The Wanderer

Why Do We Love You?

2011-11-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

For me, farewells always ignite an aura of boredom; one reason because after the farewell you find yourself wondering how to adjust to the change. The other reason for this aura of boredom is the fact that you end up remembering all the good times, which will be hard, if not impossible to come by from now onwards.

This note salutes, a friend we all love and will dearly miss. Although it is possible the man has gone in search of greener pastures and possibly better looking village divas, having given us the excuse of finding a better job, we all wish him well and very best of luck in either upgrading his status or his bank account balance!

“We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend” , said Robert Louis Stevenson a Scottish Essayist, Poet and Author. It hardly matters if you have read any of RLS's work or not, for the point of this script is to highlight a remarkable individual who breezed into few of our groupies' lives and breezed out just as swiftly.

For someone who has been in many soups other people just pushed toward me, a dependable person is quite hunky dory. I am indeed very grateful for this high priced individual to have been the salt, the pepper, the carrots and the leaks of all my soups, which not only ended up tasting great, but also made them other folks want it more! (yes this soup is vegetable because I don't eat meat!) If you ever have found yourself in a situation, where you would desperately want a person to say yes, you know the relief you feel when somebody pops up out of nowhere and says yes! This note is dedicated to such an individual who resisted the butterflies, the threats and most importantly the risks of failure just to stand up and say yes when needed.

Deliverance is a strange thing! We often see deliverance loafing around places where it is redundant. The past few years has been a time which deliverance did not fail the few of us who needed it the most. If you ever wanted to see deliverance, packed in a spectacle-d, brown, fat belly package, our subject will be that package!

People around the place I spend most of my time, have a lousy sense of humor. This is probably due the fact that most of them have spent 2/3s of their lives being geeks. Sadly, the few times one manages to strike a funny chord, us the normal folk actually feel sorry for the fellow for his/her tepid efforts. Our subject in discussion however, was never short of smiles and madness, which added the much needed life and color to a seemingly gloomy environment.

During his time, this individual has got accustomed to this strange habit of hibernation. Unfortunately for him, his choice of hibernation location was as lousy as some of the decisions he has made in his life! We hope for his sake he finds a better hibernation joint than a data communication lab when he moves on to the brand new terrain. The fellow inhabitants of his designated work area, (especially Miss Muffet) was quite annoyed of this hibernation habit. Having witnessed the constant mid-hibernation interruptions, I am not sure our subject got the sleep he was looking for! Let Deliverance be upon him to bless him with a brand new hibernation joint, with comfortable chairs and air-conditioning and less of Miss Muffets.

We hope the adventures ahead of him will be exciting. If he is lucky, those adventures will be as exciting as the adventures he is leaving behind. He leaves in the terminator style; with a loud flash and a "I-will-be-back". Having seen the predicament of his predecessors, we highly doubt if he will be able to keep up with this promise.

The man hopes to fall into some track once he settles down in his new environment. Sometimes I wonder if this track is visible only to his type, for he has been falling into this track for ages and never seemed to finish falling into it. For all goodness he possesses and he shared with all his friends, let's pray he finds this track or the track finds him, which ever comes first! :)

Adios friend. We shall not draw the curtains nor close doors. You are loved and will always be loved by more than just one person.

Why Do I Need Money

2011-10-26T08:33:00.001-07:00

Loot, regardless the form and the source of its origin is a treasured commodity. People usually complain about big numbers if the numbers are about hip size, waist, or weight. Fortunately for loot, bigger is most definitely better. It is one of the few phenomenons in this world that one can not have enough of! Let's pick an everyday mortal and ask if he/she has money. I think I have a better chance shedding 20 kilos than that person giving a yes to that question! Loot requires respect and a whole lot of it! One would speculate, looking at the seemingly neutral bills and coins that its relatively harmless and is ready to execute whatever you demand. This is wrong! As far as loot is concerned, going from hero to zero is not decided on how many zeros are added where, but WHO adds how many zeros where.

According to social norms, the one possessing loot is a respected person. Now I see most of you jumping up and down vehemently trying to deny this statement. This denial is usually accompanied by philosophical outbursts such as "it is not money, it is the virtues that value", "people with money are usually morons and thieves" etc. Sadly for us, we are not governed by philosophy. One fine thing to note however is, neither is money! :)

So, why do I need money?

I need money to be a geek.

Sure! To travel all over the world, attending this meeting, that convention, this presentation, that workshop, start a geeky business, spread the geeky love... the list is endless. Exhibiting geeky grandeur is a favorable trait, for many of us can not do that. I don't think geeks will rule, but I am sure with the truckload of money they own (doing similar geeky things), they are pretty close to ruling at some point in future.

I need money to be fun(ny).

Entertaining people is hard work. The worst is entertaining old people. I think with age, like the other 206 bones we possess, the fun(ny) bone too turns brittle! Entertaining old folk, therefore is a costly adventure, which usually returns more complains than complements. It is an accepted fact that fun people spend to remain fun. Funny people on the other hand earn to remain funny!

I need money to be rich

Loot brings riches. Unfortunately, the inflow of loot paves way to unthinkable out flows. Such is the bizarre properties of loot! It takes more than luck to be rich and remain rich. What do you need? More loot.

I need money to be in debt

There is this friend of mine, who earns a salary, pays the debtors and still manages to be in debt. It is amazing how that person does that, and that specimen certainly is study-worthy. One hopes, one day that person will find the balance of loot as the Avatar found the balance of the four elements and defeated Fire Lord Ozai.

Come the day loot loses this talent to make us want to be one thing and the opposite of that thing at the same time, we will all lose interest, literally. Regardless, its loose ends, I love loot. I am not sure loot loves me, because it never seems to stick with me. Despite the rejection, my door is always open... for loot!

Big T and the Big Bee

2011-08-13T22:48:00.001-07:00

The room I used to stay in was a funny place and it still is. People crash land, people take off, and people like me just swing by hoping for some cheap entertainment & gozz!

Come the day the newcomers arrive, people living in that room get overly excited. Is he/she good? Is he/she a moron? Is he/she like so & so?, countless questions pop in and out. In the dwellers' defense, it is quite fair any incoming foreign bodies create a lot of stir. The room had had more than its share of hooligans and baboons. Records show that, such foreign baboons create messy situations (note to reader: all apes are messy), cause issues and just take off when the other branch falls within reach (more notes to reader: recall ape-behavior).

Miss. Muffet in particular, is one dweller who accepts all foreign bodies with open arms and most noticeably with an open mouth. Unlike the one who sat on a tuffet closer to the ground, Miss. Muffet can usually be seen sitting on anything, which places her higher than the elevation of a chair. Miss. Muffet is yet to take a fall from her high altitude existence, basically thanks to her great levels of friction and the forever-on-grin plastered to her face. However, falls have come from other avenues where friction had failed Miss. Muffet. We have to thank her bike for that! Thus we see in clear light as to why destiny left The Miss. Muffet eating her curds and whey on a tuffet and not on wheels.

Big T was a breeze! T just flew in & flew out just like the modern day gust of polluted air. Miss. Muffet thought the T was her cup of tea, a breath of fresh air after a long period of dismal days and was particularly dismayed when T took off. T has earned a reputation among the gang for being quite the source of entertainment, fun, laughter and most of all bad luck. The writer has no idea the depth to which the roots of bad luck had run, thus will refrain from making larger than life comments. However, the writer does have an axe to grind with Big T, for she with a few others lost their personal retreats at work, 48 hours after Big T moved into her area in the building! Since this note is to celebrate the spirit of T, no further mentioning of T's desperate search of Leprechauns will be made! It seems luck has its ways of letting T know of its existence. It is just too bad the method of awareness raising luck has utilized has scared T out of his wits, so much so that he has turned to be a believer of hocus-pocus. While we all firmly believe a whole-vegetarian diet is good for anybody any day, we are skeptical of the effectiveness of results owing to its short (very short) life-span. In search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, T is venturing out into greener pastures. For all goodness as a human being he possessed, we hope and pray he finds only jump-able bumps in his road, and no rats or cockroaches in his brand new 5x5 cubicle.

Miss. Muffet was heard missing Big T very recently. However, T's loss is inadequately filled by the Bee. Miss Muffet feels, T and Bee complemented each other to perfection. What Miss. Muffet is not aware of is the fact that she is inadvertently coupling two perfectly straight gentlemen in her head! The Big Bee is a little ball of spitfire! Contrary to popular belief, this Bee is usually seen being the comedian in the crowd. These days the Big Bee is busy making his hive in the Electrical Engineering department. Sadly, the Queen bee seems to be pissing him off. We all feel that the Queen bee should stop trying to run the Big Bee's honey dry, because if not her there are and will be plenty of other queens for him to drop his honey on!! The Big Bee has earned a reputation for being an athletic catch. The golden or the bronze chance the Big Bee had to exhibit his cricketing skills was rudely washed away in the rain. Since the talk in the town is to have the take two of the rain-dance equivalent pretty soon, we all would soon get to watch the swings & misses of the Big Bee.

Since of Big T's departure, a strange attraction has developed between a certain chipmunk and the bee. The root of this peculiar animal coalition is nourished by pheromones coming in from the direction of the Electrical Engineering department. One should appreciate Big T's effort in not letting the Bee get into the wild side. Luckily for the Bee, freedom was available a hop, skip and a new system engineer job away. Now that the ball is in flight we hope this would be one swing the Bee won't miss. We further hope the chipmunk will be within reach, ready and waiting to catch the ball before it hits the ground!!

And so we open the gates to the best zoo under the sun & moon!

Sil Today

2011-05-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

It was the commemoration of the 2600th year since the Lord Buddha attained enlightenment. True enough, the day is special, the times are decisive and we as mortals must engage in something which can actually be carried forward to the next lifetime. So, instead of wasting my life doing what common place mortals do (tissue paper, paste & tidbits), I tagged along with my mother to observe sil.

I must be getting old or nearing the D-day so to speak. Although staying put with 7000 others (stats quoted from an organizer) was grueling, it all paid off well eventually. I actually learned a lot, sighed to myself, burned under the sun, was ruthlessly woman-handled and also started hoping and praying I won't turn out to be some of them so called "upasikawo" when I turned 50+.

The sermons: 6 or 5 of them if I counted correctly, all carried one message. We as Buddists are far from where we ought to be. We get to listen to preachings 24 x 7, yet we fail miserably at practicing what is preached for even a fraction of that time. Our brains are not developed (so it should be nearing THE END, according to one sermon), which usually means we do things out of practice & not because we truly understand the deeper meaning. Frankly, it was depressing to hear how the world is going to end, and what plight we mortals would be in when the world ends bla bla. The good news however is, being where we are in this space-time continuum, we already possess what's needed to prevent ourselves from plunging into doom. The bottom line: Time is now.

Although 6 different bhikku's said the same thing in different words, not much seemed to have reached the active segments of people's brains. Sil day meant a whole lot of pushing and shoving, especially when it came to daane times. The 8 precepts, to some extent meant discipline I reckon. Sadly, discipline was one thing many lacked both verbally & physically. Once I was unfortunate enough to sit and bake in the sun, next to some "daayaka sabha activists", having a ball of a time enjoying other people's misery, gossiping about how a baas has done some construction without using iron & how the ven. nayaka thero was going to be upset at the baas and chasing people jumping over shrubs they laboriously grew and watered. Funny thing was the shrub was ok to be jumped over by their friends, and it was detrimental to be jumped over by some stranger. So much for self-discipline!

One actually feels ashamed to be a part of an afternoon sermon. Apart from the fact that almost 60% of the crowd was female, a considerable proportion of that crowd was dozing off or completely out catching Zees right in front of the thero. The effort put in from the reverend's side is commendable, just to keep the ladies looking alive, but why they had to sleep right in front of his face is a question I seem not get!

People are rude. Either that, or they have the urge to establish dominance. Most of the organizing folks seemed to be suffering from some disorder which caused them to haul crowd into all places and shapes they desired. "move or no food", "clear the road", "hurry up" bla bla... was all they could say the whole day. No "please", no respect nothing. One wonders what one must possess to become a dayaka sabha member; obviously a loud mouth and thug-like attitude!

So, it has been 2600 years, since we have been shown the way. No wonder they say we have small and apparently useless brains. 2600 years and still we are groping about in the dark!

Happy Vesak Everybody.

May you all be one step closer next year!

When The Best Goes Missing!

2011-03-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

It is true that one never starts missing the best until the best is out of the picture. It is also true that the replacement to the best is usually some busybody dropped out of nowhere, whose presence has become a painful experience to many in more ways than one. One would only hope the world would just stop spinning at the busybody's feet! On the contrary to most of our expectations, the world just loves proving the hope wrong. I for one am slowly becoming aware of the magnitude of the void the best has left behind. We hope for the best's sake that this bad patch will not last long, and at the end the best would come unto the living with blinding flashes and deafening noises.

Silence is often a strength. Often people find it extremely difficult just to shut up when it is absolutely necessary. As has been proven so many times in the recent past, opening one's mouth at the worst possible moment gets many into trouble. The best is a person of few words. The best is aware of this danger, and often with the best's characteristic smooth moves manages to beautifully avoid unpleasant situations. We see the best's talents leave many wondering what they can't be like the best. Well, technically there can be only one best. :)

The best knows about respect. I admit this word has become a common occurrence in many penning. But it is the very word that brings about many uncomfortable situations. Sadly many of these could easily have been avoided had the responsible loose-heads had the gnats of a brain to realize the importance of respect. It is the fact that the best knows how to respect the surroundings that has earned the best a lot of respect in return. People do not talk behind the best's back. When they do talk behind the best's back they usually do not regret the fact that they have met the best.

The best is disciplined. A totally kick-ass disciplinary I might add. It is still awesome the best does not have to attend the so-called boot camps for discipline. In fact the boot campers themselves can learn a thing or two about what it means to be a disciplinary courtesy the best.

The best is not a showoff. Showoffs are good people. They add such positivity to the world. Commonplace people can realize that there is still a level that everybody else can stoop so low without reaching the level of showoffs. This is one teeny-weeny incident where being a bad person can actually make you good! If the matters were discussed on the right ground, the best probably might have lots to flash. However, being the superior human being the best manages to find less catastrophic methods to keep the best entertained.

The best has the best sense of humor. Jokes as a matter of fact can be both humorous and humorless at the same time. The person possessing the best's charisma would take the joke as a joke without shooting back venom in return. The best's lightheartedness is extremely commendable. You would see the best wearing a million dollar smile any time of day all days of the week. The best part about that smile is that it is not a smile of cynicism or sarcasm or insult, but an expression of the humane quality of an ordinary human being!

