Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

June 29, 2007

No updates till next week (Maybe)

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 12:14 PM

It still surprises me sometimes when I look at the stats for my blog and see that so many people visit my blog. Its flattering to think that so many people find what I write interesting.

Any ways this is just to let everyone know that I have been crazily busy at work so have no time/energy for blogging. I hope to have most of this stuff taken care of soon so maybe, just maybe I will start blogging again next week. Till then, take care and thanks for visiting.

– Suramya

June 24, 2007

Getting a 404 error in asp.net when the file exists on the server

Filed under: Computer Software,Computer Tips,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:25 PM

Hit this issue recently on a web server that I was setting up on Windows 2003 server using IIS. Now everything was installed correctly and I had copied all the files to the server, then I created a virtual directory for my asp.net application and when I went to http://localhost/Test it would show me the directory listing (Yes I had enabled that so that I could debug). However when I clicked on the service.asmx file it would tell me that the file didn’t exist and I would get a 404 error. Now I knew that the file was there and I could see it in the directory listing but for some reason the IIS refused to show it.

The problem was caused because the server was running the 64 bit version of ASP.NET 2.0 while we were expecting the 32 bit version. Yes, it took me a couple of hours to figure that out. To fix it basically what you have to do is tell IIS that you want to use the 32 bit version for this particular Virtual Directory by changing the Script Map. The steps to change this are:

  • Open the IIS management console.
  • Expand the local computer node, expand Web Sites, and then expand Default Web Server.
  • Right-click the folder for the application, and then click Properties.
  • On the Directory tab, click Configuration.
  • The Application Configuration dialog box appears.
    On the Mappings tab, select an ASP.NET application extension, such as .asmx or .aspx.

    The Executable Path column of the dialog box lists the path to the ASP.NET ISAPI extension used by the application. By default, the ASP.NET ISAPI extension is installed in the following location:

    %system root%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\versionNumber. Browse to the appropriate directory and select the aspnet_isapi.dll file.

  • Click Ok and exit
  • Finally Stop and Start the webserver for the changes to take effect.

Now you should be able to access the files on the server without issues.

BTW, also make sure that the user IIS is running as also has permissions to read files and execute scripts in the directory where you have copied your files.

Hope fully you found this helpful.

Source for the steps to change the mapping: How to: Configure ASP.NET Applications for an ASP.NET Version

Thanks,
Suramya

June 22, 2007

How to wash clothes?

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 1:45 PM

So how do you wash clothes?

How to Wash clothes

In my case I give it to mom 😀

– Suramya

June 20, 2007

iPhone is not going to be my phone…

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:55 AM

I am getting pretty tired of the hype that is surrounding the iPhone. Every website I check there are atleast 2 articles/news on it about the iPhone and a lot of people I know are eagerly waiting for it. I am not.

I am a person who usually goes for the latest software and products. e.g. I am typing this entry using Gran Paradiso (Firefox 3 Alpha 5) and when I bought my phone it was one of the latest in the market. But I don’t fall in for the hype. If a product has too much hype surrounding it and if it becomes a status symbol to own it then I am more likely than not to not buy it/get it. e.g. gMail accounts were the big things 2(?) years ago but since it was considered so much of a status symbol and considering the fact that I didn’t need another email account I never bothered getting one till almost an year ago when I had to get it to start using Orkut.

So why am I not getting the iPhone? Many reasons… First, I don’t like the way it looks. It looks ugly. Everyone is jumping around claiming that the interface is revolutionary but none of them have actually used it (Well, neither have I but..). Once they do they will come to the same conclusion that I have. Its clunky. Yes its shiny and new. But thats not a reason for which I would buy a $600 phone.

Second, it doesn’t allow you to install other apps. I love adding new software to my phone. That way I can enhance it by adding features that it doesn’t support by default. I might not, but that that doesn’t excuse them making the phone so that I can not. (Yes I know that they are making Safari a platform for development on iPhone)

The battery like sucks. It only gives you abut 6 hours of talk time/net access.

