Bytes and Bites of Internet
Me
Self Introduction in 3rd person in BLOG ?? Or it is actually written by another person ??
Jan 13th
Just like many people, internet is my another playground (after our backyard 
). I use google for many things, for work related stuff, to search cheap deal of computer hardware or just to find some crazy video. And every time I go to some personal blog or site, it always amazes me that why people like to like about them in 3rd person view ?? I mean come on, if it is my own blog then why the hack I will write about myself in 3rd person view ?? Unless I am just one of many poster of that blog and every author has their own bio written by some professional dude (which will be weird because … you blog because you want to write something not let others write for you, aren’t you ??) … I think it is totally OK to write bio in 3rd person view but when it is done by real 3rd person on his/her blog not yours.
I usually when find any blog, I try to find “About Me”. It is really entertaining to read those self posted 3re person bio. Some classic examples are, “S/He has XX years of experience in field of XYZ. And s/he is expert in XWYX technology.” Hell I have even seen some linkedIn profile like that !!
Anyways, I think me too can add something in 3rd person view,
Overclocking my Radeon HD 6770
Dec 30th
With my new rig I bought an average graphic card as well. I am not hardcore gamer at all but I do sometimes like to shoot some zombies or build my galactic empire 
… so I bought this cheap but very nice graphic card from ATI Radeon 6770 HD from Sapphire. And I must say that I am really impressed with this little beast. Thought it is not top of the line card, so far it is able to let me play all latest games I throw at it.
After my successful attempt to OC my AMD Processor, my hands were sort of twitching to OC my GPU as well. Just like all ATI cards, mine was also using “ATI Catalyst” software for control and setting up advance graphic options. While just browsing these options I found that it has a rather interesting option, ability to overclock the GPU and it’s RAM !! I googled a little bit about OCing my graphic card model, but I didn’t found any helpful settings which I can use for my graphic card. So, I decided to do my own little trial and error thing.
SQL Server with in-memory TempDB
Oct 20th
Today, I did some experiment with SQL Server. I have been using an awesome tool called RamDisk now and then for experiments. It allows to use RAM as a HDD !! So if you have enough RAM you can throw some RAM to this tool (free version has 4Gb max limit) and you will get nice 4Gb chunk of storage. And then you can use this chunk just as any regular drive but downside is, it is volatile since though it looks like normal HDD, it is in fact still RAM and thus it posses all good and bad properties of RAM. Bad properties like highly volatile and unreliable storage but Good property like super fast read and write capability and near instantaneous response.
As we already know that most common bottleneck for SQL Server (or generally any application) is HDD. Since they are the slowest moving part of whole architecture. Yes it is true that with introduction to newer breed of storage devices,called SSDs don’t have any moving part and so they provide super fast read and write capability. But SSDs are still relatively new technologies, so we actually don’t know how they will perform at long run and they are still expensive as hell.
And RamDisk on the other hand, is cheaper solution because you actually don’t buy new storage but you add more memory and use it to store data temporarily. It could be very well possible solution to explore for TempDB, since TempDB doesn’t require to store any data and it is mostly used as a scratch pad for SQL Server.
Before proceeding further, I would like to mention that TempDB for SQL Server was using same physical drive as of Windows and I used SQL Server 2008r2 Dev on Windows 7.
The experiment,
Over Clocking my AMD Processor
Oct 7th
If you don’t know what overclocking is then there is from Wikipedia,
Overclocking is the process of running a computer component at a higher clock rate (more clock cycles per second) than it was designed for or was specified by the manufacturer. This is more usually practiced by enthusiasts seeking an increase in the performance of their computers than professional users, as overclocking carries risks of less reliable functioning or even damage. Some purchase low-end computer components which they then overclock to higher clock rates, or overclock high-end components to attain levels of performance beyond the specified values. Others overclock outdated components to keep pace with new system requirements, rather than purchasing new hardware.
As this definition says, there is a risk involved with this process as you are making your processors to work beyond their “recommended” capacity. And it worst case scenario there is a risk of physical processor damage is involved.
But despite of all these risks, I tried (succeed ) to overclock my processor. The main reason of this is I have AMD Thuban X6 (2.8GHz, hexacore processor). Good thing about this series is they can be easily overclocked upto 3.2 GHz. After some digging I actually found that AMD has a utility called AI Suite, and with it’s help you can overclock these processors with just a single click !!
Side effects of User Account Control (UAC) of Windows 7
Oct 6th
When I used it for first time I thought that UAC was really annoying feature of Windows Vista. I mean for each and every app it was required me to confirm, if I wanted to perform some task which required access to core system. It was more like low level mimic of Linux. But after using Vista for about 2 years (yesssssss … I did used Vista that long, poor me 
) I was sort of used to of this feature. So when I upgraded to Windows 7 (tell me who didn’t upgraded from Vista to 7, except old XP users ??) I enabled UAC in it as well.
But I think I am going to fed up of this really dumb feature. Well, the feature itself is not bad its just it is not just at par with its counter part of Linux. And biggest annoyance is if you run some application and it failed to run due to UAC, Windows just don’t say it. Instead of this you will get all sort weird errors.
And finally it is here !!
Sep 13th
Yes, after month of speculations and rumors (and news of fake torrents) finally long awaited Windows 8 is here. Though MSFT has already mentioned somewhere that “Windows 8” is not the final name of OS for now it is known as Windows 8 to all of us. It has been said that it will be finest of windows ever (but I don’t want to hold my breath on it after my experience with Vista 
) but by looking at all snapshots on net and presentation videos I am sure that it will be a bit different.
Since introduction of that tiny square computing machine (ahem …. iPad) the computing trend has sort of shifted towards portable computing devices called Tablets. And this new OS of Windows is said to be designed to specifically for those devices (or devices that supports “Touch”).
I am kind of more interested in laying my hand on Metro UI (famous UI that is being used in newer Windows Phones). I’ve played with it on Windows Phones (I personally like to live free, so I am using Android 
) and I really liked it. The look is really refreshing. And I would like to see how they have implemented navigation of this UI to devices which don’t have touch support (laptops and desktops). And of course built in AV and Hyper-V are also feature that I would like to test.
X Files are real !!!
Jul 16th
Well, not real as in some FBI agents trying to solve cases with unexplained phenomenal activity (or may be there are some ! who knows) …. well, for me X file case is like occurrence of some unexplained event and there is no clear explanation of what actually happened. That is exactly what happened yesterday !!!
I am not super enthusiast but I have a small fish bowl that has had only two fishes (originally there were 4 but now it just 2 left but that’s another story). As usual I take out fishes into another container while I clean up that bowl. Yesterday I did exactly same while cleaning up that bowl. As we all generally use tap water, we need to process it to make it OK for fishes so we need to add some chemical into it that removes chlorine and other chemicals that are harmful for fishes, this process requires some time (about 20-30 mins) so I left fishes into that container and added that chemical to bowl and left for dinner.
But when I came to put fishes back into the bowl, I found that one of the goldfish was missing !!!! I investigated “crime scene” but found no evidence that fish somehow jumped out of that container and fell off to ground, nor I found that someone intentionally thrown her out (yup, you have to consider everyone as a suspect at first) 
!!