Typed Datasets and LINQ

I must confess I started educating myself about LINQ pretty late. I was really pleased to see what all it can do. I discovered that all typed Datasets allowed LINQ based querying.

This means old methods of working with Datable object should be forgotten and LINQ should be used where ever possible. Time to get rid of all those ugly 'foreach' blocks .

Read my article on using LINQ and typed datasets here:
http://ashishware.com/DSLinqExample.shtml

Five years of delightful programing ... (getting nostalgic)

9th May 1998 : My first PC arrives ( Pentium I, 200 Mhz, 32 MB RAM, 2.1 GB HDD). Spent time learning basics, playing games, exploring chip magazine CDs, exploring encyclopedias and listening to songs.

1999 (FYJC) : Learned FoxPro 2.5, continued timepass with my computer.

2000 (SYJC) : Mostly studies.

March-April(2000) : Read the book "VC++ 5 Special Edition", understood nothing. Started learning basic C++ and HTML.

July-August(2000) : Got admission to DMCOE Elex. Engg. Dad gifted me a 56K modem. Could only surf for 2 hours per week (telephone bills!). Learned javascripting,FTP, email. Also created my own website. Started learning EzWindowss (C++) and OOP concepts using C++.

2000-2001 (First Year Engg) : Learnt PASCAL, DOS,DHTML , EzWindows continues, CGI, made another website. Started learning FLTK (Fast Light Toolkit) in holidays after exams.

2001-2002 (Second Year Engg) : Studied FLTK in detail. C++ Continued. Learnt C, TC++ BGI as part of syllabus. Tried some x86 assembly language programing. Upgraded my PC ( P III 800 Mhz, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD). Worked on project related to "Interfacing computer controlled devices to Internet". It was presented at Terna Engg. College.

2002 (Holidays after Second Year) : Created a personal website. Learned Microsoft Speech API (SAPI). Finished learning FLTK.

2002 (Fourth Semester) : Wrote many programs using variety of GUI libraries (EzWindows,FLTK,Win32API) like MazeTRaveller, Rotato, JavascriptMaker,Blur,CryptoBitmap, HistoryRipper ...etc in C++. Did a paper presentation of my project at RAIT. Learned assembly language programing for 8085. Created my first AM radio using only 6 components (including battery and earphones). Started and finished learning Windows 32 API.


Phase I completed. Five years of delightful programing.



Ashish Patil
05/11/2002

My new blog

Created a new blog on my website. The first post is about a small thing which developers like me overlook in their programs:

http://ashishware.com/myblog/?p=6

My 'Image Resize Utility'

I have been searching for a tool that can resize images, add border and put a watermark on those. Most of my favourite tools, dont have this functionality the way I wanted. So I decide to write my own. It's a tiny C# console program that can process images in a batch. I use it to add border and copyright notice to images from my digital camera. The tool has fair bit of configurability. It can be downloaded here:

http://ashishware.com/ImgResize.shtml

Spore: Create your own creatures !

Computer games these days are getting larger than life. The recent example is 'Spore' , a game which allows you to create different create and nurture your own creatures and nurture them through various phases of evolution. The whole concept in my opinion is wonderful. More can be read about the game here : http://www.spore.com/what/platforms#PC



Thought this game is yet to be released, it has a great feature that is already making it a hit. The 'Spore Creature Creator'. Just downloaded the trial version and started playing with it. And I have to say that this is 'one of the best' software, I have ever used.
Within minutes of downloading the software, I was able to create really funny new creatures and upload their videos on youtube !



The spore creator is a 'standalone' software which is available for around $10. This is a real steal, for the entertainment it provides. The creator is easy to use software which has three sections : create, paint and play. The day when our world would be ruled by game characters is not far !





Here are couple of videos I created:

Enabled commenting on my site !

The long missing feature is finally here. Added commenting functionality to my website. Now users can post comment for different articles on my website.

Working on a system to show comments entered by users, below their corresponding articles. This might take some time !

Still, I hope it becomes easier to readers of my site to communicate with me !

Silverlight Applications on Linux using Moonlight !

Today, I decided to try out the Moonlight plug-in for Firefox on Linux. It can be downloaded from this site : http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/.

It looks like there is no support for video and audio at this stage. I tested my silverlight applications on it. All my apps work with both Silverlight 1.x and 2.x, and are written using javascript. I was surprised with the results. All of them worked flawlessly on Linux. Below are the screenshots:


My 'Animated 3D Bar Graph Application':
http://ashishware.com/XAMLGraph3DDemo.shtml




Animated line graph application:
http://ashishware.com/SlvrGraphDemo.shtml



Photo Viewer
http://ashishware.com/Silverlight_example.shtml


Well done ..guys at http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight !

My app on Silverlight Gallery !

Patience paid off ! Traffic to the page increased and I 'thought' someone had published link to my work somewhere. To my great surprise and excitement, I found my 'Silverlight based 3D AJAX bar Graph' example at the official Silverlight 1.0 gallery. Here is the screenshot of how it looks:


Still don't believe me ! See for yourself :
http://silverlight.net/Community/gallerydetail.aspx?cat=3&sort=1

Thank you Microsoft !

2D Animation for Web Benchmark

Came across this great site for comparing recent 2D graphic/animation technologies for the internet today. The site has nice 'colliding balls' example done with different technologies (DHTML, Java Swing, FLEX, WPF...).

Visit the site : http://bubblemark.com/

I love working with Silverlight and javascript. I was looking for performace comparision between Silveright+Javascript and Sliverlight+CLR. Though the Silverlight + javascript , example is lot slower (around 50 fps on my machine) than the CLR one, I think it has lot potential. However when performance is required, nothing beats Sliverlight+CLR, it seems !

Cool AJAX bar graph using Silverlight !

I had been working on this since past two weeks and finally uploaded to my website. Created this using XAML and javascript. There is an article on my site explaining in detail, how to customize and use it in your own application. It relies on JSON feed to refresh itself, so it's not tied down to any specific platform.

Most interesting part was to create an online tool that will let people create template XAML for this graph.

I love to work with Silverlight, javascript and AJAX. Everytime I use them together, turns out to be an awesome combination.

Check out the live demo of this graph in action here:
http://ashishware.com/XAMLGraph3DDemo.shtml

Looks like a 'rainbow' ! Doesn't it ?