A software engineer's glory so often goes unnoticed. Attention seems to come either when there are bugs or when the final project ships. But rarely is a developer appreciated for all the nuances and subtleties of a piece of code--and all the heroics it took to write it.

Until now.

With the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, various achievements are unlocked based on your activity. When you unlock an achievement, Visual Studio lets you know visually with a pop-up. In addition, your Channel 9 profile is updated with any achievements you earn, recalculating your position on the leaderboard. Now, all that hard work won’t go unnoticed!Download it today!

There are six categories of achievements you can earn, including categories like Unleashing Visual Studio, Power Coder, Don't Try This At Home and more. Some examples of individual achievements include Regional Manager (have more than 10 regions in a single class), Close To The Metal (use 5 preprocessor directives), Stubby (generate method stubs 10 times) or Interrupting Cow (have 10 breakpoints in a file). All in all, there are 32 achievements awaiting to be unlocked.

To see a list of all the achievements, check out this page. You can also see where you and your fellow niners stand on the leaderboard. You can tweet and share your achievements on Facebook. Or, add your list of achievements to your blog. After all, those badges look so shiny and nice!

Note that the Visual Studio Achievements only works for C# and Visual Basic. Progress based achievements can only be incremented once a minute. Achievements marked with Uses FxCop only work on Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Ultimate unless FxCop is installed. Visual Studio Achievements has an API for those interested.

Download it today! Happy coding!

Another fantastic year gone by and the new 2012 starts today. Awesome! Almost half of the year I couldn’t blog. So just thought of doing a quick recap.

Team PeraSoft won the Imagine Cup software design category locally and represented the country at the Imagine Cup World finals held in New York. During the 2 month window between the local finals and world finals I did about 6 trips to Peradeniya University for preparation on the world finals. Team lead by Lahiru did a wonderful job putting their 100% heart and mind into the project. Kinect SDK released during this time was an extra bonus as the team used it to enhance the solution drastically. World Finals was an amazing experience. Venue was right at the Times Square .. I mean you just walk out from the hotel lobby and here you are at the Times Square … it truly is a never sleeping place. It was perfect that they had mid-night movies … watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon in iMAX 3D and it was fantastic. Only regret is I couldn’t watch Lion King the stage drama in a Broad Way Theater … it was all booked.

In October Ministry of Higher Education launched the Student Laptop project giving an opportunity to new students to obtain a laptop through a student loan scheme. This was a wonderful opportunity for new entrants from all over the country to enter to the knowledge world regardless of which subject stream they are in.

Steve Jobs passed away leaving a remarkable footprint in the consumer IT world. Though I never actively used Apple products I have always been a fan of the innovation and creativity Apple brought in.

Imagine Cup 2012 campaign started in October from Peradeniya University in grand style with over 300 students participating the event. As of now we have over 250 signed up and expecting this would go up to 1500 within the next 4 weeks.

My Gadget list grew tremendously … among the new additions I got a new laptop – a Dell Inspiron 6420 with 8 gig of RAM, a Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Phone, Three 2 TB external HDDs, a Steering Wheel Bluetooth MP3/FM Car Kit,  Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard, Huawei Wireless/WiFi Dongle, Jabra Hands free,  Energizer XP2000 Battery Packand many more small stuff.

Many new things happened in Sri Lanka also … Hambantota Port Kick started work which will indeed be a grand contributor to the country in the future. Southern Highway was opened for traffic and this is a pleasurable drive. So travelling to Galle is no longer a problem just under 1 hour we can get there. Internal Air taxi service is up and kicking which is another great addition to the internal transportation.

Also I was travelling frequently during the this whole time. List includes a visits to Peradeniya University, to NIBM Galle, to Rajarata University, to Sabaragamuwa University, to Ruhuna Engineering Faculty at Hapugala, Ruhuna University Main Campus at Mathara, Wayamba University and many more and the full year 2011 topped up about 16,000km. Not many personal trips though which is a damn shame.

oh! Ceylon theaters opened up a 3D theater a much needed essential. Woo! hoo!

Well! seems like too many things to write … I’ll just get on with the New Year … Happy 2012 folks!

Ha! its been god knows how long since my last blog post. Was busier than the usual. Anyways now that things are a bit ok i'm going to find some to blog again.

Two days ago I received a letter from a an org named SOS Children's Village addressed to me on my office address. When I called them to find out how they got my details I learnt that it was a company named Direct Solutions who has SOLD them the information.

