Tharu's Blog

GPS Assisted Cornering

2012-02-07T23:31:00.001+05:30

Disclaimer: if you crash, its on your own cash. No responsibilities taken for following guidelines here!

Okay, you might think this is some sort of AGPS crap, but no. This is how I’d describe driving with a GPS device hooked onto your car.

This applies to Sri Lanka, and I’m pretty sure it would for most Asian and other developing countries as well.

The fact that there aren’t many GPS providers with accurate data makes navigation; hell, to guys like me. I usually can’t memorize any road. The only roads I have in my head are the ones I travel or drive very frequently. Unlike my father and some other people like several cousins I have, I neither can tell a guy how to reach Kandy with n-turns and m-roads in the description nor can I listen to that description and figure the road out.!

That’s where GPS comes in. I’m not the kind of guy who buy expensive hardware off the market if there’s a free alternative. So my alternative is Google Navigation powered by Android. I’m not here to talk about Navigation and directions. I’m here to talk about Navigation and cornering.

The level of detail Gmaps gives in cornering was tested by myself on two trips now. The first was the family trip we had to Katharagama. It proved vital in the Horana-Rathnapura road. The second was the more recent trip to Badulla. In addition to the Horana-Rathnapura road, I used it for the entire trip.

Before I elaborate, take a good look at these

This is Racedriver GRID.

and Need for Speed Underground (Sorry for the view, but this is the best I have in my collection)

and this is my setup;

Yes, it’s the lower left that makes them similar.

I know exactly what comes to your head. So let me explain.

The phone shows me the Google map in navigation mode (if you think navigation is disabled outside the USA, you need to grow up and root your phone) In the map is the latest and up to date version of the map. I say this because before these ‘trips’ I check the Google map myself and correct the road alignment to the map myself.

So before I reach any part of the road, I know how its going to lay out. The only thing I need to figure out is the placement of the vehicles in front of me.

I know, you still look a bit astonished. You have the issue; of the need to ‘look’ at the map to do that. This is where the pictures I showed you come in. If you have played NFS, GRID and most other racing games, you need to know when to keep the eye on the road and when to peek at the map. This needs intense practice.

If you keep your eyes in the map too long, you will crash for sure. and you need to keep in mind not to peek at every corner. Keep a small cache memory of the bends, and never peek while taking the curve.

If you’ve driven your car long enough and know what you’re doing with the map, this will be the coolest way to drive.

What I have seen is that most drivers calculate the speed of approach for a curve after they have reached the apex of the curve. In places where multiple curved exist, this is troublesome. And then they brake at the apex, resulting in a jerky ride, a gear shift and wasted fuel.

With this method, you know what the bend looks like. This is the sort of knowledge which daily drivers have on these roads. then you can brake, shift or even accelerate accordingly to the bend ahead.

Take a look at this bend-set. would you know that U shape before you take the first one to the right and then passing the smaller ones? If I was going in this spot, I’d stop overtaking others altogether, and start slowing down. Take the map off and visualize the bend. All you see is a left trun! And imagine this in the night.!

Hope you guys got my point. But remember, you need to

1. Keep you eyes on the road. NOT on the map. Just peek on it for several milliseconds.

2. Keep the device level with your vision. Never keep it anywhere you need to turn or lower your head to look at it.

3. Setup the system BEFORE you go.

4. Always keep in mind that the map might be wrong. use it to take a hint. Don’t try to drive the shown path

5. Use common sense (yeah right!)

Note: if you see the blue navigation path off from the yellow/white road, the road is probably right. Gmaps updates itself in stages, and when someone corrects the road, the navigation takes time to update. So the navigation layer might show old data.

If you see that some of the parts you drove was drawn wrong, go to mapmaker.google.com and correct it!

Cheers!

The Little green bot

2012-01-10T21:52:00.003+05:30

After a long long time, something came up to post. :D

I was able to publish my first android application yesterday. It isn't an advanced app. And in fact, it was the very first app that I used to learn android programming. When I purchased the market publisher account, I didn't have any app to publish.
So what I did was, I re-did the whole thing at home since my original program was in the office laptop. The older version I did just had text boxes so that users need to enter text.

