Procrastination is the root of all laziness. It's easy to come up with a million reasons why you shouldn't do something.

• Excercise? Too hard. Tomorrow, maybe.
• Eat healthy? Just one more piece of cake.
• Save money? Ooooh, XBox!
• Start a company? Hmmm, maybe in a few years when I'm really "ready".

So why should you do any of this right now? Simple. You have more time and energy to do these things today than you will have tomorrow.

Let it sink in for a minute. Now go do something.

The async/await pattern in C# really is awesome. Perhaps it is just syntactic sugar over the TPL, but it makes the code so much more beautiful and easier to read. Before async/await came around this would have been an ugly mess of BeginXXX/EndXXX. Instead, now we get to do this:

var s3 = AWSClientFactory.CreateAmazonS3Client(accessKey, secretKey);
PutObjectRequest putRequest = new PutObjectRequest()
{
    FilePath = "your-file.txt",
    Key = "whatever/you/want",
    BucketName = "your-bucket-name",
};

PutObjectResponse response = await Task
    .Factory
    .FromAsync<PutObjectRequest, PutObjectResponse>(s3.BeginPutObject, s3.EndPutObject, putRequest, null);

That is so much easier on the eyes, and that's just the wrapper around the traditional BeginXXX/EndXXX calls that the Amazon SDK gives us. If you're using the newer stuff like HttpClient, it's just one line to async goodness:

HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync("http://bing.com");

Sometimes you just have to wonder how long computer security professionals will have to keep screaming “Don’t store passwords in plain-text” before people take notice. Getting an email like this from MasterCard really freaks me out:

I wonder if they store PINs in plain-text, too. It’s just sad when a credit card company’s policies allow something like this to get pushed in to production.

I like this idea.

The author thinks carriers won’t support it because it will prevent them from locking in customers. I think they should support it because it also prevents competitors from locking in customers.

Read the original post at http://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/2012/03/23/1/

I really wonder why the Indian Railways, arguably one of the most active e-commerce sites in the country, needs to be offline for an hour every day.

Seriously!?

I run a few web apps of my own and I’ve had only 50 minutes of downtime in an entire month. Yes, I know my app is nowhere near as complex as a railway reservation system. And yes, I know, those of you that are measuring up time in 5 nines are laughing at me, but give me a break – my services are in beta. Still, why does the IRCTC need an hour off every single day? Sure, as a customer, I’m somewhat inconvenienced, but as a developer I’m really curious as to what they’re doing in that hour.

Surely, we’d all be better off if we would just turn off “complications” in our system settings.

2011 has been a very interesting year for me. It’s the year I found out that my body is in far better shape than I give it credit for. The fact that I’ve done almost nothing to aid that over the last 30 years is, however, somewhat troubling. So, for 2012, I’ve decided that the biggest priority for me is to get more exercise.

The funny thing about exercise is that you don’t really need to do a lot of it to start experiencing the benefits. And, you don’t really need to splurge on a gym, either. Just go take a walk. It really is that simple. If you’re getting absolutely no exercise right now, stepping up to nothing more than a brisk 30 minute walk every day will do wonders for your body. Assuming you’re already eating in a relatively healthy manner, a regular walk is all you really need to start burning off fat, increase your energy levels and generally feel better every day.

Walking for half an hour isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is making it a habit. This video is what got me to finally turn this into a real priority for 2012. I hope it does the trick for you, too.

When Windows 95 shipped, my primary machine was a 486/DX50 with 8MB of RAM. My test machine was a 386 with 4MB of RAM. The combined computing power and storage capacity of all the machines in my office is now exceeded by your cell phone.

-- Raymond Chen, Microsoft.