May your goodness be long lived!

The Tea Maker, The Body Maker and The Rat

2011-03-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

The room I stay in (will be for a tad bit longer) is a funny place. The moment one steps inside one is appalled by the plainness of the walls, the boring feeling the typist chairs exude and the dusty un-carpeted floor. People living in this room are sort of fancy-like. Fret not dear readers, the people living in this room are not in the least bit dusty, plain and boring! It is still funny to see another person trying to make a small room inside this room we live in. Since the person has apparently too many cupboards the small room he dreams of living has walls made of cupboards! Oh well... people and their visions!

This room serves two purposes: housing for six and pit-stop for four. Those who treat the room as a house are sour about those who are using the room as the pit-stop. The so-called "boarders" are a bunch of scavenging mortals who have developed a unique sense of smell. Their sense of smell has evolved to be so acute that one scavenger can sense a packet of biscuit being open from more than 50 feet away. The boarders basically come looking for food. And food, dear readers is found in abundance in this little space we call our room. A certain dear departed used his infinite brain power to drag in a rotting filing cabinet into the room, which basically houses all the goodies we have along with some other trash we have been too greedy to throw away. Discussions on making the rotting filing cabinet look not so pathetic were short lived. Truth be told, the cabinet has not failed us yet and continues to save the scavengers the food they would die without, from a certain other character which will soon be mentioned in this chronicle.

The guard boy who is stationed next to the door is a funny one. Infinitely talented but dead scared of his own verbal prowess. People revere the guard boy, because he picks up teeny-weeny things that keeps the fellow roomies entertained for days. The guard boy has the knack of picking on a certain other individual in the room. We term the person individual and not roomie because the individual has many refugee camps in which the person takes refuge. The tales of this individual may come on a separate note in the future. One wonders if it is the two eggs the guard boy consumes per day only affects his hearing, which of course is devastatingly sensitive.

Then cometh the tea-maker. A lady who seems to be lost but not lost for real (we hope). The tea maker, other than keeping a good track record of making tea, is also a killer singer. Sadly the tea maker suffers from a dubious disorder of wanting to climb on tables. Much as she is encouraged to do so, the desire is still dealt with, which leaves us wondering what next for the tea maker. The tea maker's latest passion involves a bike. We hope the tea maker finds her calling on a bicycle built for two very soon.

The body maker, the newest addition to the group is a wow factor. Extremely knowledgeable on bone structure, muscle structure, cell structure and Sri Lanka Postal System structure is simply a man who can not be moved. The writer has actually tried and realized how immobile this wow factor can become when it comes to pushing. One may fall for the cream complexion & the earthy look this individual carries, but reliable sources say that this man is a dangerous poker who knows how to poke equally dangerous places.

The rat is a rat. And has generated much wrath of all house inmates. Gnawing on gum bottles, soap and the most annoying habit of all, leaving poop all over the place, is looking at its imminent doom proudly sponsored by the diva in the room. We hope for everybody's sake that it will not suffer terribly at his demise. RIP.

That Last Meeting

2011-02-15T23:14:00.001-08:00

Last meetings... a phrase that can erupt euphoria, suspense, regret, hope, hatred, disgust, a fountain of other emotions and unthinkables is often used but seldom cared for. Being me, although the general preaching is to forget the past and move on, I go against the default. For me, the last meeting has always been THE meeting. To be honest, the first impression about anything or anyone does not get to my brain until the last meeting. Information influx to this little workplace atop my shoulders is extremely disturbed. Thus, the first impression usually takes a vacation during the time information is coming in through my senses, searches desperately for my brain and finally settles in. By the time the troops have settled in, "Bam!" it is the last meeting.

Speaking on the sunny side of life, reliving the last meetings is one way of procrastination as far as I am concerned. Good last meetings are, in short, good! Good last meetings are the kind of which you would think about when you have nothing important to do, stuck in traffic or when useless people start a conversation with you. I often regret the technological advances not being swift enough to come by. What I want for my 250th birthday is a time traveling device. So all you tagged readers of this note, start saving. You have a fat buffer during which you can work and get me that time traveling device. What would I do when eventually get the time traveling device? (Carefully note the WHEN and not the IF in that sentence.. *hint *hint). I would of course revisit those last meetings. The last meetings that were good. The last meetings that made everyone want to hug everyone else, but couldn't because it would seem inappropriate!

The floating like effect has been a rare effect in my life. Well, weighing at 75Kg, it would be jaw-dropping just to see the act "float" in my list of to-dos. But you know, everyone comes across that time in which all impossible seem and feel possible. A good last meeting is something that gets me to that impossible-seems-possible moment. And believe me, floating feels good, although your feet is still touching the ground! :)

Isn't it just too sad that some good last meetings are extremely short lived? True enough, good times have this weird knack of playing hard to get. But it is just not fair they have to just rush off when they eventually get there! But then again, good times must be worried about us getting bored of too much of a good thing! How thoughtful!

Regardless the form in which last meetings come, man-to-man, phone calls, and other forms of Web 2.0 methods they all carry the same level of emotion. Well, maybe some of the methods would of course leave more bitterness about than others. Last meeting or any meeting for that matter is about respect! Even if you happen to be in a meeting with a real sour sole, whose occupied space in this universe is a total waste, that person deserves respect. Respect carries neither bitterness nor regret. Attitude makes sure that when you close that door behind you, you are floating with feet on the ground.

A Hole Digger Is a Gold Digger

2010-11-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Holes...a subject of euphoria for the tactful, conniving & ingenious souls which were put on earth by some miscalculated force, also happens to be a tender topic for many others with myriad taste sensations. A hole; an empty confined space characterized by its stuffy, musty, dark environment is not a place of merriment for many unless of course you happen to be a mole. In a mole's perspective, hole digging is a gift of nature. Sadly, those who are at the top of the food chain, supposedly with better intellectual powers try to outsmart the wise selections of mother nature & morph into hole diggers themselves.

A hole is often associated with dirt, or some other form of waste that must be put away. Like the mole goes in search of the delicate areas of land to create its curvy caves, human hole diggers go in search of "dirt". This "dirt" is meant to be meddled with, turned up, ploughed through and additionally shared among similar hole digging enthusiasts. Human moles are cheeky and have the knack of going off the radar for considerable periods of time. Unlike the moles of nature, these "moles" work round the clock, in rain and shine going in search of... yes.. dirt.

Moles of nature are harmless critters. They just make an exasperating mess that can easily be dealt with. Human moles on the other hand are walking time bombs. Oh wait, forget the time adjective. Human moles are just walking bombs, capable of irreparable disruptions, many a fixes and worst of all, loss of goodwill.

A good thing about a mole digging a hole, as I see is the fact that it is only the mole who is getting dirty at the end of the procedure. He does not create a big mess, except underground. Fellow moles do not go on strike, shun the poor critter, or expel him off the company. Everybody is happy. Unfortunately when human moles start poking about in the dirt everything from A to Z ends up in a soup and the soup is also in a bottomless bowl!

I wonder if a mole pats himself on the back when he finally emerges from his twisting trench. "Oi..I did a damn good hole" kind of a thing maybe? It is about time you moles started doing that because human moles regardless the significance of their work, just love to brag. Ever heard of "making a mountain out of a mole hill" proverb?

The hole digging process exposes a lot of hidden treasures. Now, for a mole the most valuable treasure would be some edible thingy, a vegetable or a grub worm. To human moles however the definition of the word "treasure" varies. Today it would refer to gold, tomorrow it could refer to dirt! Greed and desire lubricate the digging process in human moles. I am not sure what triggers the digging desire in moles though. Any clues anyone?

Moles are blind yet sensitive to darkness. Makes a lot of sense considering their natural habitat aka holes. Human moles, most of the time are not blind (although what they do sometimes raise serious questions with regard to their visibility). As for the sensitivity factor, well let's just not make a mountain out of a mole hill shall we? :)

Unguarded man-holes, often trigger public outcry. Why, for the obvious danger that is associated with it, a far steeper hazard for health in comparison to mole holes. You see... holes are dangerous, yet the digging continues...

And so we forget..

Again...

As to why we were put on this earth...

To Fix The Match

2010-09-06T08:38:00.001-07:00

On my way home today I happened to hear the not so oooh aah news on the radio which said a certain player in our Sri Lankan Cricket Team has allegedly been involved in a match fixing scenario. Although the news is supposedly true, a lot of backfence talk is going on with regard to who the culprit behind the scandle is. The funny thing is despite being slow in catching up with the trends we Lankans sure find savvy ways to be under the spotlight albeit the thumbs-down. ;-)

I am thinking match fixing could happen both ways. Paying to win & paying to lose. Paying to win, we do not hear much. Even when we do hear paying to win scenarios, such events call for glamorous celebrations all over (e.g IPL?). Yet paying to lose is the situation that generates plenty of hullabaloo, in the big barracks, in the news, and in the streets.

To me, all these bookies (although commit a sin according to my religion) are a bunch of ingenious businessmen who know exactly how to exploit the human mind. It is just to plain bad that they decided to use the ingenuity to something that gets everybody into trouble. But then again had they opted to be righteous we would all lose on a good topic of discussion. So there... go be bad boys, but know what you gonna do when "they" come for you (hearing Bob Marley sing :D). We, humans all have a price tag atop our heads. Yet only a few entrepreneurs learn how to read that tag. Sadly for us the majority of the few are such illicit dealers! The moment one learns how to read it, the owner of the tag becomes a puppet. And there is nothing worse than being a puppet of a puppetmaster whose head is screwed. Money can do wonders to us human beings. We all like to claim how we value the work we do & how morally & principally just we are. Speaking bluntly the truth, money is one element in the world that can swing one into all sorts of directions despite the upholster we put on. People, with all the sophistication going around, have forgotten the fact that we all have had animal ancestors. Bait to an animal as we all have seen, can make it go into extremely unwholesome states, (e.g imprisonment, death) For us humans the only bait we have evolved to respond is money. :D

We are not hard workers. We all like to sit back, relax, do the bare minimum & live the life. Making a quick buck to most of us is an exciting venture. The essential clause in this service agreement is "do less". So if I were a sportsman & I was going to fix the match the best thing I would do is play lousy & hope that nobody would notice. Now that I have written that sentence, all of a sudden the concept of match fixing to win sounds extremely stupid. If I were somebody else other than a sportsman, then we all know the ends we reach trying to "do less". No need to gloat on that I reckon. ;-)

Thus the booky principle is economically ingenious. Exploit the trend & maximize the gain; win-win all around.

You walk along the street and pass a little brook. You see a person with a fishing rod sitting patiently on the bank waiting to get lucky. The immediate thought that would cross your head is that this man is committing a very bad sin. You go home. Hungry, you grab half a loaf of bread, ruffle through the pots and pans & stumble onto a fish curry. If a second person saw you eating fish & bread would you be questioned of your morality? :D

And match fixing goes on... inside this 3rd planet from the sun.

Feeling Very Wiki-ish

2010-08-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I had tons of work pending, I just spent 2 hours of my morning creating my first wiki!

After 2 hours of googling, brain wrecking and writing content the child was spawned and christened Writum Wiki. I have to say that the effort was totally worth it. The wiki was born leaving me with the feeling of wanting to come back for more. :D

It was amazing to see how easy it was to create the basic layout just after a few click hither and thither. All you need to have is a basic idea (a map in your head) of what you need to put in the wiki and presto...everything else will magically fall into place. There are tons of wiki hosting sites, some of them are generously free. I chose Wikidot to host my wiki. Wikidot has a great set of cool tools for content authoring, site management and user management. In order for you to create your own wiki, you first need to register with wikidot. After that you are meticulously guided through the creating of a wiki process. You may restrict authoring privileges of your wiki. The level of restriction may vary from one person to unlimited number of people (public wiki). In my case, I selected a set of people I would like to see contributing to Writum Wiki. These users will have to register with Wikidot first. In order to induce them to join the wiki, Wikidot has an inbuilt email notification system, which can be used to send emails to approximately 200 users. I have to say I was more than a little eager to use this feature! ;-)

It is also possible for you to receive email notifications whenever content is updated. You can customize your notification settings along with other configs that are applicable to your user account.

What I like the most about Wikis is the sense of community it exudes. Moreover, you are free to come up with a site that perfectly matches your style, your taste and your need. Wikidot also has a super community to assist you in case you found yourself in a bit of a soup with regard to your site.

So, come, partake in the most wikish method to share knowledge.

I LOVE YOU

2010-08-09T09:47:00.001-07:00

"Sach... have you ever said the three word sentence?" asks my female confidante. "oh yeah!" out comes the reply. And I let go of the flood gates, which harbor a whole deal of churning thoughts. The churning thoughts somehow magically find their way in to these notes; my surreal fortress of concession.

This female confidante is one persistent little spitfire, who knows how to make me talk. Can't blame her though, for some weird twist of fate we are stuck to each other. I for one am feeling so mighty glad that we are stuck to each other!!! As taken over by instinct, she persists. As frank as I could get, I narrate. The Tale of Woo!

So there, I have uttered the three word sentence. Quite uncanny it is that the first few times I had to say it, it came out of sheer politeness. :D Hence, no meaning, no feeling, no relevance... Debate arises with the question of my trying to mislead the unsuspecting recipient. But then again, if I sufficed the sentence with the phrase"I mean it" I would be cheating two people instead of one; myself and the recipient. True enough it is said that two is better than one, but me thinks the guy who said that must have been extremely pedantic.

To me, the title phrase carries very little meaning. I feel a whole lot more comfortable for as long as I do not hear it. The moment I hear it I am caught in a limbo, not being totally sure if I should succumb to tradition or be unorthodox. Being unorthodox in romance does not have the best of histories, while the sugarcoated sweet talk could get you from point A to point B without a single hair being ruffled. It is just amazing to see advantages one could get with sweet talk should you happen to be with "a recipient" who possess a sweet tooth. It is still sad that supposedly the most prettiest sentences in the literature is brutally exploited by many of us, so much so that it has completely lost its fire and charm...

And so, you the reader might already be squinting your eyes at this little inscription. Oh! you self conscious little miss righteous indignation... bla bla... So be it. Words alone will get me as far as the distance an ant could move me :D Don't I believe in infatuation? Of course I do. We all are bound to make that profound mistake at least once in our lives. When we do eventually commit the crime, time stands still, the earth stops spinning and we begin to see the world in colors we have never seen before.

