The question to generate the StackOverflow logo in code was particularly interesting to me and naturally I wanted to try generating the logo using C# (GDI+ code). Because nobody had a C# solution listed there, I also put the code there as an answer (Look for the answer titled “C#/GDI+”)

I initially recreated the logo in GDI+ without a for loop (every rectangle had a hardcoded value for its locations and size). Using that approach, its possible to recreate the logo almost identical to the original. But I was not happy with doing it that way.

Also because they say → “The image is not required to be identical to the logo, however it must be recognizable as it” in the description, I used a for loop to minimize the number of lines written and to just generate a logo that looks like the StackOverflow logo, but not identical.

This is no “ingenious” code. I would be really happy to see anyone generating the same logo with GDI+ in a more efficient and accurate manner, using a formula to represent the exact curve that the original logo has (without hard-coding each and every position and size of the overflowing elements)

Here’s the difference between my generated logo and the original StackOverflow logo →

Click here to download the code

Happy coding.

You can get to know more about the speculated phenomena from many sources including this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon . Or watch the movie “2012” to really get scared (Cosmophobia!)

When I wanted to say Happy New Year in a blog post, I thought I should create a video (my first attempt with Adobe After Effects).

So here’s the spooky video wishing you all a Happy New Year, doomsday-style (an overkill of course , just for fun)

Happy New Year.

A DSLR camera has always been in my “wish list”, though nobody cared gifting me one – just kidding.

I was helping a friend of a friend with a .NET software, that required photos to be directly transferred to a PC as soon as they are captured. As far as I know, digital cameras go into a “USB mode” that makes them mass storage devices, just like ordinary USB thumb drives.

But my friend told me that DSLR cameras have the ability to capture photographs even when connected to the PC and that they can transfer photos immediately to the PC too. To cut a long story short, we confirmed that the Canon EOS 500D DSLR camera of that friend is suitable for the project and the camera was handed over to me until I build the software (Yay!)

This model is actually old and there are many new DSLR cameras released by Canon. But, I should say that the days spent with this camera has made my DSLR wish stronger! I’ve always frowned at noisy low-light photos from mobile phone cameras. But the EOS 500D produces almost crystal clear photographs even in lamp light! If an old model can be this cool, how Canon 7D, Nikon D7000 or a Sony Alpha range camera would perform!

Ok, I’ll stop drooling over precious DSLR cameras and show you what I have achieved photographically with this camera, as a newbie.

Here are some of the photos I like personally.

The photos shown above are from my flickr photostream (I created a new account for this. A plus point from the DSLR encounter). And they are also posted in a Google+ photo album.

There won’t be any posts categorized under “Photography” hereafter until I get my hands on a great camera again. So, to make sure this is not the last, I need to stop typing here and start writing an important letter immediately. I’ll start that letter like this…

“Dear Santa…”

According to SEO experts, updating blog content regularly will effect the web traffic positively. So for a “rare” poster like me, seeing “Views per day: 10” in the WordPress analytics everyday is not new, and I am not serious about web traffic volume as I am (still) only a hobbyist blogger.

The small “Spike”

But what I saw yesterday in the “Wordpress stats” plugin’s chart, caught my attention. And you will know why if you take a look at the following image:

As you can see, the “Spike” on the 11th of August 2011 is really unusual.

So I clicked on the date to see more detailed information about it. The post that has attracted most of the 146 views on that day was → Tree leaves becoming “pinhole cameras” during the Annular Solar Eclipse. Though that particular post brings at least one visitor from Google search everyday, the majority of the 146 visitors did NOT come from a Google search on 11th of August.

Minor “Reddit” effect

What the statistics revealed to me was that someone has linked to my post from a comment in Reddit. Because websites like Reddit have a huge following, even a mere fraction of that community’s clicks will show a marked difference in traffic (read: Reddit)

News and social bookmarking websites like Digg, Delicious, Slashdot and Reddit are popular for slowing down or even closing down smaller sites temporarily when they flood a smaller site with traffic when a story/post becomes popular (read: Slashdot effect)

Motivation

This cannot even be called a “spike” if I was a professional blogger! Though the increase in traffic was a very minor & temporary one, it made me publish a new post after long time and it has also motivated me to post more regularly… let’s see

Peace.

The good news comes!