But surprisingly when I called Direct Solutions they first said they haven't sold this information, but 2 minutes later said they have given it to SOS at a nominal fee. And the other part is .. they also have obtained my information from another party. And they refused to reveal the name of the party who gave them information. The person who answered the phone said as per the contract they have with the data source they cant reveal the information. I’m sure DS have no clue of how the data source collected the info.

WHAT THE HELL. HOW CAN PEOPLE JUST SELL CONTACT INFROMATION LIKE THIS. I have never signed up with any local agency to receive any newsletters or mailers or anything. Fancy tag line to have ... 'accountable marketing' ...

As most of you are already aware Imagine Cup 2011 Sri Lanka Software Design round is OOONN! and the 6 finalist teams are preparing for the big day. This year the Sri Lanka finals event will be held at the Moratuwa University Civil Engineering Auditorium as Moratuwa is our event hosting partner.

Sri Lanka finals : April 27, 2011

Project: makePossible, Team: Vishwa, From: University of Moratuwa Team Members: rumalp, Pasan, akiladarshana, Gayashan	Project: Savior, Team: Team Titan, From: University of Colombo School of Computing Team Members: Tharidu, Moditha, Chandula, Kalindu	Project: Child@EDU, Team: Sentinels 2.0, From: Universiy of Moratuwa Team Members: Madhusha, Thuru, Vimukthi, Yasoda
Project: V-Labm Team: CR-Coderzsm From: Informatics Institute of Technology Team Members: Sabry,  Renien, Raathigeshan, Thiru	Project: Hear through Eyes, Team: PeraSoft, From: University of Peradeniya Team Members: Dinushan, Lahiru, Lakshitha, Madusanka	Project: Project Amma, Team: MISL, From: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology Team Members: Mastercpj, Pahanimg10, Nim.sathsara, imalkacg

Just before the Holidays, Microsoft hosted another new and exclusive Jump Start virtual training event, this time covering the Windows Azure Platform. What a success! “Building Cloud Applications using the Windows Azure Platform” was tailored for application architects and developers interested in leveraging the cloud. We are now pleased to announce that the professional videos recorded during the online class are available on Channel 9 and MS Showcase and soon the Zune Marketplace (Jan 21) and iTunes (Jan 24)!

Who is the target audience for this training?

• Application Architects and Developers
• Customers and partners already building a Windows Azure pilot project or planning to migrate an application to the Windows Azure Platform
• Companies searching for real-world answers as they consider whether or not the Windows Azure Platform fits their needs.

What’s the high-level overview?

• The entire course is 12 hours long.
• Every section is about an hour length, so it’s easy for you to find just what they need.
• Every section is led by two of the most respected authorities on Microsoft development technologies, David S. Platt (popular Microsoft Press author from Rolling Thunder Computing ) and Manu Cohen-Yashar (Professor and Senior Consultant, SELA Technical College, Tel Aviv, IS) plus their dialog and banter is quite engaging!

Where do I go for this great training?

The link to session one below will provide you with everything you need, but if you want to pick out a specific topic a link to each topic is below:

• Session 01: Windows Azure Overview
• Session 02: Introduction to Compute
• Session 03: Windows Azure Lifecycle, Part 1
• Session 04: Windows Azure Lifecycle, Part 2
• Session 05: Windows Azure Storage, Part 1
• Session 06: Windows Azure Storage, Part 2
• Session 07: Introduction to SQL Azure
• Session 08: Windows Azure Diagnostics
• Session 09: Windows Azure Security, Part 1
• Session 10: Windows Azure Security, Part 2
• Session 11: Scalability, Caching & Elasticity, Part 1
• Session 12: Scalability, Caching & Elasticity, Part 2, and Q&A
• Links to course materials and code samples

For about anything Windows Azure, including links to trial accounts, available offers, and all Windows Azure training & certification options, go to the Microsoft Learning Windows Azure Training Portal.

Wish you a very happy new year folks!

14 years ago when I first saw a mobile phone the perception was ‘AWSOME’ by every means. But it was out of reach those days due to the mammoth price tag. Remember this is not a sophisticated phone as you and I see today. It was almost the size of a brick, weights as much as a brick, and had 1% of the features of a modern phone – which is the ability to make phone calls, but this was perfect at the time as it served the purpose.

But few years later a sudden rat race became the name of the game – to make the mobile phone smaller - while the rest of the world I think was trying to make things bigger. In few years’ time the good old brick phone became a ‘dinosaur’ antique gadget and the new phones that was like 1/10 the size dominated the market. Smaller once were packed with many more cool features also. Now! who the hell said ‘bigger the better’.

