e Upendra .com - Blog

The First Ever Google Chrome Crash!

2008-09-05T16:20:00

Today Google Chrome crashed for the first time, and with it, it took away 15 tabs. The really frustrating thing is that it did not care to restore my session :(

I am wondering where the process isolation for each tab is. But then, it's a beta. Can't complain much...

Hey! Why gmail is still in beta? Does it mean that one day I will find all my emails gone, and I cant complain because its a beta? That will be too frustrating. I have been using gmail for almost 4 years now and I am totally dependent on it...

Someone please explain me this.

Why I Love and Why I Hate Google Crome

2008-09-04T10:54:00

After Google launched the beta of its browser Chrome, I started exploring it. I was in love with it within minutes. Gmail was opening faster than Outlook, and so were other site. However, by the evening, I started disliking it as well. Its become a kind of love-hate relationship.

Here I am trying to put rationally why I love it and why I hate it.

Why I am in love with Chrome

Its Fast

The first thing, it is blazingly fast. The difference is visible. Working with JavaScript intensive sites like Gmail is especially a great experience. As I mentioned earlier, the time to open emails and going back to inbox seems actually faster than Outlook. (I do not want to talk about Lotus Notes, that I HAVE to use at work. Anyone who has worked with it, know how painfully resource hungry Lotus Notes is.)

Other sites open fast too. Moreover, the difference is visible. You do not need a specialized test to see it. If you think a proper test is needed, see this page, which has run a early performance test and is wayyyyyy better than IE7 and much better than any competition.

Dragging dropping tabs

Dragging out a tab to form a new window, and then draggin it back to the orginal window is so much fun. I don't know if I will ever use this feature. But its definitely good :-)

Keyboard shortcuts

Chrome has some interesting Keyboard Shortcuts. Below is few of my favorite. The one I like most is CTRL + K. It puts a ? in the address bar and then you just start type what you want to search using your default search engine.

You can get a full list here.

Ctrl+N — Open a new window
Ctrl+Shift+N — Open a new window in incognito mode
Ctrl+T — Open a new tab
Ctrl+Shift+T — Reopen the last tab you’‘ve closed. Google Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you’‘ve closed.
Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8 — Switch to the tab at the specified position number. The number you press represents a position on the tab strip.
Ctrl+9 — Switch to the last tab
Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+PgDown — Switch to the next tab
Ctrl+Shift+Tab orCtrl+PgUp — Switch to the previous tab
Alt+Home — Open your homepage
Type a web address, then pressAlt+Enter — Open your web address in a new tab
Shift+Escape — View the Task manager
Ctrl+G or F3 — Find next match for your input in the find-in-page box
Ctrl+Shift+G or Shift+F3 — Find previous match for your input in the find-in-page box
Ctrl+U — View source

Task Manager

I have a bad (?) habit of keeping 20-30 tabs open at once in FireFox. (I cant think of doing this in IE for the obvious reasons.) It does happen sometimes that because of one bad performing page, my whole session is gone. The Session Restore works most of times, but sometimes it does not.

With Chrome, you have process isolation for each tab. Therefore, if one tab dies, only that tab dies. The other tabs are safe. Really a welcoming feature!

Another useful thing that comes with it, is the Task Manager. Chrome has its own task manager so you can see how each tab and each plug-in is working. Cool!

Bookmarklets

Bookmarklets is one interesting thing, that you should give it a try. These small JavaScript, saved as favorites, do things like changing page color, resizing window to a specified size, searching the selected word in dictionary, and may other interesting things.

Something off topic, the web application I work on has a page with lots of question, where you have to answer No to all the question before you can proceed further. It would of use practically, but during the development, I just need to say No to all. I wrote a simple script to answer No to all these question and saved it as a bookmarklet. Works great for my whole team.

Coming back to the point, these Bookmarklets are IE specific, and do not work in FireFox. However, they do work in Chrome. Means one thing to mean, Chrome has better support for the Javascript.

Why I hate Chrome

Organizing Bookmarks

The fist bad thing is no easy way to organize bookmarks. It imported my FireFox and IE bookmarks very easily, but it put all FireFox bookmarks in one ugly folder. The only way to organize is to drag and drop.

