For the past several months, me and my team have been working intensely on Microsoft Office Programming - VSTO and OpenXML. There have been so many discoveries around approaches to take and what works the best. Both OpenXML and VSTO have their own sets of pros and cons. Once the Office Environment (e.g. MS Word) is open, we were pretty much tied down with VSTO and the Word Object model, until we discovered that Range.InsertXML method is pretty much a legal method (hack) to actually manipulate the document at runtime using OpenXML. With OpenXML SDK 1.0, it's not very simple though and with a good deal of inputs from OpenXML Power tools team and other experts we found our way to simplify usage of OpenXML using LINQ and building a helper object wrapper around SDK 1.0. The key is to build it as close as possible to SDK 2.0 which is still in CTP, because the advantage is of that of portabilty when moving from SDK 1.0 to 2.0 whenever it RTM's.

I the next several blog posts, I am going to write about some of the cool things that can be done to solve certain specific Word programming scenarios using VSTO  and OpenXML.

Keep tuned!

I was generally in a patriotic mood and came across this beautiful old song, which probably every Indian has heard atleast once in his/her life time. The question is how many of us paid attention to the actual lyrics of this song. I heard the song today and it made me think for a moment....wait a minute...the song practically covers most of the virtues of india, it beautifully progresses to give a glimpse of freedom fights that happened acroos the nation and how we stood as one nation to drive some crazy, greedy for money and in-human intruders out of our country!

For those interested, check it out on your tube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E09twioyfs

Enjoy! Vande Maataram!!!

I had an opportunity to explore and evagelize diskpeer 2009 and I must say that is't a must have tool on your system to keep the health of your system to optimum. I am very grateful to Diskeeper Corp, since I have had the privilege to explore Diskeeper for the past 2 versions and now 2009. Here are a quick few things that I thought I should highlight about the product:

 Automatic Deframentation: This feature is like a good old genie which takes care of ensuring that your system is always performing optimally. This is a service that keeps running in the background and continuously optimizng the system and thus preventing framentation. The best part is that the service run on a lower priority thread, and is intelligent to ensure that the system performance is not hampered while other applications are open or are being executed.

IFAAST: Here's what diskeeper has to say about their innovative Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST):

"Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology (I-FAAST) improves file access and creation on NTFS volumes by up to 80% (average 10%-20%) above and beyond the improvement provided by defragmentation alone. This is the first industry implementation of “Disk Performance Calibration”, the modern evolution of the outdated and inconclusive disk optimization strategies of the past. Automatic Defragmentation keeps your volumes running as if they were new.

When I-FAAST Defragmentation is enabled on a volume, Diskeeper runs specially-engineered benchmarks on the selected NTFS volumes to learn their individual performance characteristics. (Not all disks have the same characteristics.) Diskeeper then transparently monitors these volumes for file access frequency on an ongoing basis in to determine which files are requested most often. Special analysis techniques prevent Diskeeper from being "fooled" by files that have been recently accessed. Using newly-developed technology, Diskeeper sequences the files to take best advantage of both the logical characteristics and physical characteristics of the volume. The sequencing process is integrated with Automatic Defragmentation, so it’s virtually transparent to you." This essentially means two things to me:

1. Sequencing frequently accessed file contiguously will not always mean better performance.

2. Diskpeer I-FASST is intelligent enough to figure out what improves performance based on patterns in disk access and disk charecteristics and thus optimizes performance intelligently

Frag shield: This prevents disk fragmentation in the first place and thus once your disk is fully de-fragemented, thereafter, the time for keeping it de-fraged is much lesser than doing it when you realize that your disk isn't performing the way it should be. This saves you on time and ensures that your disk is performing like new all the time.

Other than that it also offer others excellent features like Boot-Time Defrag that does 3 distinct things: Directory De-Frag and consilidation, Page File De-Frag and Master File Table De-Frag.

All in all, I feel this is a must have too and I have particularly noticed an increase in performance soon after I got it up an running. So far I haven't faced in issues with this product and I would definitely recommend it.

To know more browse to www.diskeeper.com

Cheers!!!

We all know, yet ignore the stark reality. Here's a link on youtube for an interview with Suhel Seth who took the case of politics and ploticians, left-right and center.

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=1cHxnHwrrjU

Listen to it and think about what we as residents of this country, should be doing about it? It's high time we stop thinking and start doing.

Also in the same window, find more parts (upto 5) of this interview.

It's a wonderful thing that the ministers have resigned or have been asked to resign. One drop of bad milk can spoil the whole milk... either don't allow the drop to fall in the milk in the first place or otherwise just replace the milk, instead of taking any chances.

Also, this doesn't mean the lotus milk (BJP) is any better.... it's a different version of the poison... in either case the Nation is in trouble because of selfish monkeys like these!

So far, I have usually always blogged about technology and gadgets on this site. However, after  seeing the sad state of the country today, and seeing the joke that these so called "cowards" of terrorists have made out of our intelligence system, administration and the country as whole, it's time to ask ourselves one question - is the government (includes everyone from police forces to ministers) alone to be held responsible?

I had several things running in my head about why this is happening? There have been several discussion forums on the internet that blame Mr. CM, the efficiency of the police force, etc.

I have an altogether different perspective to this... just a few days back, there was chaos and mess in Mumbai that the MNS party created, as a so called "act of protecting the rights of the the Marathi Manus". They came down to beating innocents, destroying property that's not their own and creating fear amongst people... their very own people, their own fellow country men.

When the Mumbai Terror started, where was the leader of MNS and his gang? Isn't it their responsibility as responsible citizens of Maharashtra to have come forward with the "same spirit" and save "their state"? I am sure, that not all the NSG guards, Commando's and other rescue parties that came to Maharashtra's and Mumbai's aid, were Maharashtrian's? Why didn't the MNS people try to stop the army personals from entering Mumbai? Because, suddenly they were scared to face the terrorists themselves, scared of death, or because they don't feel it's a part of their responsibility or because they simply aren't bothered.

All in all it's clear that MNS, Shiv Sena, and all these parties are not built for human and countries welfare. It's just a group of jobless people turned gangsters who don't want to live in peace and can't see others living in peace. There is practically no reason why they shouldn't be called terrorists as well.

I had seen one of Mr. Raj Thackrey's speech on YouTube (and I didn't do it because I wanted to, it was just a link that was sent to me). He gave a so called "powerful speech" and also said "amhi kahi gaandu chi aaolad nahi"... Do we agree that he really meant it?

I feel he is the biggest loser today and frankly (being a 'gaandu's aaolad" would still be a better choice than being a Raj Thackrey)... in the name of saving or recreating Maharashtra, what he and his party is doing or done is nothing but damage to Maharashtra and people of Maharashtra. And forget about Maharashtra, Maharashtra doesn't exist without India and vice a versa.

I hope, that anyone whosoever, reads this blog, should take it in a positive spirit and think about the first question that I asked at the top.

Is the government alone responsible for the sad state of the country?