Good Bye Blogger, Hello Wordpress...

Note: This blog has been moved to http://blog.yuvisense.net

At last, I have finished shifting my blog from Blogger to my own domain which is running Wordpress.

You can find the new blog at http://blog.yuvisense.net and if you have subscribed to the RSS feed the feed URL(whoa thanks!), then just refresh it to http://blog.yuvisense.net/feed. I know it's a PITA when you have to go around updating RSS feed URLs, but, hey that's much better than changing that URL from your memory, right?

Shifting all the posts with comments from Blogger has mostly been a painless process, since Wordpress offers a built-in importer which simplifies a lot of things. But, this domain was registered almost 2 months ago(thanks to my cousin Sudar), but I'm goin live only today, for reasons that are so philosophical that I'll keep them to another post. But suffice to say, the fact that I tried to categorize my posts twice and made 3 redesigns speaks a point...

Wordpress has been really excellent so far and has satisfied all my requirements. You get tons of themes and plug-ins. And the credit goes to the community. Right now I am playing with lot of themes and may be even this theme may change in a few days.

So guys welcome to the new version of my blog and do let me know your comments and suggestions. More content coming up soon. And, the categorization has not yet been completed...

P.S: I made this post by copying this post of my cousin Sudar's blog verbatim and making modifications. Talk about content theft:D

One [more] reason being a at school sucks...

Steve Pavlina on Ten Reasons you should never get a job. Awesome Article. Something in the ninth reason caught my eye, and I was instinctively able to rewrite it:

9. Loss of freedom.

It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee student. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee student to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible. Thus, the employee student will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question. Stir in some office student politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave. As part of their obedience training, employees students must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on. We can’t very well have employees students thinking for themselves, now can we? That would ruin everything.

God forbid you should put a plant sticker on your desk bag when it’s against the company school policy. Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant sticker on her desk bag! Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training!

Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have fun."

Truer words of Wisdom never spoken!

I am a Journalist in High School!

I've been a journalist for almost 6 months now. A Journalist for my School Magazine, The Marian Star. I'm the One and Only Designer, One of the Editors, and an ocassional photographer(without a cam:D).

And, it's been an awesome experience. I learnt lots of things, from Serif and Sans-Serif fonts to writing Reports and Headlines. And the peer-review process and bare-bones editing were fun and challenging as well. Inshort, joining the Marian Star (which happened by accident) is probably the best thing for me since sliced bread, since I got to do a whole lot of stuff, some of which you'll be seeing in the days to come...

But, If I've been a Journalist for 5 months, then why haven't I blogged about it before? Well, main reason being, I wanted to show some work for being there, so I had to wait till I had something significant, something interview-worthy. And now, since I have not one but two of those, I guess I can break the news...

As of now, we've published 7 Interviews, 6 with teachers from our school(including the Principal) and one with the General Manager of Lotte India, and we've some good ones in the works. We've also covered every major and minor event in our school, and littered the place with reports and surveys.

So today, I am publishing those 7 interviews. PDF format. Licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial licence.

At School

Our Principal, Fr. Paulraj

Our Assitant Headmistress, Ms. Selvi

Our Hawks House Master & Mr. Best-Teacher-ever, Mr. Nicholas

Our Owls House Master & Mr. Computer, Mr. Darius

Our Swifts House Master & Mr. Motivation, Mr. Arul Rajan

Our Eagles(my) House Master & Mr. Newly Married, Mr. Dominic

Outside

The General Manager of Lotte India, Mr. In Do Hwang

PDF versions for now, but I'm working on HTML versions of them as well...

And what do you think of the designs? With 20/20 hindsight, they all look crappy to me, since they were done when I was a noob and used (horror music) Microsoft Publisher. While there's nothing wrong with that, and it certainly introduced me to designing on paper, I've overgrown it and my next interviews use the f'awesome Adobe InDesign.

So, feel the Design is Crappy? Flame me:D

Creating Thumbnails in a Single line of Code

I've posted this before, but it was a bit too convulated(just showin my age:D). So, here's another try, a single logical line statement that will generate Thumbnail of any image:

Dim I as Image

I = Image.FromFile("F:\Dash.jpg").GetThumbnailImage(tWidth, tHeight, Nothing, IntPtr.Zero)

That will give you an Image object with dimensions tWidth and tHeight. The Nothing and IntPtr.Zero are there for reasons which I have no idea about. You can do anything with it, such as save it to another file:

I.Save("F:\TNail.png",System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png)

This will save the thumbnail as "TNail.png" in the PNG Format. The .NET Framework supports almost all of the popular formats(GIF, PNG, BMP, JPEG, etc) So, hack away!