Respect; that be the word I would be replacing LOVE with. Not only the newer version is hard to mouth if you don't mean it, it sounds ridiculously stupid to the recipient if he/she does not see you behaving accordingly. As far as I am concerned, respect comes bundled with trust, honor, humility and a superior emotion compared to the sugar coated love! Plus one need not bother thinking too much when one says that one respects one. The state is entirely binary; either you respect or you don't! Unlike with regard to love, which has almost a million intermediate stages like "complicated" , "I do but he/she doesn't", "just a crush", "a thing for so & so", "a fling", "no strings attached.." etc. Respect is action-driven. As for love...well...y'all know what drives what!

Actions always speak louder than words.

- NOT OPEN FOR DISCUSSIONS -

In The Back Seat Of Your Car!

2010-05-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

The back seat of a ride is a place of excitement for people of many tastes & attitudes. There...a rather mundane opening for another one of mine self-generated, randomly inspired chronicles. Stories about maniacs, scum bags, screw ups, idiots, grown ups who have refused to grow up.... in other words, us!

Rides with tinted shutters have always fascinated me. To be frank, I myself was toying with the idea of being the chauffeur of a tinted shuttered ride, but for some cause unknown to me(and to which I am so frikkin thankful for) the fantasy never materialized. Absence of light, to many people mean plenty of privacy. Absence of light also means security in the same context to the same group of people. Human beings tend to cut themselves lose when it is dark and the environment is closed up. Much like all those werewolves & vampires people have invented to vent out the darker sides of their inner selves. To me,
although those mythical beings are unreal, they are the most violated group of people ever to be spawned. How hopeless pedantic it is to be able to spring into "action" only when the full moon perches itself up on a cloudless sky? For all we know, it is full moon only once a month. It is not like those people
can hitch hike on a random form they happen to meet at a party, run into on streets or meet online....I am guessing it must be extremely boring when you know your self-inflicted curfew lifts itself only once a month!!!

Egad...a derailing!!! As usual!!!! Now let us break free from this temporary indulgence in werewolves and get back to tinted shutters....

Cutting lose, more often than not leads to oneself being a little too careless & finding him/herself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Human beings have needs. Sadly for us, the most demanding of our needs usually require closed environments. Take peeing for example. I am not sure many of us will find it pleasing to relieve our bladders in public. We, somewhere down that long dismal time line of evolution been blessed (or cursed?) with the requirement of wanting darkness when it is time to let go. Once provided the seclusion required its winter wonderland to all of us...Like they say...when you gotta go, you gotta go!!!

Takeaway point: Feelings are hard to put a lid on...

And so we crash down on our object of discussion; rides with tinted shutters. They come bundled with an assortment of VERY favorable properties for the "needy". It is mobile, it more often than not comes with just the right amount of space to do just the right type of things, it comes at zero cost, depending on where you decide to land...etc. and when you do find all properties smiling at you, beckoning you to loosen what you have been harnessing so laboriously in you, you just do nothing but giving in....O! sweet succumb...

Takeaway point: Convenience is not always a blessing...

Who do you normally like to accompany into the seclusion a tinted-shuttered-ride provides? How dense can I get huh? Is that a question to ask? Well....If you are still questioning yourselves whether or not to answer that question in your heads let me help you. You don't need darkness to have tea parties!!!
*Wink*. The quality of the specimen who happens to accompany you into darkness matters a lot AFAIK. It can invariably be your lifeline if it be the right specimen. If not....well....then you can get down on your sorry ass & start hoping for the best. One thing that mustn't elude you though, is the fact that when it comes to the moment, hope sure has the knack of leaving you!

Takeaway point: Beware of who you are with in the darkness...

Seclusion has two faces. It can provide you security. At the same time it can put your life on the line. Well, if you are somebody who happened to make a living out of being alone that is entirely a different story. But I doubt the majority of my audience is in that category. With all due respect, let us read on. One thing I have come to realize over the course of my life, is the fact that there is no such thing as "harmless fun". First of all, that phrase is not logical. Harm & fun should not be in the same sentence to begin with! It has also come into my realization that when fun comes tagged with the word harmless, there are 101 ways things can go hideously wrong. To an observant eye, it must have come into focus that excitement and seclusion go hand in hand in many a occasion. Human beings can excite one another in an assortment of ways. Be it from a gentle touch, a word, or by sharing some substance (coffee, juice, ahem ahem...). Excitement, like seclusion has two faces. It can make you feel good the moment the right buttons are pushed. However, the general case is such that, human beings tend to be extremely negligent when they reach the peak of excitement. Negligence, has a wild reputation on putting a damper on all your glorious moments. Aren't you just tired of my euphemisms!?!?

Takeaway point: Seclusion may provide opportunity and rob you of opportunity...

Opposites are a cocky invention of English language, I reckon. Simple words like give, take, up, down, can generate myriad of emotions in the reader's mind so effortlessly. The opposite of darkness is...yes...light. And such a delicious opposite it is don't you think? A sudden flash of a torch and you are jolted back into reality, out of darkness, into light. With light, strangers may infiltrate your tinted sanctuary. Light provides clarity & strength of mind to most of them who barge in. Does light really provide strength of mind? If you are afraid of the dark then I am sure you would "see" my point! Have you realized that, all Gods (in movies of course) appear amidst bright flashing lights? Good Gods in bright light, and bad Gods in ominous light. Where does this analogy take us? Light can accompany both your saviors and your destroyers. Scary thought don't you think? Light tends to make you see things in a whole new different perspective. Things that you have missed in the dark, you begin to see in haunting clarity when there is light. And then comes all should have s, could have s, and would have s, which usually make you feel even more miserable, should light happens to come on at the worst possible occasion for you. The question comes up; come unto light they say, but do you really want to?

Takeaway point: You ought to be scared of light if you are in the dark for the wrong reasons...

Strangers who come with light usually carry questions. The usual "what" "who" "where" "how" that require you to answer regardless your willingness to open up. People are rather shy of "opening up" when there is light. *Grin* Hence they go in search of darkness! Unfortunately, answering questions in the light may prove to be more difficult than answering them in darkness. For instance, when you are in the dark a question like "what are you doing?" can safely be silenced in the most delicious ways imaginable. *Mondo Grin* However, when the same question comes up when there is light, delicious answers would probably be the last thing on your mind! Moreover, your questioners would not exactly be looking for delicious answers. When the questions are fired, no tinted shutter is going to be good enough to protect you from expectations of strangers.

Takeaway point: Two is company and three (or four) is a crowd...

Then there is indignation! "This is my life, my game, why can I not do what I want? What is wrong with doing this?" etc. attitude. Well paley...that is just the way it is. There is no room to do what you want around here. This is not "the promised land". Nor there are good Gods wandering about us at your disposal to come in all their glory for your rescue. Should you happen to be somebody who has the "need" minus the "iron will" then you might as well take the chance and pray and hope lights will not come on before your party is over. You may not have been the first to break the rules. But somebody before you did break the rules and broke 'em bad. And now we all are doomed to be shackled by all these restrains until we get the green light. I myself have always been a fan of rules, hence I have no complains. A set of rules, like it or not, is a hideous guise to your perfect safety net.

Takeaway point: Respect the rules & rules will respect you back...

And it all happens... in the back seat of your car!!!

Behind The Third Eye

2010-03-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

Given the talented man/woman the right apparatus, he/she maketh magic. The ramblings of this soul today will feature the amazing traits of such talented individuals who have found their calling behind the third eye.

Although the list of featured artists is limited to only 6, (not to mention this was all I could recall in the dismal abyss of my brain) that does not mean I think you suck if you happened to be good with the tools. People are entitled to their own comments & criticisms, I believe. Thus, should you happen to fall into the latter category I just mentioned about, you ought not have your feathers ruffled. Just brush the dampening thought away & be on your merry way.

Since I am not sure all you readers of this script will be able to access the links I will be attaching here, I will take the pride in sharing a few masterpieces that tickled my fantasies. All credit goes to original artists

Featured Artist #1
Srimal Samarasooriya
My good ol' crash pad, who has valiantly rescued me from many a mishaps, seen me through a plenty of bumpy rides is a gifted individual. The noteworthy fact is that the lad is gifted not just with the third eye but also with many a humane virtues. :-) This be a tribute to all the good times, the raised voices, arguments, most of all for being a very reliable cushion whenever a crisis arises. Depending on access privileges you should be able to see his work here. Well if you are curious of his camera type, the tools & techniques he uses & what not, I suggest you not pester me with questions. Why? If ignorance is bliss, I am as happy as a clam with respect to his tool specifications. The picture of the passage you see here happened to be one of my personal favorites from his collection.

Featured Artist #2
Anjula De Silva
Aaah...from my days of learning relative velocity & dynamics & brain teasers of such like being leg tackled from under the table, comes this "fun" individual who knows how to push the lens to the limits. Given a few more clicks and you can surely rate him as a pro! The fella possess the most sophisticated camera gear I had ever laid eyes on. What is amazing is that the tools respond to his demands & they respond oh so well. A silent man by nature, but as you can see in the picture, you can see that he talks to millions behind the third eye. If you the reader is lucky enough there is more from where this masterpiece came from right this way

Featured Artist #3
Sachini Weerawardhane (erm..did I spell the surname right girl?)
Fret not dear readers, I am not gifted with the lens. But this awesome lady generates passion behind the third eye, as you will all see in a while. I might as well share a few funny facts that she & I have in common. First in the list comes the name, Sachini Weerawardhane (spelling??), second comes the birth month, third comes our Alma-mater, and now that I realize, the fourth in the list be the shortened forms of our names, e.g. sach, sachi etc :D Girl, do pitch in with a comment if you see anything I have missed regarding the list of similarities. ;-) From what I have seen, the subjects she sees through the lens is more often than not unorthodox. Want proof?
The source from where this picture was excavated, drove many a ladies insane...

Featured Artist #4
Yajith Dayarathna
Well, since I am going to publish a picture I might as well publish a picture with a story behind it. :D And the picture is... (drum roll) More can be found on his Flicker photo stream The story behind the picture involves, Crabs, YesFM ShoeBox Project, shopping on Christmas Eve (2009), a horrendous downpour, & a few good gift vouchers that never found the purpose of their existence. I am not sure the status of the vouchers that plunged into the darkness of his backpack, but every once in a while a petite camera pops out of it & voila...moments speak!!!

Featured Artist #5
Sasiri Wimalarathna
I remember the day he consulted me for some pointers toward buying a good third eye. I for one am so eternally grateful the good doctor realized his mistake, did not listen to me & trusted his gut instead. Pretty is all I can say.
More of his work Here be a living example of what you can do if you have an open mind & open doors to limitless possibilities. Kudos Sasiri!!! :-)

Featured Artist #6
Charlie G. (Chathura)
Sorry mate.. I forget your last name! Perhaps if you had a surname as spectacular as your photography maybe none of this would have happened (LOL) One album I keep on revisiting on a regular basis is his Project 365 It is simply amazing to see the album being reborn with valor, fire & life every time a new picture is added. Dear readers, consult this man right here if you want to find out how to exploit a perfectly mundane moment & mold masterpiece out of it.

PS - The order of the list here has no relevance whatsoever with the level of skill each individual possesses. The note was just to voice an appreciation, as appreciation is always meant to be.

Psychotic Work Guys!

When I Am a Bike...

2010-03-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

I Am Free

Why?
I feel the wind whizzing past me caressing my ears. The wind is a funny thing you see, creeping into the most cramped up locations & yet managing to freely wander about. One place she never fails to visit is underneath my riding jacket. Aah... such delights she gives me (choke)! Countless times, she has pushed me into states of extreme euphoria & all those times I profoundly forgot my latitude & longitude. Ma woman....purrrr....bless you!

I Am Brave

Why?
The bike undoubtedly gives you the best sitting position God has ever devised; legs on either side, slightly elevated from ground level. The position however has made me extremely lazy to put my feet on the ground, which in return makes stopping a nightmare! But who needs to stop with such hassle? I will just go & kiss somebody's bumper with my tires & voila, effortless stationing. I usually visualize myself as superman when I am riding my bike. Whoa...hold it...I said I "visualized" myself, does that necessarily require me to wear my undies over my pants? Well, if that is what you require for me to appear Mr. Invincible, then by God I shall wear my undies over my pants. The two wheels that spin so closely to my legs more often than not induce me to work magic on the road. Them all other losers on four-wheels plus, I laugh atcha suckers! I wag my tail feathers while I am on it & my ride responses. I wouldn't want to imagine y'all trying to do the same in your whack wagons. Trust me it will not work.

I Am Macho

Why?
The road is mine & I am burning hot! Ho yeah baby!! Who gives a flying fig about the state of the person driving the carcass I am overtaking. It is just me & my hot-ride forever & ever. I will just squeeze myself past this 20 Ton contraption & people around me would look in awe & throw flowers & confetti! Awesomeness!! A brave idea suddenly hits my small brain! Perhaps I could show these motorists how maneuvering is done. A tweak here, a tug there, a brush here & a yank there & a-waaaaay weeee go!

I Am Blind

Why?
Whoever the egghead who decided to stick these side-view mirrors & signal lights & what not onto my cruise machine ought to be hanged. I need no stinkin' mirror or light or anything that remotely relates to highway safety. As long as I have my undies over my pants I ain't got nothin' to worry'bout, no sir!!! What...I can twist & turn & wriggle my way in & out a jam. It's just too damn bad that you have to just sit there & be jealous of me & perhaps commemorating my folks at home with such love & adoration!

I Am An Idiot

Why?
I see an 18-wheeler carrying cargo, making & precarious turn to the left. In my own drunken stupor I go try to over take the 18-wheeler from the left. I just love feeling so small & so drastically outnumbered in weight, height, length & also the wheel count! By some miracle the 18 wheeler keeps a hairbreadth distance between my hot-ride, my legs & a good deal of metal junk that could easily flatten me like ham! Am I disturbed? Hell no!! I go along as if nothing happened & meet a van again finding me on its left. Is it just me or is everybody heavily left-oriented today. This guy too is turning left & I am rammed between 2 feet of triangular space between a pavement & a big white bulky mess! Curses...let me just stop right here & curse the causes of putting this man on this earth. *#&@$(*&@#$

Brummmm....Brummmm....Aaang....Aannggg....

