Ramblings of a Coder's Mind

Sensible Vision came out with this pretty amazing software called FastAccess that does a decent job at facial recognition. But using it on Windows 7 has given me a few issues so I thought I should just talk about it.

I’ve been using Windows 7 ever since the first beta was made public. I have been using Sensible Vision’s FastAccess on every build I’ve used so far. Currently, my laptop is on Windows 7 build 7137.

I have 3 major issues with FastAccess.

1. On every boot, it refuses to log me in. But if I logout/lock workstation and return a few times, it starts recognizing me. It seems as though it is not able to store its data and every reboot needs it to be recalibrated (even though there are different texts for the first software boot as opposed to every other time it starts up, it just seems that way).
2. This is not really a Windows 7 specific bug but why can’t Sensible Vision start its software after the camera boots up? Not doing so seems pointless to me.
3. Fine, you can’t bring the camera drivers up the boot order. I think I’ll just type in my password if you don’t mind. But FastAccess does mind. It actually logs me out 5 seconds after I logged in. I find this extremely irritating.

I have tried googling up for Windows 7 support and there seems to be none. In fact, when searching for “Sensible Vision FastAccess Windows 7″ on Google the second result you see is of this blog :|

First, I’d like to hear feedback from any FastAccess users out there who are on Windows 7.
Second, I’d like Sensible Vision to let its users know about its Windows 7 plans and whether it is planning to use something like the Windows Biometric Foundation (WBF) (Assuming they are applicable).

Note: As far as I’ve read so far, WBF seems to be for Fingerprint sensors though I’m hoping they might provide support for other kinds of biometric data such as facial recognition. Still looking into things though.

Firstly, I’d like to apologize to all that have been waiting for this. My health and unusually booked schedules are to blame. Lets get into the trip on a day to day basis then!

Before I begin, I’d like to thank Microsoft for having us in Seattle despite the prior two scheduling issues. More importantly, I’d like to thank Jas who did a great job of not only showing us around campus but around Redmond, Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland and other neighboring places always making sure we get the best experience during our trip, getting a chance to try out different things and to keep each one of us happy. He really did make the trip perfect in every respect and for that I’d like to thank him on behalf of my entire team. Of course, thanks to the Interop team as well for having us there and giving us the opportunity to interview. The experience we bring back from meeting all those great people will indeed carry us a long way.

There are quite a few things that I saw a lot of which, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of. If I was, I have uploaded them to my Picasa Web albums here.

Beware, the post is (4500 words) HUGE. Sorry about that. :P Without further adieu, let’s begin! Read the rest of this entry »

With the release of the first beta of Visual Studio 2010 which includes support for F#, it was only a matter of time till I tried my hand at it.

I don’t go for Hello World programs. Apart from C, the first code I’ve written in every other language (since I heard this question) has been the same. Keeping up tradition, here’s the F# port.

let Check (x: int) = float(int(sqrt(float x))) = sqrt(float x)
for x = 32 to 99 do
let sqVal = pown x 2
if (Check(sqVal / 100) && Check(sqVal % 100)) then
System.Console.WriteLine(sqVal);
done

This code aims to find every 4 digit number that is a perfect square whose upper and lower two digits are both perfect squares. This question was part of my sem 1 C paper and got me a 0/10. Clearly the examiner didn’t understand my answer. :P In honor of the great act of stupidity on my side (of writing such a solution in an exam), I recreate this in every concievable language as my first code :)

This is my first piece of code in a functional language so if I could have done this better, please let me know. Now to try out Haskell :)

A note about the VS 2010 F# editor. I know its not meant for performance but compiling clearly takes a couple of seconds. The IDE also could do with a bit more work with its intellisense because it didn’t like remembering System.Console and instead searched for the string everytime meaning I would hit System.Configuration instead (I am used to hitting enter after ‘Con’ due to C# :))

The Windows key might have started as something a tad bit redundant (considering Ctrl+Esc does the same thing) but the Windows Key is so much more.

