I was recently browsing through some links and in the end reached this page. Maybe you’ve looked into such pages before but this was the first one for me !

The page looks very normal but the animation effects that happened when it loads in the screen was really way too cool ! I was wondering first that it might be some scripting trick and so dived into the source to have a closer look. But i didn’t find any such scripts in any of the pages. It was really scary because i knew that it will take pages of script to get that kind of thing working but this page didn’t have any such reference. And then, in the top, there was this magic META tag which did the trick silently ! Check this out.

<meta http-equiv=”Page-Enter” content=”revealTrans(Duration=1.0,Transition=23)”>

Awesome !!! The page really has a very creative effect eventhough the author of the page didn’t have to spend more than probably 2 mins to whip it up and include it in the page. If you were to do this in ASP.NET 2.0, we could probably include this in a Master page for the site and be done with it !

Speaking of META tags, check out this site which has a complete list of all the valid META tags.

Also check out Shital Shah’s NotepadX. It does really look cool, not to mention the source is also included ! Very cool.

‘DevDays’ – my first MS event in my short software career till now. I definitely was excited about it and after reading through the agenda covering Whidbey and Yukon, I had expectated quite a bit of mental workout. I got a pass for Devdays Bangalore after a lot of nail-biting suspenses and finally on May 5, i hoped all that was expected was about to happen.

The opening keynote was very normal, not something i had expected after reading through some of the opening notes that have been delivered recently in many conferences. hmm.. Well after that, another developer who spoke, promised us to show the nitty-gritties of programming because this is ‘DevDays’ ! Ha, there’s something assuring, i thought.

Then we moved on to the technical sessions … the interesting bits eh !!

The first one was about ASP.NET 2.0. They spoke about Master pages, personalisation, Role based authentication as all inbuilt features in the upcoming ASP.NET versions. Thats cool. But haven’t i already read all that online. Show me something else interesting, something thought provoking, some complex application where it could be used, saving valuable developer time. But ahem, to my dissapointment, the session ended very soon without any surprises. Even the question and answer session at the end of it was very short 🙁

Then was the session on Winforms and CLR 2.0. The speaker detailed about Generics, partial types and Iterators. Wow cool ! Again, can’t anyone read the online entries from innumerable people talking about these basics. This is not what i want or expected. What happened to the anonymous delegates, and details on all that was mentioned and all the other really neat stuff that the MS devs have spent hours to include in the upcoming release ?! Not a word. Very dissapointing really … About Winforms, there was something new, some new controls but not anything other than that they have shown in the Winforms site.

Ok. Now comes the hands on session. How cool ! Am gonna do some cool code in Whidbey finally. I do not have to toil anymore with collections that are loosely typed with Objects. We can create strongly typed Generic classes over which we could apply constraints and manage to create a robust collection !!! With all that hope we entered the hall, only to find that there weren’t enough seats left. Ugh. Share the computer with a fellow programmer. Ok. Not bad. We could do something like XP here, aha. Or so i thought. The instructor got onto the podium and started dictating exactly what to do. Hello ! These are not kids here for God’s sake. Do give us the requirements, and we will code it out. If we need help, we will look into Google, MSDN or ask help from someone who knows this stuff. Don’t and Never dictate. After 10 mins, i lost all the vigor with which i entered into the place. So much for hands-on sessions …

After the lunch there was the Yukon session. There were quite a bit of surprisingly new things. But probably IMHO there was quite a bit of focus of the Reporting services, which could have been dealt with in later sessions. But anyway this one was good ! Ah at last. Then came the hands-on for Yukon. Oh God will these people never change their ways … More dictation again …

It was in the back of my mind that we have the ‘Ask the experts’ session anyway to clear all our doubts. No problem. Since this was scheduled for more than an hour, we were expecting to see some interesting questions and some thought provoking answers here. But, it was dissapointing again ! Not on the part of the experts, but on the developer’s side.