The Earth Rumbles & Why Do We Have To Age Sooner! :-(

2010-03-04T06:25:00.000-08:00

There I was, trying to catch up with my daily reading & I run into this queer article in the newspaper. Few minutes after gloating over it I was engulfed with much respect for the Mayans for their premonition skills!

Sources from NASA claim that the recent Chilean Earthquake was powerful enough to knock the Earth off its axis, resulting in shorter day time. The 8.8 magnitude quake struck massive blows to the city of Concepcion on February 27th, killing more than 700 people & most weirdly affection the geography of the planet.

It is argued that since the Earthquake has affected in the distribution of mass of planet earth, it has in return had an impact on the rotation speed. Computer simulations done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Pasadena, California, by geophysicists have revealed that due to the alteration to the Earth's axis, the day has gotten shorter by 1.27 microseconds. They further claim that the Earth's axis has been shifted 8cm from its orientation. How this rotation speed change occurs can be explained by a phenomena called "Ice Skater Effect". In layman's terms this means that the further the body mass is spread from the rotational axis of an ice skater the slower he can spin. If he wants to spin faster he can easily crouch his limbs, thus altering the distribution of body mass & as a result the rotational speed changes.

However, since the change is quite insignificant, the geophysicists assure that no alteration to clock time has to be made. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the Sumatran quake (2004) which measured at 9.1 in the Richter scale, altered the orientation of the Earth's axis by 7cm despite the massive size of the quake!

Perhaps a few quakes hither & thither & a million lives later I would get to celebrate my birthday a day quicker than I used to 10 years ago!!!

On account of the number of natural disasters the world has had to withstand during the past couple of months, one could not help but wonder if the Mayans had been right about 2012.

Hope is a good thing, don't you think? It is just too sad that when everything falls into place hope always has the knack of leaving you!

-Source Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Fire

2010-02-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

This day in February, the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Moratuwa caught fire. We dwelling on the floor above had a wonderful time inhaling the foul fumes, watching the show & trying to sound like mr/ms Situational Analysts. Stories were flying around as to how the fire started, as the case is for many a such random accidents. The closest news to the truth, stated negligence on the part of some maintenance folks. The story had references to welding gear, electricity cables, the A/C & (surprise surprise) water!! Apparently in the excited state of mind or by sheer dumbness some soul had decided to use water to put the fire out. And by some long forgotten good karma that everybody failed to pay tribute to no one got hurt.

Fire does require respect & plenty of it. The staff at the Electrical Engineering Department had their work cut out trying to curb the flames & minimize the damage while the fire brigade & the police took their own sweet time to arrive at the drama. Thankfully they eventually did & left almost as soon as they arrived! :D

Accidents like these usually make you realize how vulnerable you are. Also it makes you wonder how well (or under) equipped we are tackling an emergency situation. It was quite appalling to see such so called educated people standing right outside the burning building watching the extravaganza, while glass was splintering in thousand one directions! I mean come on...curiosity did kill the cat, did it not? Since the electrical circuitry was damaged by the fire, the power supply was cut off for approximately an hour. When you say power was cut off due to a fault you don't expect to see certain areas within the same building remaining unaffected by the power cut. The engineering genius of these people is such that we in our working area had power despite the alleged "power cut", thanks to an "old power line" they had just generously left in tact!

Luckily the incident took place when most of the students were away on their vacation. Had it been a normal work day with thousands of students attending lectures, we could have witnessed a retake of a blockbuster movie! :D People may argue, blame X, Y & Z, try to sound like mr/ms know-it-alls, but it is highly unlikely that the present loopholes will be addressed & undone in the near future. Why? we, the Sri Lankans have been graciously blessed with the gift of forgetfulness & with a lapse of a few days nobody would remember of the whole fiasco, until the next one takes us by surprise.

Tomorrow...

Promotion... or is it?

2010-01-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

Aah....never a did word exist in the dictionary with such skepticism behind it. Come to think of it, evolution itself is a variation of you & I being promoted by mother nature. And I for one am so frikkin' glad she did not screw that up, or we would have ended up with 6 limbs a pair of antlers & hooves! :D

Kiss ups, yes men/women, boot licks, suck ups are some of the very interesting definitions a thesaurus might throw at you, should you happen to look up for some definitions. What do all these phrases have in common? Plenty of drool, that's what. It is uncanny how such a source of exultation has evolved out from the honorary podium & into the rubble of repulsion. How many times have you in your heads wondered what the person did, that involved plenty of drool to be promoted? What is worse is that whenever you hear news of such nature, skills of that particular person falls mercilessly behind the drooling regardless how deep an impact skills themselves have made in helping the person in being promoted.

IMHO the freedom of speech, here in Sri Lankan corporate world is just a juicy fabrication. If ever you are thinking of opening your mouth to voice your opinion on some injustice, you might as well dig yourself a hole & bury yourself in it. "What on earth were you thinking?", "Why do you want to go bang your head on a brick wall?", "Face it man, we sprats can in no way swim among those whales & sharks"...would be some of the colorful & brutally truthful comments you would receive from your peers, if by some unfortunate twist of fate you happened to find yourself trying to be a little too brave.

It is natural for us humans to want more. More of everything & more than what we already have. It is just too sad to see people falling into such 3rd degree levels trying to get what they want. But then again, you just have to cut your cloth according to your coat do you not? After all, who wants to sit at the same place getting the same return for the next 15 years?? First of all your chair would rot. Second of all your butt would fall asleep & third of all your neighborhood will change & before you knew it would be surrounded by people who are calling u grand pa!!! :D Nothing doing!!!

Let's be frank. Most of us would rather not have our incompetencies pointed out. A promotion to a peer is interpreted by such people as a constant reminder of your incompetency. To add salt to the wound, it is just there, right before you. Day in & day out, screaming at you "nah..na...na...naa..naa..you cant catch me!" Thus erupts the cycle of competition, trying to be the better boot lick. And it is all downhill from that point onwards.

Makes you wonder, does it not? Why can't I just mind my own business?

ඉංග්‍රීසි සාහිත්‍යය නම් ෆෙස්ටිවල්...එතකොට සිංහල සාහිත්‍යය?

2010-01-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

ඊයෙ ගාලු ගියා.." Galle Literary Festival" එක බලන්න. ඒක ඉන්ටර්නැෂල් කියල ගහල නොතිබ්බට තිබුනු ඔක්කොම අයිතම වල සත්කාරකත්වය දරලා තිබ්බේ විදේශික පිරිස්. හිටපු ඔක්කොමල වගේ ඉංග්‍රීසි කතාකරන, කොලඹ කට්ටිය. ලොකු වාහන වලින් ඇවිත්, බැහල ගාලු කොටුව වටේ රවුමක් කැරකිලා ආයෙත් කොළඹ එන එක තමයි එහෙම ආපු ඔක්කොමල වගේ කලේ. මේක ලියන්න හිතුනේ ඒ උත්සවයේ ගුණ දොස් විවේචනය කරන්න නෙවෙයි. ගුණක් කියන්න තරම් හොඳකුත් දොසක් කියන්න තරම් වැරැද්දකුත් ඒකෙ තිබ්බෙ නැහැ ඇත්තටම.

හැබැයි එක දෙයක්, ඒ උත්සවය හැමෝටම ගිහින් බලල එන්න පුලුවන් දේකුත් නෙවේ. එක අයිතමයකට ඇතුල් වීමේ ගාස්තුව රුපියල් 900ක්! නොමිලේ ඇතුල් වීමේ අවස්ථාව තිබ්බෙ අයිතම එකක්, දෙකක් සඳහා විතරයි. සම්පූර්ණ දිනේටම වලංගු අවසර පත්‍රය රුපියල් 3000ක්. ඉතිං ඔච්චර ගානක් දීලා සාහිත්‍යය ගන්න පුලුවන්ද අපි වගේ පොඩි අයට.

සාහිත්‍යය විතරක් නෙවේයි පරිප්පු ඇටේ ඉඳන් ඔක්කොම දේවල් ගිනි ගනන් කාලෙ ඔය ගාස්තු ගැන පුදුම වෙන්න දේකුත් නැහැ මම හිතන්නේ. මම ඔය විස්තරේ එක්කෙනෙක් එක්ක කිව්වම එයා කියනවා ගල්කිස්ස හෝටලෙන් දවල්ට කාල එන්නත් ඔච්චර ගානක් යන්නෙ නැතිලු. කවුදෝ කිව්වලු සාහිත්‍යය ඉතින් කන්නද කියල! ඒ කියපු කතාවෙත් ඇත්තක් නැත්තෙමත් නෑ. ඒත් අපේ මිනිස්සුන්ගෙ සාහිත්‍ය රසඥ්‍යතාවය අන්තිමයි කියල කෑගහන අය ඒ වෙනුවෙන් මොකුත් නොකරන නිසාත්, රුපියල් 900කට වඩා අඩුවෙන් බාල වින්දනයක් ගන්න පුලුවන් ඕන තරම් ඉඩකඩ තියන නිසාත්, රසඥ්‍යතාවය අඩු අපේ තවත් රසඥ්‍යතාවය මොට්ට වෙන එක අහන්න දේකුත් නෙවේ.

මේ කතාවේ දෙපැත්තක් තියන බවත් ඇත්ත. සාහිත්‍යට වඩා වැදගත් කොච්චර දෙවල් තියෙනවද? එහෙම කියල අනිත් පැත්තට අපිම රිලැක්ස් වෙන්න කියල හොඳ සින්දුවක් අහනව, අපි මුහුන දීපු සංවේදී අත්දැකීමක් බ්ලොග් කරනවා. බලන්න, අපි හිතුවට සාහිත්‍යය කන්නද කියල අපි ආයෙ ආයෙත් එතෙන්ටම යන හැටි!

සිංහල භාෂාවට කරන්න පුලුවන් දේවල් පෙන්නපු දක්ෂයො එදත් හිටියා, අදත් ඉන්නවා, හෙටත් අනිවාර්යයෙන්ම ඉඳීවි. ඒත් එහෙම අයට ඉස්සරහට එන්න තියන ඉඩකඩ ගැන නම් කියලා වැඩක් නැහැ. ඒ නිසානේ අපේ රටට විදේශිකයො ඇවිත් එයාලගෙ සාහිත්‍යය ගැන අපිට කියල දෙන්නෙ අපෙන් සල්ලිත් අරන්!

සිංහල විතරක් නෙවේ අපේ රටේ අනිත් ප්‍රධාන භාෂාව වන දමිළ භාෂාවත් හොඳ වියත් භාෂාවක්. ඒකට තියන තැන ගැන කියන්න මට හරියටම දැනීමක් නැහැ. මොකද මගෙන් ඇහුවොත් දන්න දමිළ භාෂාවෙන් සාහිත්‍යකරණයේ යෙදෙන කෙනෙක්ග්ගෙ නමක් කියන්න කියලා, ඒකට මට උත්තරයක් නැති නිසා!

(අ )මනාපය.

2010-01-26T23:20:00.001-08:00

ඔන්න ඉතින් අපිත් ගිහින් ඊයෙ කතිර ගහල ආවලු. ආපු ගමන් කල පලවෙනිම රාජකාරිය ඇඟිල්ලෙ ගාපු පාට සායම් මැකෙන්න දෙහි ලෙල්ලක් අතුල්ලන එක! වැඩේ නම් හරි ගියා හැබැයි තියන ප්රශ්නෙ ඡන්දයක් කියල එක එක්කෙනා කන් පිරෙන්න ගහපු කයිවාරු ටිකයි කාලා දාපු පැය ගානයි මකාගන්න දෙහි ලෙලි කීයක් ඕන වේද කියන එකයි.

මේක සිරි ලංකාවෙ හයවෙනි ජනාධිපතිවරණයෙයි කියන්නෙ! මේක ලියන ටිකේදිත් රේඩියෝ එකෙන් ප්රතිපල කියනව! හෙට වගේ වෙද්දි දිනපු කෙනා රජගෙදරට යයි. පැරදුනු කෙනා අකුලගෙන යයි. අපි ඔයාල සුපුරුදු පරිදි වැඩ රාජකාරි වලට යයි. ඊටපස්සෙ පෙරලුනු පිට හොදයි කියල දෙන දේ කාල වෙන දේ බලන් ඉන්න තමයි වෙන්නේ.

හැමදාම වගේ වෙන්නෙ ඡන්දෙ දිනල මාසයක් යනකොට "අනේ මේකට දුන්නට වඩ හොඳයි නිකං උන්න නම්" කියල අපි අපිටම දොස් කියාගන්න එක නෙ. ඒත් ඉතිං එක දවසකට රජ වෙන්න කවුද අකමැති. ඉතිං ඊයෙ 26 වෙනිද අපි තමයි රජවරු! අර කවුද කියන්න වගේ හෙට වෙනකොට බලු වේද කියල බලාගන්න නම් හෙට වෙනකම්ම ඉන්න වෙනව!

ප්රසිද්ධියෙ පොලිටික්ස් ගැන කතා නොකලට අපිට එකෙන් වහං වෙලා ඉන්න පුලුවන්ද කියන එකත් ප්රශ්නයක්. මාත් ඊයෙ අර කාඩ්බෝඩ් පෙට්ටිය අතරට ගිහින් පැන්සල අතට ගන්නකම් තීරනයක් නැතිව හිටියෙ. පස්සෙ ඔන්න ඕන එකක් කියල දීල දැම්ම. ඇනෑලිසිස් පැරෑලිසිස් කියල සංකල්පයකුත් තියනවනෙ. කවුරු ආවත් අපිට හොඳක් වෙනවනම් එච්චරයි. හැබයි වෙන්නෙ නැත්තෙත් ඒකමයි!

ඇත්තටම අද උදේ එක්කෙනෙක් චැට් එකෙන් සීතාම්බර සළු හොයද්දි දුකත් එක්ක හිනත් ගියා!

Pregnant

2010-01-26T08:15:00.000-08:00

Criminy!!! Why can't I simply go to bed, shut my eyes & drift off to snoozle land without letting my wild fantasies get the best of me? Serious genetic flaw I am telling y'all... So here I am (again), rattling away on the keyboard, with a stinging right eye & a fried brain.

Today's topic : You can read, can't you?

You sit on a stiff chair, a boring desk, in a long demeaning hall. You are surrounded by four of your peers each at a distance of 2 or 3 feet maximum, surrounded by rustling of sheets, surrounded by long sighs, and the occasional sound of a pen hitting the floor. The clock ticks away & you know you are in a losing race. The heinous empty spaces in your writing sheet gapes at you. The recollections of all the wasted hours & incompetencies you are doomed to hang on to for the rest of your life scream into your conscience. And you are pregnant with convalescence.