I have already spoken about the Win+(1-9) to activate programs in Vista’s Quick Launch Toolbar and its transition to taskbar applications in Windows 7. Of course, everyone knows about Win+Tab activating Aero Flip 3D but there is more to this.

Here is one that really strikes me as super-useful. On Windows 7, you can now use Win+Up to maximize a window, Win+Down to restore a maximized window and minimize a restored one, Win+Left/Right to Aero Snap it to the left/right of the screen. Keyboard warriors such as myself are going to love this! :)

I’ve already fallen head over heals for Aero Snap on my 1080p laptop monitor. It kind of makes up for my need for dual monitors. Aero snapping with the laptop track pad was a tad bit inconvenient. Issue no more! :)

Here’s a list of Win shortcuts I can think of which work in Windows 7. I have found that a lot of keyboard warriors don’t know quite a few shortcuts. Sharing always helps ;)

• Win: Open/Close Start Menu
• Win+F: Windows Search
• Win+Tab: Aero Flip
• Win+Up: Maximize a restored window
• Win+Down: Restore a maximized window or minimize a restored window
• Win+Left: Aero Snap to the left of the screen
• Win+Right: Aero Snap to the right of the screen
• Win+D: Show desktop (Forced)
• Win+M: Minimize all windows
• Win+M+Shift: Restore windows after Minimizing all of them
• Win+(1-9): Activate Window from task bar
• Win+X: Open Windows Mobility Center (Non Desktops only)
• Win+L: Lock Desktop
• Win+Space: Show sidebar (in Vista); Possibly doing the same in Windows 7 (different Sidebar functionality in 7)
• Win+E: Open My Computer
• Win+B: Jump control to (select) Notification Area (System Tray)
• Win+Pause/Break: Open System Properties
• Win+P: Computer Projection modes
• Win+F1: Open Windows Help and Support
• Win+R: Open Run Dialog
• Win+Shift+Left/Right: Move to the monitor to the left/right of the screen (circular; for multi-monitor systems)

Well, I’ve been browsing through Visual Studio 2010 for a while now. I’ve not gotten into coding but did get a chance to have a look at the User Interface for this product. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed.

1. WPF is in: Oh yes, you heard right! The start page uses WPF for a clean and slick use. Have a look at the start screen (image in the gallery at the bottom)
2. New context highlighting: Its bigger and better than ever! The editor looks slicker that ever before and I’m loving every byte of it ;)
3. Changed Intellisense drop down menu: I must admit, my favourite part of the VS editor is its code intellisense and they have changed things up a bit in this department. I must admit though, I haven’t figured out what the Ctrl+Alt+Space exactly does :(
4. Inbuilt support for Office projects: Want to write managed code extentions for Office products? Go right ahead. Start your work out of the box ;) I believe you don’t need to export PIA with your projects any more. (More on this in a technical detail post)
5. F# supported OOB: I’m sure you have heard of F#, the object oriented functional programming language. Well, it isn’t an outcast any more. :P Visual Studio 2010 has full support for the language. No more need for downloading and installing separate binaries. :)

One thing still remains the same. The installer takes a lot of time to finish up the entire process. Also, .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 asked me for a reboot before proceeding with the rest of the installer (Don’t remember 3.5/2.0 asking for reboots in prior Visual Studios). I dislike installers asking me to reboot but I especially hate it when it doesn’t give me an option to restart later ¬¬. The installer isn’t going to go ahead either way. The rest will be completed after reboot. You should let me restart later ;( I’ll make sure I mention that in my feedback to the VS team :)

There are a lot of videos out there about Visual Studio. You might want to check out channel 9 for 10-4. The 10-4 shows are downloadable so you can get the weekly video podcast whenever you want :)

Here are a few screenshots for you people to gobble up. Hope you find them as tasty as I did ;)

Next up in VS talk shall be the different technical aspects of what has changed in VS and the new .NET Framework. Also, I might look into the new kid on the programming linguistic block, F#.

Au revoir!