But after several office Java projects and Android learning of my own helped to revamp the UI a bit and I got it compiled.

You can check it out at
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tharu.subnet

laters...

Windows 8, Developer Preview, my way

2011-09-16T23:21:00.001+05:30

I downloaded the Windows 8 developer preview yesterday and got a test disk and installed it today to check out the all new OS in town. I got to say, the smartphone and the tablet has taken their toll on the PC. Now, the PC’s OS has a tablet interface in it! damn! the world has changed.

As you might usually think, I am not writing this off in Win 8. The reason? well, I tried to install the Windows live writer to it and it started downloading .NET framework 3.5.1 or something from Windows update and I saw my Win 8 BSOD’s twice in an hour. Those are the BSOD’s I saw for a long time in any PC. (Are we missing them? ) So I put the screenies I took to a flash drive and started writing off in Win 7 instead.

This is it. The all new Metro style interface for Windows 8. It has most of the apps that we use day-to-day I guess. IE, a twitter app, and a Social Network app to connect Facebook to, RSS reader and some other stuff.

The tiles update themselves after configuring accounts on them. I could not try adding/removing tiles coz I forgot to try that.

The metro UI has the search feature that comes with Windows 8. It is the only way we can open an application, even Paint. The start menu is now a thing of the past.! When we open the metro mode (or whatever its called) and start typing, the search bar comes alive from the side and starts searching through apps, settings and other stuff.

The spotlight of discussion that was on the Building Windows Blog was the existence of two Internet Explorers. The PC type one and the tablet type one. Although both share the settings, history and all, the experiences are quite different.

This is IE 10, on the desktop. You might notice that the desktop is pretty much the same thing except for the Windows Logo. When you click that, the screen goes straight back to the tiles. (Ah, NOW you miss the start menu?)

This is the metro style tablet friendly IE. Notice the entire thing is full-screen and when I right-click, the top and bottom bars appear with tabs and the address bar shown here as well. It’s a real pain in the back to right click every time you need to switch tabs. But in a touch environment, that would make some sense. Even though the Windows team expects a lot of bad comments about dual-IE, I think it’s a good thing to keep both in line to cater the PC and tablet users. (Or in tablets’ case, when using the keyboard or the touchscreen)

Given below is a snap of the downloads progress bar.

The release is full of bugs. apart from the BSOD, I experienced that sometimes the app tiles don’t work when clicked. And there was a time that things wouldn’t just show up in the screen after login. And this social network app crashed saying I need to login.

and the Store was not available (well its not a bug anyway )

But the twitter app worked fine

The animations in the system are also revamped. Take a look at this waiting animation at installation.

Windows 8 setup animation

The lock-screen is real eye candy. Take a look at this;

Lockscreen animation

The desktop environment has also gone through some changes as well.

First, these are the properties.

And some eye watering reality

Most of the changes are to good old Explorer. The ribbon is now official for explorer.

I know for sure this will make things really easy to work with and will take some considerable amount of time getting used to.

The title bars have gone through some design change.

These are the new buttons

As opposed to the old ones in Win 7.

They look somewhat square I guess.

I tried to mimic that multiple copy case, but ended up in an error saying the desktop was in use.! So we cant put two files from two sources to the same destination at once? That’s peculiar.

That’s about it.

At the end of it all, I have to sum up. 2 great working apps, @ BSODs, 0 shutdowns (yes, it was a restart and a reset!) and some time later, I think I still like the new OS. We have to keep in mind, this is pre-beta (in mozilla terms, aurora channel)

I’ve got a feeling we will get one heck of an OS with this Windows release. I wish the Windows team all the best, and I will keep track of the changes when they happen.

The Great Virtual Wall

2011-09-06T09:29:00.000+05:30

Just read some news regarding Chinese search engine Baidu doing some development copying the Google's OS Android to make a mobile OS called yi.

When seeing the website, I realized how lame China has become. And this came in to my head. The great firewall in place in China. I wanted to do a comparison of a controversial search term.

Enough words, see the pics. This is what internet censorship means. Lets hope our government don't implement something like this.!

