MediaCenter, Xbox and my work

It's been a long time since my last post. It's just that I have become really really lazy.. Too lazy to even blog, chat with friends or do anything useful :P As usual, I'm just sitting on my couch and watching movie after movie, series after series, game after game......

One of my friends asked me to blog about my work. I thought I would start with that, without getting technical ;-) It's close to one year since I started work. The past year has been a lot of fun. Now, that we are 'almost' done with Windows 7, we can relax a bit before we start planning again. I spent most of my time working on the Windows Media Center - Extender streaming scenario. For people who are not familiar with that (most people outside U.S are not), go here. My idea of home entertainment has changed completely after I was introduced to Media Center and Xbox (I have been using my Xbox more as my home media hub than as a gaming console). This is the setup I have at home

These are some of the perks of working with this team, I get lot of cool stuff at home. I've never even imagined that I could enjoy HiDef TV wirelessly, streamed from my living room to my bedroom. It is fun even at work. I was working on a bug for close to one month. We were using a Seinfeld HD episode as our test stream. I ended up watching that episode a zillion times before I fixed the bug. I can tell you each and every dialog in the episode even when I'm sleeping ;) Now, they've given me a TV. I can watch TV 24x7 (or more precisely 8x5 a week!).

People in the U.S, please give the Media Center a try. You can use your xbox360 as a media center extender, stream live and recorded TV from your PC to the 360, pause, rewind or record live TV, stream videos from the internet and so on...... so, this is short summary of my work so far - fine tune the networking in the home media scenario. Hope you all enjoy Windows 7... I'm planning to write some more as we get closer to the release... Until then, enjoy the beta and RC versions ;)

CRASH!!!

Feb 19th '09 :(

Feb 24th '09 :)

Stalking??

I have picked up this habit of searching for people on the internet to know more about them. I don't mean celebrities/famous people, just normal people I meet in person. After I interviewed with Microsoft, I tried to find out more about people who interviewed me. I was surprised when I found out that one of them had written several books about Windows Sockets Programming / Windows Networking. Then, as I started to meet more people at work, I started searching to find if they have really acheived something :P Gradually, I fell into the habit of searching about someone right after I meet them for the first time. Recently, I was able to find out a lot of info about a person within 5 min after I met her - school, interests, achievements, facebook/orkut/linkedin profile, few photographs, videos.....

Then I started wondering... Is it rude to do this? Am I intruding in their privacy? Do they want me to find all these information just because they have posted it online? Have I become a stalker?? Wait, aren't stalkers obsessed about someone/something and follows them continuously? I decided to search for "stalker" on wikipedia. Looks like there is no clear definition for "stalking". Here is what wiki says -

Stalking is a controversial pejorative term applied to the behaviour of individuals (and perhaps to bodies of persons) towards others which has no universally accepted definition. The difficulties associated with precisely defining this term (or defining it at all) are well documented. [4] It seems to have been first applied to the harassment (in a general sense) of celebrities by strangers who were described as being obsessed. This usage of the word appears to have been coined by the tabloid press in the United States[1] and has been adopted as a term of art in psychology and, in some jurisdictions, as the name of a criminal offence.

It has been applied to the obsessive following, observing, or contacting of another person, or the obsessive attempt to engage in any of these activities. This includes following the person to certain places, to see where they live or what the person does on a daily basis, it also includes seeking and obtaining the person's personal information in order to contact him or her; e.g. looking for his or her details on computers, electoral rolls, personal files and other material containing the person's private information without his or her consent.

Who cares if this is stalking or not. It helps me find out more about a person and I am happy to take advantage of the Big Bad Web!! If you don't want others to find out something, think twice before uploading anything. Now, I understand why a lot of bloggers remain anonymous and sites like this exist to determine if the blogger is male/female (I tried 5 of my friend's blog on this site and it gave me a result that all 5 were written by females - 0% accuracy)!!

P.S: The picture in this blogpost is nothing more than a picture!

Synchronize your life......

I've been experimenting with Live mesh for some time now. It is a very useful and extremely powerful tool to synchronize files between my PC and my laptop. Now that I've got a Windows Mobile I installed the live mesh app on my mobile. Now I can sync the pictures that I take on my mobile with my laptop and work PC instantly. Just click and its there on my laptop and my PC. Works like magic!!!

A moment to cherish!!

India has finally climbed above Australia in the ICC ODI rankings. It is now placed second behind South Africa. Kudos to Dhoni and his men!! This is after India's success in Sri Lanka (India leads the 5 match series 4-0) and New Zeland's good show in Australia (NZ leads the 5 match series 2-0). Australia is not in the top 2 spots after like forever.....

Time to dislodge the Aussies in the Test rankings too!!