Janith's blog

Maybe

2012-03-05T21:04:00.001+05:30

Sometimes you tend to forget.
All the interesting people you've met,
All the crazy things you've done,
All the memories.

And all you can see - the past, the present and the future - is the dull grey cubicle you spend your days slaving away.

But maybe there will be better days, days of sunshine and laughter, of cold rain and hot chocolate. Maybe there is still hope.

Delwala, 28/12/2011

Scumbag Blogposts

2012-02-27T07:53:00.000+05:30

Yeah, writing a blog post these days involves waaaay too much work. :P

Blogging during long weekends

2012-02-03T21:39:00.002+05:30

Regular readers of this blog know that long periods of silence are usually followed by a post where I tend to rant about stupid lecturers and having to write mindless assignments etc. This will not be the case this time around, since I don't have the energy to even write a rant anymore. Nothing describes the feeling of going from an awesome 7 week break where you grew in leaps and bounds as a programmer - to a grueling study course which involves about 2 hours of C programming a week, supplemented by 38 hours of reading reference books about the intricacies of dependable software design and time sharing operating systems.

For someone who's never been inside the library, like ever, it's a nice change to be spending so much time in there, faithfully reading the ebooks and typing notes on the laptop. (I don't take the physical book anymore because it involves scanning the bar code on my student ID - a student ID I lost 2 years ago and costs an arm and a leg to replace, hence me never bothering.) If year 1 and 2 were spent taking notes in class and treating the lecturer as god, then year 3 is trying to digest every reason Avi Silberschatz gives as to why Solaris was the greatest operating system ever built, and hoping that your Australian paper marker feels the same way Avi does. But hey, cheer up. Pass rates from previous years hover around the 40% mark, so it's all good! :P

It's not all bad, though. I'm actually managing to stay motivated and properly sit down and study, something I never managed to do, even during my A/L days. The Malabe campus is awesome, expansive and beautiful; and there's enough and more eye candy around. ;) I also met a bunch of awesome new friends, and it also helps that our old gang of five still remains pretty much intact, which is super cool. Maybe when we're done with this year, we could (hopefully pass and) go back to Galle Face and grab an isso wade, like we used to in the good old days. :)

:(

2012-01-08T01:58:00.001+05:30

Releasing this picture of Kella to the public domain. Looking for ways to protest the plans by the Ministry of Health to reinstate the culling of stray dogs. :(

You can sign the petition against the cull here.

Highway to Hell (not!)

2011-12-23T11:51:00.002+05:30

December is almost over, and what a December it has been... most of it has been spent on the road, away from home. With the Southern Expressway opening up, the long journey up to Delwala has been shortened to a 2 hour cruise along scenic routes. The stretch of road between Agalawatte and Kalawana must be one of the most beautiful and naturally set roadways in the island. And the land surrounding the expressway isn't hard on the eye either (for now...)

A few snapshots of the expressway:

...the Kalawana road:

This is, I believe, the famous "Akasa Bokkuwa"

Delwala Valley, from the Kalawana - Thiruwanaketiya road

We even caught a fleeting glimpse of Siri Pada
(faintly appearing in the middle of the picture)

A bridge on the road during a normal day...

...and on the day we got caught in a storm :D

But to be honest, the most beautiful road that we got to travel on was the Rathnapura Panadura road, which is a messed up road to drive on (has way too many curves, and is narrow... we passed one head-on collision), but has views that are to die for. After coming down from the mountains, there are the industrial parks of Horana, which are vast! (You literally can't believe we have such huge factories in Sri Lanka)

There is also a bad ass bridge across the Kalu ganga somewhere near Kiriella that I wasn't able to snap, which is a shame coz it looked really nice, deserted like an old Western film and leading to a haunted-looking rubber estate on the other side. :D

Update: Here's a photo of the bridge I managed to catch a few weeks later. It doesn't look that haunted in the mid-day sun, but at the right time, in the right light, it looks seriously haunted. ;)

Huge rubber estates were a recurring theme

So were awesome sunsets

Here's something strange I saw, and I hope Amila can shed some light on this. At sundown, Mathugama town is filled with literally tens of thousands of these tiny birds (a friend of mine suspects they could be 'Vee kurullo'), fluttering around like tiny moths near a lightbulb. They were on every visible tree and lamp-post, and I had never seen anything like that before. O_o

Like 'Meruu', but bigger o_O

Oh, and here's a video of Tommy and his friend Achcharu being idiots. :D

Blogger facepalm

2011-12-21T10:06:00.001+05:30

How a human being likes to see an RSS feed:

Jerry's comment feed (Wordpress)

How a monkey generates an RSS feed:

Mein feeden (Blogger)

The reaction of the hapless programmer who's trying to parse comments:

I know, I know, parsers don't care about whitespace. But uuuugh, that fugly feed makes.me.want.to.tear.my.eyes.out.

The perfect social network

2011-12-15T21:19:00.002+05:30

...is not Google+. Har Har. ;P

Years after the party ended, and everybody had left, I joined Last.fm back in March. It's pretty neat. It stores records of all the music that you listen to quietly in the background and gives a running commentary on your profile page. Everything is neatly categorized, and every artist (even the more obscure ones) have an artist page. It's kinda a wiki, in that it allows users to tag artists and put up descriptions. And for old time music fans, it's a place for you to discover that the kid with a nice voice you're listening to from back in '66 just died a few months ago. :/ (I personally found of about Gerry Rafferty and Alex Chilton through Last.fm comments)

But seriously, for such a small time social network, the programmers have paid enormous attention to detail. Every little stat or arrangement you can imagine is available. It's a geek's dream. For someone who's trying to build a social network of sorts, it's an eye-opener about how creative you can get with a few more lines of code. For example, you can look at someone's library, go to an artist, and go to a particular album by that artist and look at their listening trends on that, like so:

The title track is amazing. And too short. :/

And Last.fm doesn't pretend to be something it's not. It's not Facebook pretending to be Twitter, or Google pretending to be social (don't kick me off G+, Sergey and Larry!). It's always been about the music. And they say the best way to discover good music is to look through someone else's library, and Last.fm allows you to do that in every way you can think of, without being an annoying babysitter. Power to the people, yo! :)

Not-so-lilac skies, and the beginning of December

2011-12-03T16:41:00.004+05:30

A sequel of sorts to Lilac skies and the end of November

(Two years later...)

:P

I took a look at the blog archive and noticed that November is usually a very busy month around these parts. Not so this year, COZ SAI IS BACK! Woohoo! :D So we've been on all sorts of trips around the place, including a secret Negombo beach trip that my parents know nothing about. ;) Yes, I'm aware that I'm writing this under MY OWN NAME and that my (pretty internet savvy) mom could be reading this. So let's just call it Schrödinger's trip. Since nobody observed it, it simultaneously could have and could have NOT happened. :P

But here's a panorama from Rathnapura, where we stayed at my place all by ourselves for two nights. Fun story: We almost lost Sai to the angry waterfall. Good times. :')

In other news, things have been ORSUM. And I mean that. I think my life is finally getting back in order (knock wood) and things will hopefully get orsumer and orsumer now that Makuluwo is back on holiday! :D

Going to finish off on a random music-y note, and no, I'm not going to post Oasis here like I've been spamming my Google+ with. But seriously, Noel ILY!!! We owe you big time for making guitar bands cool again. Like I said once, I quite like SoKo, and I love Cornershop, and two days ago in Kandy (in a moment of total randomness) I discovered 'The School of Soul E.P.'. What a gem! :D

On a side note: Is it just me, or does the original 'Brimful of Asha' not have a bassline? :O

Open Source: Why it matters to you

2011-11-02T23:23:00.008+05:30

Computers have crept up on us on an impressive scale in the last 30 years or so. They were once behemoths stuck in large rooms, but with the advent of the microchip things have gotten a lot more exciting. First came devices like the personal computer that took computing to the masses, but today computers are virtually everywhere - even if you don't know about it. From your mp3 player, to your microwave, to the chip that controls the fuel injectors in your car - embedded devices and smartphones are everywhere.

This places an extraordinary amount of responsibility on those people - the programmers, the electronics engineers and the quality assurance engineers - who create and programme these devices. One little conversion error on your car's ABS system might cost you your life (remember the Mars Polar Lander?), and a mis-scoped variable in a stock market system could even bring the global financial system down. Therefore it is in everybody's interest that knowledge on how these highly critical systems work is not limited to a privileged (or is it powerful?) few, and that it is shared by all. Think of it as science, or law. If only the judge knew how the law works - and the law is something that affects all of us - there would be chaos. (Similarly, in science, people not knowing how magnets work has led to ~~issues~~ hilarity in the past)

So that is the situation - computers are becoming indispensable in the modern world, and the knowledge on how critical systems work is at risk of falling into the hands of a few selected individuals. This cannot end well, right?

Open Source to the rescue

This is where initiatives like the Free Software Foundation (and their awesome General Public License) come into play. Under the terms of this license, the source code - the knowledge, the step-by-step instructions of how software works, is released to be viewed by all. Not only can you view it, you can modify it to meet your requirements (or to fix bugs) and share it freely. Just like law and science are taught freely, and is accessible to all with the relevant domain knowledge, the knowledge of how software systems work can also be shared freely.

This is not just a great theory - it has proven results. It is what makes Linux a great kernel (which powers most of the servers and embedded systems that are critical for the survival of the modern world), and Firefox an excellent browser, and all your servers run on Apache, and your smartphones on Android. It gives the power to harness the great infrastructure we've built back to the users, the masses, the community. It makes sure that one select group doesn't get to hold the world for ransom. It makes sure that the your brakes won't fail - because half the world's programmers have had a look at that code and have certified it as bug-free. It lets you sleep soundly at night, knowing that the future of the world is securely in the hands of a community of global programmers - who are just as concerned as you are about the reliability of the software.

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" - Linus' Law

Note: I know that 'open source' does not necessarily mean 'free' as in free speech, but I thought including all the different licenses in the post would be confusing for casual readers.

Romancing the Stone

2011-10-22T12:57:00.002+05:30

Yes, that Michael Douglas movie. The one which involves a lot of walking around Colombia. And my post today is about a lot of walking around in Colombo. See what I did there? Yeah Raisa, I didn't expect you to get the joke. *ka-ching* ;P

Aaaaanyway, this morning I got a haircut and walked all the way from Pannipitiya to home because ~~I was too cheap to take the bus~~ it reminded me of all the long walks I had taken. Good times.

And since ~~I've run out of things to blog about~~ I wanted to share all of them with you, here they are, the top 8 walks through the city I've taken. Nowhere as epic as Himal's, I'm sure, but yeah.

#8

The walk that started it all. Earlier in the day I had taken the bus ride that had started it all. What's "it all"? Why, my rastiyadufying of course. :D

I had gone to watch the Royal Thomian regatta of 2009. And after it finished, I was hungry. Walked all the way to Burgers' King to grab a bite. Got stopped by an Air Force serviceman and got my ID checked and was told to walk on the other side of the road. Oops.

Distance: ~ 915 meters
Epicness: 5/5 (coz it was all new to me)

#7

This one is here because I'm a Fort noob. There was another walk through Manning Market (Pettah) that I once took, but the landmarks on this one looked better. Got told off by the Presidential Security Division because I was going through a high security zone. There's this cool old police mess or something behind the World Trade Centre that they're renovating, and my walk took me right through that area. :D

Distance: ~ 975 meters
Epicness: 3/5

#6

We had a Reach Out presentation at St. Peter's College, at some ungodly hour in the morning. Got down from a 138 at Redimola Junction and took the small gravel road near the canal. Apparently the canal usually stinks, but the night before it had rained very hard and it didn't stink at all. I even thought it might be a good place for a picnic. Erm.

Distance: ~ 1.2 km
Epicness: 3/5

#5

This one happened last Sunday. :D I finished my exams a bit early, and visited a friend who lives close to uni. Afterwards, I was on the way back, and just when I was about to turn towards Indra traders (to take the backlane and get to Public Library to catch a bus), I saw a lecturer from uni. Not just ANY lecturer. A lecture who should be avoided at all costs. Did a quick 90 degree turn and was off to Slave Island. Indecision causes death.

This route is quite a frequent one I take. One night, some months back, after watching a movie with the gang at the aforementioned friend's place, I was walking towards Slave Island when a Maruti driven by a lady was almost rammed into by a police jeep. O_O The policemen shouted at her in filth, dragged her off to the back of the jeep and were off. Another policemen drove away in the car. Later I saw them checking a bunch of files in the car near the Slave Island traffic lights. Scary shit.

Distance: ~ 2.0 km
Epicness: It wasn't epic, it was just creepy

#4

This. Was. A. Fail. Makuluwo wanted us to come for cupcakes at Galle Face, and my mom wanted me to pick up a birthday card for my cousin. So I get down at Town Hall, go around looking for birthday cards and find that all the shops are closed. On a Sunday. Of course as a matter of principle I don't shop at ODEL (I prefer soaking up their A/C and looking at books with faux-interest), and so I ended up walking the entire length of Union Place looking for a place that was open. Found none, ended up walking to Galle Face. At least the cupcakes were good. :)

Distance: ~ 2.5 km
Epicness: 2/5

#3

This happened after exams. Meshak, Ino and I went to Pilawoos, but it was closed for prayers. So we loitered around Marine Drive, came back to Pilawoos, had some lunch, loitered around Bamba a bit more and finally went to Galle Face. I think there was something wrong with the food and Meshak threw up on the way home. :D Good times though.

Distance: ~ 2.6 km (sans walking around in Galle Face, but we took the bus)
Epicness: 4/5

#2

This. This was epic. Bo, Tulie and I were supposed to write a script for a forum theatre. Tulie couldn't make it, so Bo and I were eating ice creams at McDonalds and trying to figure out something to write, but to no avail. So knowing this wasn't going to work, we went down Nimalka Gardens, hoping to get to Marine Drive, but we found an old beggar in a vacant lot instead. Basically ran back to Galle Road, took the next lane, loitered around Marine Drive for hours watching the ships and talking about suicide (haha) and walked all the way to Royal Skills Centre, where there was a BB/RO meeting. The whole thing involved a lot of walking but it was fun. :D

Distance: ~ 2.4 km
Epicness: 4/5

#1

I rate this as probably the most fun outing ever. Makuluwo, Middle Child, Himal and I went to, wait for it, A POETRY JAM. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, I guess. So anyway, afterwards, we walked all the way from Green Path (where the poetry thing was) to Galle Face and flew 2 kites. The one I flew failed though. I blame Himal for this. He's bad at putting together those Chinese kites.

Distance: ~ 2.9 km
Epicness: 6/5

I was going through pics from that day, and I found this and couldn't resist sharing. :D Good times, yo.

Hamster-fu :D

Escape

2011-10-19T19:09:00.000+05:30

Komari Beach. Picture by my friend the hiker

Exams will be over tomorrow. I've been waiting for this day for a long time. And my legs are itching to run fast and run far. I need to get away from this city. It no longer feels like home. I know, I know, I used to profess my undying love for her back in the day, but all of that feels like another lifetime now.

I've even been toying with this strange idea of just leaving for somewhere else (Trincomalee? IDK) and starting anew. Strange because it's so out of character, but I don't really know who I am any more. I blame deleting my Facebook account for this. :)

Other things I really need to do include learning some Haskell and polishing up on my driving, because I have a major urge to do something like this, soon:

<br><br><br><br>

Since I forgot to mention this: the footage is from a real early morning drive through Paris, in which the driver actually ran red lights and all. It's from a cult film called C'était un rendez-vous

Happiiibaaarthday, @thejester100! :D

2011-10-14T07:17:00.001+05:30

My last two posts were (sadly) about dead people. Today's one is about a guy whom I hope lives to be 94: The funny man in the blogosphere is turning 22 today! :D w00t w00t!

Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned, no verdict was returned

We all have our fair share of crazy Jerry stories. My favourite second-hand Jerry story is, I believe, the one where he ran away from an elephant. I have a tendency to wear t-shirts with elephants on them, a fashion choice he always questions. Now I think I know why. ;)

Favourite Jerry story of my own: I think the one where he slapped Aruna hard on the cheek, said "Don't question me bitch", and ran for his life. It takes BALLS (and luck) to do that to the Dayanandanati and get away with it alive.

Since the thing he loves most is getting comments on his blog *cough*bloghoe*cough*, I'm going to link to a random post on his blog here.

Happy 22nd Jerry!!! We vuv ya, and demand cake. ;)

For dmr

2011-10-13T20:30:00.001+05:30

Logo I designed for Kottu, in tribute to dmr

Is October the month of tech's heroes dying, or something?

C was the very first language I learned at university. I had dabbled in bits and pieces of code before, with VB6 (ugh), a bit of C++ (utter failure) and maybe JavaScript. But C was my first proper language, and I fell in love. And I've seen many languages since, but none that were as easy to grasp, yet as useful as C. Today's languages are much fancier, but there's something about it that you can't beat.

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie can be described in many words, but I would call him a true genius. In his own words: "Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity". He, and the rest of the Bell labs team, took a very pragmatic approach to programming. They kept things simple, and put power in the hands of the user, with merely the warning to use it wisely. The theoreticians can say what they will, but in practical terms UNIX (and the C language it was written in - becoming one of the first major operating systems to be implemented in a high-level language) has responded by being one of the most successful operating systems in history. Today, a major part of the world's IT infrastructure runs on UNIX-derivatives and UNIX-clones. BSD (and its child Mac OSX) is wildly popular, and so is GNU/Linux. Even though the original UNIX code is not used in these implementations, the features, the layout of the file-system, the shell, the common utilities... the basic concepts and most of all the awesome little language that all of it is written in pretty much owe their existence to the work of the original Bell labs team.

Imagine what it must've been like to walk with giants? I would give everything I own to go back and work at circa-1970 Bell labs. :)

Rest in peace, Dr. Ritchie. Future generations will continue to read K&R, appreciate your genius and your contributions (and your humility about it all) and hopefully your life will be celebrated much more in the coming years. You deserved a much better send-off than that which you received today.