The search term was "Tianamen Massacre"
This is the bing results set:

Google's hits:

What our old friend Yahoo! had to say:

And finally, this is the Baidu result set! According to them, I've searched for a myth! XD

Barclays Sri Lanka cheating when selling computer hardware

2011-08-24T11:08:00.000+05:30

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[update 2011-11-17]
Nalin, from barclays personally called me. As per Nalin, they have got a set of cards from Singapore hand delivered to the shop. But I insisted that Nalin look in to the matter and I told him how sure I was about this. I'm putting this on top because this post is showing up in the 3rd Google hit for "Barclays Sri Lanka".

Nalin assured me that he will look into it and he will personally monitor the hardware sold. So I think we need to give these guys a small break and see.

Hope you can get the stuff done my friend. Hope we all can go back to Unity Plaza and buy good stuff as we have done in the past.

Cheers.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The story starts when I went to Unity Plaza to buy some RAM for a project at office. We needed five 2GB DDR 2 RAM cards to expand the memory of some of our computers used for a project. So armed with petty cash (some 'petty' cash that is!) Nalaka and I went there.

Since I have purchased a lot of items from Barclays and know the price is cheap, I went straight to the shop. Its what I normally do. If you have circled around unity plaza you might know that the final destination is most of the time, at Barclays. So I cut the crap, we needed the cards so that the colleagues installing the software can have it as soon as possible.

Once we asked the counter, the salesman asked the usual questions with his usual intentions. What is the bus speed.? I straightaway asked whether they have 667MHz or 800MHz. The man asked the question only to reply me saying "we only have 800MHz". The purpose of the question might be to judge whether we are complete IT illiterate or in the higher end of the spectrum. They do that to ether sell crap or to increase the prize of products I guess.

After that, we were told that there were two brands. I insisted on buying Kingston rather than the other which if I heard correctly was ADATA. The prize was 3300 rupees and we told him we needed five of it.

Then they billed it, as usual, and then another guy in the counter for issuing stuff was told something in tamil by the salesman.(Geez, I should have taken Kuru with us!) Then he took out the cards.

Then did I spot that three of the cards were in the Kingston packing and two were not!

I took the cards which did not have packing to my hand and gave it a good look. My Gosh! Any idiot who has seen a RAM card could say it was used!

The the following discussion took place which made my blood boil!

Me: Why is that two cards are out of the packing and three are in the packing?
Issue Guy: [silent, keeps packing other stuff]
Me: Where is the packaging of these cards
Him: We can give you a packaging, but its from a 1GB card
Me: I dont want a packaging, I want to know why these cards dont have their OWN!

And when I looked closer I could see that the Kingston stickers were rolled up in the sides, indicating clearly, the RAM was used. Usually the heat inside the casing loosens the glue of the sticker and when you remove the RAM from the slots which are usually tightly packed between the cooler and the PSU, you tend to roll up the sticker. Besides, there were marks in the gold contacts which showed insertion!

Me: These RAM are used. Mister, I'm not here to practice buying RAM, I want original cards.
Him: We're out of stock. These cards are the last. And these came as bulk, thats why no packaging!

At that point my boiling point passed! How stupid does this guy think I am to assume RAM cards come without a packaging. What does he think I'd assume! That the cards come wrapped in a rubber band strapping them together?! I was furious over the statement. I lectured him a bit and I straightaway told them that I am NOT paying for the used cards.

After some mumbling to themselves they decided to return me the money for the two cards. Nalaka was adamant that we leave all FIVE of them behind and buy somewhere else! I just couldn't do that because we'd risk the availability factor of RAM in other shops! you know Unity, some stuff go rare all of a sudden!

So we paid for the three cards and came back. I told the salesman clearly that I would never buy from them again!

More than that, this is not the first time they tried to cheat me.

When I went to buy dad's laptop, after all the payment and stuff was finalized the salesman tries to give me the laptop on the shelf for show! On that day too they tried to give me the "last of the stock" trick. I straightaway told him that I want the money back. Then he sends someone to bring me a brandnew laptop! I think they try this trick with everyone!

And that laptop lost its motherboard in a month. The warranty is that they repair it and give it back. Those of you who think this "1 year warranty" is part to part, its a hoax! What they do is they repair it and ask you to wait 2,3 weeks till it gets back. Dad had to wait 2,3 weeks.