No RSS Feeds

It has no support for RSS feeds. Firefox and even IE handle RSS feeds. When RSS feeds are becoming so popular, I do not believe how Google could ignore handling RSS feeds. If you click on RSS link, all you will see the content XML, without formatting, filling your screen. Ugly!

As expected after experiencing the RSS torture, XML files do not open. IE and FireFox handle them so well.

Bad RAM management

If you leave Chrome open for while, go to some other application, and come back, the tabs have been erased from the RAM. The result is that when you go to a tab, you see a blank screen and then the content starts to appear. This happens when my Laptop has 2 GB of RAM.

Missing Keyboard Shortcuts

There is no keyboard shortcut to append .org or .net. Opera and FireFox have it since long.

I am sure that there will be more things showing themselves as I continue using it. Until then, I am going back to use it. Post in the comments what you think.

View page source when right-click is disabled

2007-10-04T10:21:00

There are instances the page uses frames, and you want to view the page source. If you do View > Source, it will not show you the source of the page that you want to view, but only the container page. You could right click and say view source, but then there are certain sites which have disabled right click using javascript. What would you do then?

Solution: Use Maxthon browser.

In the bottom right of the browser, you will see a button that says "Force Open Links in New Tabs".

Before clicking a link, that will opens the page in the frame, click this button. Now the pages will open in a new tab. (You can turn it off later if it is irritating). You will have the page opened in a new tab without frames. Now you can always use the View > Source menu option.

Simple but useful tip I would say.

The Buffalo Theory

2007-09-21T11:12:00

Here is what they called, Drunken Wisdom: The Buffalo Theory

I hope you will it as much as I did...

GMail V2 - Taking Gmail to the next level

2007-09-20T16:35:00

I came across a few scripts to enhance the functionality of GMail. I was impressed! But then, I found a Firefox extension: Better GMail, and I was speechless.

This has around 25 scripts to take GMail literally to the next level. Do try it out, you will not regret.

Click Here to go the developers page

Funny Linux Commands to bring a smile

2007-09-19T14:33:00

I found these commands quite funny, haven't tried them yet. Downloading Ubuntu, will try soon :-)

% cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% "How would you rate your boss's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Osama?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change operation go?^
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% \(-
(-: Command not found.

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink matter
matter: cannot create

Ignore whitespace in Beyond Compare

2007-09-17T12:58:00

When you compare code using Beyond Compare and see a big red block of difference, many times the difference is actually just of tab space.

You can set your beyond compare to ignore the leading and trailing whitespace. Go to Tools > Options > Rules. Select 'Everything Else' at the bottom. Click Edit. Go to Importance tab and check Leading Whitespace and Trailing Whitespace. Finally, close all boxes. That's it!

Here I have assumed that you are comparing aspx or .vb/.cs files. If you are comparing file types which are defined in Beyond Compare, you need to select the appropriate rule instead of everything else.

झूठपकड़ रोबोट

2007-09-14T14:17:00

एक दिन राजू के पापा एक रोबोट ले कर आये. वह रोबोट झूठपकड़ सकता था और झूठबोलने वाले को गाल पर खीँच कर चांटा मार देता था.

आज राजू स्कूल से घर देर से आया था... पापा ने पूछा "घर लौटने में देर क्यो हो गयी?"
"आज हमारी एक क्लास थी" राजू ने जवाब दिया...
रोबोट अचानक अपनी जगह से उछला और जमकर राजू के गाल पर चांटा मार दिया.
पापा हंसकर बोले, "ये रोबोट हर झूठको पकड़ सकता है और झूठबोलने वाले को चांटा भी मारता है. अब सच क्या है यह बताओ... कहाँ गए थे?"
"में फिल्म देखने गया था" राजू बोला. "कौन सी फिल्म?" पापा ने कड़ककर पूछा
"हनुमान"
चटाक... अभी राजू की बात पूरी भी नहीं हुई थी की उसके गाल पर रोबोट ने एक जोर का चांटा मारा.
"कौन सी फिल्म?" पापा ने फिर पूछा.
"कातिल जवानी."