Microsoft is usually eager to release updates to its products. I have been seeing Vista SP2 news and downloadable links all over the internets. Release Candidates have been around for a while now but I never got any of them because I didn’t want to spend an hour or so on the update (that’s how long SP1 took to install) and then possibly have to do it again when the final SP2 comes out. I was just waiting for Microsoft to push SP2 through Windows Update.

Microsoft has come up with the RTM for Vista SP2. They have asked manufacturers to start shipping with Vista SP2 until 7 comes out. But they seem to want to hold off the release (for some reason not clear to me) until the original release estimate they had given, the end of Q2 (end of June).

May be it has something to do with what Bill Veghte had to say..

“If you’re just starting your testing of Vista, with the release candidate and the quality of that offering, I would switch over and do your testing on the release candidate, and use that going forward.”

- Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President for Windows Business @ Tech Ed 2009

So I’m guessing Microsoft wants to push Windows 7 further. They are marketting it towards that set of population which didn’t like Vista, either because of the Mojave factor or its “high” hardware requirements (mostly the former I presume). As for organizations, if XP legacy is an issue, surely Windows 7’s XP Mode is there to help ;)

I still feel Vista doesn’t get its due credit, may be not as bad as Windows ME but Vista does deserve more credit. Most techies will tell you how much they love Vista but most laymen users generally prefer XP. I for one haven’t had many compatibility issues, nothing Compatibility Mode didn’t solve.

I like Windows 7 but at least for now, I shall still be in love with Windows Vista despite my systems having already moved to Windows 7. For its time, it was a truly great OS. It had tid bits of features that gave users a better UX and simultaneously had showstoppers to provide the WOW effect ;)

The one last machine I have on Vista is going to updated with SP2 tonight. I suggest you do the same :)

Yes, they are out! You might have been hearing about the two for the past week or two around the interneticle blogosphere. I certainly did and as with every VS release, I was excited. VS is the best IDE I have seen so its no surprise that a new release excites me.

Initial reports state that the editor now uses WPF at points, has a brand new editor and improvements in syntaxes. Another thing they have changed is VS 2010 now has native support for F# :o This release isn’t really high on performance and optimization but gives you a good look as to where this project is going. Seems really exciting the things they have done. You can have a look at the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit VS 2010 TS B1 :)

All this and much more in this release. I’ll have an initial review up by tonight when I get my hands on it.

People who are waiting to download it can do so off MSDN Premium, Microsoft Downloads or try the Web Installer. I’m sure there are other not so legal ways to do it as well :P If you are looking for a x64 VS 2010 Team System then don’t. There isn’t one :( So its x86 for all of us! Don’t worry, the following OS’ are supported:

• Windows 7 RC (x86 and x64) Ultimate Edition
• Windows Vista (x86 or x64), all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows XP (x86 or x64), Service Pack 2 or later, all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows Server 2003 (x86 or x64), Service Pack 1 or later, all editions
• Windows Server 2003 R2 or later (x86 or x64), all editions
• Windows Server 2008 (x86 and x64) or later (all editions)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 RC (x64) Enterprise Edition

Windows 7 might be supported in this release but Microsoft doesn’t really recommend using VS 2010 B1 on Win7. Why? I guess as with most betas, you want bug reports that are purely based on your product. Two betas working together could do a lot more weirder things than just one.

If you already have Visual Studio 2008 on your machine then don’t worry, VS 2010 B1 will install beside it without disturbing your precious VS 08 install ;) As with any beta, don’t rely on it for your major dev work and avoid installs on your primary machine.

I guess a lot of programming lovers are into development on smaller platforms. I certainly am one of them. I usually speak of work I’ve done on actual programs when in actuality, there are a lot more smaller pieces of code that I write that never get shown off publically. Most of them are known to a select group of people; the ones who are meant to find use to it.

Not many know this but despite mIRC scripting being non mainstream and not a perfectly good platform to do a lot on, I spend a lot of time (perhaps more than I should) working on it simply because its fun. It might be because I do spend a lot of my time on IRC on a certain network for helping users of a certain software :P I have been battling with myself to make the scripts (for myself and maybe even the ones for others) I’ve written public but I never managed to win that debate.