Certain things dawned upon me then. Ofcourse I was not the only guy who was bugged by this contentless showcase but then we have all been following blogs and all the discussion that has been happening in the past year. May be that is the reason why these sessions weren’t interesting at all. As someone said in the Keynote, I was expecting to see some hardcore nitty-gritties of programming in Whidbey and Yukon but instead it just turned out to be an overview of the basics. There could have also been an indepth session on the CLR 2.0 which covers behind the scenes on the exact kind of things that the CLR does for each of the new constructs and how it is being handled. That would have been very interesting. Also, I would have certainly liked it a lot if the speakers didn’t treat the developers like kids and start popularising the absolute ‘drag-drop-build an application’ philosophy.

Well, at the end of the day, for all the money’s worth, we got a bunch of 4 CDs containing Whidbey, ASP.NET Resource Kit and an Infopath SDK ! Cool ! But wait, where’s my Yukon ??! Hey, please give me a copy … Why did you forget that ?!

There goes my perfect sessions. What a start 🙁

Scoble, is there any reason or background why the DevDays sessions were like this in India ?! I’m sure i am not the only one with this opinion. Mahesh, Babu shared my opinion about the event and so did many others who had come over. Any thoughts or comments anyone ?

Quote :

Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn’t drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, “It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my own damned liver.  – Jack Handy

Definitely a very cool perspective huh 😉 Will work for beer !! Ok. Time to check out these bunch of interesting links now…

• There are a series of support webcasts from Microsoft that have been posted recently. Most of them talk about the internal workings of the ASP.NET infrastructure and the general nitty gritties of programming in ASP.NET. Check out the bunch of links that i found below …

• Microsoft ASP.NET Server Controls : Learn about the internal workings of custom ASP.NET server controls such as ViewState, PostBack, Events, and Rendering.

• Microsoft ASP.NET Threading : An in-depth look at the Microsoft ASP.NET threading architecture, and what it means to your Web applications. You will learn how to monitor the ASP.NET ThreadPool in real time, use the real-time ThreadPool information to tweak the machine.config to yield the best performance for your application, and avoid threading trouble when using COM components from ASP.NET (especially when you are upgrading from ASP).

• Microsoft ASP.NET: An Overview of Caching : Hear about the features of the different types of caching that are available in Microsoft ASP.NET, and where to use them. This also includes information that will help you gain a general understanding of how caching can improve performance in Web applications.

• Data Binding in ASP.NET Web Forms : Learn how to retrieve data from different data sources and populate it in data bound controls. You will hear about various ASP.NET Web controls and the binding techniques related to them. You will learn about simple data binding, but the WebCast will focus on complex data binding.

• Microsoft ASP.NET: Side-by-Side Execution with ASP.NET : A brief introduction to the side-by-side concept, which involves running multiple versions of programs and .NET Framework on the same computer. It will then discuss how those concepts apply to ASP.NET applications, both at run time and during their development, including using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to create Web applications.

• A very useful KB article that details “How to create keys by using Visual C# .NET for use in Forms authentication”. Learn and improve your encryption of form data…

• Inheritance versus composition: Which one should you choose? – by Bill Venners of Artima fame. In his own words, its a comparative look at two fundamental ways to relate classes. A must read.

• The list of presentations done at the EMEA Architects tour 2004 in Helsinki. Very very nice 🙂 Don’t miss this one.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

• This is a new site where there are architecture related articles, links and news. Just seen it. Nothing to comment yet. Check it out.
• Building a Defensive Perimeter Against Malicious User Input – Simple and true.
• The SOA Implementation Framework White Paper. See here.
• A cool article on creating SQL Based RSS Feed !
• A bit old article but found the idea very interesting. Yet to try out the code. Read about Circular Buffer here …
• And Google’s stats show that Win XP, 2K and 98 comprise almost 87% of the OS that are used to access Google worldwide !!! Wow ! But i still can’t beleive that 22% of those people are still using Windows 98 ! hmm ..

Nothing new and you might have already noticed it, but i wanted this link here to stay for future reference.