P.S. There was a quote of either Thompson's or Ritchie's that I've read and was trying to track down all day (if any of you guys know where it is, please send me the link) about how they never usually duplicated work while writing code, but once accidentally wrote the same utility in assembly code. They then went through the code, to find that they had implemented it almost identically - line for line. That story just blew my mind away. :)

Edit: Adding this cool Japan Prize video that I found today. The Japan Prize 2011 was awarded to Dennis and Ken.

On Kottu development, and oxygen for ideas

2011-10-11T18:25:00.000+05:30

Kottu, after the 8.0 redesign

The thing with designing a software system you have no idea about is that you don't know how deep the water is, and you never will, until you jump right in. When Indi contacted me back in July with the proposal to join him at Kottu, I was stunned. It was truly a dream come true. I loved Kottu, Kottu was every young blogger's best friend. And it was where people could find good content, ~~and sometimes even love~~

Coming back to the jumping in the water business: there is no way you can get something as complex and dynamic as Kottu right first time around. And I jumped right in, rewrote the whole code base from scratch. Every software best practice that I learned went flying out the window, and I cobbled up the least complicated thing that worked. No OOP, no comments, no nothing. Getting a working system out (no matter how ugly the code looked) was first priority. And only after going public with that did everything else flow along: documentation (still partial), code refactoring (check out the Posts class, which is basically what the whole back-end of Kottu looks like now) and more features.

When Kottu 7.8 beta first launched, we had no thumbnails, no categories and a bunch of those buggy Javascript social widgets that made loading the home page take ages. Only user feedback and time fixed those issues, and I don't think it is humanly possible for it to have happened any other way. Good systems don't just happen. Of course, there was UNIX, but let's not try to pretend we're Richie and Thompson, shall we? ;)

Right, then. The back-end of Kottu hit version 8.0 with some nice little refactoring (basically a revamped utils folder.) There are some development goals that I hope to achieve before we hit version 8.0 officially. (Note: These are not long-term goals like Indi has described here, but more of short-term, little, code-based goals)

Refactoring the front end

There is a lot of code that gets duplicated in index.php and search.php and elsewhere in the front end. I hope to unify everything into a PageGen class to make generating pages easier and the code much cleaner.
Caching

Kottu stupidly generates every page dynamically... every.single.time. I plan to put an end to this madness and store cached copies of several frequently accessed pages (or options within Kottu, say for example "Sinhala + Popular Today"). This would make me feel less guilty about running long and costly queries to give users a bit more of the beautiful data we have at Kottu. Don't tell anyone, but there will be graphs! ;) Shh!
Better documentation

If you ask people why many open source projects fail, they would say that the two primary factors are developers losing interest, and lax user documentation. I've been a typical programmer, and been slacking off when I was supposed to be writing the f@#%ing manual (couldn't resist, sorry!) :D Yeah, there is a nice little markdown file on our Github, but we need more, including better on site documentation (not about the code, obviously, but think of a better About Us page).
Not-so-active blogs, what is?

Okay, so there are active bloggers, and there are not-so-active bloggers. Thing about Kottu is we're dealing with limited resources, servers that might melt sooner or later, and other real world problems. We currently have 907 blogs listed on Kottu (wait, I'm sure that number was higher... dafuq?). What does FeedGet.php do? It takes 50 blogs (least recently polled), goes to each of those RSS feeds and adds any new posts to our database. Now, FeedGet.php is cronjob'd to run every 5 (!!!) minutes, the minimum limit allowed by our hosting provider, but still it takes approximately 1 hour 30 minutes to repoll a feed. So, if we polled your feed just before you posted a blog post, then sorry.com, bro. You will have to wait for one and a half hours for your blogpost to appear on Kottu. (We can't poll more that 50 feeds at a time due to the fact that PHP is a freaking crack addict that gobbles up insane amounts of memory without de-allocating any)

What do we do now? What do we do now that doesn't get me banned from the next blogger meetup? Maybe we should poll not-so-active blogs less frequently, giving priority to active blogs - which are more likely to have new posts. And as soon as a less-than-active blogger makes his comeback, his blog is made active again, and gets polled in the usual way. It's sort of evil, yes, but necessary if we're to increase the response time of Kottu. And it also encourages bloggers to be more active. Whaddaya think?

So, finally, don't let the version numbering and jibber jabber fool you. Kottu is pretty much a work in progress, and Indi and I will continue to tinker and attempt to make it better and faster and cuter. And hopefully, I will realise my dream of a happier, friendlier, active little Blogosphere, like we had back when I first started in February 2009. Those were the days, maaan! :')

P.S. The title of the post is from an awesome awesome article by the guy behind Wordpress. READ IT! It totally changed the way I view software, ~~and contributed to numerous bugs on Kottu,~~ and I highly recommend it for anybody, geek or Greek. :D

A quick note on Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T09:18:00.000+05:30

Our philosophies about software freedom and user choice were worlds apart, but I was an admirer of Steve, and the company that he built - basically out of his garage. He was the epitome of the American dream, a self made tycoon who (unlike most people) only sold products he was genuinely passionate about. There are stories of him getting a prototype matte black MacBook Pro (or Air, I don't exactly remember) and rejecting it because the coating attracted finger prints and body oils, and was hard to clean up. A design that would've sold millions and millions of units, but was rejected because Steve only released products that he was passionate about - products he himself would want to use. As developers, techies, designers or whatever other field we're in, there's a lot we can take from that.

Here are some interesting titbits of what I've seen written about him:

Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He’s such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise!

I like Apple for the opposite reason: they’re not afraid of getting a rudimentary 1.0 out into the world. [...]

Now, the crazy thing about that release is when the original iPhone went public, flaws and all, you know that in a secret room somewhere on Apple’s campus they had a working prototype of the 3GS with a faster processor, better battery life, normal headphone jack… a perfect everything. Steve Jobs was probably already carrying around one in his pocket. How painful it must have been to have everyone criticizing them for all the flaws they had already fixed but couldn’t release yet because they were waiting for component prices to come down or for some bugs to be worked out of the app store.

- Matt Mullenweg, 1.0 Is the Loneliest Number

I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.

"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?" [...]

But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I'll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.

- Vic Gundotra, Icon Ambulance

It's just the biggest loss that Silicon Valley has ever faced. And nothing will replace this visionary figure who made a company mocked for its small market share the most profitable business in the world, not by taking shortcuts and marketing bullshit to people, but by making actual awesome goodies that anyone would want to buy.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

- Steve Jobs (more quotes here)

Rest in peace, Steve. You will be missed.

How to track down the @himalkk

2011-10-04T09:38:00.001+05:30

Himalinga

Today on Chavie's nature hour, we're going to track the elusive (and endemic) Himalus Kotelawalus, a distant cousin of the Melursus ursinus inornatus (The Sri Lankan sloth bear) ~~and also of Foxus Houndus, but my editor told me to take that bit off~~

There is only one confirmed specimen of this species, which would put it somewhere between Extinct in the Wild (EW) and Critically Endangered (CR) in the IUCN Red List, a category I personally like to call "ZOMG Almost Gone WTFBBQ!!11 (ZAGW)"

While naturally found wandering aimlessly around MC and Marine Drive, habitat and climatic changes have forced Himalus Kotelawalus to move into other areas. While there is no guarantee that you might spot him, conservationists scored a massive victory by introducing a smartphone to the specimen, which has made tracking using foursquare a trivial process. Though sightings in the wild have been rare, some lucky trackers and conservationists have had the privilege of capuring the specimen on film, often in quite unexpected places:

...

Yeah, I'm that jobless. :P

Edit: Here are some more and a link to the PNG file, if anyone wants. ;)

Farewell, Colombo 03

2011-09-30T17:32:00.000+05:30

I'm sitting here alone in the 15th floor lab, near a window looking out on Dharmapala Mawatha. A view I've taken for granted since the initial wonder of being on a high-rise bulding passed. It's been two years, and the memories have been good. Good friends, good times and of course, pretty pretty code. :) The first great memory I had was seeing the central mountains from the windows, barely a month after first coming here. It was so beautiful that I kinda became obsessed with seeing them again. I have, twice, and once actually managed to snap a pic. :)

Other good memories from the first year include finishing off weekly programming exams super early in the evening, so I could go hang with Meshak and the others at Galle Face (he's got quite a few pictures of us ronde-ing around here and also, our national past-time of drinking Nescafe and plain tea in the canteen here)

All in all, a good two years, under the wing of some lecturers who really cared for us. Especially Miss A (our awesome junior lecturer on programming and algorithm-based subjects), who came to our lecture hall today and wished us all the best for our next year(s) spent in Malabe, to keep up the good work, and to make sacrifices now for a better future. It was pretty emotional, and it's sad that we won't be seeing some of the great lecturers who taught us in Malabe next year (but I'm hoping against hope that Miss A will get a transfer there or something!) :D

And now, without boring you any further: Chavie out, one last time. :)

Tales of the Purple wonder-van

2011-09-28T21:51:00.000+05:30

I think this blog will be going into nostalgia mode shortly. The impending end of our happy days at Kollupitiya campus will warrant another post, but I'm going to go way back with this one. Back to 2003-06, in fact.

I was about thirteen when my parents put me in a school van to get me home. Not just any school van, this one could be spotted from miles away because it was painted purple!

There were a couple of kids from our school and a friend of ours from Mahanama in the first-row seat and the makeshift backward-facing seat that was right behind the driver's seat. The rest of the van was full of women. There was never much interaction between the boys and the girls, which I put down to some sort of ultra-awkward incident that happened before I joined. The van had gone through various interesting 'incidents' before I joined, the most famous (known throughout the school, in fact) being when it almost got blown up by a bomb aimed at the prime minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake.

The memories I had of the van are mostly ~~of being stuck in traffic, getting home two and a half hours after the end of school,~~ wonderful. There was a pecking order, or rather a seating order that was strictly followed. The front row was taken by veterans, so I had to wait till somewhere like Nugegoda to jump into that one. C used to tell us about what happened last night on his favourite show: Angili Salakuna. Ni and S were WWE fans, so their stories usually revolved around ~~whatshisname~~ the Undertaker. They even had a pack of WWE cards that we used to play. Na was into music and smoking. A was the guy who was an year older than us, who used to chase me around and poke my (non-existent) tummy. Yes, I'm aware of how wrong that sounds. :D

One of the funniest things happened once during big match time. We had a College flag out one window, and we were passing out of Flower Road in moderate traffic when suddenly a guy came running onto the road, grabbed our flag and threw a rotten egg into the van. The egg was thrown at the back of the van (it hit the rear glass, and I believe it stayed there for a week till someone cleaned it up, LOL) and the girls were basically threatening us with bloody murder. But the funny bit is that as he ran back, someone was waiting for him: a stern-looking policeman! Good luck, dude! :D

Water fights were a common occurrence when the last day of school rolled by. This was when the animosity among the guys and the girls just bubbled and everyone threw a good bottle of water to make up for everything the others had done throughout the last three months. One such day, after much water being thrown, the guy who drove the van (our Uncle! oh how we drove him nuts as he drove us home) bought us all yoghurt. We ate the yoghurt, but as we were nearing the bottom of the cups, we found out that the yoghurt could be used for other purposes. When my bag started stinking badly a week after end of term, I realised that I had been hit. Oh well.

And finally, of course, the music. The van had a cassette player and radio. One day, uncle was bored and switched on the radio, much to the displeasure of everyone sitting in the van. The girls, cunning as always, exploited this moment of weakness by bringing two cassettes the next day: Ranidu's debut album and some BnS songs. Despite many failed attempts by the boys, these two continued playing on loop till we finally left the van 3 years later. And now, whenever I hear those songs, I remember the van days. :D

How Laura Marling broke Charlie Fink's heart, and other stories

2011-09-10T17:42:00.000+05:30

When I first heard 'Blue Skies' on PseudoRandom's blog, I had no idea that this was one of the few uplifting songs in an album about a breakup. I listened to that live version a million times, fell in love with it, but didn't do much follow up with the band. I didn't even discover 5 Years Time, their big hit from the debut album. Oh the shame.

That first album, that big hit, has backing vocals by Laura Marling, whose own debut album was produced by Charlie. A great load has been written about their break up, but nothing more powerful than their second album, "The First Days of Spring". An album written and recorded when the pain of heartbreak was so raw, that Charlie apparently broke down the first time he heard the album in full.

Two years after the release of TFDoS, Noah and the Whale are back with "Last Night on Earth". I first heard "Life is Life", but didn't like it much. But then I heard L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N., a song that reminded me of Get Back by the Beatles and Oh! Sweet Nuthin' by the Velvet Underground, and I so began the listening on loop.

And then, I listened to a couple of more songs and decided to download the entire album, something I seldom do. But ukulele fans be warned, Noah explores new sound in this record, and electronic music does creep in. But it has been used with discretion, and class. Seriously, this record is awesome. Favourites include "Tonight's the Kind of Night", "Give It All Back" and "Waiting for My Chance to Come". But my pick of the lot? This absolute beauty:

Well I've always had a wild imagination,
And a see-through heart,
Which I know can be, a wild combination,
Like a flame forms from a spark,
But don't be shy, be brave little champion,
It's better to live than to hide...

It's the What Ifs that kill me

2011-09-07T21:58:00.000+05:30

Two IF conditions, in Allman style

I consider myself a fairly rational person, and hopefully others do too. But I am very control freakish about the world, to the point of obsession. If things don't neatly go the way I want them to, I take great offence. This is not to say I go around imposing my will on people. I do take suggestions and I do change my mind. But when things happen, and it seems very illogical, and nobody offers me a proper explanation as to why it is so, I try to fix it. Like a mad web designer screwing with Firebug, I hack away. Slowly but steadily, while you are sound asleep, I am awake, plotting away. Social engineering. Researching. Waiting for the perfect moment to launch a blitzkrieg... I know, creepy right?

And then, I fail. Because other people's problems aren't mine to "fix" (the polite way of saying I should sod off and mind my own business). And then, without letting go of obsessions, I let go of people. Ah, the greatest gift and the greatest curse of being an only child - the ability to be completely by yourself and yet have a good time. A great time. (Ok, a pretty much awesome time... People are meh.) ;P

So anyway, point of this post is to remind myself that I've tried 4 times to "save" someone, and four times I've failed, because if anyone wants salvation, they'd just ask for it. And probably ask someone else, coz I'm creepy. ;)

And before I go, I'd like to share the words of the great I from uni: "Anith unge prashna oluwata daagena api mokatada nahenne" or "Why do we bother with other people's problems to the point of killing ourselves".

Dedicated to G1, who is happy; to G2, who is confused; to G3, who I'm confused about; and to G4, who will see the light someday - I will make sure she does. Muhahahaha. :/ *facepalm*

Chavie who?

2011-09-06T20:28:00.001+05:30

Soooooohhhhh, it took a complete GUI redesign at Blogger to bring me back to these parts huh? :D

Welp, I have been a biiit busy, ostensibly working on Kottu (a hora sneak peek at a new feature I'm working on here), but actually just doing nothing or catching up with Sai, WHO'S FLYING DOWN FOR GOOD THIS MONTH! Yaaaaayayayaya!!! :D

There are so many things to tell, so much to blog about, but ugh, goddammit this blogger interface is too shiny and distracting... I wonder what this button does...

ZZAAAAPPPP! :O

Ok, lame jokes aside, I came here to write about how signatures are crap. I mean, I had the misfortune of going to the bank today, and the poor lady in front of me had put her signature a bit too longer than what was on her book thingy. I mean, wtf man?! How do people manage to keep their signatures looking the same? Mine changes like a gazillion times a day (anyone looking at the uni class register would understand) and I actually practice before going to the bank, and still mess up horribly. I mean, in an age where retina scanners and fingerprint readers are freely available, ugh nevermind... -_______-

So, anyways, good to be back. Will hang around this time, I guess, since working with Kottu means I get to visit your blogs quite a bit these days. We're rolling out a few new features in the next few days, so stay tuned to Indi's blog! :D

The new Kottu beta

2011-08-24T09:07:00.001+05:30

Kottu is the Sri Lankan feed aggregator we all know and love. Kottu currently has more than 1000 Sri Lankan blogs in all three languages (and one Dhivehi blog too!) listed, and it's safe to say that without the community and traffic built up around Kottu, most of us would never have continued blogging. Indi, who basically set up and ran Kottu from scratch with his own money, contacted me last month to see if we can spice it up a bit, and add some new features to the site.

Introducing the new Kottu beta

Screenshot

One of the most popular features of Kottu, that sort of got hijacked and removed, was the popular posts widget in the sidebar. We wanted to re-implement it, without relying too much on clicks and relying more on social media (something that wasn't that huge when Kottu first launched). So now, you can basically click on the popular posts (categorised by time - today, this week, this month) in the sidebar and it shows the most popular posts in that time period. (Note: Don't be angry if your popular posts don't show up, we just set the system up and stats are only being counted from yesterday). Another feature is language based filtering, which makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

The technology

There isn't much behind the interface, really. We use SimplePie to read the feeds and get new posts, the Twitter and Facebook APIs (the latter through the Facebook PHP SDK) to get stats, and combine them using a very simple formula:


Post Buzz =
(No. of tweets / Max tweets for a single post in the last 24 hours) + (No. of FB likes and shares / Max) + (No. of clicks / Total no. of clicks)
(with appropriate weight given to each metric)

So basically: The more tweets / Facebook likes or shares your posts get, the higher ranked it will be.

We also use something called Fizzling to reduce buzz as a post gets older. This follows the logic that the older a post is, the more tweets / FB likes or shares it should get (if it's good) and therefore, to give newer posts a chance, we counteract this with the negative influence of age on the post buzz.