It is wrong. But you did it anyway. What part of your brain that did not function properly at the time of your doing the wrongful act seems to be a good rhetoric question to ask. Now you are caught. You dread at the prospect of a zillion whys & hows & whens being fired at you most to which you will not have a rational answer. Many a prospecting black moments that will be spawned as a result of your mediocre processing skills flash before you. And you are pregnant with remorse.

The week seems to drag on forever. You wait patiently for "that" day. The day of long, secret pleasures. The moment you are transformed into this alien species who listens to no rhyme or reason. The patience is annoying. Yet, you know patience is duly rewarded & perhaps in many ways than one if you play your cards right. For some unknown reason, the longer the day seems to take to come, the faster it dies on you & adds itself to yesterday. And you are pregnant with covetousness.

You are given promises. You being the hopeful promisee believe that the promise would be honored. It turns out the promise comes at a cost you are not quite ready to pay as yet. You wait until the promisor sees some reason & lower the bargain. Your waiting yields nothing but futility. You question & throw alternatives at the promisor hoping the conditions would be waived. Seeing the rigidity, you back off and the promisor goes into oblivion. You are left stranded & wondering what the intentions of the promisor were. And you are pregnant with repulsion.

You see a frail figure lying on a stretcher. He is alive...still. You look at him & you see the struggle he has to put through just to suck in a breath of air. He twists & turns, apparently in discomfort caused by constantly running out of air. He wants to cough but his lungs are too weak to support the demand. His body dissolves so mercilessly under the wrinkling skin. He is sick. You have the same disease the man is suffering from. You see the state you will get to if you aggravate the disease. And you are pregnant with angst.

You have been saying "It is okay" "Nevermind" for a long time & for too many times. You know sometimes you do not mean it even if you said that it was okay & you did not mind it. But under certain controls you yourself have set you force yourself to say so & be a pretender. You are too stiff headed to lower your controls and admit the fact that you are not as strong as some of these antagonizing freaks believe you to be. Living in your own twisted game of charades you wonder if you are getting too strong or too numb. And you are pregnant with perturbation.

And you thought I would trail on digging into the human reproduction system didn't you? I laugh!!!

Pricks!

2010-01-23T03:46:00.001-08:00

Startle not, with the seemingly obscene title my friends & fiends. This word for all I know is one of the most beautiful words in the English language yet cursed to be so brutally abused in more ways than one. This rapport, again a sudden gush of thoughts put to words is not in any way intended to slight a group of people, male or female. But should you happen to see yourself between these lines try not to chicken out. Read on. You might browse away from the page feeling like a new man/woman!

During the short course of my existence, I have been blessed to be surrounded by people of many a taste; sweet, sour, sensational, sullen, strange, sphinx-like. (Well yeah, I have a thing going on with the letter S, so sue me!) Variety my friends & fiends is a fascinating concept. Not only does it add color to our lives but also it make you & I all unique in our own ways. And so, from here-onwards unfolds the chronicle of pricks, written by a prick for pricks!

The slang for the word prick is so overrated, IMHO. For best effects, read on having removed the slang term out of your heads! Well, if you insist on licking on the slang term, be my guest for all I care! (LOL)

#1 - Best-Friend Prick
So it comes down to this. Supposedly one of the best childhood relationships many of us tend to cherish for the entirety of our lives, pops up as the #1 in the prick-list.
It starts like this. You know what I am up to. You know too much. Let us be "best friends", so that you will have your hands tied & mouth sealed. Be neutral, at whatever the cost for I know my deepest darkest secret is talking to you about me!
I for one have never believed in the best friend concept. Not basically because I believed myself to be the All mighty. All you need is a vent to let your frustrations out so that having done so you could be on your merry way! Takeaway point, be a friend to somebody, who knows how to be a friend to you in return. The best friend shindig is all bogus!

#2 -All-The-World-Is-A-Cheesecake Prick
There we have it, the one who sees all 7 colors of the rainbow all the time. Every person, event, & passing second is euphoria for them. People do only good. Nothing bad will ever happen. No cloudy skies, gloomy days, & no bastards around to stab you in the back. Welcome to Utopia!!

#3 -Your-Bar-Is-Too-High-For-Me Prick
The surreal inferiority complex. I happen to be a fan of this kind of heads. For some reason they never fail to make me feel like a super hero, with formidable powers. Instant stardom!! What more can you ask for? My advice, try not to talk them out of the pitiful state of mind. Like I said, it's surreal.

#4 -My-Bar-Is-Too-High-For-You Prick
If the bar is too high is probably because you are better off not trying to grab at it. Who needs to go through all the trouble of walking in high heels & stilts trying to reach too high a bar? Be at ease. That be your greatest strength my friends & fiends.

#5 -I-am-A-Grown-Up-In-A-Diaper Prick
Mother nature spins the clock of aging for a good reason. Try not to outsmart the woman. You are required to get old and act your age. How atrocious would it look if you happen to have a head going bald & need to change diapers every 30 minutes!?!? Prancing around like a wild kid will not attract you attention. It will however make others wonder what part of your genetic structure is faulty.

#6 -Imma-Do-You-Before-I-Go Prick
This I believe is best left to the readers to decipher. If only!!!

#7 -Crash Pad Prick
Not every prick is an eyesore. Hear, Hear!!!

#8 -Sealed-Lip-Busy-Head Prick
And the fascination of pricks continues, with the ever popular thoughtful ones. It never ceases to amaze me the tangled webs these pricks contribute in weaving. And once in a while the moment comes at which you are left feeling thankful that the prick is alive & upright.

#9 -Annual-Squeeze Prick
If you feel you belong to this group then I have nothing to say to you. You should feel downright sorry, ashamed & little. Why? Has it not occurred to you that surfacing only when you require something from somebody puts you way below in human ranking? People have to swallow an awful lot just to sound normal when you show your futile self. Try not surfacing at all for a change. That would do everybody a whole lot of good.

#10 -Now-You-See-Me-Now-You-Don't Prick
Lo & behold the great Houdini! Crowd Pleaser #1, so to speak!!! These souls have the knack of pulling out disappearing acts that are world class.:D The good thing however is that they never fail to keep you at the edge of your seats, although the fun is extremely short lived.

#11 -Be-The-Underdog Prick
Sometimes, there comes along the obnoxious creature & blabs out the most infuriating statements ever! The statements include, do not be an over-achiever, nobody wants an over-achiever, be average so that you will get noticed, do not do this, it will not work, don't do that you will be wasting time, bla bla bla...Well, dearies the space you lot occupy in this universe is just a waste!

#12 -The Weed Prick
Be not misled. This be not the "herb". The weed clan is always best kept in a distance. The lot is full of venom oozing out & feeding on any weak conscience that happen to cross their paths. BRRRR.... Fall not pray, or thou shalt be doomed for all eternity!

#13 -The-Easy-To-Please Prick
Oh, the cheery bundle, & by far the best of the lot. The most creative, weird thinkers. Good times once in company is guaranteed!

#14 - The Worthy Prick
If you did not happen to land yourself in any of the prior prick groups, this is where you probably belong. Congratulations...

"You Know, You Make Me Feel Like The Girl In This Conversation!"

2010-01-22T08:15:00.001-08:00

So it comes in so many different forms yet never failing to draw a smile on my face.

The note starts with the famous Sachini Weerawardhana Assurance extended to the source of this utterance. I got your back pal! This is written with no hard feelings, no satire, no WTF intentions. Just the thought of scribbling something on a writing pad being executed merely out of the hilarious nature of the aforementioned statement made.

So the source happened to be a sweet, nice, man with a cheese ball like complexion. Beware of the harmless looking external aura people...The man,( as has proven so many times in the past) is known to be the most difficult to read! I for one have completely given up the studying the body language part & taken it to a neutral "go with the flow" approach. Sauciness aside, the cheese ball has been responsible for a few but noteworthy good times that he decided to get me involved as well for no apparent reason.

Thank you for the 31st night.

Having made the intros now I proceed to ponder as to what in my mode of conversing made him doubt his sexuality! This being a little piece of literature I am sure I am entitled for some exaggeration. I am not sure what the cheeseball actually meant with the remark & I am going to leave it up to the cheese ball to hang on to his own opinion here. The bottom line - .......................... :D

Comments with similar theme have been directed at me so many a times that I have lost count. Some funny, some obnoxious & some with alien like emotions attached with'em. I am not sure if it is a good thing though. Neither am I sure if it is something I should set about fixing. What do you call it anyway? Intimidation??? Er...that somehow seems too harsh a word!

Heck, if it is intimidation i should be feeling glad! I am this wild thing which in no way can be tamed unless I, myself command my systems to shut down. The self-sufficient nature sort of bugs most of them I reckon (as I have been told many times again) ! I however, do not see myself necessarily changing in the foreseeable future mostly due to the fact that I do not function to please the outside world. This is strictly a no comfort-pillow zone.

My theory of co-existence: If it does not feel like your court, do not play in it.

So my response to the comment goes on to describe how the cheese ball should be happy about feeling like a girl, because it was "oddly comforting". To which the cheese ball half heatedly agreed. I do not blame the poor critter for his confused state. It is a pretty big deal if you in your head begin to question your sexuality.

The curtain is drawn here with a note to the cheese ball, conversations with you are brain teasers!
You are the man!! (thumbs up)

Google Project 10^100

2009-09-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

And so, the "Change The World" Project hosted by Google is having a flourish of ideas. Google 10^100 project marking the companies 10 year anniversary, is finally getting underway. All that is left to do is to shortlist what to do from that extremely long list of 150,000 project ideas & we are good to go! The objective of this project is to launch campaigns that could and will "change the world".

The project is said to be branching off to 16 different themes, ranging from effective methods of de-mining to introduction of more socially conscious tax policies. The project proposals will be vying for 10 million USD that will be awarded as grant to the winner.

The winner will be chosen based on a public voting. Voting ends 8 October.

How To Make a Customized Title Page Using LaTex

2009-08-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

To do this you need two .tex files. Let us name the original document as report.tex & the title page you will be making as title.tex.

In my report.tex file I write the following code.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{report}

\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
\newcommand{\HRule}{\rule{\linewidth}{0.5mm}}
\usepackage{fancyheadings}

\pagestyle{headings}

\begin{document}
\input{./title.tex}

\end{document}

In my title.tex file I put the following code:

\begin{titlepage}

\begin{minipage}{1in}
\begin{tabular}{l}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{./uom}
\end{tabular}
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}{1in}
\begin{tabular}{r}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{./cse}
\end{tabular}
\end{minipage}

\begin{center}
% Upper part of the page

\textmd{CS5999 Post Graduate Diploma Project Report}
\vfill
% Title
{ \huge \textbf{Exposing Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) Agents on The Web} }\\[0.4cm]
\begin{center}
\vfill
By\\
\vfill
\large\textbf{S. S. Weerawardhana}
\end{center}

\begin{center}
\textmd{MSc 2008 Registration No: 088274C}\\
\vfill
\large\textbf{Supervisor: Dr. Buddhinath Jayatilleke}
\vfill
May 2009\\
\end{center}

\vfill
\begin{center}
This proposal is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement of\\
Master of Science in Computer Science\\
in the\\
Department of Computer Science and Engineering\\
Faculty of Engineering\\
University of Moratuwa\\
\end{center}
\vfill

\end{center}

\end{titlepage}

Make sure you keep title.tex document and the report.tex document in the same location. The importance of this is because in report.tex you get the code line \input{./title.tex}. This means that when report.tex is compiled it should also look for title.tex in the same location & compile both the documents to produce the end result.

See the attachment provided with this post so that you can see what the outcome of this code looks like.

Ditch MSWord, OOWriter, etc..Go LaTeX

2009-08-25T02:25:00.001-07:00

So you have another one of these book reports to write. You go through trauma, trying to figure out what to put on paper. Eventually when you do figure out what goes into your report, comes the problem of making the report look nice & professional like!

Has it not ever occurred to you the word processors we normally use bite us only too hard when it comes to formatting lengthy documents? The pictures are never there where you originally put it. Paragraphs break at the most uncanny locations. Alignments, white spaces, line spacing....arrgh the list is endless...

Would it not be cool, if you could just write whatever you wanted to be in your report and leave adding makeup part to the word processor? Well, you can. All you have to do is get used to using LaTex (pronounced either "Lah-tech" or "Lay-tech") .

Here is what you need to get yourself going. I was doing this on Windows OS. AFAIK creating LaTeX documents can be done on Linux environments as well. I am yet to explore on that particular phase.

Download a text editor that can compile & parse LaTeX source. I use WinEdt. Pretty good it is!
You need a few supplementary software. These are mandatory. So don't ask questions. Just have them installed before you compile your LaTeX source.... :D

MikTex (The more recent the version is the better)
GhostView
GhostScript

There is no need for any of these software to be installed in a particular order. Just be a little cautious about the platform you are on when installing stable binary distributions of these aforementioned software.

You will be writing your document on the text editor. What you will have to do extra is to add the formatting tags where necessary in the text.

The following code is a simple structure of a LaTex document.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{report}

\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\pagestyle{headings}

\begin{document}
\title{Coffee Tales}
\author{Sachini Weerawardhana}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
This is a silly document. No need for abstracts here!
\end{abstract}

\newpage
\tableofcontents

\chapter{Introduction}
This will be the first chapter with the title Introduction. Has two sections; dummy section 1 & dummy section 2

\section{dummy section 1}

\section{dummy section 2}

\chapter{How To Make Good Coffee}
Sections below describes how you can find out yourself if your coffee mug sucks or not!

\section {Is Good Coffee Hard to Find?}
OK so, good coffee is hard to find. Want to know why?

\chapter{Coffee Makers Inside Vehicles?}
Some incoherent nonsense goes here.

\end{document}

Write all that on a new document in WinEdt, save the document as .tex & compile. That is all there is to it! Tutorial here has super help to get you started. A post following this would be describing how you can make a customized cover page using LaTex

The Pessimist

2009-08-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

So, here I was talking to somebody and the somebody has been awfully nice and more than tolerant with my insolent ways. Suddenly it dawns on me how easily I forget good things that have happened to me throughout this short life of mine.

