Thushan Fernando

Channel 9 WinInternals: Going Deep, Windows Shell

Another juicy video from Channel 9, this time its on Windows Shell and has some useful information about the historical aspect of the Windows Shell (from 3.x, 95 & NT4) including threading(STA/MTA), extensibility(Major!), etc...

This video's audio stream is not the best in-terms of quality, to fix the background noise load it up in Windows Media Player, open up the Graphic Equaliser ( View > Enhancements > Graphic Equalizer) and once its up select the individual bars (first top option on the left radio buttons) and then drag down the 125/250Hz bars down the bottom (maybe not the lowest but 3/4 of the way down to improve the audio (background-noise removal)...

Windows Shell Architecture
Ever wonder how the Windows shell is designed? Ever try and write a Windows shell extension? It gets easier in Vista! Here, Catherine Heller, a developer and technical evangelist, and Charles sit down with two of the big brains behind the Windows shell architecture and platform: Architects Chris Guzak and Mike Sheldon. It's always fun to listen in on architects reflecting on the evolution and future of the technology they think up.

Watch Going Deep - Windows Shell [ Approx. 50 Mins]

Internet Explorer v7.x beta 2 released publicly

The long awaited Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 7 was just released by MSFT. Go Download it

Men get distracted by women.... DUHHHHHH!

From the BBC article "Sex cues ruin men's decisiveness":

Catching sight of a pretty woman really is enough to throw a man's decision-making skills into disarray, a study suggests.

The more testosterone he has, the stronger the effect, according to work by Belgian researchers.

Men about to play a financial game were shown images of sexy women or lingerie.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B study found they were more likely to accept unfair offers than men not been exposed to the alluring images.

The suggestion is that the sexual cues distract the men's thoughts, preventing them from focusing on their task - particularly among those with high natural testosterone levels.

And to think they actually had to do a study/research to proove that... heck watch us going to lunch on Chappel Street and you'll see that almost instantaneously... We'd be talking about work, suddenly a good looking gal passes by the entire crew turns around and checks her out... After a few minutes we'd be trying hard to recall what on earth we were discussing before;-)

So how do you fair? Try out the Concentration Test (NOTE: Not Safe For Work) I admit i got distracted by Sydney the first few times... I mean come on...

Visual Studio Express editions free permanently & Sql Server 2005 SP1

Quick Microsofty post in the middle of LAN Principals revision...

First up Visual Studio Express editions are now permanently free! Great thing if your starting out in .NET, although I have yet to try any Express editions personally, from what I've seen and heard of people using its a good IDE.

Like that guy in the Dilmah Tea ad says (also a Fernando btw - not related!)... Do Try It;-) (and the original post)

Next up SQL Server 2005 SP1 shipped a few days ago.

Download SP1 for 2005
Download SP1 for Express

COOL: Twelve 30 Inch 3007WFP's running on 6 GeForce 7900 and on a 3000Watt system!

If playing Quake III on 24 Monitors wasnt enough, someone's gone nuts with Dell's new 30" LCD Beast 3007WFP (Which I'm considering buying in the not-too-distant-future to replace the 2405FPW) Certainly not cheap to run... but drool-worthy!

Powering the matrix are six GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB graphics cards and three Turbo-Cool 1KW 1000W power supplies. Cooling duties for the horde of displays are handled by 48 fans mounted behind the displays.

Read More(Including Photos and step by step build information etc)

How smart are you? Human Body and Mind Senses Challenge

Another thing to waste your sunday morning on... Take the BBC Science & Nature Human Body and Mind Senses test, if you feel particularly dumb today, leave it for tomorrow because some questions are quite hairy.

I scored 17 out of 20, I failed the taste test (there goes my chance of being a chef) and the question relating to the area of the brain (well I aint no brain surgeon). A couple of inteligent-on-the-fly-real-time-guess-work;) got me the pencil question and the keyboard question, the ball in the middle was a fluke. So in realistic view, I only scored 14. Yayyyy I found out how dumb i was today!

MOVIE: The Simpsons Movie trailer revealed including release date...

I hope this isnt an April fools joke, but MSNBC have posted an article detailing a glimpse of The Simpsons Move Trailer. To quote the article directly...

The animated 25-second clip opens on a giant superhero S. “Leaping his way onto the silver screen,” intones a narrator, “the greatest hero in American history!” Cut to Homer Simpson sitting on his couch in his tighty whities. “I forgot what I was supposed to say,” he says. The narrator continues, “ ’The Simpsons Movie,’ coming to the screen, July 27, 2007.” “Uh, uh,” says Homer, “we better get started.”

