The Blog

I haven’t been using Google Docs much, since I don’t work on documents that I need to share that often via the web. But it seems that Google Docs has come a long way since it was first started a year or so ago. Its got pretty much everything: a Document, Spreadsheet and Presentation (correspond to MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint respectively) and it gives the ability to save documents in MS Office and PDF formats. And now its more useful than ever since it is now available offline.  You can create a document, save it offline, share it, edit it, and sync it when you get back online. Not bad for a FREE product. Read More about it here.

A few months ago, we started playing squash. Although I have played the game a fair amount of time growing up but having not played for ages since it was hard to get back into it. The muscles complain a lot and the stamina is pushed to the limits. The breathing is incredibly hard. The game is so intense that you get out of breath very fast. Squash is a great sport as you get an incredible workout in a forty-five minute slot [which includes at least one break]. A similar workout playing tennis would require at least two hours.

Google’s main page is dark today, to observe Earth Hour. Earth Hour is an effort to conserve energy to save the world/environment. I’ve turned this humble blog of mine black as well. Only for today.

A beautiful song by an Iranian singer, Niyaz. The song, Allah hi Allah kiya karo, is a childhood favorite of mine (I heard this sung as a lullaby growing up). Love the melody.

Source: WikipediaChanging times require changes in skill and education. After several years of working with Java within the SAP NetWeaver Platform, I’m learning ASP.NET (C# and VB.NET). Recently being acquainted with the Microsoft Technology I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful the .Net environment is. Microsoft has clearly done a huge amount of work in getting the old Visual Interdev from the VB 6 days to the highly flexible and robust environment that is Visual Studio 2008. There is a wealth of resources available on MSDN but a few good books go a long way when learning a new technology. I’ve been working with the following books, among others. I recommend these to any developer working with the ASP.NET technology.

Beginning ASP.NET 2.0
Price: CAD 30.23

32 used & new available from CAD 0.11

ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem – Design – Solution
Price: CAD 30.09

25 used & new available from CAD 6.02

Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition
Price: CAD 45.35

28 used & new available from CAD 16.23