As I see it this trend continued until the mobile phone became too small. Too small to hold in a hand comfortably and make a button. A person with big fingers for sure had a tough time getting to press the correct button. Anyways there were choices.

Today! it seems like things are going backwards. Are you using a Windows Phone 7, Apple iPhone or Google Android? Look at the size of it. Even though these new smart phones and several other phones in the same league are big in size compared to the trend few years ago – it seems like nobody is worried. I’m not for sure.

Eagerly waiting for my next phone

dang! 2010 is just about to end. On several angles its been a great year. On work front there were couple of interesting events. Great thing is there was never a dull moment … it has always being very challenging and dynamic. Have made tons of new friends. I’m not talking about just Facebook friends (now! no offense to all my FB friends) … tons of new friends who I have really met.

But on another angle things are not too great.

I have missed tons of movies … Backlog has about 50 movies that I have to watch. Given the current situation cant see a way to find time for this. There are other more important things which need my attention. Wela Junior is not 1.6 years old and occupies most of my time when I’m home. Anyways it’s all good.

Cant even believe that I have gone only 3 trips during the whole year … previous years there was an average of 12. In some good years there were like 20. This is a terrible situation so I have set things in motion for 2011. Jan 1st and 2nd I’ll be starting the year with a trip with family.

Anyways … looking forward for the new year … for bigger tougher challenges. Bring it on baby!

What is your practice when you reply an email? I’m sure your answer would be Click REPLY and type and send away. Have you seen replies without the original mail contents … I get these all the time.

Most cases University students reply mails without the original mail. the reply comes to my inbox as a new mail and I have no way of relating to the original mail. I think to save bandwidth or something they just delete the original body contents. I just have received about 10 replies from 10 people to an email which I sent yesterday and now I have to open and compare which one is which as each of these mails had personalized contents. … you know what… I’m just going to ignore them all … even though these mails are important. no time to waste

Put this in a context where I deal with couple of hundred emails every day. It’s time wasting. So folks … for god sake please make sure to KEEP the original mail contents when you reply.

The first thing that comes to your mind is … oh! damn! those spammers. This morning I just deleted about 400 emails from couple of my inboxes from various email marketing companies. Among them Sri Lankan Advertising,  SriMails.com,  eVision Advertising, CP Promotions, 4th Dimnsion tops the list by sending the most number of emails .. or more SPAM!

I was just annoyed and called some of them and also called the companies they are sending emails on behalf of. Comic Classics! Their customers have no clue about what’s the problem or purposely neglecting with excuses. Some even had balls to say we have outsourced it to our media agency and cant take responsibility on whom they are sending the mails to. Now! what kind of an irresponsible answer it that. As per my knowledge they are equally responsible as the party who are sending the emails. Sad part is they put all these effort to create the emails and they have no clue of to whom they are sending to … just sending out … in other words that sounds like they have no damn clue about their own business. For an example … so called Training Sri Lanka Newsletter have no clue of who they want to reach or train.

Out of the above mentioned companies it seems like nobody had a clue of what they are doing, or no knowledge about the correct process, or the worst case purposely ignoring the situation to make a quick buck out of it. One of them mentioned that they know about the issue but cant stop because it’s a good income source. When I questioned about how the mail addresses were collected (because I never subscribed to) the answer was they have an option to enter the mail address on their site, and anybody can go and enter any email address. How would I know they themselves didn’t enter my email? Rest of the answered were just useless.

Anyways … the way I see it … the end is near. Email campaigns done in the right way can be a very effective marketing tool. But when keep spamming people like this without analyzing the customer preferences it just becomes useless. Right now hotmail and live have already recognized some of them as spammers. and for sure many administrators have blocked these from receiving mails to their networks … and within couple of more months their headless customers also will realize that there is no value in sending emails. For an example SriMails market themselves as they have a database with over 200000 addresses … what's the point if 90% of them are blocked by servers, firewalls and many more receivers just delete these mails and only like 20 of these receivers actually reads these emails. I’m sure most of them don’t have a good tool to track how many emails were received, read etc, or don’t provide a report to the customer.

Something that could have been a good ethical marketing channel have already been spoiled by few companies who call themselves innovators, or first to do e-marketing in the country bla bla … too bad! Even though two of the above listed companies agreed to remove my mail addresses that’s not going to solve the problem at large.

Couple of years ago I also have sent email campaigns for several of my foreign customers, but only to mailing lists where receivers have subscribed. Not just bunches of collected emails.