And, if you wanna do this in ASP.NET web pages, here's a pretty good article on how to.

Windows Tip: Imporve your internet speed!!! Get Rid of Bandwidth used by M$!!!

I've heard that myth some four times this month alone, and that includes twice from my School Friends, who donno an APE from an API.

So, instead of me, an unkown kid with no reputation, kick this myth in the but, I'll just link to Raymond Chen(fixed more bugs in Windows than Windows 98 crashed) who kicked it, in an eloquent, easy to understand way with a f'awesome example...

I bow down at thy feet, Raymond, and accept the worship of one more humble programmer...

I hope somebody gets fired for this...

No offence buddy, but seriously, this craps up the whole thing for Windows Live Writer:

I thought the font tag died a horrible death some time ago, but it still lives through my outdated textbooks(which have almost no mention of CSS) and now, Windows Live Writer...

Also, the Color Picker needs working:

When was the last time you saw that?

Seriously, Windows Live Writer is just plain awesome, but small non-webby stuff like these need to be ironed out before it's perfect...

Get Rid of Installation Headaches with Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

With the RTM release of Office 2007, It was time for me to install it. But, there was just one single problem: There was no upgrade path from Office 2007 Beta 2 TR to RTM. I just figured, "No Problems, I'll just uninstall it".

No Problems, eh? I uninstalled it, but still no luck: Office 2007 RTM installer just kicked me out saying that I still have "Pre-release versions of Office installed". Even after kicking me all the Registry Keys that said "Office" from the Registry hive, I still had no solution...

Drumroll please. In steps this Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. Removes the Setup Information alone for just about any installed program. Saved me a ton of headaches...

Thanks to Brian M of the Microsoft Technet Forums.

Digg2? ROTFL..

Somebody please tell me that this guy is joking...

I won't fix your computer!

I wish I had the guts to say that...

But, anyway, this guy said it much better than I could've, and the comments are even better than the post itself!

But it's free!

Was I dead? Actually, I was not. The low posting frequency was caused by a mixture of overloaded workload doing work that I needn't be doing and the exams...

Yea, the doggone stupid Quarterly exams are here. And, as usual, I finished French in about one-third the time alloted. So, what do I do?

Well, recently I've started watching Animax, and like it a lot. And, the effect of bLaugh and xkcd is not to be dismissed.

So, I got myself one more piece of paper, and drew these comical comics. Comical in the sense pathetic, but hey this's the first time, and I think I did a pretty good time.

Disclaimer: I don't intend to hurt anyone/anyone's feelings in these comics/posts. If it seems to target you, please ignore it, because I didn't intend it.

Anyway, here's the first one:

But It's Free!

 

 

 

How was that? Funny? Idiotic? Stupid? Waste of Bandwidth? Anything, just put up a bit down here, in the comments...

P.S. Licences coming up:D And, this is a precursor to something more, biggr....

[Rewrite]Conservative on memory, huh?

Original Blog Post here.

Quick: How much memory does a 1000 element array of Bytes occupy?

Doing some math, it seems like 1000 x 8 bits = 8000 bits = 1000 bytes, right?

Right?

No! Wrong!

It occupies 1000 x 32 bits = 32000 bits = 4000 bytes!

How come? Isn't Byte an 8 bit Integer? So it should occupy only one byte per element right? What the hell is it doing occupying 32 bits?

To find out, compile this code using the VB¹ compiler in your Cerebral Cortex:

Dim b as Byte = 100
Console.WriteLine(b.GetType().ToString())

What did you get? Ofcourse the expected System.Byte...

Now, compile this:

Dim b as Byte = 100
Console.WriteLine ( (b-10).GetType().ToString() )

Now, what did you expect? System.Byte, right? Afterall, b is a System.Byte, so an operation on a Byte should still be a byte, right?

Right?

 You know the drill: Wrong!

If you compile it in a real VB compiler, you'll get System.Int32! Yes, System.Int32. Not System.Byte... How? Why?

Now, try replacing the Byte in the above example with a Short, and you'll still get the same results...

But, compile this:

Dim l as Long = 1000
Console.WriteLine ( (l-10).GetType().ToString() )

Now, what didja expect? System.Int32?

However, this time you really do get an Int64. How? Why?

