Trying out Windows Live Writer

 

I have been an irregular blogger all this while. Everytime I promise myself that I will blog whenever I learn about something interesting so that I can share my thoughts and what I learn… but then I get just too bored to logon to the blog site, compose a page using the online editor that blogger gives and then write my thoughts. A few times I had typed what I wanted to blog in Notepad and then logged on later and posted it here but that too wasn’t something that I would find enthusiastic. I must admit that I never bothered to try out any Offline Blog Editors that have been around for a while. A few days back I downloaded Windows Live Writer and saw that it offers a convenient way to write your blog posts with some nice and handy features. This post has been written using the same. Apart from the usual editing options, there are some great plug-ins which are available here. I hope it keeps me enthused about writing regularly.

Is THIS BIS ? Our Experts Panel ?

Bureau of Indian Standards ! These are the people who represent India at ISO and give their views on Standards and their adaptation. Funny to say that these people voted against OOXML. Their reasons ? Here are the minutes of the "experts" meeting, but to cut a long story short, here are my sentiments :

1) It seems BIS does not understand the fact that the design goal of OOXML was not to deal with binary file format. They seem to be more worried about conversion from Binary format to be part of the standard rather than looking at how the new standard can actually make life a lot more easier from interoperability point of view.

2) The enlightened guys in the committee objected to Custom XML being allowed to be embedded inside OOXML documents. To quote "... the provision to include custom xml elements into a document unacceptable if inter-operability must be ensured." Guys ! dont you understand the basics of what XML is used for ?

3) As stated by a learned professor of the committee, he is strongly of the view that voting for OOXML by BIS at ISO will increase the digital
divide in India and will harm the domestic industry and economy. Eh ?? On what basis sir ? Care to explain ? Or you just like making statements ? And he feels it wise to go by ODF. I hope he is currently living his life with an Open Standard wordprocessor running on an Open Standard Operating System with an Open Standard thought process. I wish the BIS team reads up on the fact that the ODF format is limited to the features and performance of OpenOffice and StarOffice.

As far as the story goes, Microsoft has won the OOXML battle and has won ISO recognition as a global document standard. Of course, Microsoft has frowned at BIS for voting against the format which as the ruling suggests, most are in favour of. However, Microsoft has agreed to work and support what BIS expects from them.

So at the end, OOXML joins the ranks of PDF, HTML and ODF amongst document formats.

Batti Bandh !

Participating in the Batti Bandh organized by Mumbai Unplugged. So here I go offline and off power for an hour.. Whoop...

Clear Bluetooth history - Windows XP

Recently I wanted to clear by Bluetooth Devices History on the Send To menu on my computer. With many files being sent to different devices and computers over a period of time, my Send To Bluetooth menu was quite cluttered with a long list. Many of these entries were useless since they were probably a one time transfer but they remained on my list forever. I tried to Google up (ahem.. tried Windows Live Search too) but there was nothing I could find for clearing this list on Windows Xp. Did a Registry Search too but to no avail. Thats when I came across a simple way to to this. My computer uses the Widcomm Bluetooth stack and here's what I did. I went to c:\Documents and Settings\< username >\Send To\Bluetooth (its a folder with the Bluetooth Icon on it) and thats where I could see 1 KB Shortcuts for each device. Interestingly these shortcuts point to c:\Program Files\WIDCOMM\Bluetooth\Bluetooth Software\btsendto_explorer.exe with a list of parameters which have the Bluetooth Device Address, Device Name and Device Class and deleting the relevant (or rather irrelevant) shortcuts result in the discovered device getting knocked out from the Send To Bluetooth list. I do not know of an option on Windows Xp which does this so I thought this might help someone who needs a solution to this.

Shastriji ?

With the 2nd of October just having gone by, every newspaper, publication, media spoke a lot lot lot about Gandhiji, the father of the nation. There were full page advertisements of most companies and most political parties trying to grab their share of attention by writing about the Mahatma's good and simple ways. Thats another story though.. But everyone seems to have forgotten an even more simple and humble person who deserves his share of respect who happens to be born on the same day as the Mahatma... Shri. Lal Bahadur Shastri. Did we care to highlight that he lead the nation at a crucial time, his slogan Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan ? Did we care to highlight that he lived a humble life ?

In India, today when farmers are commiting suicide because they are heavily in debt and with the government not doing much to ensure that these farmers live a good life. In India, today when cine stars like Mr. Bachchan who probably has never touched plough before claim to be farmers (to keep a 20 acre property). In India today when we remember the forces that guard our nation only when there's a Kargil like episode, we seem to have forgotten the values of Shastriji.

This is not the first time and I am not the first person to write about this. Every year, there are a few people who suddenly remember about Shastriji, just like I did.. after the 2nd of October. I think Shastriji deserves his respect and its high time we start doing it now. If not 2007, at least from 2008 onwards.

Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan.

VS 2008 Beta 2 is here !

Awright ! So finally Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is available for public now. This most awaited download is 99% feature ready as per what Scott Guthrie says. Can't wait till I get my hands on it. So, its time to get busy again. Theres some interesting stuff mentioned by Somasegar in his blog. So now there's a lot to go after. The time is now !

You can get the download here. There's also a video by Scott and Somasegarhere where they talk about whats new, what's changed from Beta 1 to Beta 2, the state of .NET languages like VB9 and C# 3.0.. and how .NET has changed from 1.0 to 3.5. There's a Lap around Visual Studio 2008 video by Jay Schmelzer, which is a recording of what was presented at TechEd 2007, Orlando.

WB Atlantis, WB Sunita.

Last night, all attention was on TV. With the Atlantis scheduled to land. Various TV channels were showing their own coverage.. and perspective of the event. Some were showing people with tensed expressions but waiting to celebrate, some were showing Sunita Williams' relatives being interviewed, some channels were all out to get people even more tensed by showing how the Columbia disaster happened.. and some like Times Now were focussed just at NASA, Reuters and the event. It was all happening.. and then the Atlantis came in sight. truly majestic.. and made what was called a picture perfect touchdown. Whooo... a great experience to watch it live on TV. My palms locked in a prayer, I muttered welcome back Atlantis, welcome back Sunita.

The NASA website also maintained a Landing Blog with updates as it was happening and a live video feed too. What a journey it must have been all the way out of the earth's gravitational pull piggybacked on a rocket.. get docked to the ISS... and then back home to the earth. With many such past journeys and many more to come. I got curious about other space shuttles.. existing and non existing.. and their history. I found this interesting Wiki Page which says it all. Also, here is Sunita Williams' Mission Log which I found quite interesting to read.