Same thing happened when my monitor went haywire at the end of its 3 year warranty. I had my BIT project going. I didn't claim the warranty. I somehow kept the thing going till I finish the project!

I have the following items in my PC from them

Foxconn 45cm-s Motherboard
2x 1GB DDR2 667MHz Kingston RAM (Good thing I registered and verified them then)
HD501LJ Samsung HDD
Sony DVD+RW drive (the model number sadly is forgotten :D )
Foxconn 9600GT nVidia card

I would never buy from Barclays again. And those of you who are planning to buy from them, I cant stress this enough, DO NOT BUY FROM THERE!

I will send complaints to memory.lk and Kingston Taiwan, whom I believe are the dealers for Sri Lanka and Asia.

And one more thing. Kingston has their website for verifying the RAM. (http://kingston.com/verify/)If you have a mobile phone or a laptop which you can access the net, do it ON THE SPOT and verify the RAM.

Facebook apps

2011-08-11T20:45:00.001+05:30

With the boom of the social networking sites comes the apps. Facebook has almost the number of apps equal to the number of users. But with apps come security issues that is not a good thing to ignore.

I needed to develop an application at office for some test. Got me quite some time to figure out the API requirements and authentication schemes. It is with some training and trail and error that I figured the thing out.

With that, I got a warning to give out to you guys. When an application adds to your profile, it requests some rights. You might remember the window that has two buttons saying "Allow" and "Disallow". When you allow an app the right, say to post to your wall, its normally granted when you are online and for a limited time. (but, there is a certain mode that apps can request to function when you are offline)
When this right its granted, the third party site can use a token to request information in your profile from facebook.

The risk with this API is that, when you grant the permissions, its for ever. Until you remove the app from the profile, it can play GOD!
If it has the correct permissions, which you seldom check when granting by clicking "yes", it can add or remove friends, access your pictures (and even store them in their site) and even send and respond to your friend's messages.

So when you add an app next time, make sure you read what's in the rights dialog box. And refrain from adding apps like "what kind of celebrity ass you have" or "what color is your ghost's ass". I think you realize we don't need to give access to some stupid app to ruin our account. Remember, once you add the app, it takes seconds for it to gather almost all the information it can from the profile, and even if you remove it later, that information is still there in a third party sever!

Logitech’s Idea of languages

2011-07-21T19:52:00.001+05:30

do you speak this language? I don’t!

youPissMe, iPayback! Unlocking an Apple iPhone 3GS.

2011-07-08T21:26:00.001+05:30

After my cousin brothers asked me whether I could unlock an iPhone 3GS, I could not say no to it because of two things. Firstly, I know damn well the guides are out there and there is this small grudge with mister Jobbs, for ruining the face of technology and for suing my favorite hardware developer Samsung for no apparent reason other than the definition of the word “icon”.!

So I got the phone yesterday for the ultimate task, unlocking the iPhone. Strange thing though, I didn’t feel much awe towards it when I laid hands on it. This was the first time I got my hands on an iPhone like this. Beforehand, I just got glimpses or I got to hold it and give it back. But after all that droid over me it was just another phone, far inferior in technology and innovation. A mere shadow, which was once the great iPhone. I remember how much I awed it back then when the first iPhone came out. But, people in the office had some love towards it though.

The first thing I did to it was take some photos of the phone with it’s Chinese cousin. Harsha was using a phone from Korea called the “WiFi phone” which was a copy of the iPhone. Look at the friends in hands.

The unlock screens of the phones. Hey Mr. Silva in the real phone and Master Chipmunks in the fake.! Please ignore the time on the 3GS, its never been up on a network to get SL time on it.!

The sides. Notice the contacts on the lower one? That’s the wifi phone’s dock connector. It has a small diary like dock mechanism which has a qwerty keypad in it. We’re so used to calling Harsha “Talking to the Diary to get an appointment” when he speaks on it! (For that same reason he doesn’t bring the dock to office anymore!)

Top and left sides. Notice the volume rocker in the iPhone.

The backs.! the real iPhone is on the right side.

So I took it home. After coming home, it was reading for the methods all along. There were so many methods. Rather confusing ways than rooting an android!

