Google Earth Team == leet coders

I mean really these guys never cease to amaze me , from there brilliant KMZ Files to just about everything in earth. Now they amaze me once again by secretly embedding a flight simulator into GE. I mean whats cooler than viewing your house from a satellite then actually flying over it.

Access the simulator by pressing ctrl + alt + a in GE . For full details check this brilliant post .

Vertigo Or Something

Assasains Creed

Finally finished the game, on whole very nice game definitely worth the play .Although i have to complain about the ending of the game. The story was on such a roll and all of a sudden they pulled it to a abrupt stop . Its quite clear that a new game will be comming out the will continue the story , so will just have too wait till then to see the rest of this interesting story.

Also keep in mind unless you are a gamer score addict i doubt this game is going to have much replay value. I just cant find it in myself to mindlessly search for flags scattered in the oddest areas of the map. For a open sand box style games there is so much more that they could have done

My Score : 8 / 10

Eye Candy != Awesome Game

Eye Candy here is referring to the general graphics in a game. This is one of the many things recently with which people seem to judge games. The other aspect of a game that people seem to over judge is game play time. Of the many reviews i have read in the past few months alot of games seem to fail with the general community because of one of these to factors .

Eye Candy :

Why is it that so many people are willing to put down a game because it did not live up to the graphics standards that it was hyped to be. Sure we would all like to play photo realistic games and surely we are getting there , but the emphasis is placed too much on graphics. Take for example a FPS , 8 out 10 FPS shooters are so fast paced that if you take 5 minutes to sit and enjoy the scenery you will most surely be gunned down. There are other ways in which a game can be made to stand out , so why not try to focus on other things. For example , make the player more aware of there surroundings by engaging the player in such a way that he remembers where he or she has been .

The basis for most of this most comes from playing army of 2 this weekend. The game was really hyped last year before being delayed and only being released this year. Overall the games was a fun experience with a friend , but again it was nothing spectacular. Alot of the game seemed forced onto the user. It seems the devs were given certain objectives and had to get these into the game no matter what it took. A few things that really got to me after playing the game. Its short , really i cant remember the last time that i finished a game in one weekend .The graphics are sweet yet bland at the same time , walk through 3 or 4 corridors in the game and you really notice a pattern. Walk around 2 bends , defeat a few enemies do a step up with a friend , but make sure not to boost him over as there is always some one wating for you on the other side. And that basically it the whole game.

A few of the nicer things in the game were the options to purchase guns and basically customize your avatar to the way that suited you , but this again was not that well thought of since the was so short that you could not save enough money to buy the gun you wanted. My brother with whom i played the game was particularly frustrated after saving up the entire gaming , not buying anything and then not getting the gun he wanted.

O well at least for a short bit they try to get you attached to your character ,but this again suffers from short gameplay where the bond between player and character is not able build to a point where you feel for the charecter. A good example of this bond came from star craft where the users became very attached to the races they played and as your race took a loss on battle or a cinematic it invoked your emotion if loss as well.

Firefox > all

How far are you willing to go to show that Firefox > all. If you can beat this fellow let me know please. :)

The Leetness

select @CurrentPlatforms = count(platforms) from spore

set @CurrentPlatforms = @Currentplatforms + 1;

So i begin another very cryptic post. If you have not read the weird cryptic message then i will have to spell it out for you.EA has announced yet another platform that they will be releasing spore on ,as if the total number of platforms on which it was being released was not enough. From the very begging everyone knew that EA is going to milk spore for everything it can get.And keeping with that trend they have just released an announcement that they will be developing for iPhone now that the sdk has been rleased.Find the link to the full article on kotaku below. I for one am very excited about this development as mobile developement has always been an interesting area of development for me. Granted that they wont be able to make the game the same play style as the PC but it should be very similar to the Nintendo Version , which while not having the best graphics has the the most interesting features for the platform.

What also caught my attention today as well was the fact that Sims 3 is now also in development ,just how much money does EA have. Spore is going to be EA’s big hitter if not biggest ,which would lead me to believe that they would give the project the most resources .Since Sims 3 is in dev its obvious that they are able to push to major releases at the same time.

But heres hoping that they release Sims 3 at a decent time after Spore has been released. The last thing that would be needed is that the Sims pulls more attention then expected because its such a well built brand where as Spore is fairly new.

