Omkumar's blog

For a while now, I use several websites in order to find auspicious days and times based on Tamil astrology. Daily sheet calendars in Tamil provide all the information about a day. However, finding those daily sheet calendars online is a pain. There is not one reliable source out there. Either you go to one of the Hindu temple’s websites or you find local Tamil newspaper online. Even then you have to search there a lot. One recent finding seems to be reliable since 2009 which I got it from my favorite Hindu temple . But then the problem is every time I need to go through the calendar website and click on drop downs and wait for the image to load. For a long time, I was wondering whether I could add such calendar info, like nalla neram, raaghu kaalam etc. to my Google calendar. Data entry is a tedious work and error prone. Maintenance of those manual entries is also a problem. When I was browsing some other feature in Google calendar I found out this cool event called Google Event G

The coding experience is getting better and better. I just happened to get Visual Studio 2010 Premium installed on my personal laptop. I also picked up the April edition of MSDN magazine . It focuses mainly on the new Visual Studio release. Couple of articles talk about some of the many new features that VS 2010 offers, including Vertical edits and IntelliTrace. I was reading about IntelliTrace and how you can avoid “no repro” scenarios. More often we come across such cases at work. I will test out the IntelliTrace this weekend in order to fully understand it. I am sure it is great feature that will very useful for developers. Vertical editing – How long have I loathed text editors in general that I cannot replace text vertically. With VS 2010 it is pretty simple. Just Alt+select your text vertically and you can replace them all together. I wish they bring this feature to SSMS as well. This combined with .NET framework 4.0 features will definitely be a sure winner. I will explore m

For a long time I was not blogging because at work (which is where my idea-horse is running in full speed) all social networking and blogging sites are blocked ( may be one of the reasons is to not get distracted, but come on! I should be able to express my views when and wherever I can ). Then recently one of my friends, Madhu , was telling me about Windows Live Writer (WLW). Its pretty cool. I am able to blog from work now. I also found this post to be useful when was searching for cool tips about WLW. Oh! By the way I also recently started using Microsoft OneNote at work. It comes in very handy. Takes time for me to get used to it. Extremely useful tool when I do research online – be it finance or technology.

Often times when you try to install a software on Windows computer, the software will complain that there is a "pending restart - please restart your computer and proceed with your setup". You will get this error message no matter how many times you try to restart. Solution for this problem: 1. Open Registry Editor by going to Run...> regedit. 2. Traverse to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager 3. On your right hand side, look for PendingFileRenameOperations key. 4. Right click on this Name and delete it (yes it is safe to do so). 5. Close Registry Editor and continue with your installation.

This is a very interesting article on how China is becoming a rare-earth metal monopoly. "Deng Xiaoping's comment in 1997, where he said that China would be for rare earth metals what the Middle East was to oil, has become a very stark reality." I have a strong belief that China will emerge as a super power in a decade or so. I will continue to follow news articles that talk about China - both sides of the coins and collect them under the label "China".

This snippet is from The Hindu - an interview with Prabhakaran in 1986 about his movement. This is very gruelling... …Could you give us an idea of your personal heroes in revolutionary struggles or liberation movements or in any sphere of life..... people and experiences that have inspired you? And perhaps thereby give us some insight into your own political evolution from the time you were a schoolboy? From my boyhood, the struggle that attracted me most was the Indian freedom struggle. The role of Netaji attracted me very much. I was brought up in an environment of strict discipline from childhood. I was not permitted to mingle freely with outsiders. I used to feel shy of girls. Great store was laid by personal rectitude and discipline. My father set an example through his own personal conduct: He would not even chew betel leaves. I modelled my conduct on his..... he was a government officer, a district land officer. A very straightforward man. People say in our area: “When he walks,