Mobile Surface (3D without glasses)

Microsoft is in the phase of presenting a new technology to the market that will change the balance of power and mobile distribution, I believe that all high tech mobile owners will throw there mobiles and get ones with this new Microsoft technolog.

To see more check the following links

So know if you have this new mobile technology and have any flat surface, you will have your monitor (screen), mouse keyboard & even touch screen.

Sixth sense technology is coming (microsoft demos surface )

If you want more fun and if you are not still convince that this will work see the simple version of what Microsoft is working on,

The windows phone

Net Fundamentals

Net Fundamentals

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Asp Net Advance Topics

Asp Net Advance Topics

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WD My Book Studio (2TB External Hard Drive)

I have a large movie library and I will not start talking about the series too, currently about 400GB movies, I didn't see all of them but I believe I will have sometime in my vacation or on a Sunday/Friday night, so at that moment I will love to select something from my library and see it with the family. The problem was to store all that.

I selected a 2TB hard disk from my near computer equipment office (Speed for Computers) and the most things that I was focusing on were size and speed, with the WD My Book Studio I got both and more.

The size was 2TB, and against its price it was very cool, the speed was impressive, I have a local drive that’s 1TB and WD 2TB is faster (yes its an old 1TB drive). I have USB 2.0 connection that’s good and two FireWire 800 too (now we are talking).

It also includes in the same package a FireWire converter from 800 to 400 adapter cable for older systems with a FW 400 port.

It comes with backup software that will backup all your computer data with very simple and useful interface. So backup of your important family photos or important development software (I'm a coder) is one click a way.

The ink display on the devise is very helpful, with the free space left and a bar to show it, its very easy to know were are you in terms of space. I have a Windows 7 PC but the drive supports MAC too. It also have a very cool flashing let to tell you the state of the device (by the way it's also GreenPower Technology).

The dives design is cool too, a silver cover that looks very cool on my desktop near my monitors, it needs an external power devise to work too.

The WD SmartWare software can be updated (really the first thing I did) , it promises to increase the performance x5, I really did this first so I don’t know the old performance but two computers and two laptops had a very quick detect for the device and were all communicating smoothing.

The software is located on a separate write-protected partition on the drive that appears like a CD ROM when the drive is connected. (you can leave it and use it or you can remove/hide it).

The only sound you hear is a small quiet hesh hash when it is being used. When the drive automatically shuts down (Is not actually in use), there is no sound at all.

Its simply the most attractive device I used from a long time.

A new update to the Light Beta Sudoku

You can see the live version here Light Beta Sudoku

I made some small enhancement to the site, First completed the Auto Generation of New Sudoku Puzzles, and filled the database for the next two years, so Daily Sudoku is now active with the Complexity setting.

Yes you can select the level to play and then you can select from Random game or from the Daily Sudoku.

I updated the Action menu so it will display checkboxes with the help of symbol fonts, it helped to make the menu lighter and faster to load.

I updated the Sudoku Possibilities so that it will work with other browsers like Google Chrome & etc. made some small color adjustments too.

With a day or two the site will be fully functional, and I will try to add Google AdSense or/and Amazon recommendations too.

Working with this project was fun and I hope I can close it by the end of this week.

Generating New Sudoku Puzzles

You can see the live version here Light Beta Sudoku
I searched a lot for algorithms and methods to create new Sudoku Puzzles for my site (Sudoku.lightbeta.com), and the most Algorithms that I as interested is was GA (Genetic Algorithms), so I started playing with it. My results were not so impressive but will do the job needed.

The idea of GA is simply  Generate a several random solution

1. Calculate each solution fitness  (or how much percentage of the solution is correct)
2.  Generate New solution from mixing two good solutions (Reproduction)
3. Make very small changes randomly to this new solution (Mutation)
4. Do it again and again until you get a 100% correct solution

I need to have multiple new puzzles so whenever I complete I save it to a DB and start over.

Currently I’m creating new Sudoku’s every 3-5min, that’s slow but it will cover my Daily Sudoku site need.

I focusing on showing the fitness function because it’s the heart of the application.

Public Function CalculateFitness() As Single

        'max error are 81 so to norimilize devide on 81

        Dim CheckItems As New Hashtable

        Dim Errors As Integer = 0

        For Row = 0 To 8

            CheckItems.Clear()

            For Col = 0 To 8

                If Not CheckItems.ContainsKey(Me.Items(Row, Col)) Then CheckItems.Add(Me.Items(Row, Col), 0)

            Next

            Errors += (9 - CheckItems.Count)

        Next

        For Col = 0 To 8

            CheckItems.Clear()

            For row = 0 To 8

                If Not CheckItems.ContainsKey(Me.Items(row, Col)) Then CheckItems.Add(Me.Items(row, Col), 0)

            Next

            Errors += (9 - CheckItems.Count)

        Next

        For GroupX = 0 To 8 Step 3

            For GroupY = 0 To 8 Step 3

                CheckItems.Clear()

                For row = 0 To 2

                    For Col = 0 To 2

                        If Not CheckItems.ContainsKey(Me.Items(row, Col)) Then CheckItems.Add(Me.Items(row, Col), 0)

                    Next

                Next

                Errors += (9 - CheckItems.Count)

            Next

        Next

        LastFitness = 1 - (Errors / 81)

        Return LastFitness

    End Function

Simply I’m doing it in three phases; Checking the number of error in row, Columns and squares.

I’m assuming that for each group the numbers must be unique so that the group will contain the numbers from 1 to 9

So I’m adding them to a hash table with the number as the key, so if the number of items in the hash table is less that 9 it mean there was some duplicates that will give errors to the Sudoku solution.

If this function can be enhanced in performance it will be a huge update, so the solution will give more results with less time.

HTC Desire

I bought an HTC Desire and its grate and awesome in all ways.


Very simple to use, beautiful colors, after making the basic setting it was like this is the only mobile I will use for life, the Google Android 2.1 is very stable, there performance is great, I had several other mobiles like the Imate PockePC and the Imate JasJar, some Nokia ones too like the N95 and some classic modules from the stone ages, in last period I was using BlackBerry Curve 8700, so people if you are out there and didn’t use the new age mobiles you are missing a real part of life,

Selecting what to go was a challenge, IPhone, Windows ,Android & Nokia & etc, my heart when to the HTC Desire, its design, large screen resolution, containing all the basic, and the most important thing is to test some new ground and that was the Android OS (Google mobiles). for more details you can check the HTC site here

Google made a super powerful mobile OS, the Google market place with all that free stuff, whatever you can imagine, you can simply find with only minutes.

May be some day I will even develop a small application for it, only for fun.

Virtual Business Card

This isn’t new stuff, but I don’t see it a lot on the web, it’s a very cool feature for Microsoft MCP’s

You can add it to your resume links to display your experience with Microsoft technologies and its very simply to set up. So if you are a Microsoft Certified Professional pay it a visit, it’s cool. (you can access it from your Microsoft MCP side menu).

You can check mine to see how one of the setting can be like (here), it contain a lot of templates and designs.

Free Online Sudoku

I like Sudoku and love programming, so after some years of playing online games i decided to build my own, it’s still underdevelopment but its promising too. so if you like you can check it out here. http://www.sudoku.lightbeta.com/Sudoku

I used Net4.0, and a lot of generic collections, some java and JQuery too.

The solving engine took more time than expected but it can solve very hard puzzles now, I’m planning to add some more effort to have a user database and generate automatic Sudoku’s daily, have fun.