Watermark photo date and time

I wanted to superimpose the picture taken date in the photo's saved from my digital camera, i don't know if i really read thro' the digital camera manual, this doesn't seem to be possible, so after a while had some fun with coding (Ahem... Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V code stitching)

This utility reads the picture information available as EXIF attribute and stamps a watermark in the photo, now i can print those with the date and time on the photo.

Needs .net 2.0 framework, copy jpg's to folder where exe is located and run the binary or you can prefer to pass the folder path as cmd-line argument.
WARNING: Doesn't implement Lossless JPEG Transforms, so image resolution will degrade, shouldn't be a big problem if you are planning to print 5-by-7 and not a poster.

Pls feel free to extend the source to a full fledged app with decent user interface and implement lossless jpeg transformation.

Update 4/28: Some more code stitching and got the windows app interface for the same core logic, find the application and source.

Online Suryan FM, Sun Tv, K Tv, ...

Long expected and finally now its here, listen to Suryan FM Chennai live in online. Hmm lets wait for Radio Mirchi's answer.

As a side note, watch free stream of Sun Tv, K Tv & Vijay TV online @ isaitamil.net . Also here is
link to Mahabharatham (தமிழ்) from rajshri.com

இனிய தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்துக்கள

Sivaji mp3 with ID3 lyrics

Sivaji mp3 with ID3 lyrics for iPod/WMP/...

.NET and statistic calculations

Today i had to calculate 99th percentile and slope and forecast. I was hoping .net may have something or i should be able to get some open source, but after couple of hours of search i was not able to find anything.

I decided to write my own component and got some java pseudo-code using koders.com and wrote one, here is VB.net code to compute nth percentile, i was too lazy to go back and study statistics literature and client gave me the logic for slope and forecast calculation. (Thanks Terry!)


PS: During this process, we figured out the percentile calculation in Excel is not statistically accurate.

Update 2/10/07: Let me share some of the common code i wrote in last few months. Unlike Microsoft enterprise library or application blocks these were written with some assumptions and simplicity in mind, so don't expect this to be feature rich. If you find any bug/issue with code leave a note. Compressed file has a data access layer component, common routines used for web and desktop, authorization component for web; all code written in .net 2.0

NTFS & Knoppix Live OS. A deadly combination.

Last week my laptop crashed and after multiple tries i was not able to recover the OS and decided to reinstall OS, but i recovered data booting from Knoppix Live OS. Hell with NTFS protection, i figured out anyone with a live OS may be able to boot from it and mount the NTFS file system and copy any file from it, only consoling thing was Knoppix mounted drive as read-only system, so much for NTFS security :-(

How to be a programmer and also *like* being one?

As I'm turning another page in my programmer's life, this is my answer from my experience, obviously there is very big crowd out there and do it in lot of different ways.

• Code for personal use and fun. Helped me to learn things that i wouldn't have had a chance in my professional life.
• Innovate. No, I'm not Edison, but i like to do simple things that makes my life easier, my first one, i was so lazy to hit F5 and created auto refreshing html to check for support issues, you have to believe me, till that team use to hit F5 every 5 mins manually, Duh!
• Learn jargon and go beyond XYZ. Learning something new is always fun, 'coz I'll not be using it professionally and no one knows how bad I'm in it, but when someone needs to use it, they may think i know something on that, of course by that time, I'll have to atleast learn to use it properly;-)
  
• Think Architect - Think Naïve. Sometimes i have to think from an architect angle and next minute I'll also have to think like an entry level programmer, kind of chinese Yin - Yang, if i haven't learn to try things differently, it 'd have been a boring work for sure.
  
• To err is human. Slowly learning(!) from initial dog days, I can now appreciate this concept so much now. There is no such thing as Zero Defect, But why the heck TL's expect bug free code :)
  
• Last but not the least, i think someone in future may look into my code. Yeah, i know what i'm writing is not a kalvettu, but atleast later i should not say "what the heck, is that?".
  

Reminds me incident in my first development project, where i decided to side track from normal VB program style, used encapsulation and coded a class to abstract the logic (some vetti work i should say). I had to take off on one day and there was a bug to be fixed, TL after looking in to the code, decided to wait for me to fix it next day though she had really good developer who knows better VB than me. You rarely get these days where you realize, you do justification when coding.

Happy New year 2007 !!!

FireFox extensions - my list

I really hate to bloat my firefox with extensions, here is my list of extensions that accumulated overtime.

All-in-One Sidebar
Adblock Plus
Adblock Filterset.G Updater
Screen grab!
DownThemAll
FireFTP
FlashGot
Javascript debugger
Netcraft Anti-phishing toolbar
and of course Google toolbar

How much time should it take to watch a tamil movie?

< 60 secs !

Yes that's all it took today for movie Rendu, what do they think when they make tamil movies, this will only stop if audience have a FF option in theater's. Whatever, here is a link to a site which holds few HQ movies, one of different ways to catch hold of divx in net.

BTW, If you have collection of divx movies, checkout Phillips DVP3040, i got one, this Thanksgiving day for $30 and it plays allmost all my formats i have, one thing to note though it doesn't have DTS decoder, but i think it is better that way and get a good HTS receiver.

Update 12/17 :- Looking for tamilgrounds coupon, one of my colleague shared the info about this v.good paysite YAMS, where you can download DVD rips of tamil / hindi / telugu movies @ $11/month, you will look no further.

Shopping for Holidays: Why not checkout google ?

Shopping for this holiday season, do check if you can get something by using the google checkout. Technically it's like old wine in old bottle with new cork. I'm sure this is not going to wipe out Amazon, i go to Amazon 'coz of low price and high quality shipping service, many-a-times free.

Hype or Not, you get $10 to $20 Orders with Google Checkout now, in many participating merchants. If you buy something closely above the set limit, that's some discount, on top of your other discounts and coupons, why waste that, i did that few days ago.

Ok now the scary part, if you had clicked that "Remember me" checkbox when you login for convenience of using any other google feature, say gmail, i see many do that; your payment information is thrown open to anyone using that computer, 'coz you just clicked on that innocent looking checkbox. WTH! With that always signed-on feature, it simply takes me to screen where i just need to click one button to buy, what was google thinking ??? I expected them to authenticate me again before getting into this final order page.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein

Happy Thanks giving.

ASP.NET 2.0 Caching - New features

Here is a article that gives you fly-by of new caching features added in asp.net 2.0