A step forward!

So finally I pulled myself together, formatted and upgraded a PC that was idle (and in such a pathetic state due to viruses) to Vista, installed Visual Studio 2008 code-named ‘Orcas’, Silverlight runtime, tools and SDK as well as ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX extensions and ASP.NET 2.0 Futures, and obtained all the associated documentation, and dubbed the machine ‘devpc’!!! So far I have done a few things with both Silverlight (1.1) and ASP.NET AJAX, but still at chilld’s-play level and learning!

I also installed VS 2005 parallel to my current installation of VS 2003 (I just have never got past that cos many projects were lying on it) on my production machine which is running XP and installed Silverlight (1.0) and ASP.NET AJAX extensions and I am also playing around with that.

The only snag is the monitor on devpc, apparently the drivers for Vista are not in existence for it (it’s a Dell monitor).

All in all… definitely a step in the right direction! I will be doing some LINQ later on today! I have a couple of screencasts and videos to follow as well.

Filed under: fun, laptop, microsoft, OS, research, software, technology

A Special Night

The last couple of dys have been a bit busy. Following up on my previous post, i did some more reporting with SSRS(That tutorial is still in the pipeline) and I also got a taste of some new things here and there as well as experiencially learning the DOs and DONTs of SSRS. SSRS is a great tool, the only thing i do not quite fancy is the way you have to tweek the report a lot just to get the right print out (and big-up to all those nice folks at MS who worked on it!). For example, there is this interesting thing that started happening with the report i built; on the client machine they would navigate to a page say 221 but oddly when they preview the print-out it would show a page or two ahead (like 222). I have not managed to track whats up with that but i gave the users a simple work-around that suffices.

Other than that I have as usual been doing a lot of work on data and some interesting reports, i did one this afternoon that almost had me jumping up and down in blissful glee.

Other than that, I have been watching all these videos about interesting stuff at microsoft research, stuff to fo with CLR research, an interesting item called DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) that they are doing with Ruby (I really ought to learn Ruby!), F# and Functional Programming, LINQ (very interesting, Anders is pretty good), Silverlight, Programming Language development  and some more stuff, but mostly CLR.

Frankly, a lot has been said about Microsoft, but I think they have some great work going on there and they work on pretty interesting stuff (but i still think Google totally rocks).

I am sure the title of this post has some eye-lids up in curiosity… so I will just leave it like that… for now!!!

Filed under: cool, fun, google, googler, interview, microsoft, research, software, technology, work

Research

Today I am in the office researching some tech options for a potentially major project. This is my first time to interact with Futures Trading and it’s so far been exciting, longs, shorts, hegding… quite interesting. As I write this it’s almost lunch time so I will probably leave in a few minutes to fuel up! This is like the first time in a while I have been able to just do some intense googling on a specific topic in a while and on something totally new, it’s awesome. And I like to think that I am probably the most learnable person you will come across.

I am back in class. Yep, after a one and a half week ‘holiday’.  This semester I am taking Business Law, Introduction to Macroeconomics, Information Resource Planning (I think), Cost Accounting and Computer Graphics (OpenGL here I come!). It promises to be an exciting semester. Yesterday we had Business Law, quite interesting, and the discussion was quite interesting as well.  In case the mix of subjects seems a bit wierd, BBIT is what I like to think of as the outcome of a bond between Comp Sci and BA. This semester has more of the BA than the Comp Sci. What I love about it is that at the end of the day not only do I get to learn all the cool and (mostly) geeky tech stuff but also see how it fits within the business world, plus I have a keen liking for business.

Some pals are asking me to host a 2-day party at my place, yep, 2 days, and there is another group of pals from church who want an overnight party, movies, fun n food! The same thing we did over new-year’s eve. It was awesome, we called it ‘The Wolf Plot’ so they are labelling this one ‘The Wolf Plot II’… cool, eh!

One warrior!

Filed under: cool, friends, fun, research, search, work, working

Yahoo Research Berkley

Filed under: cool, fun, research, search, technology, video, yahoo

The long version

Hi there. Do you guys remember me telling you about wearing a skirt? Well, here is the whole story.

This past saturday a bunch of friends n i went for an excursion to the fourteen falls. We were well above 20 of ud all fitting somehow in an 18 seater mini-bus! And squeezed we did and squeezed we were! So we met at church and left nairobi around 9 a.m. along the way we had to pick up a few other people adding to the agony in terms of sitting arrangement!

The trip was pretty nice, I told jokes (which people laughed at!) and guys generally had fun on the ride (in between muscle cramps and the like due to the dire sitting arrangement). We got to the fourteen falls around 1 pm and people got right down to eating. By the way, the falls are located in the Thika region. You can read this other adventure which I had in Thika last year!

Anyways, before eating a number of us were playing football on the really soggy ground on the picnic spot we spotted next to the river. The falls are quite a site, I mean tons of streamming water falling over rocks n stuff and the rapids which formed immediately after leading to calmer waters a little further down, where there was the bank where we set up camp.

Back to the main story. You see, its been a while since I played football and you guys know I am a little playful so I kinda got carried away (need I add, naturally?) Anyways, I was chasing after the ball with this pal of mine and all of a sudden we found ourselves on like REALLY soggy, wet, muddy ground and i stupidly tried to stop which only lsent me sliding, and skidding on the ground and I ended up landing FLAT ON MY BUTT! And it is not a joke!!! I was utterly shocked, confused, dis-oriented (do you kinda get the picture???) My pal had managed to stabilize himself so all that happened to him was some mud splashed over his clad.

So here I was sitting on th ground and guys all around are laughing their guts out. To add insult to the injury the mud was stinking and consequently so was I. After coming to (and a number of photos taken by my very amused pals), I was advised to wash my trouser in the river and someone lent me a kanga/kikoi to wrap around my waist!

I went off to a hidden location to remove my trouser and shock on me! While pulling down my pants, some girls are walking in my direction, I quickly wrap the kanga around my waist, the girls (who i guess were also visiting the site) turned around and went back, probably wondering what madness had gotten into this guy!

So I got my pants washed and hang them to dry on the bushes around! Luckily it was a very sunny day. I had to spend the rest of the day in my kikoi!!!! Waaaaaaaaa! But it was cool! I had fun! And it was a moment to remember! My pants dried later and if anyone saw me they would not have guessed what had happened, they were actually cleaner than they were before the ah, ‘fatal insident’

So now you know the story, and since I am such a nice fella I will actually post the (discriminating) photos here.

One Warrior!

Filed under: adventure, friends, fun, kenya, thika