Then I muster up some energy and sit up. Deciding to go about my usual daily duties, I open the 1st message to read, which is a CNN news alert: “Google hinted today that they are making moves to get rid of Internet Explorer 6 for good, CNN”! What? wow, I thought. And I open the 2nd message…

Its a facebook status update from a web-designer friend of mine that says “Tired of fighting with IE6 bugs… I give up “, feeling sorry for him, I open the 3rd message, which is again a CNN news alert: “Google made a public statement saying that it has got positive feedback from yahoo, facebook, twitter, <add high-traffic BIG site names here>, about their intention of getting rid of IE6″!! What? that’s really interesting… wow, I get excited already.

More excitement awaits…

I get ready and rush to work. At the office, firing up my favorite browser… Firefox, I head straight to twitter, and see “Google” and “IE6″ trending! Now we are on to something really serious I think. While I read related news, I get that awesome text message. Yet another CNN alert that makes you have a loooong sigh of relief…

“Google and other top sites have decided to stop serving for IE6 starting from 04:45 GMT time”!!! Wow… thats my 3rd wow for the day and its a serious one. I just can’t believe that. How come it all happened so fast?.

I calculate the time quickly +05:30 from that GMT time means… it should be 10:15am in Sri Lanka. Whats the time now… oh It’s 10:12… just 3 minutes from now. I fire up my portable IE6 copy that I used to test sites on, and visit YouTube. I still see only a recommendation to upgrade the browser.

Believe in miracles!

I refresh the page… watch the time… 1 minute more… refresh the page… nothing new… 10 seconds more… refresh the page… times up! nothing new yet… refresh again… and… it takes time to load now… and…. oh! I see a new page…. a mostly empty page, which says: “Sorry, but your browser is too old. Please upgrade your browser using this link or, select an alternative browser to download from the following list”… yeahhhhh! They’ve done it!

I visit Google.com and see the exact same page. Google has provided the page to be linked, so that all site owners can use the same page when a user visits using IE6. Its gone… IE6 has gone forever… People would be forced to upgrade if they want to view their favorite websites. I jump up in excitement without thinking much of what I’m doing….

Ouch…

Ouch! That hurt. I hit something hard when jumping… oh it hurts… but.. how come my back hurts? err… where am I?… my back feels cold… Im on the floor!? in my room… oh my God… I’ve fallen off from bed… so it was all… a DREAM!

hmm… At least I saw it happening in my dream. Swift changes for nagging problems come only in dreams it seems. What a sweet dream

Note: That was not a real dream. No sleeping baby was harmed in the making of this post!

The reason why I selected a Sony Ericsson K800i is because… I still use it!   Though I use a SE K800i here to demonstrate the settings, I’m pretty sure you can use the same settings with any phone that supports IMAP to send and receive Gmail messages.

Off to the steps…

Enable IMAP access in Gmail

If you haven’t already done so, you have to enable IMAP access in Gmail, so that you can use the mail client in your mobile device to access your email.

1. Go to “Settings” in Gmail and select the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab:

2. In the “IMAP Access” section, select the “Enable IMAP” under “Status”.

Remember to save your changes

Set up the mobile phone’s mail client

1. From standby, select “Menu” => “Messaging” => “Email” => “Settings”.

2. Select “New Account” and type a name for your account (e.g.: “My Gmail Account”).

3. When you press “Ok”, you will be taken to the first set of settings. Select “Connect Using” and select a data account you have set up in the phone (If you don’t have one, you will have to set up a data account with your mobile operator first. Without a data connection, you won’t be able to continue).

4. Once the data account is selected you will be back to the settings. Now select the next item, “Email Address” and enter your full Gmail address (including “@gmail.com”). Press Ok.

5. Next step is to select “Connection Type”. Select IMAP4 as the connection type.

6. Then change the “Incoming Server” option’s value to imap.gmail.com. Username should be your full email address and set your Gmail password.

7. Change the “Outgoing server” option’s value to smtp.gmail.com, and move on to the “Advanced Settings” option.

8. Under Advanced Settings, you can set your name (how you want it to appear in mails) and a signature. Under “Download S&R”, I recommend you select “Subjects Only” so that you can check the subject and decide whether to press the button on the mail to download it or not.

“Check Interval” can be used if you don’t want to use Push email. Setting a check interval won’t keep the phone connected always. Instead it will check for mail periodically when the check interval elapses (This is recommended if your phone has battery life problems!).

Turn “Push email” on if you want to be notified about incoming email as it arrives (like in a BlackBerry!). This option will not be available at this time. But it will be available AFTER you create the account. The only warning I would give is that it will drain your battery fast. So if it is a problem, leave it off and use the “Check Interval” option to an appropriate value.