So, finally

Use it. It's at kottu.org/beta. Let Indi and I know about what you think. Our hope is that this will help in some small way to rejuvenate the local blogging scene, which is nowhere near the glory days of 2006-08. And we can hopefully iron out the issues and take this out of beta in the next few weeks. :)

Bus Route Finder

2011-07-21T14:53:00.000+05:30

A month and a half back, I made a map of bus routes in Colombo that became a surprise hit. This, coupled with the number of calls Himal was getting asking which bus to take, made me think that a website that tells you which buses to take from location A to location B would be pretty useful. With my beginner-level knowledge of SQL, JavaScript and PHP, I was able to cobble together a website that helps you find the bus route to your destination.

The system is far from perfect (it has only 25 or so bus routes, from the 70 odd listed in the Colombo bus routes Wikipedia article), and so it could do with some improvement, which is why I'm releasing the source code and the database SQL under the GNU GPL. :) So, I hope someone who's better with buses and code can take this to the next level. So, do feel free to modify, change, and host as you please, and please excuse the n00bish code, I'm kinda new to this! :D

A better algorithm for finding buses would be really nice, since all buses are not created equal. Waiting for a 135 that never came on a Sunday afternoon in Narahenpita, or getting late for an appointment because some fool recommended you take a 255 (worst bus ever!!!) from Kottawa to Mount Lavinia, is uncool. A better system with some sort of ranking algorithm would solve this problem, me thinks. :)

Hope you guys find the system useful. There is a mobile version of the site, but my stupid web host won't let me automatically redirect users to it using htaccess. :( A special Thank You to all my friends who helped me with this, and especially Mr. Inosh Perera, who helped me with the 187 bus route and also suggested I add Google Maps geolocations to bus halts. :)

Update: Bus Route Finder on GitHub (Thanks, John!) :D

I Know What You Did Last Summer

2011-07-03T20:10:00.000+05:30

So, a couple of months have passed since finals and the university student inside me has been awoken from the long slumber that he took during the vacation months. Our fourth semester at SLIIT promises to be filled with challenges, the most important of which is the infamous "Second Year Project". We have been blessed with a great client, and it's now up to the group to deliver. This project offers us a chance to get our hands dirty with all aspects of the development process, from requirement gathering and analysis, to designing the system, to making databases, writing documentation, keeping the client and the lecturers happy with progress reports, as well as my favourite part - getting down and dirty with some mean code. ;)

The holiday months, alas, were not spent being entirely useless. :P I helped my friends at The Pooch Foundation by designing a website for them. When you're short on development time, bad code and design tends to seep through, and the website went through some horrid n00b html versions before coming out with the current iteration, which I quite like. The great thing about it is that it uses jQuery to look very, very good. ;) And the sad thing about it is that it uses jQuery, which tends not to run in some machines (like at uni), even if JavaScript is enabled. :/ But the project, as a whole, was brilliant. I learned PHP and jQuery on the job, and the intricacies of writing code for other people. ;) This new found love for PHP, coupled with something else has resulted in me working on a small project of mine, which I'll update you on within the week. :D Needless to say I am terribly excited about this, and it's something which -with enough user input- can grow into something that I hope a lot of people will find useful.

So, with the promise of blogging again in the not-too-distant future, I bid you adieu.

Colombo Bus Map v0.2.4

2011-06-04T22:58:00.009+05:30

I love the London Tube map and thought of making a map of Colombo's bus routes using the same principle, i.e. topology over geography.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombo_Bus_Routes
http://www.oocities.org/waidyah/SRILANKA/COLOMBO/BUSROUTEMAP.HTM

Excel file I used to draw the map:
http://chavs.000a.biz/bus4.xls

Bus routes:

100 Panadura - Pettah
101 Moratuwa - Pettah
120 Horana/Kesbewa - Pettah
141 Wellawatta - Narahenpita
177 Kollupitiya - Kaduwela
154 Angulana - Kiribathgoda / Bambalapitiya - Kadawatha
138 Homagama/Athurugiriya/Rukmalgama/Matthegoda/Kottawa/Maharagama - Pettah
122 Rathnapura/Awissawella - Pettah
125 Meepe/Padukka - Pettah
103 Narahenpita/Borella - Pettah
175 Kollupitiya - Kohilawatta
135 Kohuwala - Kelaniya
140 Kollupitiya - Wellampitiya

Notes:

Variants may exist. A 154 might stop in Bambalapitiya, or a 103 might stop in Borella. Be aware of the stop names on the big yellow board.
The hollow lines follow the route of the filled lines unless otherwise specified.

May, I ♥ You!

2011-06-02T15:03:00.004+05:30

Thank you for being a great month to me.

April was horrible to me, with exams and assignments effectively ending my social life. Gahness galore. But we finished off uni, got two months of vacation time and the past two weeks have been insanely awesome and very very productive.

Stuff I've been involved with:

Reach Out

The fact that a woman can't travel in a bus without being groped, or walk a street without having to face catcalls and leering is a serious issue in our society. Reach Out's project focuses on educating school children to be aware of the consequences of harassment and intervene in situations where a girl is being harassed. The end goal is to create a strong social movement against sexual harassment and to make public spaces safe again. We're doing presentations at schools (our first, at Amal International School, was held today) these coming weeks. And the best part is that I get to hang out with a load of bloggers, since a lot of them are involved in Reach Out. :)

Facebook Page

Pooch Foundation

There are currently 4 million stray dogs on the streets, without food, shelter, vaccines, and most importantly: love. Pooch Foundation aims to find homes for these innocents, and also change society's attitude about stray dogs. I have been helping them out with their website (I'm learning PHP and jQuery on the job, baby! ohhhyeah!) and stuff. Pooch also publishes a weekly column on the Funday Times called "Pooch Times". :)

Website

After feeling all caged in and socially isolated for almost two months, the last two weeks have felt like dying and going to heaven. I hope the good times keep on rollin', and that I don't suddenly fall off a bus and die! ;) (That'd be epic though. LULZ!)

Love is messy business

2011-05-09T00:58:00.000+05:30

Platonic love is underrated. This is what I told a friend of mine who had just broken up, to comfort her. Don't we always struggle with that special person whom we really really love, but don't know if we're meant to be friends or lovers? What is it with being lovers that is so attractive anyway?

It's rarely ever the physical intimacy.
Is it the whole social girlfriend/boyfriend thing?
Maybe it's attention. Or respect.

Friendships are so often taken for granted. You crave attention and respect, but you never get it because, hell, "We're just friends, right?". This leads to a logical fork. Do you put up with these limitations and re-adjust your expectations, or do you make it more than just a friendship?

Is it worth it?

I don't think it is. I don't get why rational people do this to themselves, put themselves through the pain of romance. And it almost never works out. Romance crashes more often than Windows ME.

And yet people keep falling into this same old trap. Girl and boy. Share interests. Find each other charming. Carefully build up friendship for months. Move on up to Stage II. Crash. Unable to look each other in the eye again.

And you do this over and over again. I've seen some beautiful friendships fall apart because, apparently, whatever they had going for them wasn't enough.

Part of life? Self-destructive behaviour? I really don't know.

A farcical end to a farcical semester

2011-05-06T13:54:00.000+05:30

Why do lecturers insist on doing this to us? Giving us assignments that fall so out of our scope of knowledge that we're left with no option but to steal shamelessly. Maybe this is about shame. Maybe this is to condition us, to make us understand the grim reality that we'll probably never write an original block of code in our lives.

Meh. I know the world turns regardless. Life goes on without so much as a second glance. We're the lucky ones. We have the luxury of pecking down a few words in protest before having some lunch and, if you're lucky like me, pudding.

Crickexams

2011-04-24T09:38:00.000+05:30

So, good old SLIIT is going through exam season these days. The common rooms are crowded, and the staircases are full of last minute crammers with books and papers lying all around. :) My exams so far have had mixed results, PS was a miss and SPD was a definite hit.

So, remember me saying we might have World Cup coverage around these parts? :D Yeah. Well, the closest I got to the World Cup is when I went to watch the Kenya vs. Sri Lanka match on March 1 with my mates. But fear not, this post is sort of related to cricket.

I helped out a friend of mine studying in Australia with his programming assignment. It was a neat little C program that read from a file, did some basic data manipulation and graphed the results. After being stuck for so long doing non-programming things at uni (Ugh, I thought this degree was about learning to code. How wrong I was...) it was a treat to write some good code and it inspired me to write this follow up program. It's a tiny piece of code that graphs runs against overs, like those Manhattans that they show during cricket matches. The code can be found here.

Here's what the output looks like:

Crashing in 3... 2... 1...

2011-04-15T09:02:00.001+05:30

The sheer volume of stuff we have to memorise for this final is astounding. From obscure statistical formulae to the intricacies of various routing protocols to the exact code needed to write certain Java applets (which even the lecturer admits is an outdated technology) to godforsaken Bash scripts.

It's all too much. And I'm more concerned right now about how good the ocarina sounds on Wild Thing.

:/

5 days to go and right royally screwed.

Date a girl who Codes

2011-04-07T19:42:00.003+05:30

This (Facebook note) was inspired by the Tumblr post Date A Girl Who Reads (by Rosemarie Urquico) which GG had posted on Facebook. :) Disclaimer: I'm NOT an Emacs user. ;)

Date a girl who codes. Date a girl who spends her time on Stack Overflow and not TMZ. Her computer's fucked because she messed with the kernel too much, not because she downloaded "Free Smileys". Date a girl who knows a couple of languages, compiled her first program when she was 11.

Find a girl who codes. You’ll know that she does because she'll always have Emacs open. (What do you mean vi? Are you crazy to even look at the devil's spawn?) She lovingly looks through the Java API, and quietly cries out when she finds that one interface that's been giving her a hard time. You see the weird chick staring at her laptop with her hands on her head? That’s the coder. They can never resist the urge to code, even in public.

She’s the girl coding while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of inheritance and multiple threads. Sit down. She might not notice you, as most coders don't like to be interrupted. Ask her what's up with her indentation.

Get ready to have a cup of coffee thrown on you.

Let her know what you really think of Stallman. See if she can code Lisp. Understand that if she's a fan of Bash scripting, she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Canonical or she would like to work there.

It’s easy to date a girl who codes. Leave her alone when she's coding, but never for too long. Tell her to look out the window from time to time. Giving your eyes rest is important for coders, lest you want her to go blind. Buy her Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming". Let her know that you understand that code is love. That every opened curly bracket is a commitment. Understand that she knows the difference between how code works and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little binary. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

[Can't be fucked writing any further. I've got more important things to do.]

:P

P.S. If you meet the aforementioned girl, please give me a ring! O_O

Guilt tripping the cricket fans

2011-04-03T19:26:00.001+05:30

This post is not really about cricket. But for the record I'll just state that I enjoyed the match and as one of my friends said, "It was a game befitting of a final, unlike 2007". How very true.

But I have to instead talk about a duller and murkier topic than run rates, field placements and Poonam Pandey's knickers. There are a few people who've been suggesting that supporting the Sri Lankan cricket team equals supporting the Government of Sri Lanka and its policies. (The word 'genocide' is thrown around liberally by these people.) While its not untrue to say that a majority of Sri Lanka's 20 million people support the regime, the support for the cricket team transcends any petty political, ethnic or religious lines. They were watching the match in the south, in the north, the west, the east and up in the hills. Cricket is the glue that held us together during the most difficult periods of our history.

For me, I support the team because they represent me, and my 20 million countrymen. Not because of politics, not because waving a lion flag (something I've never done, to be honest) gives me a feeling of superiority or whatever the critics say it's supposed to do.

To all the haters, I say: Go fly a kite. We love our boys, and nothing is ever going to change that.

O Bradman, God of Cricket

2011-03-27T00:11:00.003+05:30

Let Dilly make balls evade the stumps, as easily as he did today
Let Upul flirt with the ball, batting as gracefully as a Left-hander ever could
Let Sanga be the rock of the innings, while everything around him burns
Let Mahela continue to make me wish I batted Right-handed ;)
Let Thilan miss no more sitters!
Tell Angie to lay off the lasses, for he seems to be missing practices
Let Mali find Kenya again
And let Murali be fit, two last times!

Let the island of so many,
of so little,
plenty,
nothing,
beautiful people,
blood spilt in vain,
of the finest tea,
and the finest kasippu too,
of beaches,
and landfills,
of smiling assassins,
and frowning salesmen...

LIFT THIS CUP!

Let us be at peace with the world,
at peace with our past,
and at peace with the rocky journey ahead...

"Looking ahead with hope"
Image © Getty Images

Linux: Making the jump to Free Software

2011-03-22T05:50:00.002+05:30

I was reading an article about introducing your better half to Linux. It's something every geek goes through: having to pick between their girlfriend and their favourite operating system (good thing most of us are hopelessly single! :P ). But in all seriousness, weaning off Windows isn't that hard.

My Desktop at the moment

There are obvious categories of people that this post is not meant for: Hardcore gamers (let's face it, gaming options on Linux are seriously limited), People who live on Visual Studio/Photoshop and Microsoft employees. For everyone else, there's Linux. ;)

I started using Fedora as my primary OS last year, when I got my own laptop (I have since switched to Ubuntu due to the whole 'ease of finding and installing software' (PPAs) thing). Using it on the desktop was never an option. For one, I had a USB modem (unsupported by Linux) and my mom was constantly on Excel, and retraining her to use Linux would've been a lot of work (not that difficult, but I tend to cut corners when it comes to my parents).

Anyhoo, I was never a serious gamer, nor used Office obsessively. Most of my work is done on Google Docs (or in text files. I'm using gedit to write this post) and most of the time I'm stuck on a browser (Firefox 4 there, which coincidentally is leaving the testing phase and being released today!). Banshee is much better a music player than either Windows Media Player or Songbird, and GIMP works really well if you're not really into photoshop but want to mess around with some images or something (there are a load of extensions for it that make so many things possible). Emesene is an awesome Windows Live Messenger clone, and Pidgin is the best chat client that money can't buy.

And for those pesky tasks that can only be done on Windows, I have installed Windows XP inside a Sun VM VirtualBox (but seriously, FUCK ORACLE!). I've run MS Office 2003 and SPSS 13 (a statistical package by IBM) without issue in the virtual box.

I've used Linux exclusively for over 6 months now, and save a few occasions when newly installed kernel images refused to boot (rebooting always fixed the issue), I have faced no major issues with the OS. No blue screens, no security threats, no OS crashes and little or no unstable software. This in spite of me using Alpha or Beta quality software (Hotot and Firefox).

So, my friendly advice to all of you looking for a change is: Think about it. Find out about it. Run a live CD, experience it. Discover that Linux is not all typing complex commands into the console (in fact, the themes coming out these days can pwn Windows sideways!).

Also, for the latest updates on Ubuntu and free software, check out OMG! Ubuntu! :)

Things

2011-03-16T05:46:00.003+05:30

I've been a bit busy in the past few days. And things will only get more so, with exams approaching. I'm kinda excited about the things we're learning these days, bar the antics of a certain Statistics teacher who has wild mood swings. We're learning regular expressions next week! Things I've heard about for such a long time, and we're getting to try it out! :D And yes, we've hit the fifth stage by learning Perl. ;) So exciting stuff, albeit very tiring.

I've been keeping a close eye on the destruction in Japan. My mom got the text message about some radioactive rain falling in Sri Lanka or something. Totally agree with Pseudo that children should be taught basic nuclear science so that people don't panic unnecessarily like that. I mean, every time someone mentions the word 'Nuclear', people think of Chernobyl, Hiroshima and cancer. The phobia is so much that MRI scans, which should be called 'Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging', had to drop the N so as not to scare off patients. But seriously, panicking over Nuclear power is so 1950s! People should get with the times already.

And in other news, I will be casting my first vote tomorrow! :D Yep, pretty excited about this. Look for a purple pinky to be my profile pic on Facebook for a couple of weeks to come. ;)

P.S. I broke with tradition and didn't post a big match update this year. I didn't get tickets early for the match, and when it looked like a friend could set me up with some tickets, I fell ill. I should stop this nasty habit of falling sick right before the big match. :( Anyway, it was a wonderful game and I watched a lot of it thanks to the live broadcast on Prime TV (or CSN) and on ThePapare.com. A big "Thank You!" to those guys for making it possible for us unlucky folk to catch the action. :D

Why Windows is better than Linux

2011-03-16T04:42:00.000+05:30

Wallpapers

Can you find one wallpaper for Linux that doesn't have a penguin or a gnu in it?

You don't have to use the command line in Windows, ever

(...because it's underpowered)

Anything runs on Windows

Even scripts off some random site that some script kid in Russia copy pasted together to steal your personal data. M$ loves 'em script kids!

Windows never asks for the root password

Any user can delete all the OS-critical files. Such an egalitarian design.

The blue screen of death

From here

So blue. So pretty. I think I'm in love.

If my little jab at your beloved Windows pisses you off, you should totally read this! :D

And you...

2011-03-06T20:34:00.001+05:30

...are probably the nicest, most graceful, intelligent, beautiful, forgiving, mature, loving person I've ever met. And I'm lucky to have even met you.

There are three things that I suck at very badly. Saying 'Thank You', saying 'Sorry', and saying what I feel like, for real. Every single time I put up a stupid update about some programming thing, or some non-event, I'm preventing myself from expressing how I really feel inside.

And like you said, we're all human, and we all screw up. But I will beat myself up over this. Yet, if I could go back to December, I don't think I would've changed a single thing. I learned more about myself in the past few months than I had for years, and I learned about the world, and I learned about my responsibilities to other people. I dare say I even peeked out of my self-centred bubble for a while, and saw the sun shine outside.

Things always dawn on me a little slowly. And as upset I am about this right now, things will only really sink in once I understand your true value. Under-appreciate the people who love me, I always will.

And maybe someday, just like you said, I will learn to lower my guard. Let my heart lead me, and not my useless brain. Love as fully as I am loved.

Someday. Maybe.

I miss you.

Obsession [update]

2011-03-04T12:57:00.001+05:30

Remember my little obsession?

