Stylish Stylus

During my short vacation to India, I proudly showcased my Olympus E500 Digital SLR camera to all my friends and family members. As expected, everyone was awestruck. But my younger brother claimed my older camera, the Mju 400 which was so dear to me for years. He was right... why do I need this little camera when I have a bigger one.

The bigger one was good for major shootouts. But if I go for a small party or a casual outing, this bigger one was too clumsy and embarrassing to take out from its even bigger bag. Moreover, my wife wanted a gift on our wedding anniversary. As those wise people say, whenever you buy gifts to your own family, make sure you buy something useful for yourself. So I decided to buy another small point and shoot camera.

The buying process starts from deciding on the brand. The experience with my E500 had only increased my love for Olympus. So I didn't even consider other brands. Now need to decide on the model as Olympus had a lot of options. The Stylus (Mju) series seemed to be a better option as they were slim, stylish and weather proof. The different versions of that added more confusions but after reading lots of reviews and user comments from various sites, decided on the 760. The optical zoom was less (3x compared to 5x of some other models), but everything else looked great including the price.

I preferred buying it from Amazon, as they had better deals and free shipping with no taxes. Selected the pink color (Remember... its for my wife!) and got it for $199.94. I placed the order today and I am not waiting for it to arrive to write about it... I trust both Amazon and Olympus and I am sure things will go great.

I have its specs at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/camera.html

Being a Movie Maker

I was never a fan of video cameras (and I am still not), even though I had used them a couple of times. Carrying a video camera on a vacation or function spoils the whole idea of enjoying that occasion as we end up in holding the camera and recording all nice events. Besides, it takes lot of effort to edit the output and store/organize them properly due to the huge size of these video files.


But when I decided to visit my home country for the first time from US, I felt like buying a small handycam to capture the scenes from here, so that it will be more fun for my friends and family to know our life here. A better option than listening to my boring narrations as they can fast forward or skip any time. :) And, my younger brother wanted a gift from me and this served both the purposes.


Since I was never into camcorders, I knew nothing about them. The buying process started with extensive research on the net and I learnt lot of new things. First of all I had to choose the type of recording medium. Built-in hard disk were the new trends, but many people on discussion forums and reviews reported that it is still not very proven and quality will be less as they had to compress the output. DVDs were popular but they also had this same quality issue. I was not interested in tapes, as I thought they are very cumbersome and require conversion devices to get the video transferred into computer. I was wrong and there were these mini DV tapes which records video in digital format. Then I learnt that there is something called firewire port (like USB ports but with higher transfer rates) in computers and buy buying an additional firewire cable it is possible to transfer videos from these tapes to computer easily.


I compared various models from Canon and Sony after knocking out JVC and other brands from the list. The actual user comments from various online store sites helped in getting the right feel of the products early enough to make a wise buying decision. Due to the noise issue, Canon ZR850 was knocked out in the last minute and decided on the Sony DCR-HC38.
Visited various stores like Frys, Best Buy, Walmart and Circuit City near Irving (Dallas, USA) to actually feel the product and get the details of their deals. Also compared prices from popular online stores like Amazon, B&H, etc and finally got the better deal from Amazon with free shipping and no taxes.



Since the free shipping takes more days to deliver, I was bit worried about getting it delivered before my vacation. But it did arrive just two days before my travel and I was really surprised to know that how easy it has become to shoot quality videos with this tiny camcorder. I spent a whole day shooting all near by places and used the firewire cable to transfer the video to my laptop using Sony's software that came with the camera. The files were in avi format, and for the first time I used almost all the features of Windows Movie Maker that came along with my Vista, to make a not so bad video. Adding titles, effects and background music was a breeze and the final output in wmv format was more compact than I thought.

I have its specs at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/camcorder.html

Going SLR

The transition from point and shoot digital camera to SLR was obvious. But the buying process wasn’t that easy as I thought. I am sure my wife will never forget those days I spent in front of the computer every evening reading reviews after reviews to decide on my first major camera purchase. Also the long discussions I had with my friends who owned SLRs... asking the same questions again and again.

Canon's Rebel XT and XTi versions were in the last list along with Olympus Evolt E500. The two lens kit and the better price together with features that helps a novice with SLR photography made sure that Olympus got my bet.

Since the research process took more time than expected, I had to buy the camera as soon as possible to get ready for my first big vacation trip from here to Las Vegas and Canyons. I had placed this camera in the shopping cart of Amazon, few days back only to find it out of stock when I finally decided to buy. My hopes on the prices of these cameras to come down also seemed diminishing when I noticed prices going up in some online stores. So I rushed to Circuit City shop where I had examined this camera before. I had to spend some tensed moments at the store when they insisted that I need to place the order online first to get the better deal. I did that from the connected computer in the store and got my package right there. Within no time, I was into exploring its details and got immediately hooked into this new gadget.