Another such example is my work in PHP. I am not much of a web designer but god knows, I’ve tried my hand at it :) I do however enjoy the occasional web development most of which arise from a need to do something. One such example would be a web scrapper I developed to get information about future Manchester United matches. I was on the brink of making it SMS me results and notify me of future matches but then my source, the Manchester United Official website decided to change its data format. A small fix would bring things back on track but with 2 matches left in the season (one league and one Champions League final) I didn’t see any point in doing so. I was planning to expand this and include feeds for Real Madrid’s matches which my dad follows along with league tables for both the leagues but all of these are things that will remain known to only a handful of users (at the moment, 3 to be precise)

I have spent most of my spare time in the last 2 months working on Project Euler. I haven’t written many solutions since mid way April when college exams began but that is where I have spent at least a couple of weeks of good development time. Why? I like solving computational problems. I enjoy finding efficient solutions.

The popular view (at least here) is to judge a developer on the basis of his performance on the work he has done. Now my discussion today is limited to students. One (commonly used) yard stick (at least here) would be the number and more importantly the quality of projects one has worked on. People judge the grade of the work and things such as the technologies used. Also, the technologies one is familiar with is also granted as a plus.

I for one, find this extremely flawed. The above yardstick doesn’t go too well for programmers who spend less time developing full fledged software and are more into component based development. For example, writing a script in mIRC where you need data from an application running on your machine would require you to make a dll to get this data for you. Thus, what seems like a script in mIRC is actually a script along with a dll probably made in something like C++ or Delphi. The number of technologies one is familiar with does not show the level of fluency and in depth knowledge.

This “method of judging” I speak of is one used when you don’t have direct physical communication with the person in question or when you have to have a first glance impression of someone. Sure, first impressions are quite often incorrect. But given a choice, wouldn’t you want to make an accurate judging of someone’s skill at first glance. So if you have limited access to them, say you only hold to their resumes, how do you judge them?

Which path of developing should students choose? One path would certainly be to dedicate myself to making big time projects; applications that would have wide scale appeal. Another would be to work on those projects as them come but along side work on small scale pieces of code. The latter allows a developer to indulge in what he enjoys until he strikes and idea worthy of pursuing. If a potential employer asks you of the things you have developed, small scale experience in the above stated platforms wouldn’t have too much commercial application (PHP yes, but I certainly am no expert. I could be with a bit more practice :) mIRC scripting is certainly non commercial).

How do you judge yourself as a developer? Especially when you are a student who spends his “free” time writing code, what parameters do you use to judge yourself. One (commonly used) yard stick (at least here) would be the number and more importantly the quality of projects one has worked on. But doing so, a developer who works on various non-commercial platforms wouldn’t rate too high.

I for one feel that this yardstick isn’t fair. I know a lot of developers who work on small time components which are crucial to achieve targets. Others work on different platforms, quite a few of which aren’t all that commercial. Most of them are really talented and when needed they will move to any necessary platform and get the job done (which is what a good developer should have the ability to do; take concepts and apply them to different situations). Sure, a lot of young coders out there are into popular platforms such as Ruby For Rails, Perl and Python. Just because others aren’t, does that make them any less of developers. Is it a combination of the type, size and quality of projects along with the platforms you’re good at that make you a good developer (basic versatility) or is it something else?

How would you describe a fresher (student with experience working in an organization) as a good developer? If its past records are the way to go, how much does experience in non-commercial platforms weigh in against commercial ones?

That’s 5 questions I’d like people to answer. I had a discussion along these lines with a friend recently and thought I wondered what others felt. Do let me know what you think :)

Have you heard of Wolfram Alpha (also called WoflramAlpha or Wolfram|Alpha)? If you haven’t, you best do it quickly. Its going to be brought online in about 30 minutes from now. I can’t wait! :D

Wolfram|Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research headed by British CEO and founder, physicist Stephen Wolfram. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer instead of providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer. It is an effort to make all the information known to man to be made available to everyone at their computational fingertips ;)

Cyc founder Douglas Lenat was one of the few given an opportunity to test Wolfram Alpha before its release:

“The resulting mosaic covers a large portion of the space of queries that the average person might genuinely want to ask. [...] It handles a much wider range of queries than Cyc, but much narrower than Google; it understands some of what it is displaying as an answer, but only some of it [...] The bottom line is that there is a large range of queries it can’t parse, and a large range of parsable queries it can’t answer.”