So, I got to uni a liiiittle early today, and even though the sky was cloudy, I was greeted to this outside the windows:

Look just below the clouds and just above the towers...

After a bit of messing with levels

All photos courtesy of my friend Heshan, who saved these images for posterity with his camera phone. Thanks mate! :D

Prefectship: Is it worth it?

2011-02-28T08:27:00.002+05:30

Those of you who subscribe to the Sunday morning rag sheet would've have seen the good name of my Alma Mater being dragged through the mud. With it, the shadowy world of prefects and the ragging that they receive as the initiation ritual have come to light.

No right to hurt your brother

I am lucky enough to attend one of the few institutes of higher education in Sri Lanka where ragging is unheard of. When it is so, a new student feels freedom and belonging and a sense of security in his new environment. This is in stark contrast to what some of my friends have had to go through at some of our universities. Ragging, therefore, is a hurtful and vicious activity that should be eliminated.

As schoolchildren, our teachers would make it a point to disciplinary action against children who bully the other kids in the class. Therefore, isn't it a logical extension of that principle to view ragging as a systematic, and extreme form of bullying? And therefore, isn't it logical that the students who have been guilty of bringing upon their fellow students mental and physical harm be subjected to the most severe punishment that the College can hand them: expulsion?

Prison-guard mentality

Out of the 17 prefects who got suspended, I knew quite well a few. I knew a few of the victims as well. They were among the smartest, most talented (through sports, aesthetics, debating, etc.) and most level headed people I knew. These are kids who would go to debates and make the audience cry about how humiliating and painful ragging is. These were well rounded junior citizens, on their way to take on the world (at some of the most prestigious universities the world over).

So what gives? What turns a non-violent, smart, level-headed kid into a thug who abuses kids (most of whom he has known for years). And what allows this kind of abuse to go on for years without the abused speaking out against it?

There was a very interesting experiment done in the Stanford University in 1971. Termed the 'Stanford prison experiment', it took 24 undergraduates and assigned them roles as 'prison guards' and 'prisoners'. The outcome of the whole experiment was astounding. The 'prisoner guards' adapted to their roles so well that they began being authoritarian and torturing the 'prisoners'. And the 'prisoners' adapted so well that they would take that abuse as if they deserved it and generally behaved in a subjugated manner. I highly recommend that you read that entire article, because it certainly blew my mind away.

So, giving kids who are in the cusp of adulthood and responsibility a 'prison guard' role, are we endangering theirs and their subjects' futures? Are we bringing up a generation of 'prisoners' who think that they deserve the abuse they get? Are we telling kids that it's okay to be authoritarian and abusive, if you're in a position of power?

Is the tradition of 'Prefectship' worth all of this?

The stages of a programming language

2011-02-26T12:54:00.000+05:30

Every programming student is taught the four or five generations of programming languages. Well, here's a new system of categorization that some kid with too much time on his hands came up with. :D (Note that this was just done for kicks, and doesn't claim to be factually correct or anything)

Stage 1:

Assembly language

Stage 2:

Stage 3:

C++, Objective C, Vala

Stage 4:

Java

Stage 5:

Python? IDK really.

Why Fill T is the best rapper in Sri Lanka

2011-02-22T16:41:00.001+05:30

Here's what his YouTube description says:

Chamath Perera better known by his stage name Fill T, is a Sri Lankan entertainer, rapper, record producer and actor. Fill T is best known as an MC in the West Coast hip hop scene, and for being one of Sri Lanka's most notable protégés. Fill T was a CMB Crip gang member while in Colombo.

To which a commenter replies:

CRIP gang member????? Aney Huththo! Panadure godey Kariya....

But YouTube comment battles aside, Fill T has produced some of the most memorable lyrics by a Sri Lankan rapper ever. This is a clip of him rapping drunk:

I've taken the clip and turned it into a few easy-to-follow strips:

Unclogging the drains

2011-02-19T22:10:00.001+05:30

I've been a bit busy lately, what with exams starting in 2 days time, my best friends in the whole wide world who're down for their holidays leaving (it's much harder to say goodbye a second time around) and various other 'events'. Well, mostly wasting time on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, I've started tweeting again, and if past experiences are anything to go by, this WILL NOT end well.

Sri Lanka's world cup campaign kicks off tomorrow, and hopefully we can trash the Meese (yes I know that the plural is moose... sue me for having fun with a foreign language). But this World Cup is so... I dunno... I'm not not-excited, it's just I think there was so much more hype and awareness last time around (or maybe it was just me). I mean, even Chinaman has a chapter about that legendary (at least for us Lankans) final. I vividly remember putting a mat down on the floor and settling down to watch the match that night, watching our batsmen fight the losing battle with rain and what not, and then finally the broadcast being interrupted to say that some bloody mosquito planes were attacking Colombo.

How come nobody even mentions that we were the runners up last time? (or maybe that's just me, too)

But anyway, the author of the aforementioned Chinaman, Shehan Karunatilaka, has a very interesting take on the World Cup:

One-Day vs T20

Is One-Day cricket still relevant? The purists have test matches, which have seen a renaissance, post-Ashes and post India-South Africa. The non-fans have 20/20, which packages the highlights and passes them off as entertainment. Do we still have the inclination to sit through half a day of a format that is neither here nor there?

The answer is, without a doubt. The One-day game is less of a lottery and allows enough room for drama and for fortunes to switch sides. There’s enough time for an innings to be built, for an absorbing spell of bowling and for spectators to pace their drinking over the course of an evening.

Anyway, 'nuff Crickeh, let's talk about birds, and not the wingless type. There's a bloody bird in my backyard and he's eating all our squirrels. -____- Dunno what it is but I managed to snap some pictures:

Well, that's all I've got for tonight, folks. MUST.GO.SLEEP.BYE.

oooh yeah! Edexcel Sucks!!!

2011-02-12T11:15:00.001+05:30

That was the first title of my first post, on Thursday, February 12th, 2009. Wordpress took those first few posts down when I deleted my first blog and moved here to Blogger, thankfully. That lot is more embarrassing than all of the posts I've typed out since combined. Yes, that bad. ;)

And to answer the question that I was asked at my first blogger meetup (which also happened one year ago this month): Do I use an automated script to leave all those comments on everyone's blogs?

Yes, I do. ;P

Here's the only bit of my first post that I could save thanks to Kottu:

Well, here’s why I’m so worked up… I left school about 2 months ago, not coz I wanted to or coz I had turned 20 (have around 18 or so months before that happens), it was because of some f***tard who wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do with my studies! And so [...]

Fiery, innit? ;)

Cerno's desktop screenshot festival...

2011-02-07T21:53:00.002+05:30

...and I'm 2 years, 7 months and 5 days late, according to this. ;) Better late than never, I guess. :D

Lucid, running hotot and Firefox :)

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)
DE: GNOME 2.30.0
Dock: AWN (lighter and better than Docky, imho)
Theme: Elementary

Cerno's original post can be found here. :)

National Day

2011-02-04T09:49:00.002+05:30

As I type this out, the King is giving his speech on TV. All these years they showed only the guy giving the speech on TV, but now he's confined to a small picture-in-picture box, while the bigger area is being used to show all the reservoirs, roads and ports they've built. This government are masters of the spin, or atleast self-promotion, I'll give them that.

As we pass the 63rd milepost of self-rule, we're facing challenges seldom seen in our short history. Most of the world is out to get us, we've got a government that favours centralised rule and a president who abolished term limits that applied to him, we've got the armed forces engaged in business (vegetables, luxury cruise ships and even whale watching!) and we've got an opposition without hope. Even when things looked bleak for the UNP in 1975, with Sirimavo using her majority to delay elections by 2 years, there was a valiant and cunning leader in JR who capitalised on the unpopularity of the government (and its inability to feed its people... ring any bells?) and won a landslide when elections were eventually held in '77. Today the UNP is a party of blind leading the blind, and the other forces in the opposition are either in jail (SF) or getting routed from their traditional strongholds in the universities (JVP). And before you accuse me of being an anti-government booyaka who wants nothing more than to topple the bros from Hamba, let me remind you that people who want this government to succeed (myself included, I've seen way too many governments fail before) would want a strong opposition that acts as a watchdog against government wrongdoing, corruption and wastage. If we're to call this a democracy, the people at bare minimum deserve that from their elected opposition. For example, all the pundits seem to agree that had Gamini or Lalith not been assassinated, and had served as opposition leader from '93 - '99, CBK's government would never have grown so corrupt and ~~impotent~~ incompetent. So for the sake of the country, wake up from your slumber and get your act together, hoes. And don't complain about losing elections, you idiots don't even deserve the seats you win. Do it now or 15 years down the line, we'd all be forced to 'Walk Like an Egyptian'.

Okay then, back to watching the parade...

Mud

2011-01-31T21:50:00.001+05:30

You know what would make the Galle Lit Fest cooler? If they had authors mud wrestling. That'd be pretty cool.

I'm rather bummed that I didn't make it to Galle this weekend, but that's cancelled by the whole 'glad to be alive' thing that I've got going on.

I wholeheartedly recommend watching Stranger Than Fiction. Sure, they could've made it better, but the story's serious while being quite funny, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is nothing but smoking all throughout.

I decided I shouldn't hate Java just because it's very popular and a lot of people use it as a golden hammer. I also learned that writing single line methods gives me a 'kick'. ;)

Van Morrison really is an underrated artist. I mean, sirawata! :/

Since I won't really be able to support Wikipedia financially (till I get myself a credit card), I decided that spending some time each week expanding stub articles and starting up new ones on stuff that I like would be a nice way of contributing. I also discovered that I've been a registered Wikipedia member for more than 4 years now! O_o

Stuff I want to do next month: Go somewhere exciting (could be in Colombo, could be out, I don't care), go for the Wagon Park concert on the 12th and pass my midterms. :P That is all.

Javin'

2011-01-31T20:48:00.000+05:30

So, hello there after a long long time! :D It's been almost two and a half months since I last posted, so I'd like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year first!

So, yours truly and his friends have now been elevated to the rank of second year students, tasked with keeping the peace and giving the first years a hard time (Well, not really. They have been giving everyone else a hard time, though!). So with being a second year student comes the opportunity to study that intriguing language, Java. I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of the language - or Java culture. People seem to love it, and use it as a golden hammer in programming (check out this xkcd comic), or as we say in Sinhala - a කෝකටත් ෛතලය. In their mad dash to popularise the language, they've spread a lot of misinformation (I once saw in a book belonging to a cousin of mine that the -local- author had stated that Java was faster than C and C++, a fact that any real programmer knows is utter bull). But anyway, I'll share a simple programme I did in Java today. It does nothing of use really, but I just love the fact that I wrote some single line methods. ;)

So, here it is. The things I love about Java are many (as anyone switching over from the rigid C++ environment will tell you), but the foremost among them is the ease with which strings can be handled. I mean C++ makes you wish you weren't born when it comes to string handling, and while Java isn't exactly perfect, it does much better than C++. I just wish there was a compiled language that combined Java's ease of use with C++'s speed and power. But I guess it's already invented (there are literally hundreds of programming languages listed on Wikipedia alone) and I'll discover it someday. ;)

That's all the time we have for today, but do stay tuned. We might have World Cup coverage (haha, fat chance!). :D

Happeh!

2011-01-26T20:25:00.004+05:30

This is going to be nonsensical, but I'm mentally prancing around in joy. This week, everything from Monday onwards, has been awesome. Lectures got cancelled Tuesday (Pirith at uni) and we got tomorrow off as well (research symposium at uni. HA!) and I wrote a report I had no idea was due today in like an hour, got it printed and handed it in as well, and to add to that, I helped out a friend who couldn't make it, made his report look fabulous (note to Meshak: you sent it as email text... aneyyy babo! :P) with my customary formatting (wink wink... look at the design of this blog... imagine that minimalism in a word document. People who've had the (dis)pleasure of working with me hate me with a passion for messing with their formatted headings and painstakingly tabbed indentations) aaaand printed it and handed it in too and I did all of that and I got out of the building just right on the dot at 5 when I told my father that I was coming out and I fully appreciate how much I love my mom for the first time in years and I ate so much food today and had yoghurt and cookies and I'm hiiiiiiiiiiigh...

I told you it was going to be nonsensical. I swear it's the gotukola and all that lime acid talking. :D

But yes, moving on to the more serious part of my post, one of my oldest and bestest (suck it spellcheck, that word exists!) friends, who's also a budding veterinary student, is starting out a small foundation for pooches, that aims to do big things. So if you're inclined towards animal welfare, and would like to learn more, please visit their blog at http://thepoochfoundation.blogspot.com/ :)

Soooo, to end my happy, high, high post I shall leave you with a gig played in the sky (or on the rooftops of London) and the longest microtonal lick George Harrison was ever forced to play by one Sir James Paul McCartney. It last from 1:22 to 1:26 in the video and I think it beats the one in Helter Skelter by a mile, but my ear hasn't been tested recently so can't be sure. ;)

P.s. A note about everyone who's complaining in that video: They got to hear the last gig ever played by all four Beatles together. Imagine what that must've felt like after a good few years! :D

A month in a post

2011-01-24T21:25:00.004+05:30

Erm, so hi! Yeah it's me again, the kid who went AWOL all of a sudden. Trust me, there's a good explanation as to why I wasn't around, and as to why my left arm has been shaved of all ~~fur~~ hair just above the wrist. But this is not a time for such trivial pursuits. Or is it? Nah.

Anyway, I was genuinely offline for like 9 days and apart from external factors like nausea and the fact that I was peeing saline... it felt good. It felt good to have some down time. I even learned how to turn off worrying about all the lectures I was missing. I still haven't been able to switch that back on, even after I realised today that I have no flipping clue as to how one could get a user's keyboard input on a Java program (this lapse in programming knowitallitary has since been rectified). Sometimes you realise that there are bigger things, that you could just drop dead and the world could move on without so much as a whimper, that the true value of friendship becomes apparent only when you're lying in a prison (of sorts) unable to move about, that sometimes the little things matter - like you eat one grape too much and you throw your whole dinner down the toilet. It's then that you realise that your dickish, constantly moody, nothing's-ever-good-enough attitude hasn't got you anywhere, and that we're all human and we're all mortals and that we should all chill a bit and be kind to each other and all other kinds of drug-induced crazies. But seriously, this post is getting nowhere.

I just want to jot down something here that's far more important than my ramble up there:

On the 13th of Jan, just 11 days ago, Colombo experienced temperatures of 18.8 Celsius, the lowest recorded in over 6 decades. That day, due to unusually high cloud and an extremely clear lower atmosphere, my little obsession was visible: not only from the 12th/15th floors where we usually look at that, but even from the lunch room of a certain 5 story building, from what I heard. I was in bed that day, unable to crawl out. I missed that golden golden day, and that is perhaps the only thing I regret about this whole month. Meshak got some pictures of it though and hopefully he'll put them up. (I got a sneak peek of the pics off his phone a couple of days later.)

So that's that, that was my Jan. I hope yours was happy and fulfilling. :)

Christmas/EOY post

2010-12-23T14:17:00.004+05:30

I don't think I'll be able to post anything in the next couple of days, so here goes my wishlist for 2011:

Right the wrongs

I've done some stuff that I'm not too happy about this year and I hope to right at least some of them before new year's day. 'nuff said. :)

Less Illness

I've been sick a lot this year and it's not fun. Here's to a healthier year!

Learn Wijesekara and blog more in Sinhala

This has been on my wishlist for a good couple of years now. But 2011 could be the year I finally get down to it.

Less hasty/irrational decisions

A calmer, more logical Chavie? Something that can't be left off the list after everything that was said and done in 2010.

More meetups!

We meetup and fly kites. We're hardcore like that!

And more cupcake parties! :D 2010 was billed to be the year of blogger meetups (in my head, albeit) and it was, to a certain extent. We could've done better though. :P

More travel!

Eclipse in Anuradhapura, January 2010

2010 sucked travel-wise. Despite having been on vacation for a good 4 months this year, I only got to go on 2 or 3 trips and it rained like hell during one. 2011 ~~could~~ will be the year I'll be meeting Kirigalpoththa, Amila and going on my first Sinhalaya Travels adventure, whether my parents let me or not! :P

More TOMMY!

"Sup, bitches?!":D

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, y'all! :D

Dingdongs

2010-12-16T18:42:00.000+05:30

Nope, not talking about Dinidu's balls here. :D

At the end of last year, I felt like doing some comics, but putting them up on this blog was not an option, what with no anonymity and the rather political (and rather offensive) nature of most of the comics. So I created a webcomic blog called Dingdong, made about 8 or 9 comics, ran out of inspiration and shut the thing down. Sadly I lost all the comics (They were stick figure art... I had just discovered xkcd and my drawing was terrible), but there was this one comic I remembered and I redrew it today (with updated art and what not). It was entitled "Living it up in a puritan society". I used GIMP almost exclusively for today's comic (I usually use Paint.NET) so this is my first comic created in GIMP and in Linux. :D

The lights, and the action

2010-12-13T16:43:00.001+05:30

I was fortunate enough to witness the gradual development of "Who Turned The Lights Off?", from a draft script to the version performed at Punchi last Friday. Over the course of several chance (gives Himal the :P face) run-ins with the crew in meetings and practices, I watched as the story took its final shape and form.

The story arc is something that is not unfamiliar: Boy and girl fall madly in love, girl trusts boy, boy does wrong, girl is left HIV-positive and abandoned by friends and family. Sadly, no matter how common the story is, it still gets repeated way too many times in society, with the same tragic ending.

And forum theatre is a place where people get to change that ending, and in the process learn some important facts about HIV, and how you can protect yourself and your loved ones from it. I should note that you can never be too informed about these things, as a lot of us learned the correct way to open a condom wrapper during an audience member's (highly passionate) intervention.

Don't use your fingernails or teeth when opening a condom wrapper. It's very easy to tear the condom inside.