Yeah...I have been plagued by pessimistic behavior for as long as I can remember. People I meet more often than not say very nice things about me! And do I give a "word"? EN-OH! How rude, crude and lewd!!! Looking back now, I realize I have a lot to be thankful for and lot to be tagged as so freakin' lucky....It is such a shame much as a sponge my brain is it has become a sponge that absorbs only slime!! :D Of course people do like to be revered, appreciated and treated like heroes. I am sure most of you still realize the value in helping people & being supportive. While some help expecting something else in return, there are those who genuinely want to see good things happen to people. I am not sure to what category I fall into, but one thing I do know is that if I happen to make you feel good about something and you feel you need to appreciate me for that, DON'T BOTHER! I wouldn't remember the good things you would probably say anyway....

Many a times people have complained that I am too hardhearted & behave like a rock. The irony of that claim however is that, I am also immune to the message that claim carries. Ignoring what is not relevant and what I think is bullshit come naturally to me. Perhaps doing that a little too much is risky I reckon....but I am a survivor being the person I am. Hence I am a happy person.

Perhaps it is just that I am too neutral and not a pessimist per se. And I do not normally see the glass as half empty. I just see it as somebody thought the drink was shit!! :D

Shinedown Shines Down

2009-08-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

My tastes in music have never ceased to baffle me. But no complains! I luv my taste in music. :D

It is kinky, electrifying, soothing, calming, ear-splitting, irritating all at the same time. The spectrum of genres spans from alternative rock, country, hiphop, r&b, pop, gospel to who-knows-what music! I do have to admit that I listen mostly to english numbers. Why?? Sinhala music nowadays sound so strangely similar to Shaggy mumbling in sinhala, Twista rapping in Sinhala & so on and so forth. For some reason oriental music is yet to see the spawning of new generation talent that have their own identities...

When I listen to music I first go for the tones & then to the lyrics. What keeps me attached to a particular number is in fact the lyrics! Probably that should explain why I am a fan of rock music. Although sometimes they can be brutal to the ears, they usually carry meaningful lyrics. This is one of my most recent attractions!

Enjoy!

Seven Reasons Why I Think A Couch Is The Best Place In The World

2009-08-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

So I have just unearthed my deepest, darkest desire for couches. The realization of my attachment for the object in discussion has left me left thinking "Gee, I had no idea couches can be such fun generators!!!" However, I find it much to my disappointment that couches, good, plush ones in particular are quite short in supply here. (Sad Face) If I were the honorable minister of recreational activities & youth affairs, my first official duty after taking office would be to submit an order for good two dozen couches to be located at odd places in Colombo! (Excited Face)

So, here I begin my justification for my officially joining the couch lovers' club. To the less bright who have eerie attractions to my ramblings, reader discretion is advised. The following statements do contain, and is intended to be treated as euphemisms to incidents of superior mental pleasure.

HASH ONE
Leather is a sexy material. (Wicked Grin). As my sudden outburst of emotion implies, I love to park myself on leather. Not only does the material responds well to sudden alterations of temperature, it also feels good upon physical contact. If leather is sexy, leather with soft fillings in between is pure psychotic bliss! Given the chance to choose between a leather couch & a normal couch I would raise both hands in favor of leather. If I were to own a leather couch I would not bother to crowd the oasis of recline with cushions & such like pathetic excuses to decor. I would want the couch naked & all to myself!

HASH TWO
Couches are great places for conversation. Both verbally and otherwise. Since I happen to be quite weak in gossiping (so I think) (GrinningFace) and talking about shopping & clothes & shoes, I find this "otherwise" part much to my fancy. One can just sit on a couch and stare at the ceiling and nobody would question why. Well, even if one nosy, busy-body just happens to impede your train of thought with a goofy question you could just mumble some incoherent nonsense and be on your merry way! See...no feathers ruffled! Peace Rules!!

HASH TWO DOT ONE
Before you bust a vessel wondering why two dot one instead of three, I felt the need of jotting a line on "otherwise" class. "Otherwise" is an abstract class which can be implemented in ways that tickles your imagination. Let me just terminate this elaboration indicating that my implementation of this particular abstract class is quite baffling. (Wink)

HASH THREE
I do the most important things in my life lying horizontal! I will start the list with sleeping. It goes on to studying, idling, reading to eating. Yeah, I have spent a good number of hours of my life eating lying flat on my back. Couches are superb places to eat at, or drink at, or do whatever you feel like doing at. Too bad the couch at my place has failed to live up to my expectations. (Flat Face). Oh well, there shall be other couches that would undoubtedly careen into my life at some point, opening doors to a world of fun & excitement. (Evil Grin)

HASH FOUR
Couches are usually located at places having good food and drinks; again the exception being the couch at my place! What a rip off!!! (Indignant Face) There is nothing like having a steaming cup of coffee or some icky sticky delectable food item before you when you are on a couch! Food tastes extra nice, IMHO, when you have it at a nice place. My idea of a nice place spells C-O-U-C-H.

HASH FIVE
Couches mean extreme physical proximity. Extreme I say.
After thought - "Somethings are best left to the imagination of the readers..."

HASH SIX
Research shows that the best sitting position is not the 90 degree angle you and I are forced to sit in. Apparently sitting at obstuse angles in the thang to do if you want to avoid uncomfortable aches & pains. (Chuckles) More couch please!

HASH SEVEN
For me couches have always been more relaxed seating arrangements than chairs. Less edgy. More comfy & Easier on ones muscles. (smile)

To all the couchos....come hither & partake! (GRIN)

Untitled

2009-07-06T04:51:00.000-07:00

Bang!!! Bang!!!
(shot A)
Gun with silencer
Smoke coming out from the mouth of the gun

A falls to his knees
Not dead

The shot has hit the mango tree behind A

A is in shock

HAA (I say) and you thought I would shoot you with a measly paper rocket!!!
MuHaHaHaHaHa

(Evil Laugh)

(Gruesome look at A)

Xin Ren

2009-06-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

"They prosper who on virtue's aid depend; Who trust in vice reach an untimely end."
- Chinese Proverb

They say respect & trust is not given, it is earned. In a state of confusion as to what the "word" the title means? Xin Ren is the Chinese symbol for trust! See picture? That is how you write it. :)

And so....my train of thoughts derails. Nice tattoo that would make on me don't you think? ;-)

The world is materialized out of too many fragile things as far as I am concerned. It is amazing how it is able to withstands such a perpetual stream of shocks. Good shock absorbers the world is made out of I reckon. But then again, the world does know how to get rid of what she thinks she does not need. The wonder of it is that she never runs out of options of getting rid of debris. Maybe that theory ought to explain why the heavens pour down after most of the natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc.)

That is how The Grand Design works. The Grand Design works for the greater good!

Connections are made out of trust. You form a construction having faith upon the bricks, wood & cement that holds the whole thing together. Much as sturdy as the construction is when everything is in the right place, the right blow at the right place would make everything fall apart.

Keywords:- Create - Blow - Destroy.

You, me & everybody else: we are not indispensable. The Grand Design has placed immense trust in putting you where you are today. Be it a shit hole or heaven on earth, you are where you are not because you alone chose your location. It pays to realize The Grand Design can take you away from where you are if she feels that you are screwing things up. Why? Because you are NOT indispensable!!! :D

Funny how every paragraph I have jotted down ends in "destruction" ainnit?

Hold on dear to what you have at present. Going in search of change can prove to be deadly. We are all connected in The Grand Design. You mess you link means so many other links will also find themselves in precarious situations. Do not be selfish. You are not designed to survive alone.

Does The Grand Design sound to apocalyptic?

It should sound so, for The Grand Design is US.

Trails...

2009-06-15T02:24:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, my travel chronicles are pretty mediocre. Apart from the off-the-shelf family trips I was dragged kicking & screaming, I have not traveled much. Now I see more than a few good reasons to uproot that habit & plant myself in the oasis of travelers, conditions permitting.

Just when you thought, you life has become incredibly safe & predictable, something good happens to you & you find yourself confronted by an assortment of possibilities....travel & otherwise. Sight seeing is fun. OK I admit, it is more fun when you are going with the right sidekick, but that is besides the point. Screw them all who claim you gotta get out of this country to start seeing things, screw them all who claim ours is not a happening country! Quit torturing yourselves with questions like, "aww where do we stay?", "aww....I need a comfy bed for the night", "aww what do we eat", "aww how much is it going to cost", "ohmigosh what do I wear..." so on & so forth. If you are not the planning type of a person, simply do what I do. Hook yourself up with a more methodical person. Do not waste vacations on villas & hotels & whatnot. Go & get lost in the trees; literally!!! My advice, if you have somebody who would drop everything & go off with you to get lost in some unknown corner right here in Sri Lanka, EXPLOIT the conditions.

And so begins my tips for the loonies:

Trail Tip #1
Should you be driving off for a considerable distance, it pays to make sure that your travel buddy talks less. If this seems impossible for some unknown twist in fate, at least make sure that he knows how to cork it long enough for you to quit worrying that he is going to blow his windpipe!

Trail Tip #2
Water. You can not simply have too much of a good thing. H2O & plenty of it is a definite yes yes! Worried about not having sufficient bladder control? Deal with it later! Do not let your bladder keep you from having fun.

Trail Tip #3
Enjoy sceneries. FYI scenaries are not all the time caused by trees & waterfalls & stones & rocks...hint hint

Trail Tip #4
I hate Galle Road & all cities that are associated with it. That is no way to have some quality fun while travelling!!

Trail Tip #5
Costs. If you are on a tight budget & think you need more loot, cast your fears away. I can personally recommend my travel guide for economical getaways. The guide himself is not so economical. You might want to be on the look out for that ;-) ;-)

Trail Tip #6
The places....umm well.........I think I am more a fan of hills than vallies. To getaway from everything & just relax, the hills is the way to go! Get close to trees. Trees do make you feel great, although I have no clear explanation as to how they manage to do that! Check out http://www.lakdasun.com/ for the most comprehensive collection of info on where you can go & wot you can do when you get there! It is sort of my tourguide's travelers' Bible, which I am sure you would also love to check out.

Traveler's Chronicles unfold...

Argh....April Just Went By....

2009-05-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

If somebody asked me what I have been doing in the month of April I have a very simple answer.

Freaking out!

Yes! That is right!!!! Here I am perched on my chair on an average Wednesday afternoon, thinking what I have been doing in the month of April and what comes to my head? Zilch!!! The first half of the month I was busy with projects & assignments & what not. The second half of the month I wasted trying to get stuff into my brain which were so not meant to be there. Many a times I found myself wondering if my head had a leak at some place, but the lack of first-hand witnesses prevented me from further processing of that issue.

Avurudu just came & went. I think I was too engrossed in thinking about my semester exams, which I really doubt having any hope of passing. Maybe, this old age is finally getting to me, my intellectual capacities, (which were not much to start off anyway) and everything that demands psychological effort!

Exams have always freaked me out! It eludes me as to why I still go on looking for them. I would rather not waste lines in my blog trying to elaborate how the semester exams went, because it simply did NOT!

April ended in a funny note though! I wrapped the miserable month taking part in an Avurudu Uthsawaya organized by a friend of mine. Thanks goes out to Dillion & his crew for setting the stage for a day of fun & laughter! I have to say I kicked ass in the events I took part! Not only the events were superriffic, I also ended up being crowned as the "Avurudu Kumaraya" (male version)!!! Much to my awe I realized I rock at tug-of-war, simply cuz of the fact that my team lost the moment after I retired hurt on the grounds of having my palm cut! :D

Photos? Don't ask!

Cool Tool

2009-03-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

For those who are dying to see an easier way of typing sinhala letters/words/sentences etc. here is a fun tool to get yourselves moving.

Real Time Unicode Converter, is a unicode translation service hosted by the Language Technology & Research Laboratory at University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC).

You just have to type the sinhala word as it is pronounced using English & the tool converts is to sinhala unicode real time.

This is how it is done.

The text you type - aayubowan! mei magei blog eka
Sinhala unicode converter output - ආයුබොවන්! මේ මගේ බ්ලොග් එක

Here's to seeing more sinhala letters on web pages!

Drive Smart - Save Loot

2009-03-07T21:17:00.000-08:00

Driving in Sri Lankan roads is a nightmare at times! Heavy traffic, poor road conditions, little shopping malls on the pavements eating up one-third the road's width are a few of the many annoying things drivers have to run into. Of course driving comes at a cost, despite the comfort in travelling it brings. This little post is to tell y'all how to drive without burning too much deep a hole in your pockets.

Stay away from aggressive driving
I certainly could use this tip! ;-) I was like "oh-heck!", while reading an article about fuel efficient driving. Apparently, driving like a mad man & hard breaking eats up fuel as much as 40%. Plus it can also increase emission of greenhouse gasses by a considerable level. The right way of driving is to accelerate slowly & smoothly & hit the top gear as soon as possible. How feasible this is in SL roads remains a question though.

Stick to speed limits
Accelerating on highways always increases fuel consumption. It is reported that increasing your speed from 55mph(90 km/h) to 75mph(120km/h) can raise fuel consumption by as much as 20%. Driving at a constant 55mph can improve mileage by 10-15% under same conditions.

Avoid idling the vehicle
Not only does idling waste fuel, it also gets you no where & produces a lot of greenhouse gasses. If you are going to remain stationery for more than 30 seconds, except in traffic stop the vehicle.

Say no to poorly inflated tires
Make sure the tires are inflated properly. This prevents rolling resistance & in return can save fuel by as much as 6%. It is a good habit to check tire pressure at least once a month. Although it is not a good idea to inflate the tires to the "maximum allowed" level for that particular type of tire.

Drive in right gear
I think I am a little too lazy to change gears for some unknown reason. :-D. It is said that the best way to move about with stick driven vehicles is to accelerate smoothly & going up to the top gear as quickly as possible without accelerating too hard. Driving in a gear lower than you need wastes fuel; so does letting the engine labour in top gear on hills and corners.

Avoid the air-conditioner
Using the air-conditioner in a hot weather can increase fuel consumption by 10% in city driving. Rolling down shutters can help save fuel if you are driving at low speeds. But at high speeds driving with open windows may actually have an adverse effect due to the wind resistance.

Choose the right octane fuel
Most cars are designed for normal low octane fuel. Higher prices do not necessarily guarantee improved performance. Do not just blindly ask for higher-octane fuel unless you are certain that is indeed what your vehicle wants.

Service & Maintenance
Regular, timely service is indeed the way to go. A poorly tuned engine can use up to 50% more fuel and produces up to 50% more emissions than one that is running properly.

Turn off power accessories
Shutting off power consuming accessories, in your vehicle before turning off the ignition, can decrease the engine load the next time you start the vehicle up, hence saving fuel.

