global warming are seen very drastically in all parts of the world. Temperatures are become more and more extreme. It seems that the joys of spring and the beauty of autumn will soon be lost forever. If nothing is done and we keep on burning fuel and heating the planet at this breakneck speed, our children will never experience pleasant and enjoyable weather which we did at one time.
We should all at least make some effort to save the planet in our day to day lives. Small things like closing the tap while brushing our teeth, not letting the engine run idle, switching lights if we leave a room, using public transport whenever possible will go a long way if we all do it. If everyone of us, keeps a plant or two and tends it, think of the number of plants which will increase on this planet. Let’s everyone at least make some effort. It will definitely make a big difference.
Category : General
Back to Coventry
April 7th, 2006 // 8:04 am @ Amar
My holidays are finally over. Will be travelling back to Coventry tomorrow. Hopefully from next week, I will be able to write more regularly. With the Office 12 NDA partly lifted, I will try to write a bit about the new revolutionary Office.
Category : General