Another fact that people might not be aware of:

Don't use oil-based lubricants, like baby or cooking oils, hand lotion or petroleum jelly as lubricants with latex condoms. The oil weakens latex and can cause condoms to break.

(You're supposed to use water-based lubricants)

The play itself was brilliant, the story flowed nicely (nothing too overtly complicated, and no WTF?! moments) and the acting was superb. In a show with so many brilliant performances (from the butt-smacking 'Men have needs' guy, to the crazy Dad, to the depraved pharmacist who makes buying condoms near-impossible), the female lead (who, I think, was making her FT debut) took everyone's heart. The Awwws were free flowing that night, and so was the sympathy when her character found out her fate. Beyond Borders certainly has stumbled across some fine actors and playwrights. :)

So, in conclusion, the only way to prevent the terrible scourge of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections is the continued education of high-risk groups, the foremost of which is our youth. This is of utmost importance, at a time when even those in the know have a nasty habit of becoming victims.

Eighty percent of Americans with HIV do not know they are infected.
– Philip Emeagwali

Chavie's unfunny comics, part eleventy-four

2010-12-12T09:39:00.000+05:30

Well, Starpoints guy makes a comeback. Oh and please don't call your better half IE6. :S

Talking of star points, they have to be redeemed them before they expire on the 31st. Yes, this was a paid advertisement by Dialog Telekom PLC. ;)

Blogger screwups

2010-12-11T23:31:00.000+05:30

I should've written this a couple of months ago, but didn't have the balls to.

The wise Makuluwo said it best when she posted this on her Tumblr:

We were once a big happy family, just euphoric and full of goodwill. But stuff happened and everyone did and said things that they weren't supposed to. I get that, it's human nature to screw up a perfectly good thing and it happens all the time. But dragging it out this long is both painful and childish. We're all adults, so can't we just smile, nod and pretend nothing bad ever happened?

And you know what the worst part is, it makes people choose between us and being loyal to their best friend, and that is something that nobody should ever have to go through. I certainly wouldn't want to.

This might seem an angsty, immature and rather naive post, but I really needed to put this out there.

P.S. If you get invited to a meetup near/just past your birthday, please do try to make it. We'd like to thank you muchly in advance. ;)

Recap

2010-11-30T14:16:00.003+05:30

November started off on a positive note with a presentation at uni that went off pretty well on the first day of the month. But plenty of other things that were planned didn't happen as expected, but it was a good month nonetheless.

I learned a fair bit of C, and can implement everything we learned up to now at uni using it. Object orientation and such are obviously not supported, but the workarounds exist and as many programmers say "C is easier to learn in its entirety, and that is the biggest advantage it gives a coder". Basically, when you know exactly what the language can and cannot do, it makes coding so much easier and more productive.

A thing I didn't get to do was visit ol' Tommy. The time elapsed since I last saw him has hit a new high of 5 freaking months! :( And I don't think I'll get to visit him this weekend either. Sucks ass.

A lot of the travel planned for November had to be shelved, especially due to the bizarre weather conditions. The family did visit Katharagama and the south, but it was a rain affected journey. The planned hike to Nuwara Eliya with Uni buddies didn't work out, and neither did Arugam Bay with Sai and the old thread gang. I did get to spend an extraordinary amount of time at Sai's place though (thanks for the lunches, Sai! :D And the lulz too.) Spending time with one of your best friends in the whole world who only drops by the island once every 15 months or so is one of the true delights of life. :)

Hmmm, so what else. Watched a couple of movies, including "Toy Story 3" (How the hell does Pixar impress over and over again like that???) and "The Social Network" by David Fincher. The latter was one of the best movies I had ever seen. It had the obvious geek appeal for me ("OMG Zuckerberg uses Linux!!!") and also the first Beatles song in a soundtrack that I've heard in a long time (Baby, You're a Rich Man, off Magical Mystery Tour. Beautiful song.) But what I loved about the film is that he achieved in a couple of years things that most people wouldn't in their entire lifetime. And it made me think... What's the point of being called a geek, what's the point of knowing what a wget command does if you don't apply that stuff and do something exciting, do something that you can be proud of? Will you forever be remembered as a nameless faceless glorified typist who slaved away coding some buggy commercial software, or will you be remembered as a Torvalds, a Stallman or a Cohen? Someone who gave up a boring, well paying life to do something that they genuinely found exciting and worth working towards? It's something I'll have a long hard think about in the next couple of months.

Welcome to the rain-affected test match known as life*

2010-11-26T17:58:00.001+05:30

11:21 AM

The downpour keeps steady as I gaze out the window on the second floor of Liberty Plaza. Hard enough to make the towers in the distance a barely visible grey silhouette, but not hard enough to drive away the people from the street. The street, as it runs in front of Liberty, has 6 lanes and is one way, though it functions like a 4 lane road. I love staring at the rain, more so when I'm safely behind a window. Yes, I'm evul like that.

Liberty cinema is playing a Hindi film called Guzaarish. Aishwarya Rai reminds me of a creep zombie for some reason. O_O They're playing an old Bathiya Santhush song called 'Tharuka', which I heard is based on a Hindi song. Earlier they played some hip-hop song which had the lyrics 'This is an awesome ring tone for your phone' in the rap. Hmph.

01:34 PM

We're walking back to Kollupitiya in the rain. The buriyani and doughnuts we had for lunch are getting digested. Talk shifts to malfunctioning computer parts and how to destroy hard drives without any scratch-marks and have them replaced. The school yard has filled up like a lake and a stream is flowing out into the road. Fucktards drive at breakneck speeds in the almost bumper to bumper traffic and splash water all over the pedestrians. I yell obscenities at 'em. Rain is fun.

2:51 PM

We're at the uni canteen again, Meshak, another friend of ours and I (Yes, in the middle of vacation. So what? We kinda missed the place okay?). The second years had decorated the common room with and the wall sported a sign saying 'Thank U'. I guess they threw a little party for the lecturers before 'graduating' from here and moving on to the bigger campus. I'm going to miss them. They were the polar opposite of our own batch, always together, having fun. Even from a distance, it was a treat to watch them. Le sigh.

* Okay, the title has got nothing to do with the post. But it does vaguely sound like something off Chinaman, yes? ;)

Pwnage on the cloud

2010-11-19T12:24:00.001+05:30

Cloud computing is touted to be the next big thing. From Google Docs to Dropbox to Chrome OS, innovative applications are putting thousands of super powerful servers at the command of users like you and me. But non of these applications seemed that interesting. Granted, backing up to the cloud is one of the most failsafe ways to secure your data, but none of these things had that Ohmagawd effect. I was reading Gizmodo yesterday (sorry Jerry!) and I was hit with that effect thanks to this.

OnLive MicroConsole
(Image copyright Gawker media. Please don't sue me for unauthorised use!)

Think about it for a second. A game, rendered dynamically on the server, streamed to your home like a normal IPTV stream. Provided network latency is low (something that we really need to work towards in this country), your controller-strokes will be transmitted to some server in Palo Alto and the resultant scene in the video game rendered and retransmitted to your HDTV. It's like having a PS3 without having a PS3. And think about it, you don't have to worry about hardware upgrades, or buying expensive VGAs for the singular purpose of playing games anymore. The physics will be beyond awesome, the system requirements will always be met, and you don't have to deal with those pesky anti-piracy measures because there won't be any piracy anymore. If all the games run on servers, and no retail versions are ever released, there's obviously no way to pirate the games. It's a win-win situ whatever way you look at it. And imagine the amount of money spent on hardware that can be saved. You'll essentially be sharing a server with some dude in Bosnia, and while you sleep (due to the time difference) he'll be pwning away, and while he sleeps it'll be your turn. Playing multiplayer would be a breeze since inter-server connectivity is lightning fast (no need to worry about who's hosting and what his upload speed is anymore!)

And you know what the best part is? Servers hate Windows, because it is buggy, slow and expensive, where as Linux is stable, fast and free. The gaming servers will also need to run on Linux, which means... MORE GAMES FOR LINUX, YO! :D (side note: I discovered an open source clone of one of my favourite classic strategy games: Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It's called OpenTTD and it...is...AWEsome! A must have for any Linux user. There is a port for Windows too.)

All of that being said, I'm still not going to pay $99 a year to play games on my bullcrap internet connection. :P

2nd Semester ST Project

2010-11-18T17:51:00.000+05:30

The main intention I had when setting up this blog was to share coding related stuff and other content that would be deemed boring and too tech-y for my other blog. The following post is about an accomplishment of mine that I'm very happy about, and this seems like the perfect place to share it.

Software Technology was my favourite subject during my (recently concluded) second semester at SLIIT. We were blessed with a wonderful lecturer and assistant lecturer and this, combined with my love for code, resulted in one of the most enjoyable learning experiences I've ever had in my life, comparable to that time during A/Ls that we learned about sub-atomic particles and nuclear energy, or the time in 8th grade which I started my first website on Yahoo! Geocities. (RIP)

So, at the end of the semester, we had to do an assignment based on the stuff we learned. It was done in C++, in Visual Studio, this neat little Windows Forms Application. But all that Microsoft goodness came at a price, and our simple application was 1.8 megabytes large. Another drawback was that it wasn't portable, meaning poor old me couldn't compile it in my GNU/Linux machine.

So after we finished our semester, and began our two month long vacation, I reimplemented the program in C. I simplified the problem that we were given (it would otherwise need an insane amount of coding, which I - a lone programmer without the incentive of assignment marks - would find difficult to do), but also switched the data structure we used to store the records from a linked list to a binary tree. The advantages of using a binary tree would be that searching and inserting would be pretty fast. I also did use a post order deletion method to ensure that every record on the tree was deleted before exiting the program, so as to ensure that there were no memory leaks.

My original idea for the C program was to implement it in GTK+ (a cross platform widget toolkit, itself written in C), but I settled for the command line in the end because I had no experience with GTK (and very little experience with C itself) and the learning curve could've been too steep to handle. But I did what I could do, and I finished up with this, a working system that does what does. :) And in the process, I learned how to use malloc and got a new found sense of respect for the 'new' feature in C++ which makes memory allocation so much easier.

So this concludes this long, boring and pointless ramble about a piece of code that doesn't really do much at all. But it is released under the GNU general public licence, not because the free software foundation needs crapware like mine, but because it feels so right to give back to the community that has given us so much, including (but not limited to) the OS that I'm using (GNU), the kernel (Linux), the distro (Ubuntu), the web browser (Firefox) as well as the compiler (GCC) and the text editor (gedit) that I used to create the program. Long live software freedom! :)

The Southern coast in 8 pictures

2010-11-11T15:25:00.002+05:30

Over the bridge...

past the temple in the sea...

a beach!

A wide deserted beach, with the softest, whitest sand...

But the sea is rough,

red flags are up,

what to do but walk away...

...at least the pool is tranquil.

Kinda ironic that I'm writing about beaches and sunshine when Colombo is undergoing the worst flooding in decades. What can one do but have hope in times like these.

The quest for cheap slippers

2010-11-07T21:54:00.000+05:30

I'm the kind of guy who wears slippers anywhere (apparently not Coffee Stop, guess that's another for my list of places to never ever visit), hopefully even to my grave. But my old pair of DSI Beach slippers are getting a bit old and I wanted something nice and comfortable to replace them. I always considered spending more than 200 bucks on a pair as blasphemy, but if you're going for the 200 rupee limit there's not really a lot of choice in the local market.

Trusty old DSI beach

The selection is further limited by the fact that I'm a bit anal about details. My ideal pair of slipper has to:

a) Be flat topped. No spiky 'health' slippers for me Sir, thank you very much.
b) Shouldn't be too thick.
c) The top and the bottom should both be very non-slippery, since I jump off buses in the rain in these things.
d) The shape should be the proper round foot-like shape and not hexagons or something.

So I begin my search at Bata. The slippers are a couple of cents cheaper than those at DSI, which is always a nice thing. There's nothing much in the way of colour selection, but dark blue or red with a white stamp on it looks pretty good. Things are going pretty nicely till I flip the slipper over. OMG, the most horrid underside I have ever seen. Plastic, baby... slippery slippery plastic. I throw away the failslippers in disgust and mosey over to DSI.

The DSI beach slippers look good. I like their blue, black and red colours, but their green and orange leave a lot to be desired. I spot this nice looking dark blue pair, but the price tag says 700 BUCKS. -_____- Stupid 'Walkers'...

So I guess there are two kinds of people in this country. People who spend 700 bucks so that their slippers look good, and those who don't. The vast majority of people belong to the latter category, but they're being kept away from slippers that have a semblance of style in them and are possibly being put at deadly risk with those stupid plastic undersides.

Why can't Bata make slippers like these anymore?

Elegant slippers for a more civilised age

Rainy rainy Katharagama

2010-11-06T21:40:00.000+05:30

I've been to Katharagama about a dozen times, and I never knew that it rained like THAT! On the 4th evening, just as we got there, it began to rain by the bucket-load. I hadn't seen rain like that since... since the last time Colombo got flooded! :D

At the end of the day, I was drenched to the bone... and shivering on the bed. The rain subsided somewhat in the night, as we made our way to Kiriwehera in darkness (the electricity supply had been disrupted due to rain) in a tuk-tuk taking a jungle road, all the time hoping that an Elephant won't emerge out of the shadows and just flatten the little thing into a roti pan. Kiriwehera in darkness (and ever increasing rain) was a surreal experience.

By next day though, the rain had thankfully ceased.

Katharagama Maha Dewale


These guys were out in force.


Elephant bathing in Menik ganga.

Sellakatharagama seems to have undergone a construction boom since the last time I visited, which includes the building of a new bridge, a parking lot, a suspension bridge from the temple to the parking lot and a beautiful hollow stupa.

The roads in and around Hambantota are beautiful, though they seem to have undergone a deterioration due to the construction that's still taking place.

Thissamaharamaya

P.S. If you ever go that way, don't forget to eat Yoghurt from the NLDB farm in Weerawila. That stuff is gooood. :O

Patriot: My take

2010-11-03T08:13:00.003+05:30

Word of warning: Long and pointless post ahead.

Let's begin with definitions first.

Patriotism is love of country; devotion to the welfare of one's country; the virtues and actions of a patriot; the passion which inspires one to serve one's country.

Political freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. Freedom is commonly known as a state of being free from government oppression.

"L'Etat, c'est moi." (I am the state.) – Louis XIV, King of France

First things first, country ≠ the government or the ruler. Loyalty to your country does not mean you should be loyal to your leader. In [an ideal] democracy, the government really has no say in what an individual can do with his life (as long as it's within the laws of the land) and cannot force him to do something that he refuses to do. This is a fundamental human right guaranteed by our constitution and this is why there are Fundamental Rights Petitions in the supreme court. That being said, Sri Lanka is not an ideal democracy. Not really because the paperwork isn't there (we might complain loudly against this 'bahubootha wywastawa' of ours, but really it's positively heavenly compared to, for example, what the Chinese have) but because there are thuggish ministers who are 'above' the law and can mess your life up pretty bad. Ministers with firm handshakes and funny laughs, actually.

So imagine you're Mr. David Senanayaka. You're the son of a famous General Abhaya Senanayaka, who gave his life serving the country. You're quite a hot commodity in the advertising world. You've got a nice wife who's expecting your first child, a mother-in-law who knits stuff for you and friends who talk of our glorious 'Hela Sinhala Buddhist nation' while sipping 800 Rupee lattes in posh Colombo coffee shops. Oh and you hate the government. Not 'hate' as in bitching at the dinner table 'hate', but hate as in "To hell with them, I will not work for them even if it gets me, my wife and unborn child killed." hate.

The reasons for this hatred is not really explained, but thanks to snippets of dialogue I theorise it's because:

a) He believes the government (of the time?) bled his father dry and left his carcass for his mother and him.
b) The severance payment wasn't enough to support them.
c) He believes the government is not doing a good job with post war reconstruction. ("The north got completely demolished by the war. Then why is so much money being spent on the south?")
d) He's wary of the 18th amendment.

So when your bitchy boss sets you up with a government propaganda contract which promises rewards limited only by the star at the centre of our solar system, you pick a fight with your boss, get drunk, badmouth the president of the country in front of his loyal coffeehouse electorate, and get whacked by the minister's thugs. The interventionists offered two plausible alternate endings:

a) Tell the minister to go shove it and leave country fast. Ironic since David is a 'patriot'.
b) Swallow your pride, shut the eff up and work for the government. You're in advertising for heaven's sake, you DON'T HAVE IDEALS! (What sort of messed up moral compass lets people make ads for 'fairness creams'?)

Okay, so final thoughts: You might think you love your country, but that doesn't make you a better person. (Example: me) You might think you're right and the government is wrong, that doesn't make you a patriot and them oppressors. It just means you have political and ideological differences. For all you know, the laughing foetus-murdering minister might 'love the country' as much as you do. There's no definite way of saying that you love your country more than someone else.

But in conclusion, in this country, loyalty to the head of state is more important than loyalty to the state itself. (Example: Compare Sarath Fonseka's present situation to that of Karuna Amman.) In this country, we shut up and keep our heads low, for love of everything we hold dear, and wait for the next election and hope the government doesn't rig its outcome. If you don't like the system David, you might as well a) cut the patriotic crap and leave b) enter politics and attempt to shake things up. Sorry for being blunt, but that's how 'we' roll.

I hear you asking, what's the point of this long and wandering post? My point is that the title of the play should've been "Political Freedom" and not "Patriot". Yes, I'm pointless like that.

Dr. Sheldon Cooper FTW.

2010-10-31T18:11:00.024+05:30

I've watched all the episodes released so far in the last couple of days, and BOY I can't wait till Friday to see the next one!!! :D Long lost television addiction, here I come! :D

Talking of television, I suck for missing last night's drama involving Mervyn, "kukku", Dayasiri and Kauda Bole Ajith. Though watching it all on YouTube makes up for it somewhat. ;)

P.S. I dunno why but the character I root for the most is Howard Wolowitz. I guess it's because I know where he's coming from. ;P

Right royally screwed

2010-10-26T18:11:00.008+05:30

My last exam is tomorrow and I have:

a) Studied anything - negative
b) Done at least one past paper - nope
c) Watched the entire first season of Big Bang Theory in one day - check!