Friggin Reason

Digging through ECMA-335, the technical spec for .NET, I find this gem:

The CLI only operates on the numeric types int32 (4-byte signed integers), int64 (8-byte signed integers), native int (native-size integers), and F (native-size floating-point numbers). However, the CIL instruction set allows additional data types to be implemented:

So? This means that the only true signed Integers in .NET are System.Int32 and System.Int64!

But, what about the others? System.Int16! System.Byte! How?

They're just an Illussion! Here's another excert from ECMA-335:

Convert instructions that yield short integer values actually leave an int32 (32-bit) value on the stack, but it is guaranteed that only the low bits have meaning (i.e., the more significant bits are all zero for the unsigned conversions or a sign extension for the signed conversions).

So, this means that, for example, if you are storing the value 100 in a byte, you might expect 01100100 to be stored in memory, but you'll actually get 0000000000000000000001100100! But, all the bits except the rightmost 8 will always be zero in a Byte. So, while you can use only 8 bits, 32 bits are allocated! 24 Bits Wasted!

Moral of the Story

The Moral of the Story being, don't use Bytes and Shorts solely for "conserving" memory, because you make the matter worse. You are actually wasting memory, not saving it.

Rewriting

Less is More. So, I'll rewrite some of my tech posts from the past, with less words and same matter...

Aswin's enjoying at Blogcamp, while I sit here trying to study[sic]. Enjoy dude...

Imagine Cup 2007!

Imagine Cup 2007 has been announced! And, the cool thing being, even the theme has been announced!

Imagine a world where technology enables education for all

Juicy Topic. Hope to get something cool goin on atleast this time.. And, hope they don't disqualify high school students like they did last time....

Pre-RC1 Build of Vista Available!

I hate to sound like one of those dorky ads on TV, but:

Quick! Grab it while you can! In a new and improved effort, Microsoft(tm) is offering 100,000 copies of Windows Vista build 5536 to the public! Hurry, and get your iso while the offer lasts!

via Paul Thurrott's Windows Super Site

Tech Support...

Reading through Sriram's old blog, I came across this nugget from a while back. Needless to say, it's exactly the same situation as I am in.  Difference being, I have all non-techy normal people to handle, so it can get a bit frustrated...

Sriram says about the "Computer being upside down". And, he "Still Don't know" what caused that...

But...

I know! I'm such an egoisticall buff that I can't but write a blog post when I discover something I know that an uber-geek doesn't:D

It's called by a bunch of names in different video cards, but it's advertised as a "Feature". In my NVidia Geforce FX, it's called NRotate. And, in most Intel Integrated Video Cards, you still have that "feature".

What's more, there's actually a Shortkut to rotate the screen! It's thankfully off by default, but a few bits of Exploration will switch it on...

And then, all you need is to press Ctrl+Alt+Up Arrow to flip it upwards, Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow to put it up in "Portrait Mode" and so on. It's actully a rather fun prank we try at school...It's not uncommon to find upturned screens in the School Lab. But, it's rather common knowledge, so most guys know to correct it. But, it's always fun to watch the horrification of some of the lower class CS teachers when they see the Screen upturned:D

I know it! I know it! I beat an uber-Geek:D

Geee, I'm such an egoistical bastard:D

P.S. Just more link spamming, I've written about this before. More ROTFL, because she's actually supposed to be a "Fully Trained Computer Professional":D

Good Procrastination....

Reading Paul Graham on Good Procrastination. 

Here is what I think is the most striking sentence in the Essay:

 

...the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.

What's "small stuff?" Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary.[Emphasis Mine]

 

Main reason why I am completely dissed about marks and studies, atleast here...

Ever read an obtiruary that went like:

Scored 194 out of 200 in Tamil in Eleventh STD Quarterly Exam. Went to the Shop and bought Sugar. Saw 200 Films a Year...

Hopefully, more people will come to realize this, especially my Dad...

P.S. I'm posting this from Windows Live Writer, and it rocks... A couple of issues, mainly toolbar coloring has to be ironed out, but the UI is really quite responsive, and the writing experience is great, 'coz it uses the same style as the actual blog. As far as I know, this is the only blog writer that offers this feature. What else can I say: .NET Rocks!:D

Mini-Challenge from Sudar…

Ahem. After a small post when I had nothing to do about Aswin’s browsing habits, and a small joke I pulled of him in Sudar’s comments section, Sudar just posted a mini-challenge for me, asking me to try out to do the same thing to him after he posted a small screenshot.[Whew, what a long sentence!:P]

It is harder than last time, because this time, it’s just a small portion of the screen, rather than the full screen itself. Nevertheless, I did find a full sized screenshot, which he’d posted some time ago. Ofcourse, it’s outdated, but I guess I could infer something from that screenshot.

