10 Minute Mail!

Today I came across really a fascinating website. 10 Minute Mail.

Many a times you need to provide your email address while downloading any software or file and then respond to a confirmation link to prove it. More often you don’t trust the website or you want to avoid bunch of spam getting after that; you end up not downloading the file\software.

This is the one area the website targets. The website provides you a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.

~ Kiran

Online photo editor!

PiZap is an online photo editor. You can play with some demo photos or upload your own. You can then add text, stickers, change faces and a whole lot more. Here's an example.

~ Kiran

Cut on your arm!!

Cut anything (lover's name??) you want on your arm!!! Go here

English To Hindi Translation Bots in Google Talk

Google Talk Team announced translation bots for many languages to help you translate texts using your Google Talk interface. If you don’t know, a bot is a piece of software that acts as a chat contact and provides some fun or useful functionality.
Today morning I added English To Hindi translation bot. It works amazingly.

You should also try this out. You just need to add en2hi@bot.talk.google.com in your gtalk contact list.
The post below will give you more information:
http://teck.in/language-translation-bots-for-google.html
~ Kiran

माझे मराठीला योगदान

Proud to be Marathi? Yes, Then let us be ready to enrich our language with some new ideas,with some new words.
In our daily routine many times we use english words as is. The website http://www.marathishabda.com/shabda/ is platform to introduce marathi words for them. I have pasted author's preface below as is.

कठीण व उगीचच मोठे असलेले, उदा महाविद्यालय, केशकर्तनालय, मराठी शब्द वापरताना फार त्रास होतो ना? अनेक ईंग्लिश शब्द तर आपण जसेच्यातसे वापारतो. कारण त्यांना पर्यायी शब्दच नाहीत.
तसेच काही वाक्ये वापरताना गोंधळ उडतो. उदा “मी त्याचा वडील आहे” हे योग्य की नाही? मग काय म्हणायला हवे? प्रश्न पडतो..
माझ्या मातृभाषेसाठी मी काहीतरी केले पाहीजे हे नेहमी वाटते ना? चला आपण सगळे मिळून मराठी ला वेगळी ऊंची देउया. ह्या जागेचा वापर करुन आपण ते साध्य करु शकतो.
हे कसे करता येइल ते मी तुम्हाला सांगतो. आपल्याला एखादा शब्द खटकला की, त्याचे मराठी बारसं कसे करायचे त्याचा विचार करायला सुरुवात करायची. एखादा पर्यायी शब्द सापडला की, ह्या जागेवर येउन, तो दान करायचा. समजा तुम्ही आणि ईतरांनीही काही दानं दिली असतील तर, त्या वेळी मी एक मतं चाचणी घेइन. ज्या पहील्या ३ शब्दांना जास्त मते असतील ते शब्द मी आपल्या शब्द संचयात नोंदवेन.
तुम्ही दिलेल्या दानाबद्दल मी तुम्हाला प्रत्येक निवडलेल्या शब्दाला एक दान देणार. ज्यामुळे तुमच्या “योगदाना” खरे मुल्यं सगळ्यांना ह्या जागेच्या माध्यमातुन दिसेल.
आपला एक सामाजिक कट्टा पण आहे. - http://www.marathishabda.com/forum ह्या कट्ट्यावर बरीच दिग्गज मंडळी तुम्हाला भेटू शकतील. तुम्ही त्याच्याबरोबर चर्चा करू शकता. मतं चाचणी सुध्दा ईथेच घेतली जाईल. ह्या कट्ट्यावर जाऊन तुम्हाला एक “वापरू” बनवावा लागेल.
आता प्रश्न राहीला तो नवे शब्द कसे तयार करायचे ह्याचा. हे पहा- कालच मी एक नवीन शब्द वाचला. हा पर्यायी मराठी शब्द कसा वाटतो पहा.

Ghost fishing: पाताळकोळी, भुत्याकोळी
तुम्हीही असे नवीन शब्द सुचवा. आपण सगळे मिळून नवीन मराठी शब्द तयार करू. नवीन शब्द तयार करण्यासाठी मी काही वाटा (Categories) करतोय, उदा, “घरातील शब्द”. आपण इथून सुरूवात करूया. अजुन पुढच्या सुचना मी देइनच.