Oh boy.

On a happier note, I hope I'll be seeing many of you at the upcoming Beyond Borders theatre production titled "Patriot". It's happening next Tuesday at 5.30 PM at the BC Audi. The last one, "Elected" was a blast and you'd be crazy to miss this one. :) Invites can be had at http://bit.ly/aU5lEd and you can check out their Facebook page here.

Elementary

2010-10-24T09:54:00.000+05:30

Is the name of the theme I'm using on Linux, but that's of no consequence to this post really.

I just went through this awesome mind trip, a trip that took me through the beautiful mind of one of the most beautiful people I know. As I gaze at the squirrel trying to eat the breadcrumbs my neighbour has left him, I'm trying to make something out of it. This huge new chunk in my universe. The squirrel drops the crumb.

You meet these people in life who are so amazing that it takes a long time for you to absorb them and then figure out if it's wise to still hang around. My usual gag reflex is to welcome with open arms, but I'm older and less naive than I once was. Does it come down to jealousy? Maybe my childhood stories aren't so epic, maybe I've never met so many people, maybe my family is dull and conventional. Does it really matter? Does it make me inferior? Why do I have this mad urge telling me that I need to grab a piece of you while you last?

I've made this mistake a lot, bitten off more than I could chew. I need to be cautious. I need to take this slow. Whenever I say something I do the exact opposite, so I guess things won't be taken slow after all.

On an unrelated and mundane note, I hate this attitude about exams that I have. This I-know-all-you-can't-fail-me bullshit is going to get me stuck in a very very sticky hole soon enough. Oh joy.

Makuluwo!

2010-10-21T08:30:00.002+05:30

If I put all the meetup stories into little comic strips, I would be able to post one a day for about two whole years, me thinks. :D

Anyway, here's something that happened last Friday, and please note that Makuluwo looks much better in real life (disclaimer, just in case... lol)

Well it was funnier when it actually happened. ;)

And in the mean time, exams continue, illness sucks and discussing what you shat and why you shat it with your parents can be real uncomfortable sometimes. Tudu!

Sightings

2010-10-12T20:56:00.002+05:30

This has become a bit of an unhealthy obsession of mine, so I'm going to type it all out without holding it all in. I wouldn't blame anyone if they called me mad after reading all of this. And as for the all-important question: "WHY are you so bothered with this Chavie?", I have no idea mate. I wish I did.

(Copied from a Google doc I had made to keep track of my obsession, and edited to make it suitable for the blog)

Background

It was the end of our Foundation course at uni and exams were upon us. We had them in the 15th floor, the highest I had been to on the building till that point in time.

First sighting: 2x/12/2009 at around 7.30ish AM - Whole central mountain range clearly visible from 15th floor. Had phone but wasn’t bothered to capture image, since I thought this was a fairly common occurrence.

Obsession

Further sightings eluded me for almost a whole year. It was rather disappointing, but I would return day after day and the first thing I would do is look out the window. I was getting obsessed. Then, on one bright blue morning, the first day of October, I knew I might have a spotting on my hands.

Second sighting: 01/10/2010 at around 7.30ish AM - Peaks partially visible from 12th floor. Took camera even but didn’t take any photographs. Glare was too much (the sun having risen up just behind the mountains) when the window was opened. :(

Common phenomena

I observed that on both occasions heavy rain had occurred the night before. No cloud cover at all in the morning, brilliant sunlight (Not the usual bright tropical sunlight you get in this part of the world, this light is unnaturally bright and powerful.)

Why are they so rare: my little half-baked theory

Although most mornings are clear and cloudless, a constant smog (or haze, IDK) seems to hang over Colombo (and the countryside surrounding it), obstructing our view of anything beyond the Malabe hillocks. On most normal days it will be there from the morning till 5.30 when we leave. I believe this is a testament to how humid and wet our little island is.

Now this is where the whole rain-on-the-night-before comes in handy. The rain and cooling of the water vapour forces the haze clouds down to ground level, clearing the atmosphere. This would explain the ultra-clear skies and powerful sunlight. (The moment I saw that weird light on the morning of the 10th, I knew I would get lucky that day.) The trick to getting a good clear view of the mountains is to make sure you get to the Towers before the bright sunlight evaporates the water droplets from last night’s rain and recreates the haze. This is where I succeeded first time around, and failed (by perhaps 15 minutes or so) on the second.

It bothers me that sightings are so rare and only seem to occur (approximately) during the inter-monsoonal season. And that, my friends, is where it stands now. I just hope that during the 4 days on which we have morning exams in October, one would be clear, blue, and with brilliant sunlight.

When September ends...

2010-09-30T22:02:00.000+05:30

...don't wake me up, I be exhausted and sleepy. The past 30 days have been perhaps the most hectic of my life, but thankfully it's all over now and October will be the month of waking up at 10 am and never leaving home unless it's for something fun. ;) So technically we're supposed to be on study leave, but who studies during study leave anyway? That's what the night before the exam is for! :D

Anyway, amidst all the chaos, I managed to make it to the book fair, got blown away by the literally madness (more like the breeze at Galle Face where we went after) and contrary to popular belief that I'm an illiterate hobo, walked home with a copy of Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman. He's perhaps the only person who's won both a Gratiaen prize AND a TNL Onstage. I'm glad I was busy, since I would've written a post about how absoflippinglutely freaking brilliant the book was, but I would never have made it sound as good as Indi did in his review.

Anyway, I better get to bed now... long long day ahead, many bugs to squash. I fell short of my target number of posts for September by about 7, guess this means I should set more realistic targets for next month. ;)

Tutu!

Bus route 99

2010-09-14T19:51:00.004+05:30

More about the title later.

As the absence of posts in the last couple of days have suggested, I had a pretty awesomely busy weekend. Went to watch 'Bambara Walalla' with a friend on Saturday, and I have to say it was pretty good. Don't want to reveal any plot details, but at the end I felt a cocktail of emotions about how everyone acted. It's just that there is an absolute lack of any black or white characters, and all you see are various shades of grey. And the brightness and contrast of this grey picture changes abruptly with the plot twists and turns. Ok, I've said enough, methinks. If you're one of those people wait ages for a quality Sinhala movie comes, go catch this one. It's not perfect but it's one of the best I've ever seen. (Note: Regal, where I saw it, had English subtitles. So don't worry about the language issue). And the film was followed by a hastily organized blogger meetup on Sunday. Things are getting regular again, which I dig... :)

Ok, so Bus route 99. Colombo to Badulla (I've seen a couple of Welimada buses too)

You get on at Fort (or where I live, coz it passes in front of my house) get down in Kalupahana, trek up the 'Devil's staircase' to Horton Plains, camp, mess around in the highlands and take train from Ohiya back to Colombo. There, instant holiday. What say you, Meshak? ;)

Excuse the pointless post. Hopefully I'll get to write about how Meshak, Inosh and I ate a whole bag of 'gal siyambala' inside the networking lab soon! :D

Window seat

2010-09-07T19:56:00.002+05:30

The view over our beautiful city at 8.15 this morning. I've been meaning to take a panorama and put it up but it never happened till today. Once, on a really really clear December morning, Meshak and I were treated to the silhouette of the central mountains in the distance, and the distinctive shape of the butterfly mountain in the middle. Unfortunately, stupid old me didn't realise at that time how rare seeing the mountains were. I've stared out these windows on more than a hundred mornings since, but never again caught a glimpse. But I'm hopeful. Maybe this January, eh? ;)

p.s. Please excuse the image quality. This is what you get when your phone camera shoots through an unclean window. :D

p.p.s. You can see Mount Lavinia in the distance. :)

Also, I'll tack on a pic of old Tommy since this post is a bit too short. :D

The Twitter Cycle

2010-09-03T12:41:00.000+05:30

I've been meaning to do a comic on this blog for a long time, and comic turned out to be a loooong one too, so long that it had to be broken in two. :)

Disclaimer: The events depicted in this comic are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.

A quick one, while he's away

2010-09-01T07:45:00.001+05:30

Enough with the classic rock references already? ;)

Ok, I'm running out of time (have to leave for uni within the hour) so I'll make this quick. The past month was a feeble attempt (that almost succeeded) to kill the blog. Yeah, bad Chavie. Not that I haven't been busy, oh I have been oh so busy. Between exams, assignments and learning a myriad of ways to sort and search data, I've had little time to breathe and play the occasional game of Civ. Did I mention that I got addicted to Civ in the middle of all of that? Yeah, so all the free time I had was spent producing artillery to bombard the enemy's capital and be a general dick to everyone on the map. But I digress.

The reason I was away was that I didn't want to deal with all the emotional shenanigans that have been taking place behind the screens all around this place we call the blogosphere. But all of that is behind me now, and I've found out that all it takes is a couple of nice friends to express their confidence in your character for you to move on. So "Screw the misunderstander(s), I'm going home!" (Yeah, I've started watching South Park too... awesome doesn't cut it!).

Aaaanyway, since I'm so good at giving promises and breaking them, I won't tell you that September will be a post-filled month. But hopefully, for the sake of my sanity (oh how I've missed ranting on this thing), it will be.

When tolerance runs low

2010-08-03T07:14:00.000+05:30

Whoever told you to 'be yourself' was laughing at you behind your back. Nobody wants the bundle of pervy humour, great insecurities and ugliness that you are. For so many years of my life, I was a different man for different people. Then, at the beginning of this year, I had entered Uni and all and I thought I was adult enough to go towards a unified theory of everything. If you ever think of doing the same thing, please don't. People expect you to be a different man for different people. If you can suppress all your cussing when you're in front of your parents, do the same thing when you're not with your closest friends. Keep secrets. Secrets will protect you, as long as you protect them.

Life

2010-07-02T21:30:00.003+05:30

This week has been rather hectic. Some idiot waited till my uni started to blow up the bokkuwa in Kattiya junction, turning the previously super high speed 138 bus route into a messy bumper-to-bumper situ just before Nugegoda. Oh joy. Gone are the days when 45 minutes and two dozen bucks could get you from here to Town Hall. sigh!

The result has been the Father and I having to use alternate routes to get to Uni. Hence passing through Nawala. Hence thinking that I spotted a certain blogger. Hence putting up a status update on Facebook regarding that. Hence leading to a friend of mine asking me what my URL is. #anonymityfail

And like Y said today, I'm not my usual upbeat self. I don't know why, but I guess apathy happens. You start listening to the same old songs waiting for a person who only exists in your dreams to sprout out of the ground. You start disliking people, but they throw one smile at you and you go all wonky. You tell yourself that you don't care about what others say, but flip out when they throw a passing remark about the way you're dressed. You force-feed yourself for a month in the hope of being less epically underweight, only to find that you're just a kilogram heavier. You get into the same bus as that girl whom you used to like a bit, and realise that just two days ago she didn't get into that same bus because you were inside it. *facepalm*

I know this isn't the most appropriate song for the occasion, but to hell with that. Imagine that asking for rain is the main point of the whole song and enjoy! ;)

The post count matters.

2010-06-27T12:46:00.004+05:30

Not really.

I planned to do a lot of blogging during this vacation, but things rarely go according to plan in the Chavieverse (oh no he didn't!) and those plans fell apart. But I'm going to write a brief recap of the things I did in these two months, so that I won't forget so that my post count goes up by one. :D

Went to watch Elected, and almost saw PapareBoy beat someone up. Almost! :( Also met Tulie for the first time! :D

Drew a webcomic after a loooong time, for Dee's TLC. Thanks again, Dee! :)

Visited Meshak, he posted pictures and I posted crappoetry.

Took some pics in Hanthana. Got ripped off by a leech (ironically on the same day that I read Amila's leech post!).

Almost got to visit Pasikudah buh cancelled that to go watch Buddhi De Mel and Wagon Park instead. I don't regret it yet. :D

Met the gang from school again.

Visited the best friend's place in Mathugama, after delaying it for like 3 years. Had another leech episode! :D

Watched quite a few movies. Sita Sings The Blues is mind blowing for the fact that it was almost entirely created by a single animation artist named Nina Paley (also the first Creative Commons movie I've watched! Way to go copyleft!!!). Up, like WALL-E before it, just left a huge hole in my heart. Those Pixar guys really know how to tell a story, don't they?

Started playing Civ 4, my first turn-based strategy game (Yes, I'm always late to the party!). Highly recommend it, though I'm still learning how to play it myself! :D

Computers (and I)

2010-06-26T23:22:00.007+05:30

Computers crash at the most inconvenient of times: when a friend comes over and you need to copy something off his flash drive, or when you've got a report due the next day, or when you're expecting an important E-mail. I was tearing my hair out just over a month ago when my PC went down, and my mom was seriously questioning what they taught us at uni about fixing computers. That was one of those rare occasions when I felt like I had made a big mistake in picking the path that I have chosen.

I've got a really good friend from my A/L class, with whom I used to hang quite a lot at school. We'd be there in the computer periods, idling and checking out the latest Alienware laptops. He was into gaming and introduced me to Alienware, and signed me up for their E-mails, which I still get. So I met him at the reunion, and he delivered to me shocking news. He's in a uni in Malaysia and he was going to get himself a laptop, and he got himself a MACBOOK! EGAAAAD! A ~~little~~ hugeass part of me died. Apple, in my books, is the worst thing that ever happened to the computer trade. (Yeah, I hear you macs in the back piping in about how they never crash...) They're elitists, their software and hardware are as closed as can be, and they treat the customer like an idiot. I mean, look at the iPhone 4 and how they're handling the reception issues! "Don't hold it like that, hold it as if it's made out of human excrement.", old Steve Jobs said. Nice! N-I-C-E!!!

Talking about the computer trade, the computer trade in Sri Lanka makes me seriously want to lob a grenade up someone's rear quarters... And I mean seriously! A laptop that is worth roughly 65K LKR in the international market can be bought for a fabulously low price of 93K LKR from the local 'Authorised Distributors'. And I thought we didn't tax computers... meh. :/

P.s. Uni's back on from Monday. No more late nights. I am a little excited about it now, but all the drama that will invariably take place when it starts is going to test my enthusiasm. Orsum! :(

In a moment of clarity...

2010-06-19T00:35:00.001+05:30

... I write this. No, I didn't smoke anything (although weed featured prominently in tonight's conversation), but I did have the next best thing: a batch reunion.

I tend to over-think. I was worried shitless (I tweeted about it too) that my friends would think I had forgotten them, even though I had never intentionally avoided them, or ever missed a chance to meet up. People drift, and when distances involved are measured in continents rather than an hour's ride on a 138, people tend to drift even more. But when I met them, the guys who used to sit around me in my A/L class, it felt like we had last spoken just yesterday.

A wise person (I think my mom) once told me that the people you befriend in your A/L class will be there with you throughout life. I never really understood what she said till today. I had forgotten the conversations we had, the classes we would cut together, the punishments that a whole class would take as a group rather than rat on who was responsible. I had forgotten the deep intellectual conversations, I had forgotten how open our minds were in some regards, and I had forgotten how damn smart all of them were.

I hope I don't forget again.

Hanthana

2010-06-08T09:34:00.003+05:30

These pictures were taken almost a month back, and since I got my PC back I finally got a chance to upload them! :D (please click on the images to see them at the proper resolution)

The famous communications towers atop Hanthana.

Two Eagles/Hawks in flight. Sorry about the quality since I had to crop the image.

I saw this dragonfly and was reminded of the LBO ad...

"Hmmm... Is this a Pink Skimmer?" I thought! :)

The reason we went there: The gingerbread guest

houses my uncles were building.

The view from the restaurant.

Sorry about the wonky/tilted panorama. Got a

bit carried away taking the shots! :D

Spaced out

2010-06-06T21:04:00.002+05:30

Long post alert: This is what happens when a space buff starts rambling!

Come November, the Space Shuttle will leave on its final journey into Earth's orbit. During the stone age of space exploration, the earliest space modules used a small spherical or conical capsule mounted atop a powerful multi-stage rocket to get people into space. That was how the Mercury, Vostok, Gemini, Soyuz and Apollo programmes worked, and how the Russians and Chinese send and retrieve their cosmonauts and taikonauts from space to this day. The Space Shuttle was the first and only major deviation from this tried and tested method. Instead of using a capsule that could be used only once, the Space Shuttle had an orbiter that could be reused. Instead of using parachutes to land a capsule into the Kazakh steppes or the Pacific Ocean, the orbiter landed on a normal runway like a glorified glider. Instead of using a multiple staged rocket, the shuttle used 3 separate rockets. The main engines on the orbiter were fed fuel from a giant orange fuel tank, and two huge solid-fuelled booster rockets on either side of the tank gave extra thrust during take off, and subsequently jettison from the shuttle and return to Earth to be reused.

Space Shuttle Orbiter (from here)

There were obvious benefits to this new system: The orbiter and booster rockets can be reused multiple times, the payload bay of the shuttle can carry a Spacelab - to carry out experiments in zero gravity - or satellites to be launched by the shuttle. The robotic arm on board can be used to capture and repair satellites and space stations. The shuttle could carry 12 astronauts, as opposed to the 3 or 4 that a capsule could carry.

There were not so obvious drawbacks as well. The booster rockets were solid-fuelled, which meant that they could be relied on more than liquid fuelled rockets to fire, but once they did fire, there's nothing much you can do to control it, a fact that was made brutally clear with the explosion that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986. The main safety feature of the capsule era, the escape rocket, was also missing from the shuttle. The capsule is positioned on the very top of a large rocket, and a small rocket would be attached on top of the capsule. If anything went wrong during lift-off and the astronauts wanted to bail out, they would detach the capsule from the last stage of the rocket and fire the escape rocket, which would blast them off out of harm's way.