My Nokia 6270 gives me most of the features for 1/2 the price and the new N series from Nokia does pretty much everything that iPhone does for a lot cheaper.

Ah well, hopefully this craze will pass soon. I am sure that the iPhone is going to sell a lot initially thanks to the ohh shiny crowd, the apple fans and the gotta have the latest status symbol crowd. But in the long run I don’t think its a worthwhile investment. I would rather spend my money somewhere else like a new laptop. or maybe a new mp3 player.

– Suramya

June 19, 2007

eBooks, Good for sales or Bad?

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 1:00 PM

This is an age old question, with some of the copy right owners/groups suing Google for the alleged copyright infringement. The issue took a funnier (In a silly sort of way) turn recently where a couple of Book publishers decided to give ‘google a taste of its own medicine‘ .

Any ways thats not the topic for this discussion. Though while I like the prank I don’t agree with the concept. Stealing laptops is not the same as scanning books.

As most of the readers of this blog already know, I love reading and read books constantly. I also buy a lot of books because I want to be one of the first to read them. So what is my take on eBooks? are they good for sales or not? I think they are. I will use my own example as a case study. David Weber and Mercedes Lackey are a couple of my favorite authors and I have bought pretty much every books that the two of them have written so far. (And thats a lot of books). And you know what, I would have never even found the authors if Baen Free Library hadn’t made a couple of their books available for free. I found them while I was searching for good Sci-Fi books to read and I liked their writing style so the next time I was in a book store I looked for them and over the course of a year ended up buying most of their books. Now I wait for their new books to come out. So did Baen loose a sale because I downloaded a free book? I don’t think so, infact they gained a whole lot of sales because I ended up buying books that I wouldn’t have other wise.

eBooks are easy to search through so if I need to find a particular quote that I liked but can’t remember which of the books it was from I can use a search to find it. In a dead tree version (Hardcopy books) I can’t do that, I have to search through the whole book manually which takes a lot of time. So if a publisher allows their books to be scanned then anyone searching for a particular kind of book will have a higher chance of finding their books than they would if they hadn’t allowed the books to be scanned.

Another advantage of a eBook is that you can sell it anywhere in the world without having to worry about postage/shipping etc. I love Sci-Fi books but in India its hard to find Science Fiction books in most major books stores (Atleast the ones I have been to so far) the most they have for Science Fiction is the latest Robin Cook. So if I want to read the latest books I have to either wait to get back to the US or have someone ship me the books that I bought online. Or I can purchase the ebook that I can download instantly and read. So even if they are loosing a couple of thousand sales because they made the book available online they are opening up the market to a few million people that would buy the book if they had access to it and now thanks to the internet they do have access.

So I think its silly how the book industry is in an uproar about illegally scanned books and digital books. Make samples available for free, allow readers to search through it, and guess what? if the book is good, it will sell.

And the most important advantage of ebooks is this: its digital, so it won’t fade out or get destroyed in a fire. Its always going to be there for the future generations. If a particular book is the last remaining copy then almost no one can read it, because it will probably end up in a collection somewhere where it is really difficult to get access to it. Now on the other hand if the book is available digitally then it can be copied an unlimited times, so anyone can read the book without harming the original hardcopy which can remain safe in the collection.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

June 15, 2007

Microsoft Vista WOW factor…

Filed under: Computer Related,Computer Software,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:30 PM

A lot of must have seen the advertisements on MS Vista where they talk about the wow factor. Well today I used it on a clients machine and it certainly made we go wow. Read on for the details…

I had a 90 MB file that I needed to extract on their system (224 MB uncompressed), so I copied the file to their system,right clicked and chose extract. Then came the wow factor. Vista told me that it out need ~13 hours to extract the file. Waited for a few mins and it didn’t go down. It really was going to take it 13 hours + change to extract it. Certainly made me go wow.