पापा ग़ुस्से में बोले "शर्म आनी चाहिए तुम्हे. जब में तुम्हारे जितना था तब ऐसी हरकत नहीं किया करता था."
चटाक... रोबोट ने एक चांटा मारा... इस बार पापा के गाल पर.

यह सुनते ही मम्मी किचन में से आते हुए बोली "आख़िर तुम्हारा बेटा है ना... झूठतो बोलेगा ही"
अब मम्मी की बारी थी... चटाक... .

Format decimal datatype with Commas in T-SQL

2007-09-10T10:22:00

Ever fall into a situation where a column is a Decimal, and you want the output to have a comma after every three digits?
T-SQL's CONVERT function can do it for you. The syntax of the function is:

CONVERT ( data_type [ ( length ) ] , expression [ , style ] )

Here, we will be utilizing the power of the last parameter style. The style can be set to the following three values, when converting money datatype into a character datatype:

0 - No commas and only 2 decimal points
1 - Commas every 3 digits, and only 2 decimal points
2 - No command, and 4 decimal points.

Now since, the datatype stored in the table is actually decimal, we first need to convert it into money, and then convert it into varchar or char.

select convert(varchar(50),convert(money,'54120000.2154'),1)

The result would be:

--------------------
54,120,000.22
(1 row(s) affected)

Simple. Isn't it?

Online Names Misread

2007-08-30T17:14:00

All of the following are legitimate companies that didn't spend quite enough time considering how their online names might appear...and be misread.
These are not made up. Check them out yourself!

"Who Represents" is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is www.whorepresents.com
Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com
Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net
Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com
There's the Italian Power Generator company, www.powergenitalia.com
And don't forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales http://www.molestationnursery.com/
If you're looking for IP computer software, there's always http://www.iPanywhere.com/
The First Cumming Methodist Church Web site is www.cummingfirst.com
And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Web site, http://www.speedofart.com/

XML data truncated

2007-08-27T02:01:00

I was working on XML feeds for my site and found a strange problem.

The XML returned by the SP was getting truncated. After 'googling' for a while, I found this on MSDN:

The XML data row is truncated at 2,033 characters when you use the SqlDataReader object

When you read Extensible Markup Language (XML) data from Microsoft SQL Server by using the SqlDataReader object, the XML in the first column of the first row is truncated at 2,033 characters. You expect all of the contents of the XML data to be contained in a single row and column.

This was exactly my problem. I found the solution as well. The solution is to use ExecuteXmlReader instead of SqlDataReader.

Dim con As New System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection
con.ConnectionString = "whatever"

con.Open()

      Dim cmd As New System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand
      cmd.Connection = cn
      cmd.CommandText = "SPName or SQL Statement"

      Dim ObjXMLReaderAs System.Xml.XmlReader
      Dim OutPut As String

      ObjXMLReader= cmd.ExecuteXmlReader()
      ObjXMLReader.Read()
      Do While ObjXMLReader.ReadState <> System.Xml.ReadState.EndOfFile
        OutPut &= ObjXMLReader .ReadOuterXml()
      Loop

You can see the detailed articles here and here.

3 Engineer Jokes

2007-08-24T23:34:00

1

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"

The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."

"The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."

2

An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress.

The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there. The engineer said, "I like both." "Both?" Engineer: "Yeah.

If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done."

3

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.

The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"

The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude! "

The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens-keeper. Let's have a word with him." [dramatic pause]"Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"

The greens-keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind fire-fighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment.

The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight."

The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them."

The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"

Impact of Job Change

2007-08-24T23:32:00

A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question. The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath, and stopped few centimeters from a shop window.

For a second everything went quiet in the cab, and then the driver said: "Look mate, don't ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!".

The passenger apologized and said, "I didn't realize that a little tap would scare you so much."

The driver replied, "Sorry, it's not really your fault. Today is my first day as a cab driver - I've been driving a van carrying dead Bodies for the last 25 years...

