My First DSLR Camera - Nikon D90

After a long time shooting with Point & Shoot, I finally decided to go with DSLR because of its ability to control exposure in shots and lens flexibility. After a lot of research, I shortlisted Nikon D5100 and Nikon D90. Nikon D5100 being a modern camera has really great features like flip-out screen, 1080p HD video etc, but not having built-in focus motor was really a deal breaker for me. Nikon D90 being not much modern is still very solid camera. Nikon India Technical Office once said "Nikon D90 is a hot cake, go grab it.". So, I decided to spent more money and bought slightly used Nikon D90 with a kit lens 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6. Also bought Marumi 67mm UV filter with it. 18-105mm will be ideal lens, but I will definitely buy 50mm f/1.8D and 70-300mm f/4-5.6G.

Looking at it, this was my first full encounter with DSLR, I am still trying to understand it :) I will share clicks very soon, meanwhile if you like to, you can add me on Flickr.

Moving to ASP.NET MVC

I was a long time PHP guy. So, I had grown up with a thought that PHP Language is server thing and has nothing to do with HTML. That is actually great. But in ASP.NET, that doesn’t really fits all that well. From now on, I will refer ASP.NET as ASP.NET Web Forms. Web Forms were developed keeping in mind to hide to complexity of HTTP from developer having “VB6” Windows Forms background. HTTP is stateless. Web Forms has tried hard to make HTTP state full, which brings up ViewState, Post backs and Page Life Cycle. ViewState is chunk of encoded response state data that is injected into every page so that on the next request previous state can be accessed. That was a gift for Windows Forms developers to start Web Development without actually learning the core HTTP cycle. I would also like to admit here that Web Forms is very mature, it doesn’t matter you use Drag-N-Drop approach to make pages, but you can still have full control over the output. But there are still few things that really freaks me out like ViewState Size, allow only one form tag on a page, page and control events, difficulty in client side scripting because of lack of control over HTML etc.

Well, I had work with Web Forms on few projects like DVD Store, Shopping carts, Ticket system, Appointment system, Feedback gathering system etc. At the start of every project, I fall into loop of choosing the best architecture for application. It was devastating for me. After few projects, I ended up with something like below screen capture and promise myself to strict to this.

Populating Data to PDF Forms for Better Prints

There are often situations, when your client wants series of Print out of form with data populated dynamically. These forms are designed Official and follows a legal format. In designing, the issue which frustrates designers a lot is uneven layout in different Browsers. Same issue occurs when we want to print from a Web Page (CSS for Print) or Document (Office Word). Luckily, for that purpose we have a perfect solution, and that is PDF (Portable Document Format). PDF Format always prints same on paper as we see on the screen (like WYSIWYG). The scope of this article is to show how to utilize “iTextSharp” Tool to insert data into the fields of a PDF File. I will try to demonstrate all the necessary controls that are used in forms.

I'm tired of being what you want me to be

So, this is my new addiction. Song is "Numb" by Linkin Park. I just love it, each and every word in the song is so beautiful and so true. To me, its about the burden of live up to someone else's expectations but finally you ended up that you want to be on your own.

ASP.NET Image Manipulation: ASP File as the Image Source

.NET Framework with no doubt is very extensible and has a wide range of Classes which helps you to do anything, really anything. In case of graphics/image manipulation, there is a library called GDI(Graphics Device Interface) which is a part of .NET Framework and has a wide range of classes to perform operations like Create/Edit/Draw/Save on Image/Graphics. The scope of this article will be to opening a image file and sending Response as image which is Binary, so an ASP file (.aspx) act as the Image File which can be used inside the Generic <img> tag as the source. All of the code will be in C#.

Adapting Microsoft .NET Framework Technology

It is now quite long, I have updated blog. Actually, it was hard time for me. There were whole lot of bad and some good things happened during this time. Things like not getting good grades and even more worse that again got compartment in one of the subject, really making me fell down. At one point of time, I even thought of stop doing all these computer stuff. But luckily, I can't. :) Later on, me and a friend, was discussing about doing something together and so decided to start a Technology Blog. We started off with very excitement. But later on, we don't write much on it. By the way, blog is GeekSingh.com.

When I was new in Web Technology, it seems like PHP is only giant available to develop Dynamic Web Applications. I really work hard on learning and practicing it. It was really fun. But when I try to build larger Applications. I got stucked every-time. There was so many ideas, which I was unable to implement fully, I always got stuck in between the Projects. The reason is, PHP is a scripting language, which is not targeted for developing a specific kind of Web Applications.

If Websites were People...

Orkut Toolbar - Simple Text Formatting with deviantART Emoticons

This script provide an easy interface for formatting scrapbook and community messages. You can format text with Bold, Italic, Underline with different colors and smileys. Along with that, it has 500 really amazing emoticons present in deviantART. Go ahead, install it and amaze your friends with this. :)

Why people that work with computers seem to have a lot of spare time?

Isn't that true? :)

When I was a Child...