1. Uses GMail for Mail. Obviously.
2. But, also uses Yahoo mail ocassionaly, as characterized by the Yahoo Mail bookmarklet on the toolbar.
3. Too lazy to remove IE6 from the Quicklaunch bar, or even just to hide the Quicklaunch bar.
4. Too lazy to install GAIM, and instead has both GTalk and Yahoo Messenger installed.
5. Uses Bloglines for feedreading.
6. A compulsive user of Raaga for listening to music.
7. Has two folders called log and Dev which he uses frequently. Real frequently.
8. Uses a Blog-Writer that integrates with Firefox, and has a Quil icon. I’d have to check it out for the name, but it’s not Performancing for Firefox.
9. Uses an extension that adds Yahoo to the Menu in Firefox.
10. Is a complete customization freak. How else would you have the Menu and the Navigation bar on one line, and the bookmarklets and Searchbox on the next?
11. He doesn’t have a label named “Self” for emails from himself.

Ahem. Most of these are not mostly useful to anyone, except maybe for social engineering. Or, maybe, if there exists some obscure security bug that can be exploited if you have IE6 on your Quicklaunch, but don’t use it:P Or, some another bug that gives malware ability to read from folders on your Bookmarklet toolbar. But still…

Anyway, another post when I had nothing worthy to do…

This year’s taught me the full meaning of the word “busy”, and why 11^th STD is cool as well as hectically nonsensical. Hope to write a blog post on that. And, write MCP Exam 70-536 as well

                            

Aswin’s a Kid!

Oh, read it fully guys…

Incase you didn’t know, Aswin’s the Java God around the Microsoft Student Champs. Heck, he even has a tutorial or two on Java MIDP Applications, which I gather are the equivalents of .NET CF apps. Oh, he’s a Microsoft Student Champ, and a damn good one at that. Right now, he’s all hot and bothered over Ruby on Rails[who isn’t?:P], and that goes to the extent of trying to find out about this thing called as Railsconf, which looks like a Conference for Rails People[Sorry Aswin, it’s not in India….yet!]    

    He was among the top 20 Finalists in the whole of India for the MSAPP sorta-cometietion, which by and itself is cool.

    But, he’s a kid;) How? Lemme enumerate….

1. He has IE6, and that too as the First item on his QuickLaunch Bar, right before Firefox and Opera 9!
2. He uses a “Rotating World” as his “Working in Background” Mouse Pointer
3. Likes food which is mashy basy watery [tamil:kolakola]
4. Some time ago, All Punctuation will come in doubles or triples, or if you’re lucky, even Quadruples, but that’s changed now. Examples here, here and here.
5. The Site Layout/Template hasn’t changed much in the almost-one-year since he’s started.
6. Last, but not least, he reads the blog of one Lame, Useless, Sick, Idiotic, Stupid, Dumb, Brainless, Hairy Kid called Yuvi. Did I mention Dumb? I’ve seen that guy, even spoken with him, and believe me, I’m yet to meet anyone so clueless…

Lemme Come to the Point. As Mr. Nicholas says, “Pullikku Vanga”

So? What’s the Point of this Blog Post? As Raman Shankar likes to say, what’s the Big Deal? Really, nothing. Yep, nothing. I was just browsing through my Feeds in IE7, saw Aswin post this Screenshot, and having nothing much interesting to do right now, just pulled his leg a bit. And, what else would a Lame, Useless, Sick, Idiotic, Stupid, Dumb, Brainless Hairy Kid do anyway?:P

But, there’s a small Point here.

I learnt all this from his blog. And, if I’d also had his Search History….[Evil Smile]

And, if I were to combine his blog run on Blogspot[a Google Service], with his emails on GMail[another Google Service] and his IM history on Yahoo Messenger, I’d virtually know more about him than he himself!

But ofcourse, I don’t have access to these, though I know they are there. But, I know atleast two who have access to these big repositories of Information:

• The Big Bad ol’ Government
• The Corporations themselves

The thing is, the first, Government is run by mostly people without a Brain, and the second by people who have Brains, and only Brains.

So? What was the small point I was referring to? Get People who have brains into the Government.