I didn’t take a screen shot of it at the time, but then as I was telling my cousin about it, I decided to blog it so needed to take a screen shot. When I took the following screen shot it was telling me that it would take 5 days to extract. I waited for a couple of mins in case it was just exaggerating like Windows XP and it would show the correct time in a few mins. But alas it kept showing me the same time.

So here goes:


MS Vista WOW
MS Vista WOW!!!

BTW, just as a comparison, my Windows XP system on a 1 GZ system with 512 MB of RAM takes ~2 mins to extract this file. Haven’t timed it on Linux yet. And this vista install is a running on a new machine thats pretty powerful. And i am not the only one who saw this. Another guy was complaining about it on one of the forums that I visited. His file was taking ~15 mins to extract on vista while on Linux it took about 11 secs to extract.

Ah well. I think I can do without the wow in my life. Pretty happy with Debian and XP for my systems. Don’t think I will be upgrading to Vista anytime soon.

– Suramya

June 12, 2007

Being connected rules! :)

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 12:44 PM

Now that I have a new cell phone that actually receives calls when I am at home I have actually started having a social life again. 🙂 On Sat night I got a call at 9:45 pm from Ruth asking if I would be able to make it for a surprise Birthday party for Rebecca. So me and Axu (My cousin) left for it by 10:15 pm. This wouldn’t have been possible with my old cell connection.

I have been receiving replies to my mails that basically go “Thank god. now we can actually contact you when we need to”…

Been really busy thats why no posts for so long and thats why this post is going to be cut short as well..

– Suramya

June 6, 2007

Got a new cell number

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 3:44 PM

As some of you know I have been having issues with my old cell provider (BSNL). Basically I would never get any phone signal at home and at times even when I got signal it would not allow calls to come through. As you can probably guess that sucked a lot. The funny part was that I was getting a full signal at DhanaChuli which is in the middle of nowhere but at home I barely get a single bar. That too if I was lucky.

So today I finally got an Airtel SIM card and now I am getting a full signal no matter where I go in the house. Obviously that means that my cell # changed. So I will be sending out an SMS and email to all my friends/family to give them the new number.

If you need my cell # email me and I will mail it to you. Or you can check my profile on Orkut if you are in my friends list ’cause there is no way I am posting it over here.

Well this is all for now. Here’s to a better connected me 🙂

– Suramya

June 5, 2007

The DRM is Like…

Filed under: Computer Related,Humor — Suramya @ 11:39 AM

Can’t figure out what the big deal is about DRM? Check out the following site, it will give you a visual representation of what DRM is and how it would affect everyday objects/tasks.

Flickr: The DRM is Like… Pool

Thanks to Open… for the link.

– Suramya

June 4, 2007

This weekend

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 10:58 AM

This weekend sucked big time. I was hoping to use it to relax and catch up with some work, but unfortunately it didn’t go as planned.

First I had a sinusitis attack which made it hard to think much less work. Then something happened to my ear, It feels like I have cotton stuffed in it. Have put medicine in it hopefully it will work, so far it doesn’t look like it is. If not then I will have to goto a ENT (Ear Nose Throat) specialist and get it looked at. This ear is making it hard for me to work/listen to music as I can barely hear from one ear.

Then my net connection died for most of the weekend. It wasn’t fun. My UPS decided it was time to quit working so I don’t have any battery backup. If the power goes I get knocked off the net. I do have inverter but I am scared to connect my computer equipment to it because I don’t trust it (See this post for reasons).

Now my vonage line has decided to stop working. Wonder when it will start again.

Oh to top it all off I decided to backup my data (I use rsync to backup data) over the weekend so I ran the command to back up my data. Unfortunately I accidentally ran the command that synced the data from the server to the laptop instead of the other way round so I lost a couple of days of changes. Mostly on code that I was working on. Some of it was on my other laptop and some of the code I had open in editors so I managed to save a little but most of it I will have to redo. 🙁

Note to Self/advise to others: Don’t attempt to backup when you are half asleep.

Ah well. Now I am tired, sick, have to redo my code changes. Here’s to a glorious new day!

– Suramya

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