When was Windows installed?

2007-08-21T18:23:00

Ever wanted to know when was the last time you installed Windows on your PC?

Here is an easy way. Open command prompt, and type

systeminfo | find /i "install date"

This will give you a result like this:

The command systeminfo alone will give you a long list about current system configuration, very much like the sysinfo32 command. sysinfo32 has a GUI and systeminfo is command line. When we write a command after a pipe ( | ), we are actually redirecting the results to another command. So, out of the long results returned by systeminfo, we are filtering out the install date by using find command. Simple, isn't it?

Truth about Sardars

2007-08-20T17:59:00

Source: a forwarded mail.

In the diwali vacation, Jayant and his couple of friends had gone to Delhi.

They rented a taxi for local sight-seeing. The driver was an old Sardar, and boys being boys, Jayant and his pals
began cracking Sardarji jokes, just to insinuate the old man.

But to their surprise, the fellow remained unperturbed.

At the end of the sight-seeing, they paid up the hire-charges. The Sardar returned the change.

Moreover, he gave each one of them one rupee extra and said, (in Hindi, of course),''son, since morning you have been telling Sardarji jokes. I
listened to them all and let me tell you, some of them were in a very bad taste. Still, I don't mind coz I know that you are young blood and are yet to see the world. But I have just one request. Here I am giving you one rupee each. Give it to the first Sardar beggar that you come across in this city."

Jayant continued," That one rupee coin is still with me. I couldn't find a single Sardar begging on the streets of Delhi."

Friends, we all love sardar jokes. But the fact of matter is that Sikhs are one of the most prosperous and diversified communities in the world. The secret behind their universal success, according to me, is their willingness to do any job with utmost dedication.

A Sardar will drive a truck or set up a roadside garage or a dhaba, but he will never beg on the streets.

काँच की बरनी और दो कप चाय

2007-08-09T16:54:00

ये कहानी मुझे किसी ने ई-मेल की थी. इसका लेखक कौन है, ये तो नही मालूम, लेकिन ये है अच्छी.