For those of you who don’t know, the iPhone is given to people on a contract. The “Contract” says that you need to produce a credit check to the seller. Only valid citizens of the country and in case of USA, green card holders can produce this. You MUST sign the contract to get the iPhone at the lower price. Even if you don’t want the contract, you still need to produce the documentation and buy the phone at a alarming prize. Usually about $200 more than what you pay with the contract, and this is the best part…you still get an operator locked phone! (yes, and are you still wondering why I have grudges with Jobbs?)

Unlike android phones having a simple setting to permit apps to be installed from sources outside the market, the stock iPhone does not let you install apps off anywhere other than the apple’s “App Store”. This, however can be avoided. Its called “Jailbreaking” the iPhone. This of course violates the terms and conditions of the contract and voids your warranty. Its of course synonymous to “the crap at the top of the ‘I agree’ button” in SL!

Its still not operator unlocked. To do that there is an app called Cydia. which can be installed a software addon called ultrasn0w to unlock the device.

So after some reading, I decided to use the redsn0w method to Jailbreak the device. It was on IOS version 4.3.3 and had a baseband version 05.16.02. According to this guide, this baseband cannot be unlocked with ultrasn0w. I need to upgrade the baseband to 06.15.00 to do that.

The baseband upgrade can only be done with flashing an IOS of the iPad to the iPhone. Don’t ask me how that works, I think it works as fine as the HTC firmware working on my X8!

So I did that at office today. I cant download that effing 400M file at home. It would take forever to download.!

So I got iTunes to restore the downloaded firmware, and reflashed it with the redsn0w application in the PC. Its all there in the guide.

The problem was at step 13. (yeah. 13) The application crash exited with no message in the PC! The phone is now in a special mode to flash it. It does NOT turn ON and there is no response! Now I started panicking a bit. Re-run the software, same thing.!

Then I gave the lappy a reboot! That did the trick! It went forward.! Phew. That got me worried a bit.

After some time, it booted up. The cydia app was there. Now to download the ultrasn0w add-ons! Not that easy! You see, this is still an operator locked phone! But there’s always WiFi! I burrowed a Mobile WiFi hotspot that was in for testing, and then used the HSPA network to link the iPhone to the internet. An alternative would have been to use Barnacle WiFi tethering on my phone – and that would have been ironic – but barnacle was somewhat unstable.

So I downloaded the add-ons and ran it and after a reboot….

It was up and running on the home network!

I got some 3G signals as well. Its not that good in the place I sit, maybe due to some interference. Used a code to change the SMS center number and SMS was OK!

The phone was collected by my brother in the evening. He must be giving it some hard time now!

Today is one hell of a day!

The Plus hype

2011-07-02T20:56:00.001+05:30

Google recently launched it's latest product Google Plus to a limited number of users. I got the invitation from one of my friends at work despite Google's message saying that they have run out of invitations.
At first it was way too complex for me to use. But after some time I got the touch of it. The only problem now with plus is that there are no active users there. About 5 purple asked me to invite them, but they don't seem to have come forward.

google better let this loose before this becomes the next wave!

Bad cheap 3D glasses

2011-05-27T23:19:00.001+05:30

I got one of those Red-Cyan 3D glasses from eBay to check out the 3D options in my 9600 a long time ago. I was playing GRID back then and I tried to play the game in 3D.

But the glasses didn’t seem to give any good quality 3D feeling rather than the game looking washed out and grayish all over. And it gave me a funny feeling in the eyes too.

Today, I found a link saying that You Tube has rolled out some 3D vids and I used the same glasses to check it out. Again, no change and same crap experience.

But after removing the glasses, I had this funny feeling in the eyes.! Turns out I see a more bluish version of the world from my left eye and a more reddish one from the right! Damn you eBay! I’m not going to use these glasses again. And if you have one of these, please use caution using it. My recommendation is not to use it, and if you’re planning to buy, THEY DON’T WORK!

Easter egg in Angry Birds for Chrome?

2011-05-17T17:40:00.001+05:30

I installed the Angry Birds for Google Chrome application and after some slingshots I got this weird chrome icon spinning inside the window, but in a very large height.

I’m used to dive bomb the birds when I cant aim good enough. Look at what I found!