चला तर या माझ्याबरोबर…

~ Kiran

Mail Forwards!!! - My New Blog!

This blog will hold all the good forwards i have ever got.
Here is the link for it. Mail Forwards!!!
Watch out for more and more forwards on this blog. They could be helpful to you pleasing your mates.

Online file conversion...

Zamzar:

You may have come across the situation when you have some files and don't have softwares or utilities to run them. Website Zamzar will help you in that case.
You just need to upload the file you want to convert and choose the format to convert that file to on the Zamzar website. Within few minutes you will get link in your mailbox for accessing the converted file.

~Kiran

पु.ल. च्या फँन्ससाठी खास मेजवानी!

खाली दिलेली लिंक तुम्हाला पु.ल.च्या बर्‍याचश्या लेखांचे संकलन केलेल्या वेबसाइट वर घेउन जाईल.
येथे क्लिक करा
~ किरण

…and finally I have learnt motorcycling!

….husssh…and finally I have learnt motorcycling!. Actually it was enjoyable journey while learning it [:)]. I thought, I should share it with you all.

Have you ever watched film award functions?? Whenever any actor wins a title, he gives a long speech to thank all of them whoever have contributed in his success. If the same thing is told me to do then first of all I will thank to traffic police (better word “Mamu” [:)]). Why? Why because he has not caught me yet while driving, even if I don’t have driving license with me.

Jokes apart. But really if somebody forces me to take their names, then I will take Archana’s and Ankit’s name.

I brought up in that family background which has not seen 2 wheeler in its veranda before I buy it.(In last week only, i bought Bajaj Discover). In school-hood, I have learnt cycling. That cycle was the only 2 wheeler we had. But I had not got a chance to learn motorbike.

I should thank Archana for giving me confidence in driving her “Scooty Pept” during traffic peak hours. As I had learnt the cycle, I could balance the vehicle very well but there are some small small things which are necessary while driving; she taught me them. She taught me how to use mirrors while driving and how to use indicator buttons while taking turns and etc.

Ankit helped me knowing details about the “geared” bike. He taught me, how we can control the bike using its clutch and break combination, changing the gears while driving.
One important thing, he trained me to understand bike’s language. [:)]. That makes me identify differences between the noises engine makes while I accelerate and therefore to know whether I should change gear or not.

~ Kiran

Let us conserve water and electricity!

Today, as soon as i entered into the office and opened my desktop, a mail flashed on my desktop screen. The subject line was "Humble request". and The sender was "Neha Shaikh". I have recieved so many mails from her to help the child or old person immediately for rare blood group. I always feel there is hidden social worker in her. (Later on, i came to know that she is member of "Vanrai" group which activates against tree cutting.)

But today, mail message body was suggesting something different. It was request to all of us to use less water and electricity. The reason for this scarcity of water and electricity was long break in the mansoon leading to reduced water level in dams.

Whatever be the reason of it. But i love Neha's proactiveness making people aware to their responsibilites. I also want to put forward my steps in that direction. I loved the last sentence from her mail “Together we can really make a difference.” :). I am pasting excerpt from her mail:

Hi All,
As we all are aware that there are no rains since last one and a half months and MSEB has planned to begin load shedding program for Pune, we can definitely do something to conserve water and electricity.
This is my humble request for the following:
1) Kindly ask everyone to switch off the machines at EOD if their machine is not a server, if
anybody’s machine needs to be kept on for project requirements then that is an exception.
2) Kindly ask them not to waste water and use only as much as required. Usually we do not consume all the water we fill up in the bottle and the next day we just pour off the water and fill up the bottle again. We can save a plenty amount of water by not doing this.
3) Can we save electricity at office by not using all the tube lights and bulbs and only use only as much as we require?? We can at least keep toilet/pantry lights off and can switch them on
when we need it and again switch them off after the use.
4) Kindly ask people to switch off the conference room lights after the meeting is over. I have observed that people just get out of the room without switching off the lights and the lights are
burning even if there is no one inside the room. We can also ask the people to just burn one light in the conf room while in the meeting.
5) Last but not the least, we can also request people to follow above at home to conserve water and electricity. I would really appreciate if you forward the mail to your friends/relatives.
“Together we can really make a difference.” :)

~ Kiran

Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation

While surfing the internet, i came across a very good article.
Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation

~ Kiran

Disconnect all users from database

This is to reply Mohit's comment on my yesterday's post "Forcefully Disconnect All Users and Drop a Database" . I thought it would be nice to have it as new post rather than just a comment.