I’m 100% supportive to any startup company who do business in a professional manner. But people who break all the rules and annoy me … I’ll wait for the next mail from any of you

Click here to download the Sinhala Windows 7 LIP via the Microsoft.com Download Center.

Please note that the Sinhala  Windows 7 LIP can only be installed on a system that runs an English client version of Windows 7.  It is available to download for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Localization was done by Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA)  (Translation and Linguistic Moderation), and Lionbridge (Strategic Engineering Partner). 

Facts about the language:

• Sinhala contains loan words of Portuguese, Dutch and English origin, which reflects Sri Lanka's colonial history. English was official language from 1833 to 1958 (that is until 10 years after independence).
• There is a crucial distinction between "high" and "low" Sinhala: The colloquial form used in everyday life is quite different from the literary form which is also spoken in formal environments and in the media. The differences are so big that the two forms could be considered two different languages. Not only is the vocabulary very distinct, but also the grammar: In the colloquial version there are no inflected forms for verbs, for example. This is a little like having King Edward's English used on MSNBC and slang in everyday conversations.
• There are no sub-clauses - comparable constructions are created with participles and adjectives. Therefore a phrase like "The man who gives information on LIP languages" becomes "The information on LIP languages giving man".
• There are no prepositions but only postpositions. "under the book" would literally retranslate as "book under".

Classification:

Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is most closely related to Dhivehi, which is spoken on the Maledives.

Click here for more information on the Sinhala language.

Brilliant! is what I can think of. I just got off a call with the National Information Center and my requirement was answered 100%.

It was regarding the process of obtaining a temp VAT certificate and an Import License. Everything was explained perfectly. To a detailed level on which documents to submit, times that I can submit, location, etc.

Actually this is not the first time I have called them to find information. about a month back I called to find the process to obtain the NIC as I have lost it. And the person who answered provided all the information necessary … even to a detailed level of the photograph size I need, form submission date etc.

In March I called to find the process to transfer my vehicle registration and everything was spot on.

I still remember the first time when my MVP award and the MSDN Subscription was delivered and detained at customs, the trouble I had to go through to get it cleared. about seven times in and out from Inland Revenue because every time … one more document was required. This was about 5 years back and and I had no clue about the process. When asked someone gave the information, but when asked from someone else to clarify a different answer was given confusing my brain head to toe. But now I don’t have to worry about having wrong information about ANY of the public services as 1919 is there to help.

I think this is by far the best public service offered in this country. Thank you!

Reporting live from Trinity  Kandy

As all of us know only SLT provided true unlimited broadband facilities. Every other service provider implemented this thing called the ‘Fair User Policy’ which is a load of crap putting barriers to heavy internet users  like me. I have tried WiMax connection from Dialog which after couple of months they applied this FUP. Also I have tried dongles from Dialog, Mobitel and Airtel which is the same … Some of them without a shame advertise saying they are providing 7.2 mbps connections which is actually the speed of the device not the speed of the connection.

My SLT ADSL connection started giving problems 3 weeks ago and when I called the support center they informed that there is a known problem which they are attending to and to wait 1 week till they fix it. After one week when I called back it was like I called a different planet. They were telling me to upgrade to a higher package if I want a higher speed and still it might give me higher speed. So they wanted me to start paying Rs. 5500 instead of the 2900 I’m paying currently to see whether it works. Don’t customers in this country have a thing called right?

I have a feeling that they are purposely reducing the resources in the current package to push customers to go for a higher package. WTF?

I just checked IMDB after a long time and woo! hoo! Toy Story 3 has grossed over a billion dollars. Too bad I still haven’t had time to watch it.

So all in all there are seven movies who has done this. Avatar is leading the bunch while Titanic is in the second place. Lord of the Rings: Return of the king, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Alice in Wonderland and The Dark Knight are the rest in the group.

What do you think the next one in line to make this big number? I think the upcoming Harry Potter, Transformers III and Avatar II etc will be good candidates.

It’s just around the corner … As you might already know it was announced that ALL Microsoft employees will get a free Windows Phone 7 when it is released in each country. However since it’s not officially going to be released locally I have no clue when I will get it .

Simplicity is given a new meaning with this release of Windows Phone. Home page UI looks extremely simple and my grandmother should be able to use it.