9. Now select the “Encryption” option. You will find two sub options in it. Select SSL for “Incoming Server” option and select “TLS” for the “Outgoing Server” option. Use the back button on the phone to come out of the “Encryption” settings.

Select the “Outgoing Username” next and enter you full email address (including “@gmail.com”). And enter you Gmail password for “Outgoing Password”.

Set the “Incoming port” to 993 and “Outgoing port” to 587. That is the last option under the “Advanced settings” section. Now press the back button to come to the previous settings screen. Press the back button again to come out of the email settings altogether.

You should get a popup saying: “Account created. Select the new account if you want to use it as your active account.”

(Note: Hope you remember, I said that the “Push” email option wouldn’t be available until the account is created. Now, either you should get another popup sooner or later saying that Push access can be enabled asking whether to enable it, or you can go into the settings again and turn it on).

To go back to edit any settings you should follow:

Messaging => Email => Settings => (now highlight the account) => More => Edit Account.

10. To send and receive email, come into the email inbox => More => Send & Receive. You can mark mails for deletion. To clear the emails that were “marked for deletion”, you should select “Clear Inbox”.

That’s all folks.. enjoy Gmail through IMAP4, using an old brick.

Hope that helps at least another Sony Ericsson K800i user!

Further Reading:

1. Gmail Help – Configuring other mail clients
2. Gmail Help – Getting started with IMAP for Gmail

When the annular eclipse was at its peak in the region from where I was watching it (Nugegoda, Sri Lanka), I saw some peculiar shadows on the ground. It occurred to me only after several seconds that they are caused by the Solar Eclipse!

When the sun’s rays hit the ground passing through small gaps between tree leaves, they create the “Pinhole Camera” affect. These are actually small inverted images of the sun projected on the ground. Refer the Wikipedia article for more information about the Pinhole Camera: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera.

Checkout these pictures I took at that time:

It was a beautiful pattern to watch during the dreamy-darkness of the eclipse. The reduced temperature due to the eclipse, felt good on the skin too

Get to know when future solar and lunar eclipses would happen from this NASA eclipse website: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Peace.

Christmas has become a celebrated day for non-Christians (like me) too. So let’s celebrate the birth of one of the holiest men ever to walk on this planet!

I would like to wish all my friends, relatives and the global Christian community, a Merry Christmas…

These represent the “white space” characters such as the space, tab, carriage return etc.

How to turn it on or off:

1. You can press the key combination CTRL+E, S (can be different if you have modified). OR
2. Select: Edit » Advanced » View White Space

It’s actually a helpful feature to examine a code file to see what the white space consists of (tabs or spaces). But it can be annoying to keep the feature always turned on.

It has happened at least 5 or more times for me and I always forget what I did the last time to turn it off

I decided to post about it so that someone (including me!) can find this and remember what to do to turn it off (or on).

Hope this helps

Reproducing the problem:

Right-click on a table and generate a CREATE TABLE script from SQL Server 2005 Management Studio:

Paste the generated script in SQL Server 2000, Query Analyzer and verify the syntax by clicking on the “Parse Query” tool button or press CTRL + F5:

Query Analyzer would report syntax errors:

You will get a load of “Incorrect syntax near ‘(‘ ” or similar errors depending on the number of table queries you generated.

Solution for people who manage the target SQL Server 2000 database using SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

I found this solution when I Googled: http://www.waynejohn.com/post/2008/03/21/Scripting-a-SQL-2000-Database-from-SQL-2005.aspx

But note that Wayne John, the author of the blog says he couldn’t find the “Scripting” section in the “Tools –> Options” dialog box in one of his systems, where he had only SQL 2005 installed!

The solution for people who don’t have SQL Server Management Studio installed at the target to manage the SQL Server 2000

So If you are like me… using SQL Server 2000 + Query Analyzer at the target server while the source is a SQL Server 2005 + Management Studio, you can use the good old SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard to export schema.

The queries generated using the SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard worked perfectly with SQL Server 2000′s Query Analyzer (though a query for even a single table would look scary!).

But make sure you select “SQL Server 2000″ as the value for the “Script for target database” property in the “Select Publishing Options” in the wizard.

NOTE: Double-check the “Drop existing objects in script” option to make sure it has “false” (unless you really want to drop objects)

There are plenty of other tools out there too, for example from Red Gate Software. But as a free piece software SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard offers enough for my needs of exporting schema and data from/to SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 databases.