Friday, March 23, 2012

I love my JAVA

I've been a book addict since childhood, I read everything! From pieces of newspaper to classics to fiction to whatever that was printed in black and white.. or so I thought since I've not laid my hand on computer books at that time...

I've been a software engineer for 5 years! Yet it was only last week I finished reading the first computer/software related book, that I can claim I read from beginning to end.

Can there be anything duller than reading a complete software book? As per my opinion the sole purpose of their existence is for reference, and whoever is using books for reference nowadays is plain stupid since Googling is much faster than flipping through pages!

I was proved wrong by 2 wonderful people and I'm so happy they did it. Kathy Sierra Bates and Bert Bates who wrote SCJP SUN CERTIFIED PROGRAMMER FOR JAVA 6 have made it so wonderfully readable, I couldn't stop reading it!!! It burns the concepts in your head and the authors don't allow you to comfortably skip stuff... They give several examples and illustrate in various angles making it so very clear and making it difficult not to understand!

As I said I've been a java developer for  years, but this book for beginners really did teach me a lot that I didn't know before. Especially since I was a self-taught developer my knowledge wasn't organized and had a lot of gaps.

I've pinched myself really hard several times for not doing this few years back! It's THE guide for SCJP (or OCPJP as it's called now), but even without the exam it's a must read for a Java person.

I didn't really have to pay for it since I downloaded the softcopy and studied it.(It’s freely available in internet) Trust me, learning Java is so fun with this book.. 

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Configure Outlook for Your Gmail

It's my first work from home day! 

I knew I was addicted to Microsoft Outlook, all it's friendly features and professional feel. Since I don't have my office mail account, I was wondering if I can access my gmail account from my laptop's outlook.

In two minutes Google searched the answer for me and now I'm happily accessing my gmail from Outlook :)

I thought it'd be easier if there was a screenshot guide rather than a textual guides I found. So I took screen shots of what I did. 

Have fun!






Click on More Settings button...



Click ok in above and click next in the form beneath. Connections will be tested and if it succeeds it will go to the finish screen,