Release Article

P.S. This is hopefully the last cryptic Header description

Redgate == Awesome

So some time last year i started looking at asp.net optimization applications , but man these things are hard to come by but luckily for me i came across the Red gate profiler .Hope fully i will get down to installing the application again after the many formats i had to do and post some samples here. But the increases were significant to say the least.

After that i had a semi non official promotion and had more database responsibility which once again led to there wonderful sql toolkit.Of the applications that came with the toolkit i have to recommend the SQL Compare and Sql Prompt.

Sql Compare is a developers best friend. Time is never on a developers side (may be the rockstar programmers ) but for the rest of us i some times ended up doing some work development at home , and this is the biggest nightmare u can imagine .With out sql compare there was a inevitable loss of some of my work at some time as i used to run a dual config setup i.e. at work we had a dev database and at home i had my own database which was most kept in sync with scripts from dev or live. But trust me there is always some small change that u miss that ends up breaking the build and this is where sql compare comes in perfectly keeping databases in sync as well as showing you the changes between the databases and allowing you to chose what to update. Unfortunately after the 14 trial i had to stop using the application as the price was out of my range and i had no buying power in the company. But a 5 starts from me :) .

Sql Prompt is another wonderful application , simply put its everything that Microsoft should have included into SQL Management Studio for a developer .The most important being the auto complete ability as well as short cut phrases. There is not much else to add except that if you come from a Visual Studio background it will make you feel much more at home and definitely increase productivity.Again 5 stars from me :) .

They have just released a new stunning application again called the Exception Hunter ,Not having a chance to test this i will keep it to the quoted text .This application will basically hunt down the locations at which exceptions might occur. Since i have not seen this and no idea how it works, i am going to have to venture on a bit of a gamble.

Here is some pseudo code

1. Load all the code into memory or parts of the app at a time.

2.Try to invoke as many methods as possible using default stored data and mark the locations at which exceptions are thrown and the reason.

3.Search through the code to see if the user throws and exceptions explicitly and mark the locations at which exceptions are thrown and the reason.

4.Check for unassigned variables and any unmanaged code and mark the locations as possible error locations.

Being the coolness that they are they obviously have plenty more checks and are more through with there code then my little pseudo code list :).

If anyone has tried it yet please let me know what you think, but as always i would like to test it my self. (I dont mind sponsors btw :) )

Google Calendar Sync Tool

Google has just released a Google Calendar Sync Tool that will allow you to sync your outlook and Google calendar.

Granted that its still limited to windows and outlook only i think its still super useful to keep them in sync.

Grab the download from here http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955

Install the application.

Choose sync format , This is either 2 way or 1 way. 2 Way being sync up to googe and down to outlook, 1 way being either up 2 google or down 2 outlook only.

Enter name and password

And done.

Remember you heard it here first :).

Update :  Forgot to add that the application will only sync your main calendar , so if you have your own personal calendars these wont be synced in outlook.

Get ur Lol Catz

Just a reminder , added the box widget so everyone go download some lolcats :)

And it was said that the fuel price shall increase

In the never ending wave of price increases for fuel , here is some saving tips :) i think.

Only buy or fill up your car or bakkie in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the fuel, when it gets warmer petrol expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your litre is not exactly a litre. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the petrol, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role. A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3)

stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapours that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapour return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapour. Those vapours are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is, the more fuel you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine. Petroleum storage tanks have an internal floating roof.

This roof serves as zero clearance between the petrol and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every litre is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a fuel truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy, DO NOT fill up–most likely the petrol/diesel is being stirred up as the fuel is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

Express Debugging in C#

Not all of us unfortunately have the ability to code in Visual studio 2005 /2008 and have to make do with the Express editions. Now coming from a environment in which it was available i tend to miss some of the small little features like the quick watch and the Conditional debugging.

The watches i have gotten used to using normal watches but its just not the same .The conditional debugging on the other hand is a must in cases where i have to work with mass data. In these cases stepping through a loop 2000 times is a bit tiring .

After a bit of experimenting i came across the debugger class which would allow me to do what i was doing with the conditional debug points programtically.

All the is need is to add the using System.Diagnostics and the call Debugger.Break() in your code at the required time. So now i am able to stop at pass number 1278 or when a specific value changes and in the end debug my apps easier.

If anyone has any other simpler method for the express editions of Visual studio please let me know.