I love to sit and look at my childhood photos. It's fun to see how we have changed over time and see how ridiculous we looked back then. Here are some of photos. :)

(click on the photo to see it in fullsize)

Singh is King!

deviantART - Simple Text Formatting with Easy Selection of Emoticons

This script provide an easy interface for formatting comments, journals, signature etc in deviantART. You can format your text with Bold, Italic, Underline, Sub and Sup. Along with that, it has a easy "one-click" drop-down selection from all 500 emoticons present in deviantART.

Screenshots

Comment on Deviation

Hack Protest Against Racism in Australia on RAAF Website

Today, I came across this news that RAAF Website was hacked by an Indian Hacker. And the reason why hacker hack the site was to protest against the Australian government on not taking any major steps to stop the increasing Racism on the Indian Student in Australia. On July 16, 2009 a message was shown on the home page of the website as a warning to the Australian President.

Photography & Digital Art - Beginning of New Age

Last couple of months, I'm so much obsessed with Flickr and deviantART. I just love the simplicity of the Flickr, and there are lots of really great photographers to get inspiration. deviantART is a very large online community of great digital artists.

Well title of the post sounds so cool, right?, I know you will figure out later. So, I try myself on photography, just for the sake I take some photos of my college which can be seen on my photos page or on flickr. After that, I take some macro of flowers etc. But something which really catch my attention is Photomanipulation. I just love to make photo a creative look. Well, honestly saying I don't really know Photoshop that much before. Now I am letting you know my secret, so don't reveal this to anyone else.

Reading Excel Spreadsheets with PHP

PHP is yet most powerful language when it comes to deal with different data formats like SQL Results, XML Files etc. To improve the functionality of PHP, we use extensions. There are many extensions/packages which let us to read more different types of data formats. Today, we will be using one of them, i.e. phpexcelreader.

PHPExcelReader comes with two files oleread.inc and reader.php. We will need to include reader.php in order to use the package. For the sake of "simplicity", I have made some changes in example file and data. Grab it here:

Yahoo! Status Checker

Update: Sorry, doesn't work any more.

Yahoo! Status Checker is a mini web tool used to check status (online, offline) of a yahoo user. You need to enter Yahoo! ID or Email which you wish to check, into the textbox and press Go!. It'll shows status and also avatar of that user. To save the avatar right click on avatar image and choose "Save Image As" in Firefox. Under the avatar, there are few links like View Profile, Send a Message etc. which are used to interact with user or to know more information about the user.

If it shows that user is online, but in your messenger list it is still offline, that means user has set to appear invisible to you through stealth settings. Currently, I am working on it, to add more features to it. Hope you guys find it useful.

Payar Kinu Kehnde Ne - Jag Jeondeyan De Mele

Fortunate are those who are able to live the rest of their lives with whom they first fall in love with.

Few days back, I saw "Jag Jeondeyan De Mele" movie and came across a beautiful song "Payar Kinu Kehnde Ne" by Harbhajan Mann and Shreya Ghoshal. Currently, I'm totally addicted to it. Even I'm listening, while writing this post. :)

As the title says, the movie defines

CurrentStatus Wordpress Plugin

As you may have noticed a little box on the left sidebar of my blog home page(currently not available), which displays my current status and mood. While creating this blog, I came to know that it is good to have your current status on blog, so if you not going to post any new stuff, you can tell to your reader that to you are going to have a break now. ;)

So, I searched for related plugin, but didn't quite get the exact thing I want. Then decide to make one new on my own. This is my first try on wordpress plugin, so I want to share it here, hope folks found it usefull.

Firstly, Download the CurrentStatus plugin. Unpack it and upload the directory currentstatus to your wordpress plugin directory (wp-contents/plugin/).

Track Geolocation of visitors: PHP and IP-to-Country Database

Geolocation is a geographical location of peer computer connected with some network i.e. local, or internet. That location can be anywhere in the world. When a computer gets connected to any network, a unique IP address is allocated and assigned to it, which uniquely identifies its identity on that network. IP address is a 32-bit number which is divided into 4 sections, each section is separated with a dot, and contain any number from 0-255. An IP address is very sensitive and complex to grab it all. It contains all the required information like network, location, host of the computer.

Webmasters and Bloggers are always interested to see whom visiting there site, where they came from, etc. There are some free tools on web to track your visitors. Google Analytics and Statcounter are two most popular and accurate tools for visitor tracking. They extract information like region, city, country, referral, ISP, etc from an IP address and provide us processed information in form of graphical components like chart, graphs and pie.

If you are interested to make such tool or you want to use it in your own way, here is the procedure to do it.

My First Blog

Hi! I always thinking of setting up my Personal site for a long time, where I will share my "stuff" with friends and world, at that time I wasn't aware of "blogging", now I found it quite nice way to keep your site updated and also to show all things at one place.

I will update this blog with my personal life, thoughts, work, geek stuff etc.

Always feel free to post any comments, and don't ever be afraid in contact me through other sources like email or chat.

Now, I am really excited about it. :)

Keep visiting!