Wolfram Alpha is built on Wolfram’s earlier flagship product, Mathematica, which encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and numerical computation, visualization, and statistics capabilities. It is written in 5 million lines of Mathematica code and runs on 10,000 CPUs (though the number is upgraded for the launch).

You can watch the launch live on the Wolfram|Alpha launch webcast and you can see an Introduction to Wolfram|Alpha by Stephen Wolfram which shows you the basics of what will be available during today’s release. If that introduction video doesn’t blow you away, I don’t know what will (other than a F5 :P)

I do believe the Wolfram engine has the capability to be the next Google. I’m not saying that Google will lose out because it still serves a distinct purpose. If you need to find webpages, you still need Google. But I believe Wolfram won’t take time to eat up Google’s information based search market as long as Wolfram can solve their performance issues (load handling and providing good response times mainly).

Update: 10 mins since “release” time and all the Wolfram sites seem to be down. Even the blog. Another DDOS in the making and I’m not surprised. I guess users will have better luck over the next few hours/days :) Its a service which seems worth waiting.

I’ve had a bit of reprieve from work here and I finally got some time to install Windows 7 on my laptop. Though my desktop has had the latest builds available to me, they have all been on a test drive. My laptop however had to wait until I was done with my academic work before it could move permanently to Windows 7 and afford any issues that might come its way.

So here are a few things I’ve found interesting in Windows 7 that should make your Windows 7 User eXperience a lot more enjoyable.

1. Basic Application Overhaul: This one is something that us users have known would be part of Windows 7 for months prior to the first Public beta. Windows ships with a lot of basic applications that make life so much more awesome. These applications have been more or less the same for ever now. Well, its 2009 and its time for a facelift and some bottox ;) The most notable ones are Paint, Wordpad and Calculator
2. Virtual WiFi: Bhavik Vora told me back in 2007 about Microsoft working on a certain technology to connect to multiple WiFi networks virtually by using continuous switching. I was excited back then to see this in action but the lack of an actual WiFi device other than my Windows Mobile made practical applications limited. You’ll be happy to hear that Windows 7 is shipping with this technology (limited a tad bit though) allowing you to do more with your Windows. Read the original post by Long Zheng on Windows 7 adding native Virtual WiFi technology from Microsoft Research. If you’re asking yourself why do you need Virtual WiFi, refer to my reply to AI’s comment which says..
   

   @AI: Why wouldn’t you? :P Ad hoc networks are totally awesome. With the ability to (virtually) connect to multiple networks, you can create mesh and relay wireless networks. Say user A is in range of an access point X but user B isn’t. But user B is in range with user A. User A could relay the connection from X to B providing B with an active connection to the network.
   Also, you can play multiplayer games without need for any ethernet cables on your laptops or any other infrastructure for that matter. No need for a router or any other hardware to create a local area network ;)

   If you can have all this, why wouldn’t you want virtual WiFi? ;)

3. UI Standardization: Windows 7 products UI consistent with first looks at Office 2010 previews. A couple of days ago Long posted some blurry screencaps of Office 2010 which are consistent with the UI seen in Windows 7. Do you notice the similarity in the new Ribbon on the two products? Not that Vista and Office 2007 weren’t in sync, its just that a lot of the applications packaged with Windows Vista weren’t all in the same UI style. Some still seemed to style legacy looks. Windows 7 does seem a lot more complete though there are still some exceptions.
   