Escape rocket from Mercury era (from here)

But the main problem with the shuttle, and the one that eventually lead to its retirement, is the cost. It costs much more to launch a shuttle than it does to launch a traditional capsule-atop-rocket spacecraft. This is why the Russians, even during the tough economic times after the Soviet Union collapsed, were able to launch their Soyuz capsules, while even the world's leading economy couldn't keep launching their shuttles. Don't get me wrong here, the shuttles carried out more missions during this period than the Russians could even dream of, but it was eventually realised that the reusability of the shuttle was not going to pay back for the cost that it took to blast one of these things off into orbit.

SpaceShipOne (from here)

And while NASA is looking to return to its roots by getting rid of the shuttle and going back to old capsule technology, space enthusiasts like Burt Rutan are building next generation reusable space shuttles (Like SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize) that are so cheap to launch that they can even carry space tourists. The commercial space industry is bound to grow from the niche satellite market that it is in right now and move onto bigger things like space tourism and even settlements on other planets and moons (including Luna, our own). Costs will continue to come down, and more powerful rockets and propulsion systems are bound to emerge.

A golden age in space exploration occurred in the 50s, 60s and 70s due to Cold War competition between the US and the Soviets. As competition between various space companies grows, we're bound to see a similar golden age in the future too. But I can't help but wonder if the Space Shuttle was a costly misstep in human evolution into a space faring race.

(not so) celeb crushes

2010-05-31T21:39:00.001+05:30

So Dili tagged me to list the most embarrassing/wrong celebrity crushes I've had over the years. Nothing I say will probably top KERMIT though! ;)

1. Alexis Bledel

Don't let her looks fool ya, that brain can kill!

Yes, I watched Gilmore Girls.Most people who diss the show have never even watched it, or just don't appreciate how well it dealt with a lot of the issues ranging from the challenges of being a single parent, to how girls in Asian cultures find liberation (I just loved Lane... and her mom!), to growing up, to sex drugs and rock and roll, all in it's own charming and quirky manner. So what makes me pick the actress who played Rory, instead of the cute and just utterly-amazing-on-all-levels character that she portrayed? Interviews, aaaand the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (yes I watched that too... so sue me!). I am fully convinced now that Alexis is Rory and Rory is Alexis. And I love her to bits! :)

2. Anna Stern, from The O.C.

Awwww!

Isn't she just one of the most gorgeous geeks ever? And such a sweetheart too. Now why did you have to leave the show so early? :(

3. This might be the weirdest crush on the list, but hold onto your hats:

...

Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Bring out the feds, let's bust this pedo!

She was the force that held the group together during their quest to singlehandedly defeat the ultra powerful Fire Nation. And she's a kickass waterbender and healer too, how cool is that? :)

4. Ginger Foutley from As Told by Ginger

This is getting creepy, I know! O_o

I just love, love, love Ginger! And I've wanted to get into Carl's secret lab ever since I was a kid, and dating his sister might just be the easiest way in! :D

5. And ending things in a classy note:

Sydney Bristow from Alias

She can be anything you want her to be! ;)

Between her mom, her dad, the CIA and SD-6 trying to kill you, she might actually be a pretty nice girl to date!

I hereby tag Harumi, Meshak, PurpleBoxers and Black. Gogogogogo! :D

She's not emo, you are!

2010-05-29T18:56:00.002+05:30

I was on the bus home after a stay at Meshak's place, and this came into my head when I was looking at this girl (she must have been about 17, although she looked older) who was talking to her mom, and this for some reason reminded me of a old old crush. And I hate crappoetry (although I think of this more as a song with a melody than a poem) as much as you do, but I'm going to do the dirty thing to up my post count. Apologies. :)

Note: 'She' is not a single person, but a mixture of all the girls that I was an #epicfail at getting. The first line is a shameless direct lift off 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' (a brilliant song, I must add) and NO I HAVE NEVER CRIED OVER A GIRL!!!1111 :P

She's not a girl who misses much,
And if she says so, it will be such,
There are the many,
Whose dreams she tossed like a penny.

And you should always be on guard,
She strikes without warning inside your heart,
Oh, I wonder if she knows
The pain she causes...

And in the morn, at the break of day,
You've forgot the things she had to say,
Last night when you had
Bit too long a convo.

The tears fall, your heart just aches,
You hide beneath the moody face,
And you hope aloud
She's ain't arsed enough to notice.

And as you lie yourself to sleep,
Inside your dreams she begins to weep,
And then you remember:
She's not a girl who misses much.

Racism, Elected and WAGON PAAAAAARK!

2010-05-24T19:45:00.006+05:30

I was at the BB production Elected on the 22nd of May (last Saturday). I think BB deserves a lot of praise, especially for openly discussing a sensitive topic like racism in Sri Lankan society and also the really good theatre production that they offered the audience that night. It was a forum theatre, meaning the audience got to participate in the story by modifying the way the characters behave in that situation and also giving their feedback on the actions, and basically starting a discussion on this topic of racism. Let me run through the story, and how I felt that it dealt with the issue of racism.

The story takes place in a national university of Sri Lanka, where student council elections are being held. The candidates are two bright 2nd year students, Mihiri, a Sinhalese girl, and Mohan, a Tamil guy.

The drama starts with Mohan giving his speech, talking about how the university infrastructure is crumbling and that he feels that he can give the leadership to change things in uni. He gives due respect to his opponent, and from his confidence it is apparent that he is a popular figure among the student community. Next up, Mihiri talks about very much the same things, but she ends her speech with a twist. "Some people" she says, suggestively turning her eyes towards Mohan, "seem to think that just because we choose to speak in our mother tongue, that we're incompetent. Does speaking in English make you a better leader?" and continues in Sinhala that she believes that she believes that she's one of them (the students, possibly meaning Sinhala students) and she ends it with the outrageous statement (that almost made me go "DAMN!" the first time I heard it) that "Even though the forest changes, the Tiger doesn't change his spots". Tiger. Campaigning against a Tamil student. Racial profiling much?

Ok, now dealing with this part, which is the first act of the play, the only obvious pieces of racism that I could pick up was the Tiger remark. Seriously. See, the director or the scriptwriter makes several key assumptions in writing Mihiri's speech. a) That Tamil students speak more/better English than their Sinhala peers. b) That only Sinhala students take pride in talking in their mother tongue. c) That Tamil students think they're more competent than the Sinhala students because they speak English.

As we all know, Sri Lankan universities conduct all their courses in English, and with good reason. But a majority of students (both Sinhala and Tamil) who enter uni don't have a working knowledge of English and find it hard to keep up with their coursework. This is a major problem in universities, so much so that the authorities are planning to introduce a 6 month English course and subsequent mandatory exam for all university students. Mihiri was trying to tap into this market with her remarks in Sinhala about being one of them and knowing of their problems. A cheap political trick, to turn the anger and disappointment of those students into votes, without actually addressing the issue and offering solutions (extra English classes, perhaps?). We see this a lot in national politics too, but my point is that Mihiri was going for the biggest chunk of that non-English speaking cake by talking in Sinhala (many of those voters might not even understand what she was saying in English previously) and that there wasn't really any racism involved in that decision. Her subsequent jabs about competency and pride in speaking the mother tongue were directed at the English-speaking community, and not at the Tamil students.

The Tiger remark, which she chose to end her speech with, was not at all appropriate and was clearly racist remark. She did what some Republicans in the US resorted to when Barack Obama was running for the presidency, and fear mongered. "That guy's a Tamil, ooooh he must be LTTE", was what she was saying there.

In the second act, Mohan is planning his campaign with a bunch of freshmen during lecture hours. A senior lecturer (one could say the big boss of the uni), Ananda, asks Mohan if he's got permission to take the freshmen out. Mohan cannot produce a letter to prove that he has gotten permission and the freshmen are chased away to their classes. Mihiri on the other hand has no such problems with Ananda, and he lets her use his name to get the hall anytime she wants for her campaign work. He also tells her that he wants to see "one of our people" (meaning Mihiri, the Sinhalese) elected to lead the council, and that he doesn't want to see the culture of the university changed. The audience also learns in this scene (away from Ananda) that Mihiri is using thugs to intimidate voters and get popular and bright students to support her campaign.

The audience reactions to this part was really interesting. Some argued that Mohan being a Tamil, should have known that this was going to happen and made sure that he got a letter. I think that BOTH candidates should get proper letters, since pulling a student out of a lecture is a serious thing to do, and shouldn't be done without permission. So I agree with Ananda's course of action there. In the second scene, it is made apparent that Ananda has a thing for Mihiri, and that Mihiri's milking every bit of her sexuality to get this powerful force on her side. As an audience member pointed out, Ananda is using this "Us and Them" thing as a cover to protect his own interests, or in other words his thing for Mihiri.

In the next part, the lecturer in charge of elections, Himali, confronts Ananda in the common room. Ananda accepts that he did tell the freshmen to return to classes due to the lack of proper permission, and that he doesn't like Mohan. Himali tells him that she thinks Mohan's a perfectly good candidate, and this leads him to mock her telling that she likes to think differently (or in other words, that she's not a racist like him). Preservation of interest? Dunno. It's also revealed that Ananda has been involved in several election malpractices in the past.

The audience generally agreed that Himali, as the 'elections commissioner', should've known that Ananda was trouble and taken steps to neutralise the threat before it became a problem. But having lived through countless elections, and seeing how the elections commissioner gets pushed around, most Sri Lankans would understand that this is hard business.

Now we approach (IMO) the most crucial scene. Mohan approaches an old friend (I don't remember his name so let's call him Aruna) who's a bright student and a brilliant marketer (according to Mohan). Mohan asks him to join his campaign work and do some posters for him, but Aruna refuses, citing exams coming up. Mohan does very little to empathise with Aruna, and after a few more "No"s, leaves telling him that his friend (Mihiri's thug) is here to meet him. Mihiri's thug does a much better job of empathising (or understanding) with Aruna's situation. He is facing economic hardships and his siblings are joining the uni in the near future. The thugs could really mess up his and his family's life. So Aruna is left to decide which candidate to support, his old friend or the one that has the thugs.

Now, Mohan completely dropped the ball in this one. He should've empatised with Aruna's situation and made Aruna see that the only way that his siblings could come into a thug-free campus is if Mohan gets elected. He should've basically said "Look, I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing it for you. Do you want to be pushed around by these thugs all the time? Do you want your siblings to be pushed around? Or do you want someone clean and thug-free running the place?". He didn't, and he let Aruna and his family down by doing so.

A few minor scenes follow. Mohan complains to Himali how Ananda is interfering in the campaign and supporting Mihiri, but doesn't have any proof. Later, Mohan goes to talk to Mihiri as a friend but is given the 'Talk to my hand' by her, and gets beaten up by her thugs. The thugs later kill him or beat him up, and even though the audience interventions were supposed to change this tragic ending into a good one, I don't think we succeeded. We also ran out of time, and I think the BBites should take note of this next time they are staging an FT. :)

Not much racism to discuss, in the end. Just thuggery and a sexy candidate against a guy who can't empathise with his voters and supporters. I'm sorry you lost Mohan, but I don't think it was because you were Tamil. Seriously.

Ok, now Wagon Park. The poster lied! :( There was no Wagon Park, just Milo and Madu (the two guitarists), and you don't promise Wagon Park unless Buddhi's coming, right? That being said, the pre-play music was pretty good, just that Buddhi's Buddhi man... I don't know if he was going to come and then cancelled or something but the poster, in my humble opinion, should've said who exactly was playing. Just a thought. :) Ok, I got to know that the whole group was coming and it was a late cancellation. That being said, the music was pretty good, especially Thushara who sang two excellent covers of a Bob Dylan song (All Along the Watchtower) and a Nine Inch Nails song (Hurt, I think). Good stuff! :)

P.s. My PC's out and it still hasn't been fixed. Woe is me! :( I'm really sorry I'm missing out on you guys and your blogs... but I hope it'll be fixed within the week! :)

Also, ADSL is so bloody slow. It took ages to get this post posted and I can't load some of the other blogs even. It's due to a cable snap I hear... :/

Getting my blog legs (back) on

2010-05-06T12:30:00.004+05:30

Getting back, sitting down and actually writing a post is not easy. And it doesn't help when you think about the people reading, and try to please the reader, without realising that what pleases them the most is just you being you. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding this.

I've wanted to write an update about the (non-existent) love life of mine for sometime now. Baring out personal stuff on the blog can be hard, especially since more and more people from real life start reading the blog, and the regular bloggers are becoming an ever bigger part of my real life. Not that I mind that, but you can't just chuck stuff out there and not deal with the consequences anymore. So you have to really stand by what you write, and I never stand by anything I say, so... problem! ;)

Sorry about the mess I made up there trying to express myself. It's times like these that makes you realise that no matter what, one hundred posts on (ah we're getting to the real point now) you're still learning. With every post you write, every comment you receive, you realise more and more that you're still an infant in the vast blogosphere. You're still learning, you're still understanding yourself and what sort of a person/blogger you are. And that's what keeps people going in this business, I guess. :)

I don't want to drag this post, but there's a vast backlog of things I need to write about, and now that I've gotten going, I'm tempted to tack them on to this post. I really shouldn't!

So I'll end this by saying a heartfelt "Thank You!" to everyone who's stuck with me. There were ugly times, there were useless snippets and posts with wild unverified claims chucked up carelessly into the 'sphere, and there sure was a load of male PMSing, hidden behind jargon (I hate that word so much!) to disguise it's true meaning. I can give you promises that I can't keep, tell you that it won't happen again, but like I said: I'm still learning. This is a totally unplanned spontaneous journey, and you don't know if you'd end up in Arugam Bay or just Wellawatta beach. Let's just hope that it's the former.

Hey!

2010-04-30T23:27:00.006+05:30

Hey 'sphere! :D It's nice to be back after a while. My modem was giving some issues and I couldn't come online, and with the added workload from Finals I didn't get it fixed till today, and now I'm back online. Thank you for checking up on me, Harumi! :)

There are so many things to write about and so many blogs to catch up on, and this two month long holiday of ours will provide ample time for both... But for now, I've gotta go sleep. I hope I'll be seeing you, yes YOU, at tomorrow's gig. Not that I'm a fan of Black Metal but our very own St. Fallen will be performing!

Excited, I am! :D

A sunrise and a sunset

2010-04-12T19:21:00.003+05:30

I don't think I'll be posting anything for a while, so I thought I'd upload some photos that I took around the house... :)

These two were taken on the same day, looking east as the Sun woke up. I'm beginning to play around with the centre-weighted exposure metering on the camera. Funny thing is that I didn't know this feature even EXISTED before I took my first proper look at the manual after like an year and a half of using the camera... *facepalm*

These were taken today, as dusk set in. The first was looking eastwards and the second was looking westwards. We get such lovely sunsets sometimes, and this makes me wish I had a rooftop like Me-shak's! :D

And the final photo is totally unrelated to the whole 'Sunrise sunset' theme, and depicts some little Monkeyboos having mangoes after their leader raided our tree! My comfortable slumber was interrupted by these fellows and had to rush out with eyes still half-closed to chase the buggers away... *grumble* :D

"Malli..."

2010-04-07T22:51:00.001+05:30

"Sit down, I want to talk to you guys" A guy pushes his way into the hall just as we were about to leave.

"Three things I wanna tell you. First, there's an Avurudu festival at Malabe tomorrow, I want everyone in this class to attend."

When he spoke, the class that many lecturers had found hard to control was dead silent.

"Second, there are some absolute jerks in the second year. Please don't get provoked by them. I know that you guys can hammer the shit out of those fellows, but please don't. They're in better terms with the lecturers, and you guys will end up getting suspended in vain."

The guy, who looked really familiar for some reason, spoke on without any sort of hesitation in his voice. He was facing a crowd of a hundred and fifty increasingly hungry students that he was keeping from having lunch. But everyone was still uncharacteristically silent.

"Third, remember why you came here. Not to flirt, not to get into messy relationships, but to study. I'm not telling you not to have fun. Have a girlfriend, or girlfriends or whatever! But don't forget your core target here. Don't let some girl or boy or friend or even your best friend ruin that for you."

"Ok, now cheer up. What are you guys, robots or something? Don't look so scared, I'm just another guy who's giving some helpful advice. So, anyone here who disagrees with me?"

Silence.

"Anyone here who agrees?" "Raise your hands" "Oh come on! Raise them UP!!!"

I think the whole class raised their hands. I sure did... :)

***

Like I said before, he looked quite familiar. I later found out that he was from my school, a few years my senior. There are group projects that student groups have to do, and usually these groups have 10 students. His group has only 3, I got to know, and they have consistently got the highest marks in their batch for all group assignments. If you can go into a hall full of 150 hungry and rather badly behaved first years and speak to them for 15 minutes and get out of there alive, then I don't see how you can even dream of screwing up a presentation in front of a couple of nice lecturers... :D

One for the road

2010-03-31T08:25:00.001+05:30

It's been a few days since I put up a post, and I'm putting this up from uni due to the fact that my internet connection at home has been busted due to lightning... Me without TEH INTERNETS! I KNOW!!! :/ *rants*

Anyway, some friends and I visited a friend that I've been wanting to a long time, and took some pics at his place. Can you guess who the friend is? ;)

Beach panorama

View of Colombo from up north

Sunset clouds

Akon and the Buddha

2010-03-24T08:34:00.004+05:30

I copied this off The Book Baker's blog. A good lesson to all those people who are going insane over Akon's alleged insult to Buddhism. Learn about the peaceful philosophy that you claim to represent before you go doing stuff that bring disgrace to it!

From the Akkosa Sutta:

Once the Blessed One was staying at Rajagaha in the Bamboo Grove near the Squirrels' Feeding Place. Now the brahman Akkosa Bharadvaja heard this: "The brahman Bharadvaja, it seems, has become a monk under the Great Monk Gotama." Angry and unhappy, he went to where the Blessed One was. Having approached the Blessed One, he abused and criticized the Blessed One in foul and harsh words.