As always it is way before anything we have enabled the developers to start developing applications way before the device comes out to the market. You can download the free developer tools from http://developer.windowsphone.com/. One thing really exciting here is that the UI is based on Silverlight. I cant even imagine the kind of possibilities this will enable for Windows Phone. Silverlight has done some wonders in the web since the first release. I was going to download the tools for a very long time, but never got the time to do that. Since tomorrow is a holiday I just started downloading (internet connection @ home is messed up these days) and going to develop a demo app tomorrow.

Despite my previous bad experiences of using several Windows Mobile devices I’m very much looking forward for this.

As of now we have 6 technical communities in the country. Now! don’t panic if you have registered only in few of these. Yesterday a dude called trying to figure out which one he should register. So for his sake and for many others who might have similar confused sentiments I just thought of writing this.

In a short summary we have 4 Technical communities, but 6 Technical Community Websites represent them. Total member count goes over 8,000 as of not and expected exceed 10,000 registered members by end of 2010. Student Champ Community is lead by Microsoft Student Ambassadors and currently we have 10 of them. Other technical communities are lead by the Most Valuable Professionals.

Among these .NET Forum, IT Pro forum and both MSDN and TechNet sites are developed using Community Server. SQL Universe was originally developed using the same but recently was migrated to DotNetNuke. Student Champs websites is 100% developed by students using ASP.NET 3.5.

Sri Lanka .NET Forum .NET Forum is the largest Technical Community in the country with over 6000 registered members, and dedicated to talk about .NET and other related technologies. Started in July 2004 with few enthusiasts and have grown at a phenomenal rate due to the commitment of couple of passionate individuals. Monthly Meeting Date: Every first Thursday of the month URL: http://www.dotnetforum.lk

Sri Lanka IT Pro Forum This community currently have a approx. 1000 registered members. Started in 2005 as the Tech2Guys community and was later renamed to Sri Lanka IT Pro Forum. Dedicated for discussions on Microsoft Server Technologies. Monthly Meeting Date: Every last Wednesday of the month URL: http://www.itproforum.lk

SQL Server universe Started in 2007 by couple of SQL Server gurus, this community now have about 600 registered members. Dedicated to discuss about Microsoft SQL Server and related services such as Reporting Services, Analysis Services etc. Monthly Meeting Date: Every third Wednesday of the month URL: http://www.sqlserveruniverse.com

MSDN Sri Lanka This was is a new addition to the developer community in the country with the focus on adding more blogs and resources into the community. Launched about a year back and this has already grown to a base of 200 members and 20 active bloggers. URL: http://www.msdnsrilanka.net

TechNet Sri Lanka This also was a new addition to the IT Pro community in the country providing more resources. This was also launched parallel to the launch of MSDN Sri Lanka portal. URL: http://www.technetsrilanka.net

Microsoft Student Champs Currently being the largest student technology group in the country this has about 200 student champs as active members. There are 10 Ambassadors who lead the community. Monthly Meeting Date: Every first Friday of the month URL: http://www.champs.lk

So to summarize … if you are a developer go and register in .NET and MSDN Sri Lanka Forums, SQL Universe also can be recommended for developers. If you are an infrastructure professional you should register in IT Pro Forum and TechNet Sri Lanka forums. If you are a hard core database guru you should take the SQL Universe, Since SQL is not integrated with .NET it might help in registering in both developer forums as well. If you are a university students you can register in the Student champs community,in this case your registration will be activated only after considering by the Student Ambassadors.

Imagine Cup turns a new chapter with 2011. Once again we are inviting students around the world to use the power of IT to solve the real world problems. Registrations are already on www.imaginecup.com. Local Software Design category will be announced later. Stay tuned for more details. Meanwhile feel free to write to me for further details.

About the Competition
http://www.imaginecup.com/about/theme

Competition Categories
Software Design http://www.imaginecup.com/competitions/software
Embedded Development http://www.imaginecup.com/competitions/Embedded%20Development
Game Design http://www.imaginecup.com/competitions/game-design
Digital Media http://www.imaginecup.com/competitions/Digital%20Media
IT Challenge http://www.imaginecup.com/competitions/it-challenge

Competition Rules
http://www.imaginecup.com/about/imagine-cup-2011-official-rules

In case if you guys have noticed McDonalds don’t have any of the beef meals these days. This has been the case for about a month now. When asked both Kolpity and Rajagiriya restaurants said they don’t have stock of the beef slices. For a day or two I can believe that … but for a month … I’m not stupid. Something else seems wrong here.

At the end right now McDon don’t have their signature meal the BIG MAC … I mean … just think about it for a minute. How on earth can you have a McDonalds with out a BigMac?