MS presents the online SQL Server 2000 System Table Map.

Included in this document:

• Log Shipping Tables in the msdb Database map
• SQL Server Agent Tables in the msdb Database map
• Database Maintenance Plan Tables in the msdb Database map
• Replication Tables in the msdb Database map
• Backup Tables in the msdb Database map
• Systems Tables in the Master Database Only map
• Systems Tables in Every Database map
• Replication Tables in Each User Database map
• Replication Tables in Each Distribution Database map

Pretty cool.

On a sidenote, a friend of mine pointed me to a post on a small performance test wrt sorting and filtering of custom collections on 1 million custom objects… Not bad. Not bad at all !

Standing on the edge of the shore,Sea water ripples and lashes its waves ;Its violence and anger makes sense for sure,As though water shall make rocks into caves.

Ha. It feels absolutely beautiful, beyond words and measure I flinch not now, to spit on all the illusions of the earth For there exists not any surrogate pleasure That can feed this Fire in the heart’s hearth!

All the wait, change, moulding intentions all along Something lingered with the will to persist Simple like a child’s first word or a bird’s sweet song; I try not any more against the flow to resist.

With different faces for different people all day Still not forgetting which mask fits whom This work i do uncontended will now not stay Ripping apart all facades and making more room.

Is this the absolute silence after the storm In the wilderness, amidst chaos, the perfect pattern As though emerging out and clings to the heart in absolute form The never ending cycle, always revolves around the rhythm.

Searching and searching all these times
I finally know not what I want.
Beloved, my love, what are thou ?
Am I even searching for thee ? Not sure.
But incomplete feelings haunt at all times.

Beloved, art thou a woman I seek ?
Who shall answer the riddle of contradiction ?
Art thou my other half, the remaining hemisphere
Or is it just another myth that muddles the mind ?
Blank yet full, is it only part of the sphere ?

If thou art a woman, right for me
What am I seeking more from thy spirit ?
Is it again the lust, for I am a mortal
Or is it imperceptibly purer and truer than that ?
Question, questions. What answer will releive this spirit ?

If thou art a woman, the one for me
Whom I’ve seeked to unite, all eternity
Then art thou the missing serenity ?
In all forms, incomplete with a similar search
Art thou the only luminosity, I seek ?

But what is it that I desire ?
I found you, now what ? Then what ?
Is it the marriage, the physical bondage
Or is it a mutual emotional understanding
Or what else is there to desire ?

Like a friend says, I dont want more,
No more little nils, producing little nils,
producing little nils, and even more …
Enough misery here laid and no more to give
I desire not this trap anymore.

Beloved, crooked my vision might be
The incomplete half you are, that I dont see.
But may be the wretchedness is due to thy absence
I know not but patiently waiting for thee,
The wait, sweet and miserable for all eternity.

Joy, boundless, limitless and pure
Subtle as it is for which the heart leaps
The serene blanket falls, the mind so sure
This the only remedy, the memory which it keeps.

A call from far away, the destiny calls
So long the aspiration contained, on the brink
The heart filled with joy, rises and falls
The mind has forgotten now how to think.

All I wanted, aspired was to read
To destroy the innocence that corrodes the core
A symbol shown, ah someone did heed
Two years and more, the joy now fills my every pore.

Something stuck, from whence I do not know
Suddenly all I desired was “nuclear”;
The smallest, imperceptible particles that do not show.
All that has been haze is now clear.

Then what, the question arises
I cringe and cry in agony and grief
I have struggled long with this eternal crisis
With will strong enough, shall see its end.

They want me to speak, not be moody
I am not moody, I retort but am stable
They dont understand, they insist
They comment on a man with dialogues…

What am I to reply to all that ?
Do I need to, is another question on the edge
All one can do is laugh at the faces,
Not on theirs but on destiny’s and await what is to come.

Smile, laugh, joy and all that sustains
I try, persist and shall succeed.
Nothing really matters on what opinion they contain
All that is needed now is the will to proceed.