Thus reviled, the Blessed One spoke to the brahman Akkosa Bharadvaja: 'Well, brahman, do friends, confidants, relatives, kinsmen and guests visit you?"

"Yes, Gotama, sometimes friends, confidants, relatives, kinsmen and guests do visit me."

"Well, brahman, do you not offer them snacks or food or tidbits?"

"Yes, Gotama, sometimes I do offer them snacks or food or tidbits."

"But if, brahman, they do not accept it, who gets it?"

"If Gotama, they do not accept it, I get it back."

"Even so, brahman, you are abusing us who do not abuse, you are angry with us who do not get angry, you are quarreling with us who do not quarrel. All this of yours we don't accept. You alone, brahman, get it back; all this, brahman, belongs to you."

"When, brahman, one abuses back when abused, repays anger in kind, and quarrels back when quarreled with, this is called, brahman, associating with each other and exchanging mutually. This association and mutual exchange we do not engage in. Therefore you alone, brahman, get it back; all this, brahman, belongs to you."

"People, including the king, know the Venerable Gotama thus: 'The Monk Gotama is the Worthy One.' When does the Venerable Gotama become angry?"

Said the Buddha:

"Where is anger for one freed from anger, Who is subdued and lives perfectly equanimous, Who truly knowing is wholly freed, Supremely tranquil and equipoised? He who repays an angry man in kind Is worse than the angry man; Who does not repay anger in kind, He alone wins the battle hard to win. He promotes the weal of both, His own, as well as of the other. Knowing that the other man is angry, He mindfully maintains his peace And endures the anger of both, His own, as well as of the other, Even if the people ignorant of true wisdom Consider him a fool thereby."

When the Lord proclaimed this, the brahman Akkosa Bharadvaja said this to the Blessed One: "Wonderful, indeed, O Venerable Gotama! Herewith I go to the Venerable Gotama for refuge, to his Teaching and to his Holy Order of Monks. Most venerable sir, may I have the privilege to receive at the hands of the revered Lord Gotama the initial monastic ordination and also the higher ordination of a bhikkhu."

And the brahman Akkosa Bharadvaja received at the hands of the Blessed One the initial monastic ordination and he also received the higher ordination of a bhikkhu. And within a short time of his ordination, the Venerable Akkosa Bharadvaja, living alone, secluded, diligent, zealous and unrelenting, reached that incomparable consummation of holiness for which sons of noble families, having totally abandoned the household life, take to the life of homelessness. With direct knowledge he realized the ultimate, then and there, and lived having access to it. He saw with his supernormal vision: "Ceased is rebirth, lived is the holy life, completed is the spiritual task and henceforth there is nothing higher to be achieved."

The Venerable Akkosa Bharadvaja, indeed, became one of the Arahats.

Politics and apathy

2010-03-22T05:34:00.002+05:30

The coming general elections might be the most apathetic we've had in quite a while. The general public doesn't seem to give 1/100th the shit the candidates are giving when it comes to voting. People are still facing hardships: the cost of living is high, wages are low, and the Maharagama cancer hospital has run out of drugs and has to reuse catheters because the government isn't properly supplying them. Yet candidates are building massive campaign halls (reminiscent of what MR had built at Temple Trees during the Presidential Elections) all around, and spending massive amounts of money on campaigning. In the Colombo district Pachaayudaya, R. Duminda, Boggles and Wayima (a.k.a. Ayomaya Shakthiya) seem to be ahead on the spending. Where the money comes from is anybody's guess, but why the public isn't more concerned about this extravagant spending is even more worrying.

The fight for preferential votes do provide us with the laughs though. Pachaya had a huge cutout in front of the Pannipitiya flyover, and some Duminda supporters had decided to plaster posters of their candidate over Pachaya's mouth! And I wouldn't trust anyone who tells me that they didn't laugh when they saw Niroshan Padukka's poster, where he's posing like a flower girl! ;) At least the level of violence in Colombo seems to be close to nil, whereas in areas like Rathnapura (where Premalal Jayasekara, a.k.a. Choca malli, is running a campaign of terror) even candidates from the ruling party have found it difficult to campaign, so you can imagine what the situation is for the opposition.

The outcome of the election is not apparent at the moment, but I'm willing to bet that the UPFA will win. My best case scenario is that the chauvinistic elements in the government (the NFF and the JHU) as well as those in the opposition (the JVP) are eliminated in the election, and the centrists change the constitution to something with a more decentralised power structure and a weaker President and stronger parliament. The government doesn't need a 2/3rds majority to achieve this, since everyone will support a good constitution. Teamwork and bi-partisanship will produce better results and achieve a solution that's acceptable to all segments of society, instead of just the UPFA voter base...

meh

This guy's got talent!

2010-03-21T11:13:00.001+05:30

I really love this song ('The Lion Sleeps Tonight') and that style of African a cappella music (he does it nicely in solo voice though...). Check out some of his other videos.

Thanks for the link, Sai! :)

Of the past, present, 'feelings' and lau...

2010-03-20T17:35:00.003+05:30

Not my longest title ever, but yeah... prettttty long! ;)

I'm in a I-don't-wanna-eat-anything mood today. I was going through some old photos from the good year that was 2008. Me, classmates, brothers forever, class trip to the beach, fun... you get the picture right? I miss that brotherhood. I'm not saying that I don't have good friends anymore (my friends are awesome) but the thing is, those uncomplicated days of having fun whenever we wanted to have fun are over. I mean, at uni it's gotten to a point where my friends and I can't be happy even when we want to be, as if a swarm of dementors are forever hanging over us.

This started a few weeks back, during the midterms and just after, and (predictably) involves some girls. They had been dropping hints to a mutual friend that my friends and I don't talk to them and that we're apparently 'big headed'! :S Hello!!! You don't even know us! :/ Things have gotten into a muddled soup as they usually do when girls, guys and relationships are involved, and it has got to a point where I had to write a post about it.

I really don't know how my friends (Me-shak and Y) feel about this matter, but it's deeply bothering me. I've never felt this kind of inability to just be happy and laugh my worries away. Very unnerving. And what's even more discomforting is that it's affecting my ability to think straight and write code! :/

Ok, 'nuff ranting. I hope this passes, and whatever Monday brings, I'm going to smile, be my sweetest self and laugh at everything that happens, for better or for worse! I might get slippers thrown at me, but at least I'll be laughing! :D

random post #61

2010-03-18T08:47:00.005+05:30

I haven't written one of these since this, and that was ages ago.

So, you know, I have too much time on my hands! ;) So I conducted a quick survey this morning, going to 25 blogs at the top of my blogroll (my blogroll is ordered according to time of latest posting) and looking through their archives for their first post. I put the month they started out and the year separately. This is not a scientific poll or anything, the sample size is too small. But it was fun looking at the results nonetheless!

Here's the date of first posting, categorized by year:

(Ignore the parchment-like colours. I did some shtooopid image manipulation on them to make them look old! lol)

I also categorized them according to month:

So, in conclusion, more people tend to start blogging at the start of the year than at the middle of the year. The explanation that I've come up with is that the start of the year brings many changes: New schools, new places of work, etc. and this leads to bloggage! :O Anyway, should do a proper survey someday with all the blogs on Kottu or something... :)

***

I also wanted to get rid of these two photos that I've had but didn't get a post to tack them onto. They're vertical panoramas (stitched together from multiple images).

***

I shall finish off with this. I had to, absolutely HAD to, include this in the post...

A Softer World: 539

I hope you'll excuse the randomness! ;)

On Police brutality

2010-03-16T03:48:00.004+05:30

This post is not about the Trincomalee incident. Details of that are still hazy and we will have to wait to find out what really happened. The editor of the Divaina yesterday had a hard hitting editorial in which he said something along the lines of "While man came out of the jungle years ago and attempted to shed his animalistic instincts to become a more civilized creature, the police is on a course which has taken them back to the jungle clad in grass skirts, and they have proceeded to remove those skirts and live in the nude" - Ouch! He went on to warn that "...If police brutality continues to grow onto a point that the general public cannot take it silently anymore, we will see the public taking up arms to protect itself, and therein lies a great danger". He also paints a picture of a dark future where law and order have broken down and armed gangs (with public support) and police will be engaged in a civil war. A bit over the top, but based on what we see today, it is entirely possible that something of this nature could happen.

The Tibetan-Sri Lankan monk and poet S. Mahinda thero was a freedom fighter involved in Sri Lanka's struggle to gain independence from British rule. His poetry aimed to awaken our sleeping nation and create a virtuous and just society. To quote one of his poems:

උස් තැන් දැක හැකිලෙන්නෙ
මිටි තැන් දැක පුප්පන්නෙ
නිවටුන් බව සිතමින්නෙ
මගෙ පුතා නැලවෙන්නෙ

...which roughly translates to "My son thinks that those who become meek before the powerful, and those who become aggressive before the powerless, are indeed cowards". Isn't the Sri Lankan police force a good example of that? Do they not attack the weakest segments of our society in the most unjust ways? School kids, mental patients and the disabled and elderly have all been victims of police brutality. And is the police force helpless when it comes to fighting the real criminals, who also happen to be powerful? Don't they become meek when they see the drug lords, thugs, Mafia bosses and Politicians and their families?

If the Police force isn't reformed, and the public's faith in the criminal justice system is restored, the bleak days predicted in the Divaina editorial might not be far off...

Friday Morning

2010-03-12T19:18:00.002+05:30

Me-shak and I are sitting side by side in a hall, stuck in a lecture that won't end for another 3 hours. The lecturer drones on and on about some Simpson guy and his law, and how matrices are multiplied or something. As if we care. The brain cells refuse to work, the beat of the papare ring inside our heads. The centre of the universe is calling out to us. And as soon as the lecture finishes, we are off... off to where we should've gone 3 hours earlier!

The centre of the universe: A panoramic view (click to view larger)

It's ROYTHO Taiym!!! :D

2010-03-11T08:55:00.000+05:30

I'm about to make a shocking revelation. Recent polls have shown that most people don't go to the Roy-Tho to watch cricket! This might be shocking, but it kinda makes sense too.

Photo by Indi (http://www.flickr.com/photos/indi/) / CC BY 2.0

A wise man (I can't remember exactly, but I guess it was a blogger) once said "The Roy-Tho isn't a match mate, it's a freaking Carnival!", and I couldn't agree with him more. What sets this 131-year-old annual spectacle (the second longest running continuous series in the history of Cricket) apart from any other match is the carnival-like atmosphere that prevails. The segment of the match that most people really look forward to isn't the cricket, but the breaks - for lunch, for tea and after play has finished - when everybody takes to the field and goes around and around, meeting old friends and making new ones. The huge Royal and Thomian college flags make their laps, and old boys singing their school songs lustily. Everyone joining in on the fun: the old, the new, the Royalists, the Thomians, the boys and of course, the lovely ladies that the big match never fails to attract.

Play will get underway in a couple of hours time, and I'll be missing the first day due to some unfortunate circumstances. But all I can say right now is "I'm glad to be a (tiny) part of this!". May the brotherhood and the friendly rivalry between these two great schools last forever! :)

The one after that

2010-03-08T16:17:00.002+05:30

I'm terrible at this form of writing, but I hope everyone will forgive me for writing this little n00bass tale! :)

"Do you remember the first time we met?"

The girls giggle.

"You were soooo bigheaded, man!" Penny says, in her jovial tone.

"Was not... we were really normal kids" Will replies.

"Haha, were we?" James says, barely concealing his laughter... "The others might have had a different idea about how we looked"

"I still remember that shy smile you put the first time you talked to us" Lily says, looking at James.

The girls giggle again.

***

It was their first major test after joining. The kids were streaming out of the classroom, but Kim just lay there, face hidden behind cupped hands. It was obvious to Chris and Will that she was crying.

"Go and tell Sean", Will told James.

An hour later, her tears were falling down harder than ever.

"I can't do this anymore guys. He doesn't want me to continue... He says we have enough money to last 5 generations now, he doesn't want me to finish this..."

***

It was a warm and sweaty March afternoon, much like the early March drought of 2010.

"You guys sure you want to do this?" Sean asked.

"With pleasure mate" replied Will.

"There, her car's coming in. She's getting down!" James points at the black Mercedes Benz.

The boys cross the Galle Road, and what happened in the minute that followed will forever be remembered by everyone in their batch. In one swift move, Sean punched the Groom in the face, took her hand, and in a flurry of Wedding gown, they were on the run. Running down Galle Road in the midday sun, hailing down a 100 bus, and making a dash for it. Very reminiscent of 'The Graduate', yes. But Kim hated that movie, and her smile faded far quicker than Elaine's did.

***

It was indeed a miracle that they were graduating together on that day, but their time was up. They walked out of the little room, Kim and Sean with their hands intertwined, and Will looking at Penny in the weirdest way possible. But that, my friends, is a story for another day! ;)

After Hours

2010-03-07T10:45:00.002+05:30

I've been thinking (oh noes!)... The lower your expectations are in life, the happier you are going to be. Does that mean that you won't be giving it your best? Stretching yourself to the maximum possible? Yes, or maybe. Does it really matter? Not if you stop, take a look around, and enjoy the little things in life... :)

(One, two, three)
If you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
and say hello to never

All the people are dancing
and they're having such fun
I wish it could happen to me

But if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again

If you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the wine-glass out
and drink a toast to never

Oh, someday I know
someone will look into my eyes
And say hello
you're my very special one

But if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again

Dark party bars, shiny Cadillac cars
and the people on subways and trains
Looking gray in the rain, as they stand disarrayed
oh, but people look well in the dark

And if you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
and say hello to never

All the people are dancing
and they're having such fun
I wish it could happen to me

Cause if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again
I'd never have to see the day again, once more
I'd never have to see the day again

Hello 'sphere, how have you been?

2010-03-04T11:27:00.006+05:30

It's a beautiful sunny Thursday morning, and I don't have any lectures today! :D YAY!

I wanted to write a post about everything that went on, but was just utterly exhausted at the end of the past few days to get around to it. My posting frequency has gone down a bit in the last few months or so, and I need to get it back up to something acceptable like 10 posts a month, at least...

So anyway, last Sunday I got onto a 255 (always a bad idea) to go to Mount, and the busdriverkakkiman took 1 hour and a lazy 15 more minutes to get there. Why go to Mount on a Sunday, you might ask. Well, it was to go see TRALE, which would be ending on Sunday, or so I thought. A quick walk from the bus stand took me to the Small Club grounds, but when I got there I found out to my utter horror that it was empty, there was a Cessna which was partially covered up and a Helicopter on a truck waiting to be taken away. The poster that I had put up had it's dates wrong, you see, and the supposed 3 day event had been reduced to a 2 day one. It was one of those epic *facepalm* moments, as fell down on my knees and started wailing like a baby. Or not.

Anyway, the day's adventures were far from over. It was Paparé Boy's birthday and the wonderful bunch of bloggers had decided to throw him a surprise party, since he was all emo and going to slit his wrists and kill himself one of these days! hahahaha ;). So anyway, I went up to ODEL and happened to see Jerry walking out, I shouted "JERRY", "GERALDINE" and "BOB THE BUILDER" but alas, my uppercase shouts went unheard. So I did what every stalker at his first ~~stalker~~ blogger meet-up does and followed the poor boy, ambushed him right in the middle of the road and stabbed him in the back with a bottle of Apple Soda. And then waved, said hi and smiled my sweetest little smile. What a way to introduce yourself, right?! :D Anyway, the meetup was fun, everybody was really fun to listen to. And that's what I did. I mean, it was too much fun to just watch them interact and listen to stories of how Paparé Boy did unmentionable things to fellow male bloggers and how oceangirl- errrm, nevermind! :D Anyway, in the middle of all of this I got a mad urge to shout "Wordpress SUCKS!", but it was just me and Paparé Boy against like 9 highly muscular Wordpress users so I kept my mouth shut! ;) The night ended with Makuluwo and Foxy discussing how best to kill babies with your bare hands or something sick like that, and then beating the crap out of ~~each other~~ Foxy. All in all, it was awesome to finally meet the people behind some of the best blogs in Sri Lanka and I can't wait to do it again! :)

Annnnnnyyyyywaaaaai, I'm really bored now. It's 11:21 and if we had uni today Y, Me-shak and I would be sitting at a table in the canteen, doing our customary ritual of cut-the-lecture-and-sip-tea. Well, they sip the tea and I sip a Milo. I never really got the concept of tea. I mean, boiled leaves and sugar? :/ And I come from a family involved in this whole tea racket also, such a traitor! lol ;D

Meet my friend Me-Shak!

2010-02-28T22:25:00.004+05:30

He's new to the blogosphere, but he shoots with an eye for the perfect capture that many a photographer would dream about! Stay tuned to his blog for some amazing photographs from around the country in the coming weeks, together with prose written in his unique and witty style... :D

http://me-shak.blogspot.com

On the TRALE again

2010-02-24T17:11:00.007+05:30

Ok, I'll start this post with a *facepalm* 'coz one of my very first posts was about last year's TRALE. I won't link to it, because it's embarrassing to even look at that thing! :O My connections to TRALE are vaguely interesting. I helped organize its predecessor event called "The Miniature Transportation Exhibition" in 2008. I was helping out with TRALE as well, but life happened and I had to leave school two months before it took place... And to add some spice to TRALE '09, the LTTE conducted an air raid on the first night of the event!

So anyway, if you guys are free this Friday, Saturday or Sunday, and have an interest in aviation and model railroads and vintage cars, head down to Mount Lavinia for a transportation exhibition like no other! And who knows, you might find a certain blogger lurking behind a Cessna or something! lol :)

TRALE 2010: From the 26th to the 28th of February, 9.00 AM to 10.00 PM, at the STC Small Club Grounds (the grounds right next to the Galle Road)

We now conclude the shameless advertising segment of tonight's newscast. And in other news, exams are finito tomorrow and the presentation I mentioned has been postponed! Could life get any better than this??? (no) :D