While making websites using ASP.NET, a developer always have to decide either his site will be following all W3C standards or he is just another IE fan. Well following standards is no more a problem as MSDN has a nice article for all of us on "Building ASP.NET 2.0 Web Sites using Web Standards." It is a very comprehensive article covering all aspects of cross browser compatibility with code samples as well. A must read for every web developer.

Click here to read the article.

Thousands of gamers had witnessed the launche of XBox360 in an event called Zero Hour organized by Microsoft at Mojave Desert, California. If you happens to be a crazy XBox fan and want to see the spectacular launch, then this site is your place to be. I wish Microsoft had launched VS and SQL 2005 in the same way, full of fun. Anyways, all PS3 fans like me shouldn't worry. Our wait will worth it as its gonna be a massive system to play with. IGN PS3 has a nice article on this, check it out here and save every penny you have for the PS3 launch next year. Till then, I go and get my PS2 fixed.

Imagine Cup 2006 has already started and registration is open for all students around the world. I am participating for the first time and have registered for 2 invitationals. Project Hoshimi - Programming Battle is one of them and its 1st round has already begun. All participants have to download the SDK, which contains the first mission objectives, API, a server application to test your program and an introductory tutorial for completing the first mission. The minimum score to qualify for the 2nd round is 300 within turn 1500, which can be easily accomplished by going through the tutorial. Basicly, there is only 2 changes to be made into the MyAI.cs class to qualify for the next round, which is no fun at all. So I decieded to go furthur and made numerous changes into the two given classes and now I have some smart bots with a good strategy ending up giving a good score. I ended up getting a score of 1060 at turn 1340. The maximum score is 1100. The main theme of this invitational is to devise a strategy not only to accomplish a task, but to score higher. And believe me it took most of my time to formulate that. Time is going to be against us throughout this competition, so those who are also participating in the same invitational should start programming ahead of time and make different strategies to complete a single task.

I badly need the API documentation which isn't available yet, as the classes are implemented into a dll, which of course not much revealing. And for a lame programmer like me, Object Browser ins't helping a bit. Hope I will do good in the coming rounds, for that I need all your wishes.

For more information on this, visit:
Imagine Cup 2006 website.
Project Hoshimi website.
Project Hoshimi webcast part 1.
Project Hoshimi webcast part 2.

Ubuntu - another Linux distribution, which is gaining quite a reputation, arrived at my placed yesterday with 5 set of disks so I can copy and distibute them among others. But before that I decided to pop in the disk and see what the fuss is all about. Well there were 2 disks, one installation and other is a live distro means it can boot Linux directly from your CDROM. Before installing the distro, I launch the live disk to see what makes it different from other distros. Well first it took hell of a time to lauch and it cost me almost 10 minutes to boot completely. Second it has same GNOME desktop which is quite similar among other distros. Third it can't read your NTFS partitions and last it is damn slow. However, on the other hand it has almost all applications bundled so an average user will find no need in get in the hassle of finding OSS online. But this live CD has no comparision with Knoppix. Knoppix is fast, can read NTFS, boot faster and it even comes with a mono installion on a new distro, Monnopix. I think I should stick towards Redhat and Knoppix to fill in my ever increasing appetite for OSS. But still if you want to give it a shot, then you can order your copy here, free of charge.

"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year" - said Einstein. I realized it when I was in 9th grade, when I had to learn Sindhi at which I really sucked at. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get along with it. I couldn't see any relevance of that subject in my career and was always finding a way to escape, which I couldn't. And I always asked myself, is it really necessary to learn something you really don't like?

Its been eight years now, and I still have this question murmurring deep inside me, with a little revision year by year and making it even more and more difficult to solve and find answers. I wish one day I wake up in a different world, where knowledge is not judge by a system, made by humans.