I have all the details of this camera at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/cameraslr.html

SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition

Here is my problem… I need to develop a PIM (Personal Information Management) application. It will be a small client application that users can take along with them on their laptops or USB drives or even PDAs. What are my storage options in this scenario?

Having an XML or text file to store complete data for this application is not even worth of thinking when you know that your data is growing and there will be sensitive information that needs to be stored securely and searched quickly.

Another option is MS Access mdb file. It has its own issues and the debate of whether it is a better choice is still going on. Now that I heard about SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition (CE) (previously SQL Mobile or SQL Everywhere), I would certainly choose it just because I can leverage on my SQL skills and be consitent all across.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition is the next version of SQL Server Mobile adding the desktop platform. SQL Server Compact extends the SQL Server Mobile technology by offering a low maintenance, compact embedded database for single-user client applications for all Windows platforms including tablet PCs, pocket PCs, smart phones and desktops. Just as with SQL Server Mobile, SQL Server Compact is a free, easy-to-use, lightweight, and embeddable version of SQL Server 2005 for developing desktop and mobile applications.

Unlike SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, CE is much smaller (less than 2 MB) and can have a database within a password protected single file (with sdf extension). I completed its installation within a minute. I used Visual Studio 2005’s Server Explorer Data Connection to create a new database and to connect to it. Same interface can be created to design and populate tables. You can also use SQL Management Studio to mange the database.

To use it in an application, add a reference to System.Data.SqlServerCe. Then connecting to this database is a breeze.

Imports System.Data.SqlServerCe

Dim objConn As SqlCeConnection
Dim strCon As String

strCon = "Data Source=FirstDB.sdf;Encrypt Database=True;Password=Welcome123;File Mode=shared read;Persist Security Info=False;"
objConn = New SqlCeConnection(strCon)
objConn.Open()

Inserting data is also very simple:

Dim objComm As SqlCeCommand
Dim strSQL As String

strSQL = "INSERT INTO TestTable (ColName) VALUES ('" + txtName.Text.Trim() + "')"
objComm = New SqlCeCommand(strSQL, objConn)
objComm.ExecuteNonQuery()

Getting the data back:

Dim objAdapter As SqlCeDataAdapter
Dim objDataset As DataSet
Dim strSQL As String

strSQL = "SELECT ColID as [ID], ColName AS [Name] FROM TestTable"

objAdapter = New SqlCeDataAdapter(strSQL, objConn)
objDataset = New DataSet()
objAdapter.Fill(objDataset, "Products")

dgResult.DataSource = objDataset.Tables("Products")

I created a small windows .NET 2.0 application that insert data into a local CE database and populate it on a grid as shown in the above code. I could make it work in other machines where CE is not installed by copying all the CE dlls along with my executable. It is that simple and easy.
The advantages are many. It is in-proc and supports transactions. When the application grows, it is easy to migrate to SQL Server. The synchronizing features helps to get the local data synchronized with a central server using RDA (Remote Data Access) or Merge Replication.

The issues? It does not support views, triggers, stored procedures or user functions. Though you can have SQL scripts embedded in your project separated with GO statements and get them executed together. The key minds from Microsoft behind this technogy, Steve Asker and Anil Nori explined in their web cast that they are not planning to provide support for stored procs, etc, not just because that the size of this product will grow, but mainly because they dont want the business logic to be residing in the database.

Virtual PC 2007

I first encountered with this wonderful virtualization product from Microsoft sometime back when we had to setup 20 computers with identical software installations for a training purpose. The software packages we required were really huge taking up hours to install (SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio Team System 2005). Virtual PC helped us here. All we had to do was to setup one Virtual PC image with all of them and it was just the matter of copying these files into the computers and installing only the VPC software on them.

Now that I have a new laptop with Windows Vista, I didn’t want to install all my development tools on it to make it slower and problematic. Solution? Virtual PC! The new version 2007, which is totally free, now supports Vista as both host and guest. So I have a Windows XP Virtual PC with old favorites like VB6, and another VPC with Windows 2003 and VS 2003 and VS 2005. Another one is in making with Vista and .NET 3.0.


Virtual PC also helps me in trying out any software without disturbing my original system. And whenever I get new software that is not working in Vista, I can use them in XP or 2003. Now I am a complete Virtual PC enthusiast!