Park in the shade
Besides helping to keep your car cool, which reduces the need for air conditioning, parking in the shade also minimizes the loss of gas due to evaporation.

Tracking Tweets

2009-03-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Oops! My Language Just Died!!!

2009-03-01T06:22:00.000-08:00

The newest publication of UNESCO's Atlas of World Languages reads that about 6000 languages are facing some kind of threat that could eventually lead up to their extinction. 2500 of the 6000 languages are listed as endangered & 200 languages are completely dead & gone. The atlas ranks the 2,500 endangered languages by five levels of vitality: unsafe, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct.

"199 languages have fewer than ten speakers and 178 others have 10 to 50. Among the languages that have recently become extinct, it mentions Manx (Isle of Man), which died out in 1974 when Ned Maddrell fell forever silent, Aasax (Tanzania), which disappeared in 1976, Ubykh (Turkey) in 1992 with the demise of Tevfik Esenc, and Eyak (Alaska, United States of America), in 2008"
- Quoted From The Publication

What are the dangers of a language becoming instinct?

A language encodes local knowledge on a community's traditions, culture & ways of life. Death of a language will prevent those outside that community from being aware of diverse sociological behaviors.
Medicinal secrets will also be veiled forever.
Threat of losing valuable pieces of Literature, poetry & other aesthetics

Many organizations, following the UNESCO's initiative have joined hands together in preserving the endangered languages. Although the dead languages are beyond resurrection, there is still hope for those are in threat of disappearing from the face of the earth thanks to such concerned individuals.

To Standardize Or Not To Standardize

2009-03-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

I recall the time I used to carry a pack of floppy disks with such pride, as if they were the world's most prized possession. A few years later I look back & stand in dismay wondering how "lame" I have been. Although I still have the floppy disks with my valuable files stored in them I am constantly worrying about being able to get the data when I need. Some of the modern day computing devices do not even have a floppy disk drive to read floppy disks.

Storing digital data is not so effortless as filing away a stack of papers. One has got to make sure that the format in which the data is available will supported by data processing devices in the years to come. Not only the unavailability of hardware & related software, but also data on storage devices are subject to corruption & decay. Hence the need of us being a little more proactive as far as long term data preservation is concerned.

Technology has come a long way since the days people wrote on stone slabs. Storing data on digital media is faster, economical and also saves paper! The need however is in establishing a standard in digital data formats just so that we can still dig out what we have buried 15 - 20 years afterward.

Kadir Speaks....

2009-02-24T18:22:00.000-08:00

Kathiravelu Pradeeban Deviating from the typical technical blogs is the most attractive feature of your blog, I would say. It's nice to see you sharing the thoughts freely on the blog. It's like a one-to-one discussion. Thanks. I have had a really nice time, like moving through a fresher planet. I am happy to see more soon, in your collection...tc :)

Sachini Weerawardhana

hey........wow....that was such a wonderful thing to say!! I have to say, it was indeed a pleasant surprise! I keep technical stuff away from my blog. I am not at all about bits & bytes although i wound up with a CS degree by some twist of fate ;)

i have to admit i have a pretty poor collection of blog entries for someone who started blogging way back in 2006. But i am gonna pick that habit up from now onwards.

Thanks Kadir! u should have ideally passed out the complement in the morning ;) at least i would have batted throughout the day with gusto had that been the case!!!

Kathiravelu Pradeeban

Your blog is like a rainbow, with diverse ideas. I just enjoyed reading it, and would recommend it to my friends for a look.. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I hope you won't mind my calling you Kadir! I thought of publishing this little conversation we have had through Facebook in tribute to all those who have read & commented on my blog.

Thanks you guys, for the perfect stimulant & the perfect sweetner

15 Things I Do Best

2009-02-24T08:57:00.000-08:00

1) Waste time doing everything else but what must be done.

Yeah...for 26 long years I have been tormented with this great folly of mine. I find it extremely hard to concentrate on something for long enough to get it to a level that is termed as "satisfactory.

2) Getting myself into really awkward situations

Well...I would rather not elaborate on this point. This happens when the pimp inside me starts talking, more often than not. I go, commit something unexplainable in human terms, & sit around moping & musing over it for days.

3) Meeting new people

I believe myself to be a really easy person to make friends with. 15 minutes of conversation & if the second party's visions & ideas are in sync with mine, he or she is bound to get into a relationship they will not soon forget. No bragging! Now that I think about it, I can honestly say I have met the strangest people on earth, in my quest in making friends.

4)Music on the Move

I hate the radio I have in my car!! It is this silly Japanese model (as I have been told) that does not have frequencies above 90MHz. It so happens I love music. And I am so jealous of those who can play musical instruments. Something keeps telling me I am musically gifted. I am yet to find out how.

5) Forgiving & Not Forgetting

There are a few people who have wronged me in this little over 2 decades life of mine. Hmm....some of it self-inflicted actually. I of course believe that the best way to take revenge is by forgiving those who have wronged you. Therefore, if you are somebody who has tried to screw up my life, cast your fears away. You are fogiven! :-)

6) Feeling Inferior

Successful people, make me feel so uncertain of myself. I am never comfortable with such people, and I always end up looking silly & inapt! More often than not I have mistaken this to be jealousy; as in I am jealous of what they have accomplished. Much later in my life I realized that it was not a jealous attack! Just insecurity.

7) Lending my ears

Boy....this I have done countless times & still continue to do so. I am really proud of my pair of ears. Such capacity they have. Such stories they have heard. If only the ears had mouths of their own! Not only that would make me look like a complete freak, but also will have quite a few things to say to me about not adorning them with ear-rings.

8) Coffee

This is to all those who have accompanied me for coffee & also to all those who will be. Gracias!

9) Reading & Writing

Why did I not separate these two? Reading & Writing for me is like Ying & Yang! Each one complements the other & together they produce energy! I love reading & writing...although it took me an inspirational preso done by Samisa Abeysinghe - Director of Engineering WSO2 to start again on blogging after a 2 year layoff period.

10) Cutting Lectures

There is something sinister going on between my conscience & lectures I am taking. There is this little voice inside my head which beckons me to cut the lecture & go off wandering! If not for the 80% attendance threat looming over my head, I would have succumbed to the yearning a long time ago.

11) Falling Sick

For illnesses & diseases my life is a picnic! For so long I have been plagued by many a disease. I am not talking about fevers & colds & headaches! When I get it, the simple cold could turn into a couple of days at the hospital! Hospital food is nice. Only for the first two days though.

12) Sticking to the same wardrobe for an year

Not that I dont like clothes, I just hate shopping. I dont shop unless I see an absolute necessity for a new wardrobe. Usually mother yells & fusses. When her fussing gets too irritating I hit the town & shop till I drop. That usually shuts her up for a good one year.

13) Late night chats

Sumedha... This is for you ;-) . The latest I have chatted with you is until 2.45 am in the morning!

14) Cleaning Toilets

My bathroom is spic & span. And yes I have my own bathroom, which I let no one in! That little room is the cleanest place in the house!

15) Dreaming

My dreams are wild. Very Wild.

Celestial Congestion Control

2009-02-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

A Russian satellite & an Iridium communication satellite collided with each other on 10th Feb Tuesday scattering the skies above earth with debris, amount of which is still being counted by scientists.

If every object orbiting the Earth stayed on a simple path, multiple observations of an object would yield precise estimates of its orbit and position. Unexpected glitches - such as accidental releases of fuel - can shift a satellite's orbit.

But so can the drag from Earth's atmosphere, as well as gravitational tugs from the Sun, Moon, and Earth, which is somewhat squashed in shape. The military uses models of these environmental perturbations to help refine its estimates of satellite orbits.

There are 800 to 1,000 active satellites in orbit and about 17,000 pieces of debris and dead satellites, like the Russian one, that can't be controlled. As per scientists it is simply not possible to calculate all collision points of these floating objects, hence the risk of similar events occurring prevails.

Let us consider traffic police in the heavens!

Earth Hour 2009

2009-02-13T07:37:00.000-08:00

Millions of campaigners will let their voices be heard on March 20th 2009 at 8.30pm by switching off the lights for one hour to show that it is still possible to take action against global warming & climate change.

Already 377 cities, and double the number of countries that participated in 2008, are committed. WWF expects more to be committed during the coming days.

Visit earthhour.org to see how they have progressed & also to checkout the stuff put on sale to mark the event!

Are You Gonna Finish Strong

2009-02-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

Ever-so Elusive Pride

2009-02-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

You work hard for it & yet it can be ripped off of you in a matter of seconds.

Maya Arulpragasam, better known as MIA has done Sri Lanka proud. The Lankan lass became the first Asian to be nominated for the Oscar & the Grammy awards, the most covetous trophies one would give anything to put on display on a shelf at home!

Maya's nomination in the Grammy Award is in the 'Record of the Year' category for her single Paper Planes.

Her Oscar nomination is in the category 'Film Songs' for 'O Saya' in the film 'Slumdog Millionaire' along with A.R. Rahman.

As fabulous as the news sounds, her glory just had to be sullied by some irresponsible statements she had made in public in favor of the LTTE. Read the article published in the Asian Tribune & especially the readers' comments!

My Strange Attraction!

2009-02-06T06:26:00.000-08:00

Before Being Sent To The Gallows...

2009-02-06T05:59:00.000-08:00

I recently came across this nice article at http://management.about.com/cs/people/a/LayoffAlternate_2.htm, which spoke of a few alternatives a company can take before opting to a lay off in order to cut costs.

In a gist:

Job cuts do not save money

McKinley, et al point out in "Organizational downsizing: Constraining, cloning, learning" that "while downsizing has been viewed primarily as a cost reduction strategy, there is considerable evidence that downsizing does not reduce expenses as much as desired, and that sometimes expenses may actually increase. More than thirty years ago, James Lincoln warned that the costs of layoffs generally outweigh the payroll savings to be gained from them."

Job cuts reduce performance

In the article Job Cuts Often Fail to Bolster Stocks reports an average performance gain by the companies that had announced job cuts at 0.4% while the performance for the S&P 500 during the comparable time period was a gain was 29.3%.

Thinking of employees as a long term capital investment

Many companies fail to realize that they have a tremendous long-term capital investment in their employees. While wages and benefits clearly are an expense item on the budget, they should be thought of more as payments on the capital of employees skill and dedication.

Focus more on re-structuring than cutting off people

Often, when job cuts are undertaken in order to pacify the investors, the announcements talk about the cuts as part of a "streamlining" or "restructuring", but they refer only to the people involved. There are other aspects of the company's business that need to be restructured as well. These often include things such as closing of obsolete plants or branches, administrative overhauls, selling of non-core operations, or improving internal processes.

Too Many Faces on Facebook

2009-02-06T05:41:00.000-08:00

"It does not hurt to be security conscious" I always tell myself! :)

Popular social networking site Facebook is reported to have been subject to impersonations. Alarmingly the number of reported incidents are on the rise.

Facebook says fewer than 1% of its 150 million users are affected by the scam. In one such case reported from Seattle, unknown to the real owner, his status message was changed to something that read he (the real owner) needed urgent help. Concerned friends turned to his aid, & one friend even went to the extent of wiring him some cash, which was later reported missing!!!

Simple measures such as using a stronger password & using up-to-date browser versions & anti-virus software help immensely in curbing this threat.

One last word...Trust no one! Not even your friends. :)

Phelps...Suspended from Swimming

2009-02-06T05:23:00.000-08:00

So they have said, let the punishment fit the crime, but how severe should it really be?
The 08 Beijing Olympics swimming legend Michael Phelps was suspended from swimming for a period of 3 months on charges of being seen smoking from a bong. Further investigations whether he was smoking marijuana is being carried out sources said.

The cause of such severe punishment was probably because Phelps was treated as a role model/hero to many a nations budding young swimmers & kids alike. Undoubtedly such behavior sets a bad example to many who look up to him.

Not only the US swimming authority but also Phelps's sponsor Kellogg, stated that they would not extend the sponsorship period citing his recent misdemeanor.

Google Phone To Hit Stores Soon

2008-09-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

Checkout the first smartphone powered by Google's Android operating system. This also happened to be the first hardware device with the Google Trademark on it.

Teaming up with the mobile carrier, T-Mobile, the specifications Google has laid out for devices suggest that manufacturers include cameras for photo and video, and built-in Wi-Fi technology to access the Web at hot spots such as airports, coffee shops and hotels. It also is recommending that the phones be designed to work on carriers’ fastest networks, known as 3G, to ensure that Web pages can be downloaded quickly. Google suggests the phones could include Global Positioning System technology that identifies where people are.

It would be interesting to see how iPhone will respond to this :-D

Annonymous Communication On Internet

2008-09-17T00:07:00.000-07:00

This paper describes some of the available techniques that are said to safeguard the anonymity of communications. Further, it looks into an analysis of these fore-mentioned methods so as to identify the pros and cons of each technique, and also what measures people can take to protect their privacy.

I also have an abstract of the paper for those who would like to read less and still be informed as much.

This also happened to be the first paper I have written to a conference, International Information Technology Conference (IITC) 2006 held in Colombo.

Takeaways from this experience...

Professional writing
Making sense while explaining technical content
Becoming a pro at using LaTeX

The paper was selected for the poster presentations at the conference. Hmm....should I write more?? Maybe not survey type of papers :-D.

Somebody give me a research topic!!!

Get Your Code Reviewed....Pronto!!!

2008-09-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

The life of a software engineer is a tough one. Not at all a walk in the park, having to deal with many a bugs, fixes, new features, new products for customers. But when it boils down to where you have to hand over a quality piece of software, it pays to have a decent code that not only works but also screams "Hey....Look at me, this is how you write right code the right way!!"

Advantages of Code Reviews
Code reviews not only help the programmer to understand his deficiencies & show him how to improve his coding skills, but also helps the reviewer to get a proper understanding of what areas his team members need more help in, what technologies they are comfortable using, the design patterns they use (if at all they use it), if the design document reconciles with the implementation and so on.

From a sociological point of view, it improves communication between team members, negotiation skills, presentation skills and also provides a good platform for them to share technical know-how within the same work group.

Uh-oh! It's The Code Review Day...
Typically a review is conducted by a team. You have the developer, whose code is being reviewed, the review team, who would go through your code and identify the loopholes, better ways of doing the same task etc., a record keeper, who would keep minutes of the meeting and also a moderator who would facilitate the order and the flow of the meeting. A code review is generally not meant to provide answers for the problems in the code. It helps you "identify" the bugs and issues. Fixing the problems is done after the review and the fixed version is reviewed again.