Forget it. Talking about politics, in India, is so pointless, that it actually swallowed up the small point I was referring to…..:P

Anyway, Have Fun, Aswin:D

[School]Yrtsimehc Note Last Page

Uh, I know I’m supposed to be writing about [Inside .NET], but I’ve had a tough time deciding where to start: I’ve actually written and torn away several drafts. But, anyway, I’ll write it eventually, so it doesn’t matter…

Update: Any Ideas guys? I'll post the list of supposed Topics somewhere next week.... But, my Knoledge is a mere fraction of the Knowledge of you guys, so I'm asking for advise:)

What matters is, I’ve been stuck. You know, one of those people who think everyone else is a dumbass, and it’s their appointed duty to boss over people as if they know everything. Ofcourse, they are usually the worst at what they’re doing, but it doesn’t matter to them.

Anyway, in yet another torturing period of boring Yrtsimehc of having forced to copy stuff that’s already in the book in a more, uh, say unclear manner, I turned my attention to the back of my Yrtsimehc note book and did some usefull work. And, here’s the result of that half a period of useful work:D

Note: I know, I know. Just String.Reverse it. Reason for that is that there’s one guy from my School who’s not my friend who’s reading this Blog, and I almost got into hot water for the last post, and I’m sure I’ll get into a Volcanic Lake if he were to grok what I’m writing about…. So, please bear with me…..

10 Unspoken commandments by the Yrtsimehc Rehcaet

1. Leave the part of your brain that does independent thinking at home. I don’t have one, so it must be dangerous.
2. Thinking an Idea by yourself is against the will of God®.
3. Having fun is the work of the Devil®.
4. People who laugh are under the evil influence of the Devil®, and need to be brought under the Will of God™ by such techniques as bashing them for no reason, and giving them extra homework and fines for no apparent reason.
5. People must not be happy. Ever. How could you…..
6. Teaching means reading what’s in the textbook in the most unclear manner possible, in such a way that nobody will have a hairline chance of understanding anything that’s said.
7. Asking doubts is against the Will of God™, and against giving respect to teachers. If you respect your teacher don’t ask doubts.
8. The most important thing in a Classroom is my Concentration, and not your concentration. It shouldn’t matter a damn if you understand or not, as long as it looks like I’m the best teacher on Earth, atleast to the delusional few who fear me.
9. The best tool of the teacher is Fear. Ever.
10. The Most Important one: Never teach the students, always teach the Blackboard, the Fans, Tubelights, and ofcourse the Floor along with the Textbook: They’re always present during all Exams, so they need to know everything.

This List is Incomplete, because of the fact that the whim of the Yrtsimehc Rehcaet becomes a commandment the next nanosecond.

Anyway, this is just me Yrtsimehc Rehcaet bashing. Ofcourse, in due course, I’ll stop typing Yrtsimehc Rehcaet and start writing and thinking “I hate Yrtsimehc”, resulting in me shying away from Yrtsimehc for the rest of my life, eventually voiding me of the benefits of Yrtsimehc. That’s how millions of Students’ lives have been spoilt by the unscrupulous Teachers who’re not really, uh, Teachers: Just morons, Jocks, claiming to be Teachers….

And yes, it’s fanatical people like this who spoil religion…. That’s how it came into being this corrupted mass of blabbering idiots from the useful way of life that it was intended to be.

Anyway, just hoping that Yrtsimehc Rehcaet doesn’t grok this, though I think that has as much chance as a Windows OS running on a Linux Kernel…. Oh wait, we used to say “as much chance as Apple switched to Intel”, so I guess we better be on our Guard now:D

Thanks, and comment man, I’m tired of finding no comments on my blog

[School]French is Sexy, & Mid Term Exams.…

Atleast for us….

Where else could you have the pleasure of completing a whole paper in about 10 minutes and watch your poor mates try to complete their’s in 1 and a half hours and fail miserably? I took French, and ofcourse I know if I were to study French in France, I’ll get a boatload more of stuff, but right now, we have as much stuff to study as a STD I boy, so we’re enjoying it by teasing out the Poor Tamil and Hindi Guys who sweat out over nothing…..

The real bummer was, most of our Answer Papers were only two papers of written Sheets, while the Tamil Question Paper by itself was some 3 Papers of Printed text….:D

Inside .NET

Err, I forgot to mention that my Mid Term Exams started yesterday, so the Inside .NET Articles would be a bit delayed…..