To think a show that started off in 1989 (I didnt start watching it until atleast 91/92 when I arrived in Australia) has come this far, life without The Simpsons would be so boring... We'd have to recit Oprah Winfrey quotes/moments in school lunchbreaks... *imagine*

UPDATE:
Well its not an April fools joke, some mirrors for you to download this short-but-sweet clip from:
RapidShare Mirror
YouTube Mirror

Enjoy! (PS. I dont own/nor have uploaded any of the clips, so if they are down let me know!) (Update 04/04/06 @ 19:35 AEST - Removed redundant links!)

COOL TOOL: JaJah web-activated telephony calls, perfect for April Fools!

A little late on delivery but I just found this cool service called JaJah which basically bridges two phone lines to a call, great for some April fools/pranks even though its the second of the month (I had a ball yesterday randomly calling people)... Try it out! Cheap call rates too (PS. Dont worry, I dont get paid any commission if you click the link, i hate it when people do that:p)

COOL TOOL: WinRAR v3.6 Beta with Multi-threading support

WinRAR's my prefered compression application, (previously it was WinACE, but after WinRAR v3.x came there was nothing that came close - OK 7Zip is probably the better compression (via 7Z Format) but the software isnt as nice as WinRAR).

RARLabs have just released a new beta of their v3.6 release of WinRAR and whats majorly cool with this one is that the compressor is (natively) multi-threaded (see release notes at the bottom of this post).

Just as a rough estimate, compressing 480 Objects  (mixed, text/source-code, binary -EXE, and other archive files) weighing in at 49.7Mb in the previous WinRAR took approximately 32.1 Seconds, in the new beta i've managed it get it in 19.78 seconds! WOW what a saving! This was done at the BEST setting, RAR Archive on a 3.8Ghz (Single-Core with HT-Enabled) Non-OC'd on ASUS P5WD2 mobo with XP Pro SP2. Not BaD! Download it and see what the difference on your processor is! I want to try it on the 955 Presler when I get home.

WinRAR - What's new in the latest version

1. Multithreaded version of RAR compression algorithm improves the compression speed on computers with several CPU, dual core CPU and processors with hyperthreading technology. Multithreading is enabled by default, but you can disable it in "General" part of "Settings" dialog.
   
   In the command line mode you can control multithreading with -mt switch.
   
   
2. WinRAR can display the folder tree panel allowing to navigate in disk and archive folders. Use "Options/Folder tree" submenu to enable the folder tree. It can be configured separately in file and archive management modes.
   
   Folder tree replaces "Browse for folder" command previously available in "File" menu and uses its Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut.
   
   
3. Now WinRAR "Rename" command also works with ZIP archives. Previous versions could rename files only in RAR archives.
   
   
4. Added decompression of LZH archives created with "-lh7-" algorithm.
   
   
5. New "Remove duplicate folders from extraction path" option in "Settings/Compression" dialog.
   
   If this option is on and you unpack an archive which root folder has no files and only one 'somename' folder and if destination folder is new or empty and also ends with '/somename', WinRAR will exclude one 'somename' from resulting 'somename/somename' path.
   
   
6. New "Define volume sizes..." button in "Settings/Compression". This button activates "Define volume sizes" dialog. Here you can customize the list of predefined volume sizes associated with "Split to volumes, bytes" field in archiving dialog.
   
   
7. Speed of RAR general compression increased for some data types. Depending on data type and size the gain may achieve 5 - 15%.
   
   
8. New "Rename automatically" option in the extraction dialog and command line -or switch to rename extracted files automatically if file with the same name already exists. You can also enable the auto-renaming mode directly from the overwrite confirmation prompt with "Rename All" button.
   
   Renamed files will get names like 'filename(N).txt', where 'filename.txt' is the original file name and 'N' is a number.
   
   
9. "Set modification time" option in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog is accessible also for ZIP archives. Previously it could be changed only for RAR archives.
   
   
10. "Multithreading" option added to "Benchmark and hardware test" command, so you can compare performance of usual and multithreaded versions of RAR compression algorithm.
    
    
11. New 'ch' (change archive parameters) command line mode command. Its purpose is to apply switches like -av, -tl and -cl to archive.
    
    
12. New 'cv' command line mode command. It provides the command line interface to WinRAR "Convert archives" command. It is supported only by winrar.exe, not by rar.exe.
    
    
13. New command line -sl and -sm switches to set size limits of processing files.
    
    
14. New command line -fcu[file] switch allows to read archive comments from Unicode files. It also modifies behavior of "cw" command, setting the comment output format to Unicode.
    
    
15. 7Z added to list of formats stored without compression when using -ms switch without a parameter.
    
    
16. Switch -e[+] is now supported by most of command line operations including extracting and deleting files. Previously it was supported by only archiving command.
    
    
17. It is allowed to use environment variables in archive name in archiving dialog, in destination path in extraction dialog, in folder names on "Compression" and "Paths" pages in WinRAR settings. For example, you can enter '%temp%' in "Folder for temporary files" field.

Download: WinRAR v3.6 Beta 1