Windows Tips and Tricks

Have you ever felt the need to access your desktop when you are logged in using some different windows profile which has less privileges?

I have two users on my laptop (like most people), 1) Vivek 2) Others. These days my laptop is generally used with "Others" login for some reasons. And did I tell you that I hate logging off and logging in again, specially when I have around 10-20 programs running (one of which is a browser with around 15-20 tabs).

Now, what do I do when I have to access my desktop? Or some folder under "Documents And Settings\Vivek"?

I use "runas" command. I kill explorer.exe, and start "explorer.exe" again using "runas" (obviously with my credentials passed to it). This will instantly bring up my desktop and also allow me to access my personal folders.

Any better way of doing this?

Cheers,

Programming language with a difference

I like exploring different programming languages. Recently while
browsing for new languages, I hit upon a weird programming that
uses whitespaces as its syntax!!!

Check this out to believe it for yourself :-) 

An extract from the site:

"Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters (spaces, tabs and newlines) syntax, ignoring them, as if they weren't there. We consider this to be a gross injustice to these perfectly friendly members of the character set. Should they be ignored, just because they are invisible? Whitespace is a language that seeks to redress the balance. Any non whitespace characters are ignored; only spaces, tabs and newlines are considered syntax."

Ruby on Rails...

Came across this amazing interactive tutorial for RoR.

RoR looks quite good. It is amazingly powerful and simple.
Check out for yourself. Will write more on RoR once I get a
little more hang of it.

Random thoughts on Google products

Off late I have noticed that I have been spending around 70-80%
of my online time on one of the Google products. Be it the search,
GTalk, news, picasa or socializing on orkut.

Orkut, I believe, is a wonderful product and I personally have been
able to get in touch with few of my old, long-lost friends.

Recently while discussing orkut with my friend, I thought of few more
additions or rather further integration of orkut with Gtalk/Gmail.

Here is my wish-list:

1. First of all, whenever you add a friend, there should be an option to add him/her to your Gtalk list.
   
2. Once you have done that, incorporate Gtalk with offline messaging. If you want to scrap someone, just leave an offline message and tell GTalk to publish it in recipient's scrap book.
   
3. Moving your mouse over any of your contacts in Gtalk should show a preview of their orkut profile (again customizable at both ends).
   
4. When you join a community in orkut, you should have an option to send/receive community posts using Gmail. If you select this option, orkut should offer to create a label/filter automatically for you in your Gmail (or obviously select an existing filter/label).
   

All these features will make orkut more widely available. Will specially
allow people to access posts on orkut even if their workplace does not
permit browsing social networking websites.

These are just some random thoughts, will add more if I "storm" my
brain :-)

Time's photo essays and life at Googleplex

Time magazine has a great series of photo essays on various 
current affairs and  miscellaneous topics.

Index of photo essays can be found here...
And here is one on life at Googleplex...

Using "dot" in your Gmail address

Was surprising to note that you can insert a "dot" anywhere in your 
gmail username and the mail will still come to your mail account.

What this means is if your gmail address is someone@gmail.com, any mails sent to some.one@gmail.com or s.omeone@gmail.com will come straight to your inbox.

A bug? Or a feature? Documented here

Windows Development Process

Came across this 3-part long article which gives a comprehensive
insight on the development/testing/deployment strategies Microsoft
used for their Windows 2003 operating system. Though a very long
article, it is worth a read for everyone. Gives an idea how difficult
it is to develop and deploy a successful software product.

To quote Mark Lucovsky (Windows Server Architect) from this article:
"There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50
million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. It's an enormous task,
the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no
other software projects like this."

 

Back...

Am back... 

I started this blog way back in 2003 but didn't had anything to share. 
Have deleted my previous posts and will try to keep this place updated 
from now on...

Cheers,