It is this cyclical pattern of the review sessions which puts project managers on the back foot. Whatever said and done, a review does take roughly 2 or 3 hours. So, if the project is running on a tight schedule it may not be feasible for the managers to allocate much time as desired by the review team. Nevertheless like in everything else, it is a trade-off between delivering the product quick and delivering a quality product!

Read this article published by Microsoft on how to conduct code reviews, the process & also tips and tricks. There is no hard and fast rule saying that this is THE code review process. The techies are free to mould their own process to fit to their development environment.

Pretty & Poisonous

2008-09-14T23:40:00.001-07:00

Who would not want a garden with loads of flowers in full bloom? As pleasing to the eye as they are flowers and plants can still be hazardous to your health. How bad?? Here are the top 10 of poisonous plants:

At Number 1o...

Dining of the bulb of Narcissus in large quantities may result in:

Nausea
Vomiting
Cramps
Diarrhea

At Number 9...

The leaves of

Rhododendrons and azalea bushes (a variety of rhododendron) are toxic & so is honey made from its flowers' nectar. Consumption of either may result in:

Mouth Burns
Increased salivation, Vomiting
Diarrhea
Tingling sensation in the skin
Headaches, weak muscles
Dim vision
Slowing down of heart rate
Irregular heartbeats
Convulsions
Coma

At Number 8...

The milky sap of the leaves & the stems of all Ficus (aka weeping

fig, Benjamin Tree) is toxic. Ficus trees come in an assortment of sizes and is a preferred indoor plant grown in tubs & pots.

If come in contact with the sap the skin would itch & puff up similar to an aller

gic reaction.

At Number 7...

Every part of the Oleander plant is

toxic. Even inhaling the smoke of burning Oleander can cause problems. Exposure to its poison may result in:

Change in heart rate (slowing down of heart-rate/palpitations)
High potassium levels.

At Number 6...

The chrysanthemum is a pretty sight! Although it is sometimes grown to chase

animals such as

rabbits away, flower heads are somewhat toxic to humans. The effects of exposure however are mild, ranging from itchyness to puffs.

At Number 5...

A common garden item, Anthuriums is a delight to the eyes.

Coming in an assortment of colors, the flower just not merely sit in the garden, but also adorns many a functions & bouquets. However, th

e leaves and stems of this plant are toxic. Acc

idental consumption could result in painful burning senstions in the mouth, which would later swell and cause blisters. Your voice could also become hoarse & cracked. You may also find it is difficult to swallow if you have been exposed to the poison too much.

At Number 4...

Lily-of-the-vally also falls into the poisonous category althoughthe flower looks too cute. ;-)

The entire plant is poisonous, from the tips of its bell shaped white flowers to the very water in which they maybe placed. Too much exposure to the flower may result in

Nausea
Abdominal Pain
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Cramps
Irregular heart rates

At Number 3...

The plant Hydrangea, if exposed or accidentally consumed will cause itchy skin, vomiting, weakness, sweating. Extreme cases may result in the patient slipping off to coma, convulsions & even breakdown of blood circulation.

At Number 2....

Although, the leaves of the plant Foxglove are used commercially to produce

the heart drug Digitalis, accidental consumption of any part of the plant would result in: nausea, vomiting,

cramps, diarrhea and later would agrravate into heart conditions such as slow heart rate.

And At Number 1....

The plant Wisteria is entirely poisonous. Exposure to the plant cause nausea, vomiting, cramps and diarrhea that could require treatments such as intravenous hydration and anti-nausea pills.

References

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/top10_poisonous_plants-1.html
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0072510846/36904/useful_plants.pdf

WSO2 Engineering Team Unveils WSF/PHP 2.0.0; A Web Services Development Framework for PHP

2008-09-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

Armed with new features and fixes to existing bugs, WSO2's PHP team proudly released the latest version of WSF/PHP product V2.0.0. on September 12th.

WSO2 WSF/PHP is an open source Web Service development platform for PHP. It enables creation of Web services and clients to consume those services, having PHP as the implementation language. It also houses a comprehensive implementation of WS-* specification implementations.

Nandika, WSO2 WSF/PHP engineering team member announces the release, its features, & the new improvements in the latest release in his blog.

Want to learn more on WSO2 WSF/PHP and how it fits to your SOA application? The webinar on WSF/PHP, hosted by Selvarathnam Uthaiyashankar will definitely provide answers to that question.

Accident

2008-09-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is old news, but thought of blogging about it anyway.

So I have been in an accident, a motor accident. It was exhilarating but hopelessly stressful at the same time because the car was gone when I needed it the most.

One fine Saturday, I was on my way home from uni. A couple of kilometers toward Piliyandala from uni & a wild thought engulfs me...."Hey, why don't I overtake this rickety looking bus...", and behold like an idiot I did just that.

The bus driver had stopped & just pulled off just as I was passing him and WHAM!!!!!!!!! He slams the right side of the bus into my car's doors.

After getting through the first 2 second shock, the rest of the episode unfolded quite well. No shouting, no yelling & having admitted that the fault was mine I was happily on my way after 10 minutes of delay :-D

Having had two doors replaced, painted & completely renovated the car is back in business now. What is weird is that the whole university staff seem to be knowing that I was in an accident. A fortnight ago one person(UoM staff member) who I have never seen before stops me in a corridor and asks how I am holding up after the accident. I have to admit I was a little embarassed my negligence has caused too many people to notice my existance :-D While I was talking to him he drags another person in, saying "See, this is the one I told you about...The one who was in an accident!!!"

So, there I was caught off guard, not knowing what to say to them & standing there grinning like a pig!

Chorme It

2008-09-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome, the newest web browser of Google...tried it & liked it instantly. :-D I have been hearing that it is a piece of junk (from others who had tried it) but all that would be turned out all right once Google Chorme, comes out of the beta version.

Google is constantly trying to expose the Internet to as many people as possible, mainly because that is the cause of them being a multi-million dollar business! The business goal of Google is to provide information services over the Internet. And Google is slowly but surely tweaking the weak spots of information service giants. For example, Microsoft has been dominating desktop applications for decades, but their influence on Internet related services has not been quite up to the same level. With Google Chrome, Google has officially entered the browser wars.

The features of the browser include: [1]

It is based on Webkit and will include Google Gears.
It has a browser extensions framework that will allow it to make Adobe AIR-type hybrid apps.
It includes Javascript Virtual Machine called V8 that was developed by a team in Denmark. It accelerates the Javascript performance and is multi-threaded.
It has tabs, auto-completion, and a dashboard-type start page that can help you get going to the web services you need. Opera has such a dashboard.
It has a privacy mode that allows you to use the machine without logging anything on the local machine. It might be similar to a feature called Incognito in the latest version of Microsoft IE.
Malware and phishing protection would be built into the browser.

Opening a new tab on your will no longer result in a blank page. You will be able to see the browser history, the most frequently visited pages will all be available at a single mouse click. Allowing all the more space for users for a richer, user friendlier browsing experience which will in return encourage more people to use the Internet.

Asked if Google were trying to compete with Firefox[4], Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google said "Our hope is that by adding our voice, we expand the overall pie. Our hope is that by adding our voice, more people realize there is a choice in browsers. "

Who said competition can hurt? ;-)

References:
[1]http://gigaom.com/2008/09/01/google-browser-is-real-another-win-for-webkit/
[2]http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Google-Chrome-faster-than-Firefox-IE-Safari/0,339028227,339291767,00.htm
[3]http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9994404-93.html
[4]http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20080902/tc_zd/231523

Play Ball....

2008-09-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

The idea to hold a BB tourney between houses (WILD Boars, Titans, Cloud Bots & Legion) was a killer idea Sanjiva, CEO WSO2, & Hasmin cooked up. That certainly got everyone at WSO2 so worked up that no one can think of anything else but the game these days!

And so, it has been all BB all week! At lunch, at tea, corridor talk; you name it! Great thing is that we have got some serious competition going on around WSO2, both in the court & off the court as well ;-)

Two games down the line & drama already! We could not have asked for a better start than Titans Vs. Cloud Bots, in which the former took the nuts and bolts apart from the bots who went off the field limping & heads hung down :-D. Being the ever-so-cool CEO, Sanjiva pricked on the Bots' already wounded souls & went on to comment that the Titan victory was a "Landslide"!!! The Titan girl player, Praveena was awesome, not on the first half in which she was a mere spectator on the court :-D. Nevertheless, she recovered remarkably well in the second half & was seen busily passing the ball around to her team mates.

The second game was all heat, owing to many reasons. Sanjiva was playing & was also the captain of the Legions. Some folks were waiting to see the Legions go down in a "LANDSLIDE" owing to Sanjiva's comment on the previous match's score. Well, that was certainly on the cards considering the superior opponents, the WILD boars! To be honest, their name suits them well! WILD....& not to mention ruthless, pushing, shoving, elbowing & fouling their hearts out! Udeshika, their female player was a sensation. It was a tough job keeping up with her short self crawling her way between players to snatch the ball & also making a few spectacular baskets!! The guys in the Wild Boar Team was fabulous to watch & not so fabulous to play against. :-D Samisa, Sanjaya, Heshan, Asankha Abeysingha & Keith were real pros & were nearly impossible to outplay. Hats off to Legion team, who lost but gave them a pretty good fight & for not letting them win in a landslide ;-)

Well the tourney continues...& so does the action, the drama & all the heat.
May the best team win!

Thinking A Greener World? Think Again!

2008-08-31T07:47:00.000-07:00

So you thought only the "world could get green!!
Lo and Behold...Green Computing is here to stay.

By now, it is very likely you have your ears full with slogans like "Save Power", "Save Water", "Save Rain Forests"; oh the list goes on and on...

Why the outcry? The resources in this world are limited. Human race just seem to be inventing reasons to consume these limited resources and before long we could wake up to find everything gone!

Green computing is the study and practice of how to use computing resources efficiently. What are computer resources? Hardware, networks, people make up the computing systems that you and I are so much involved with. Due to the fact that there is an immense growth in the usage of computers the world over, the energy consumption levels have also risen to dramatic heights. Not only the number of computers, but also how they are used also accounts for the rise of energy consumption. Just how much energy does a computer consume? An interesting question indeed, which also carry an equally interesting answer.

A typical desktop PC system is comprised of the computer itself (the CPU or the “box”), a monitor, and printer. Your CPU may require approximately 100 watts of electrical power. Add 50-150 watts for a 15-17 inch monitor, proportionately more for larger monitors. The power requirements of conventional laser printers can be as much as 100 watts or more when printing though much less if idling in a “sleep mode.” Ink jet printers use as little as 12 watts while printing and 5 watts while idling. And lets do some math!

Total Cost per device per day of 8 hours

= watts consumed x number of hours x unit cost of electricity
(100 + 150 + 100) x (8) x (local rates)

Although the amount is dependent on local electricity rates, this would have to be multiplied by the number of devices and also by 365 days to calculate the annual cost. This would most likely to be a staggering amount. Green computing advocates methods in which you can lighten the load on your wallet. Approaches to green computing involve:

Virtualization

Virtualization is enabling the running of two or more logical computer systems on one set of physical hardware thereby unplugging the original hardware and reducing power and cooling consumption

Power management

This aspect focuses on proper control of computer hardware so that power wastage is minimized. For instance turning off CPU, monitor after a certain period of inactivity, adjusting voltages to computing devices so that they will not overheat. There exists manual means of doing such activities as well as automated programs. SpeedStep in Intel processors "PowerNow!"/"Cool'n'Quiet" on AMD chips can be listed as examples

Power supply

Desktop power supplies are said to be 70-75% energy efficient. The balance is disseminated as heat. Hence the lesser your computer heats up, the better in power efficiency it is. As of 2007 all devices having the brand "Energy Star 4.0" certification must be at least 80% efficient.

Storage

Smaller hard disk drives consume less power than physically larger hard drives

Display

The internal physical architecture of the monitor is the deciding factor of the power consumption ratio. E.g Flat panel vs. CRT monitors

Material Recycling

Of course the computer system comes with equipment & supplementary tools that can be reused and recycled. E.g. paper, ink cartridges, printers, batteries. So don't throw them away at the first sight of malfunctioning or failure. Try to get it fixed and reuse for as long as possible. It also helps toxic waste such as mercury & Chromium from landfills. ;-)

Telecommuting

Teleconferencing & telepresense technologies are often implemented in green computing initiatives. The advantages are many; increased worker satisfaction, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel, and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office space, heat, lighting, etc.

The article titled Green Computing Guide, from the University of Colorado talks about why it is important to focus on green computing, the advantages of making your IT infrastructure more greener as well as methods in which you can do so.

Like in everything else, being aware of the matter and being conscious of your surrounding helps a lot in putting wrong to right. Needless to say, little things always make a big difference :-D

Go Global Go Green!!

References
[1]http://www.greenercomputing.com/feature/2008/08/20/reuse-recycle-but-first-virtualize
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_computing
[3]http://ecenter.colorado.edu/energy/projects/green_computing.html

Doped at The Olympics!

2008-08-31T06:10:00.000-07:00

Well... It is the Olympics! The biggest milestone for any sportsman/woman is finally at your doorstep and you are actively taking part! Yes it is definitely an exhilarating news, but how far would you go to prove yourself?

August 15th, Beijing Olympics was shocked by the news the North Korean shooter Kim Jong-Su had tested positive for a banned substance and will be stripped of his silver and bronze medals

This certainly is not the only reported incident of Olympians playing it dirty. The first of the reported incidents at Beijing 2008 was the Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno being kicked out of the Games on July 31st after testing positive for EPO, a blood-boosting hormone that enhances endurance.

Incidentally she also became the first athlete to depart with disgrace at the Beijing 2008 Olympic extravaganza.

Michael Phelps left Beijing as "America's Gold Mine". So did Tuvshinbayar Naidan, Mongolia's first ever Olympic medalist who did his country proud. Need a good definition of the word pride? Go to them! It is sad to see how people opt for unlawful means to take them to the next level and failing utterly at it.

I leave you for now, with some food for thought ;-)

"Sports do not build character. They reveal it. "
- Haywood Hale Broun

Hello World

2006-12-19T01:05:00.000-08:00

Do take a moment of your time to share your ideas.

About who? About what?

About me of course...

Fire At Will

Good and Bad

All Accepted...

With Thanks