XP Customization

Seemed like I had seen every possible wallpaper and customization for XP, till I chanced upon http://www.crystalxp.net/. Highly recommended, specially the BricoPacks customization software which make Windows XP look exactly like Vista. They also have an amazing collection of wallpapers! The WWW is fun again!

Odyssey Bookstore Pune

Finally a book-store which had almost all the stuff I've been looking for, for the last 2-3 months. Though the store looks small compared to others like Landmarks or Crosswords, they have a sophisticated collection of books and CDs. I went there looking for the 'Tao of Jeet Kune Do', though they didn't have it, I got 2 other amazing books on the same subject which were also on my list. I must say the customer care is pretty good, they took down the request the 'Tao...', lets see how soon they can get it!

They also must have a pretty neat collection of CDs. I say 'must have' since I didn't have much time to browse through their collection, I just asked for "Deep Purple - Knocking at your back door" and "Best of Shania Twain", they handed me both without much searching, amazing!

Crosswords, you could learn a few things from these guys.

Sparring fear

Two days back I sparred with four or five different students. Everyone one of them used me as a punching bag with my 100% co-operation!

I travel out of my city for my Martial Arts classes so there is usually a gap of 2 - 3 week between the days I attend. I train at home 1 - 2 hours everyday when I'm not attending and keep picturing techniques and moves I can try the next time I spar.

Never has it happened that a single technique I had thought of earlier could be executed during actual sparring. I seem to freeze during sparring and all the grand plans I have disappears into smoke.

I finally searched google for "fear of sparring" and came across some good blogs. I chanced upon some sayings which have motivated me:

'When practicing martial arts, don't be the artist; become the art'

'Every Black Belt is a White Belt who did not quit'

If things work out for me I'll try and analyze how these saying motivated me and helped me to act differently in my next sparring session. Till then keep training.

Patenting the conecpt of Patents and links

I wonder if the concept of Patents is patented.
Anyway, a few links which discuss the stupidity and greed of people concerning patents:

Believe it or not! Some ass**** patented the idea of swinging on a swing, and I'm not even talking about Java.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6368227-fulltext.html


Legendary Richard Stallman talks about the implications of software patents.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jun/20/comment.comment


Read this idea for a patent.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220050160005%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20050160005&RS=DN/20050160005


A small article software programmers.

http://gadgetopia.com/post/2727

Kudos MediaMax !!!

MediaMax users have been facing problems with their accounts for sometime now.
I too couldn't access any of my files.....TILL TODAY!
How happy I am to see all my pics and programs back online!!
MediaMax rocks!

SqlDependency not firing

Grrrr...after hours of trying various pieces of C# code and tinkering with SQL Server 2005 settings it turns out that the database owner was the problem.

class Program
{
static string connStr = "Server=DARKSTAR; Initial Catalog=MyDatabase; Integrated Security=false; User Id=sa; Password=XXXXXXXXXX";

static SqlDependency dep;

static void Main(string[] args)
{
SqlDependency.Start(connStr);
TestSqlNotificiation();
SqlDependency.Stop(connStr);
}

static void TestSqlNotificiation()
{
try
{
using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(connStr))
{
conn.Open();

SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand();

cmd.CommandText = "Select RollNo, [Name] from dbo.Students";

dep = new SqlDependency(cmd);

dep.OnChange += new OnChangeEventHandler(OnDataChange);

SqlDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader();
{
while (dr.Read())
{
Console.WriteLine("Name = " + dr[1].ToString());
}
}

dr.Close();

Console.WriteLine("Waiting for any data changes...\nPress to end program.");
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
finally
{
//SqlDependency.Stop(connStr);
}
}

static void OnDataChange(object sender, SqlNotificationEventArgs e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Info.ToString());
Console.WriteLine(e.Source.ToString());
}
}
}

This is the program which should fire the OnDataChange function when rows change in the Students table. However, the event was simply not firing.

Finally I chanced upon this article which made everything work right. It turned out that I was having problems with the database owner. I just changed it to 'sa' for the time-being:

ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::MyDatabase TO sa;

SQL Server 2005 Express Advanced Edition reports AGTACCOUNT error during Setup

SQL Server 2005 Express Advanced Edition reports following error during setup:

"SQL Server Setup has determined that the following account properties are not specified: 'AGTACCOUNT' . The properties specify the startup account for the services that are installed. To proceed, refer to the template.ini and set the properties to valid account names. If you are specifying a windows user account, you must also specify the password for the account."

After trying some of the stuff mentions at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=365116&SiteID=1 I finally gave up.

But wait a minute, there was something about a template.ini file.
This is what I did and it worked. First copy the install files from your Read-Only media (CD/DVD) to a folder on your hard-drive. Open the template.ini file (directly under the root folder containing the setup files).

Look for the following section:

; Note that if SQLBrowser is already installed, SQLBROWSERACCOUNT and SQLBROWSERPASSWORD are ignored.

SQLBROWSERACCOUNT=
SQLBROWSERPASSWORD=

SQLACCOUNT=
SQLPASSWORD=

AGTACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE"
AGTPASSWORD=

ASACCOUNT=
ASPASSWORD=

RSACCOUNT=
RSPASSWORD=
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
; To use the *AUTOSTART features, specify 1 to start automatically or 0 to start manually.

See the bolded line, all you need to is specify the account for it and then launch setup.exe with the following parameters:
setup.exe /settings c:\template.ini

Looking at the command line, it seems likely that you could get away by copying and editing just the template.ini file instead of all the installation files to hard-disk.