He had mentioned one scenario where there are times when you just have to disconnect other users from the database. We can acheive it by just killing all the processes connected to that particular database. I have written small stored procedure to do this:

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.removeConnections
@database_name SYSNAME
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @spid INT
DECLARE @query NVARCHAR(255)

DECLARE processes CURSOR FOR
SELECT spid FROM master..sysprocesses
WHERE dbid = DB_ID(@database_name)
AND spid != @@SPID

OPEN processes

FETCH NEXT FROM processes
INTO @spid

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN

PRINT 'KILLing '+RTRIM(@spid)
SET @query = 'KILL '+RTRIM(@spid)
EXEC(@query)

FETCH NEXT FROM processes
INTO @spid

END
CLOSE processes
DEALLOCATE processes
END
GO

~ Kiran

Forcefully Disconnect All Users and Drop a Database

Yesterday, one of my colleague was telling me that he was not able to delete the database. When I checked the issue at his desk, I saw that other users were connected to that database without his knowledge and hence he was getting error while deleting it.

One way to get rid of it immediately:

ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase
SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
DROP DATABASE MyDatabase

~ Kiran

Confusing @@VERSION?

I was confused when i first ran the SELECT @@VERSION query and saw the result out of that query. Try to run the following query in SSMS:

PRINT @@VERSION
GO
PRINT 'Edition: ' + CONVERT(CHAR(30), SERVERPROPERTY('Edition'))
GO
PRINT 'Product Version: ' + CONVERT(CHAR(20), SERVERPROPERTY('ProductVersion'))
GO
PRINT 'Product Level: ' + CONVERT(CHAR(20),SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel'))
GO

Result:-
---------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.3042.00 (Intel X86)
Feb 9 2007 22:47:07
Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation
Enterprise Edition on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2)
Edition: Enterprise Edition
Product Version: 9.00.3042.00
Product Level: SP2

I have highlighted the confusing part in RED. This is Windows NT Service Pack Level, Not the SQL service Pack Level.

The reason i went to conclusion that the output provided by the query is very detailed one but i guess they missed to include sql server pack infrmation there.[;)]. Anyway we can get that information through SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel').

~ Kiran

Want to download YouTube videos???

There are two very simple ways i see to download YouTube videos.

1. Kiss YouTube way:
If suppose your YouTube URL is something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs. You just need to add word "kiss" in front of the youtube.com in your URI. The page in this modified URL (http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs) will have the link to save that clip.

2. Keepvid way: http://keepvid.com/
Keepvid is a very good site for downloading videos from any site. On Keepvid's first page, you just need to choose the site you want to download from and copy the link of the page with the video on it and paste it in the textbox provided.

~ Kiran

Car Puzzle!

Solution:

















~ Kiran

RSS In Plain English

This is really nice video to get to know what really RSS feed means.

~ Kiran

@@IDENTITY vs SCOPE_IDENTITY() vs IDENT_CURRENT

@@IDENTITY, SCOPE_IDENTITY, and IDENT_CURRENT are similar functions because they all return the last value inserted into the IDENTITY column of a table.
@@IDENTITY and SCOPE_IDENTITY return the last identity value generated in any table in the current session. However, SCOPE_IDENTITY returns the value only within the current scope; @@IDENTITY is not limited to a specific scope.
IDENT_CURRENT is not limited by scope and session; it is limited to a specified table. IDENT_CURRENT returns the identity value generated for a specific table in any session and any scope.

More help on msdn.
~ Kiran

Leap Year has not been handled in SQL Server 2008 CTP

SQL Server 2008 CTP installables were not working on this year's FEB 29. I was using SQL Server 2008 CTP on one of my projects and found the above issue. All the installations worked properly on March 1.
~ Kiran

A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure

(Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum , Philadelphia, March 22,2008)
Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?
Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India's "Rohini" satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.
By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure.
That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization. The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, "You conduct the press conference today." I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions

Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions

Case 1

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.

And what did the Russians do...?? …………………………………………………..They used a pencil.

Case 2

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soapbox went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.
But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.


Moral: "Always look for simple solutions,
Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problems"

~ Kiran