4. Open in new process: Here is something new. Pressing shift+right clicking on a folder/app allows you to launch it in a separate process. If you do this to open a folder, you will see a second explorer.exe in your task list. This could open up whole new avenues for polygamy ;)
   
5. PowerShell is in!: And its about freaking time! I first came in contact with PowerShell a day after its v2 release (a coincidence). I needed to use it to do a couple of things and it did it really well. I loved the power it possessed but I never really needed it again. I was always wondering why they took so long to make it main stream. I’ve known about it for years now, blame Matt for it :P
6. XP Mode: Do you have applications that don’t work on Vista? Usually using Vista’s compatibility wizard helps. Still, there are some which don’t work. Windows 7 has a much more elegant solution (at least in my opinion). Install XP in Virtual PC and start up XP mode ;) For more information, read the Life Hacker page on Setting Up and Using XP Mode in Windows 7
7. In-built and custom create-able Troubleshooting wizards: Windows 7 became the first operating system that I know of, at least in the Windows line up that has in built support to fix issues. Jus click start and search for “Fix” and the first result you get should be “Fix problems with your computer”. If you have issues listed there, the tool will provide you with a chance to fix it ;) How does it work? Simple! Its a collection of uber-powerful Powershell scripts. Can you make your own? Sure you can! Just head on over to WithinWindows.com and Rafael will explain the rest ;)
8. Popular keyboard shortcuts all retained: I don’t know about you but I certainly loved Windows Vista. I wasn’t a fan of its UAC, but I liked the OS. One of the things that made me love the OS so much were the nifty keyboard shortcuts which keyboard lovers like me can’t live without ;) Two of my favourite ones were the Win+<num> to access quick launch icons and Shift+right click to open command prompt in specified folder. Considering that the new Windows 7 Superbar has no such thing as a quick launch, the Win+<num> shortcuts now refer to the icons on the superbar ;) The shift+right click to open command prompt in specified folder sure does save a lot of time for users like me who are command prompt addicts. ;)
9. Remembering System Tray Icon Status: This is one that almost everyone would know out there but its important enough for me to put up because it was really irritating for me in Windows’ past Operating Systems. Now, if you ask Windows to hide an icon in the System Tray and then the application crashes, you no longer need to reset the status (Hide always, Hide when not being used or Show always) when restarting the application. Sure, you still need to wave your mouse over the icon to make it disappear and until then, two copies are shown but that’s still better than having to reset the status.

Also there are a few things that need to be fixed.

1. Maximum usage = 101%? :D Just have a look at this screenshot and it should be clear what I mean :-D This one is included for the lulz :)
   

   Have a look at the Maximum Frequency and you'll see what I mean

2. New User Account Control: Well, I’ve already made it clear that I find UAC on Vista extremely irritating bugging simply because I needed to (at least in Vista RTM) acknowledge an action multiple times. Microsoft did make a few changes to UAC since then to make it single prompt but it still remains off on my desktop. On my laptop, considering I don’t often do work that would set off UAC (unlike work on the desktop), I let UAC stay. When it comes to Windows 7, Microsoft has made a few changes to the implementation to make them “less irritating” by allowing auto-elevation of processes. A few concerns were raised by certain tech users made popular by Long Zheng and Rafael Rivera in posts such as Malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7; “By design” says Microsoft. Clearly, Microsoft needs to move back to Secure Desktop for changes to UAC. We don’t mind UAC prompts as long as we don’t have to go through multiple windows like Vista RTM where you’d have to sometimes go through a normal prompt and a secure desktop to perform a restricted action (For example: addition/modification/deletion of Start Menu entries).
3. High Quality Icons: As I’ve already mentioned in my previous post, with the arrival of Superbar, the icons being shown need to be of a much higher resolution to avoid tearing. Yet some icons are still not up to the mark. This is like Windows Vista’s non-standardized UI all over again just not as bad. Microsoft has put in a lot of effort into revamping the UI on most applications but I guess it has missed out on a few. Nothing that can’t be fixed in a giffy ;)

There are more features in Windows 7 just waiting to be discovered. Windows 7 RC does look quite promising. These are just some of the things that make this such a great OS. Quite a few of them are minor, probably don’t feel like much when being mentioned while others are fixes to old problems that have plagued users for many a year but all of it contribute to make this a worthy successor to Windows Vista :)