जीवन में जब सब कुछ एक साथ और जल्दी-जल्दी करने की इच्छा होती है, सब कुछ तेजी से पा लेने की इच्छा होती है, और हमें लगने लगता है कि दिन के चौबीस घंटे भी कम पड़ते हैं, उस समय ये बोध कथा, "काँच की बरनी और दो कप चाय" हमें याद आती है ।दर्शनशास्त्र के एक प्रोफ़ेसर कक्षा में आये और उन्होंने छात्र से कहा कि वे आज जीवन का एक महत्वपूर्ण पाठ पढाने वाले हैं...उन्होंने अपने साथ लाई एक काँच की बडी़ बरनी (जार) टेबल पर रखा और उसमें टेबल टेनिस की गेंदें डालने लगे और तब तक डालते रहे जब तक कि उसमें एक भी गेंद समाने की जगह नहीं बची... उन्होंने छात्र से पूछा - क्या बरनी पूरी भर गई ? हाँ... आवाज आई...फ़िर प्रोफ़ेसर साहब ने छोटे-छोटे कंकर उसमें भरने शुरु किये, धीरे-धीरे बरनी को हिलाया तो काफ़ी सारे कंकर उसमें जहाँ जगह खाली थी, समा गये, फ़िर से प्रोफ़ेसर साहब ने पूछा, क्या अब बरनी भर गई है, छात्र ने एक बार फ़िर हाँ.. कहा अब प्रोफ़ेसर साहब ने रेत की थैली से हौले-हौले उस बरनी में रेत डालना शुरु किया, वह रेत भी उस जार में जहाँ संभव था बैठ गई, अब छात्र अपनी नादानी पर हँसे... फ़िर प्रोफ़ेसर साहब ने पूछा, अब तो यह बरनी पूरी भर गई ना ? हाँ.. अब तो पूरी भर गई है.. सभी ने एक स्वर में कहा..सर ने टेबल के नीचे से चाय के दो कप निकालकर उसमें की चाय जार में डाली, चाय भी रेत के बीच में स्थित थोडी़ सी जगह में सोख ली गई...प्रोफ़ेसर साहब ने गंभीर आवाज में समझाना शुरु किया - इस काँच की बरनी को तुम लोग अपना जीवन समझो... टेबल टेनिस की गेंदें सबसे महत्वपूर्ण भाग अर्थात भगवान, परिवार, बच्चे, मित्र, स्वा और शौक हैं, छोटे कंकर मतलब तुम्हारी नौकरी, कार, बडा़ मकान आदि हैं, और रेत का मतलब और भी छोटी-छोटी बेकार सी बातें, मनमुटाव, झगडे़ है..अब यदि तुमने काँच की बरनी में सबसे पहले रेत भरी होती तो टेबल टेनिस की गेंदों और कंकरों के लिये जगह ही नहीं बचती, या कंकर भर दिये होते तो गेंदें नहीं भर पाते, रेत
जरूर आ सकती थी...ठीक यही बात जीवन पर लागू होती है...यदि तुम छोटी-छोटी बातों के पीछे पडे़ रहोगे और अपनी ऊर्जा उसमें नष्ट करोगे तो तुम्हारे पास मुख्य बातों के लिये अधिक समय नहीं रहेगा... मन के सुख के लिये क्या जरूरी है ये तु तय करना है । अपने बच्चों के साथ खेलो, बगीचे में पानी डालो, सुबह पत्नी के साथ घूमने निकल जाओ, घर के बेकार सामान को बाहर निकाल फ़ेंको, मेडिकल चेक-अप करवाओ..टेबल टेनिस गेंदों की फ़िक्र पहले करो, वही महत्वपूर्ण है... पहले तय करो कि क्या जरूरी है... बाकी सब तो रेत है..छात्र बडे़ ध्यान से सुन रहे थे.. अचानक एक ने पूछा, सर लेकिन आपने यह नहीं बताया कि "चाय के दो कप" क्या हैं ? प्रोफ़ेसर मुस्कुराये, बोले.. मैं सोच ही रहा था कि अभी तक ये सवाल किसी ने नहीं किया... इसका उत्तर यह है कि, जीवन हमें कितना ही परिपूर्ण और संतुष्ट लगे, लेकिन अपने खास मित्र के साथ दो कप चाय पीने की जगह हमेशा होनी चाहिये ।

In search of NULL

2007-08-08T09:25:00

NULL has a special meaning. This was created to fulfill the need of having a character, that means ’nothing’ and it equals ’nothing’. So, it doesn’t even equal itself. Suppose, you have a column named ’PRICE’ in your table with datatype ‘money’. For a particular product, you don’t have data for price. How would you store it? Store a zero? But that would mean that the product is free!

Consider another scenario. You have a table, where you store the comments written by visitors on your site. Whenever a comment is written, you have to either approve it or disapprove it. If you disapprove, a ‘sorry’ mail is sent, if you approve, that comment is shown on your site, and a ‘thank you’ mail is sent. In this case, what would be the value of the column ‘approved’ initially?

Above two cases make a good case for storing a NULL.

Now the problem, how would you search for NULL in your query? The obvious answer would be to use something like:

select * from sometable where somecolumn=NULL

But above will NOT work. The reason is NULL is a special character and it equals nothing, not even it self. So, the solution to this problem is the IS NULL operator:

select * from sometable where somecolumn IS NULL

This works perfectly. Another solution is to set ANSI_NULLS to off:

SET ANSI_NULLS OFF
GO
select * from sometable where somecolumn=NULL

This will work fine as well. The reason for this is compliance to SQL-92 standards. When you set ANSI_NULLS to off, you are actually turning off the compliance to SQL-92 standards. Read more about it here.

Happy Coding!

eUpendra.com Goes live finally

2007-08-06T10:54:00

Ladies, and gentlemen. It gives me immense pleasure to announce that www.eUpendra.com is live...
I admit that it is not yet complete, there are broken links, dummy text, and error on the site, but still, it can be showed to the world now :-)
I will request all of you to sign my guest book..