This chrome icon spins around the black bar seen above. Cant see anything on this on the web!

The Solid State

2011-05-10T20:12:00.001+05:30

I’ve been drooling at SSDs ever since they came out to the market. Two things stopped me from buying them. First was the price and the second is the unavailability of the drives in SL. I remember Anusha and Gayan imported two Intel SSDs. I had more dire needs at that time than installing an SSD into the PC.

But last week Podi mama said he’s coming from USA to SL. So he asked me at the last minute whether I needed anything transported

Gave me a dizzy feeling trying to remember something that was light enough for him to bring and something that I could not buy here. After a rigurous search for five minutes (yeah, you read right, that’s what I meant by “last minute”! ) I got the Samsung 470 series SSDs.

The cheapest was $130 which was 64G. So I went for that since I don’t have much cash for PC hardware! Besides, I wont need a bigger SSD since I don’t have enough RAM to disable the pagefile and pagefiles on SSDs are not a good config.

So he bought this for me from FRYS.com.

The looks of the drive are great.

Had to do some software juggling with BIOS to initialize the drive. The same thing that I had to do when I got the new 500G Samsung.

But performance wise, I don’t see any major improvement! Why? This is why;

These guys are slowing me down. Add to that the pagefile in the older drive, you get one sluggish system. So I fear that I’d go for a processor upgrade. It’ll happen if I manage to do two things;

One is to upgrade the BIOS. Yes. Shitcon (aka Foxconn) has a new BIOS updated in their site. It boasts 4G RAM support. If I manage to install the BIOS (which I think wouldn’t be much of an issue) and get another 2G DDR2 RAM from someone and test, I’d be able to verify the 2G+ support.

The second is to sell the existing processor and RAM! I have only 2 RAM slots, so if I get a good offer from someone for the stuff, I’d certainly upgrade.

Ah…almost forgot. The drive labelled “MASCOT”, a present from Madhawa aiya is now a valid data transportation device rather than a Readyboost Drive. Check this out;

Hope this drive continues to satisfy me! Enough for now. Just installed Live writer and Windows is bugging me to restart! I sneaked in to write this post. Theoratically this post should not upload .

Our baby girl

2011-04-04T12:50:00.001+05:30

We had our baby today. I'm happy that both mother and baby are fine. Right now she is sleeping tight.
We're yet to name her.
It wasn't easy staying in the operating theater with Nadeera till the baby was taken. I was relieved for a split second when the doctor showed the baby, but was too scared about Nadeera as well.
We were able to hold her for the first time in the theater itself until she was taken away for washing and cleaning.
Feels great to hold her but it gives me the shivers every time I carry her from one place to another even if it is two feet apart.
That's all for now, looks like the baby is waking up again. duty calls.

Anusha empowers me with the power of regeneration with the cube!

2011-03-31T23:24:00.001+05:30

Ok, its about 4 cubic cm’s short of being a cube, but it is named the cube.

The primo cube is an additional power source for Android and Blackberry phones that has a rating of 1000mAh.

This will enable me to use the phone for more than a day if I travel or run out of power in the middle of something. It gives a headache every time when the phone goes low-battery in the evenings.

Here are some shots.

I should really thank Nush for the gift! hope I could do something in return But alas, we met for 5 minutes in his visit to SL. too bad!

The arrows represent the charge of the cube. But I cant get it to 100% with usb. wonder whether the amperage of the port is too less. Have to plug it into the phone charger’s USB port. Hope it doesn’t burn!

P.S.: It Just charged to 100%

Windows Live Writer Gets a face-lift and some good features

2011-03-24T20:52:00.001+05:30

I’ve been using live writer to write most of the blog posts for a long time. But it had some issues when it comes to inserting photos from the web and photo uploading.

The add photos items did not have any easy access to insert a source file from the web to show the photo. In the new Live writer 2011, the options are there. and it’s moved the tags and date to the top as well. Looks good enough

Here are some screenies of the toolbars. Hope the duplication bug in Picasa is also gone. The old version uploaded two photos to Picasa whenever we added a photo from live writer.

The new ribbon interface of Office 2010

The toolbars

Even smileys

Posting from android

2011-03-15T11:55:00.001+05:30

Google has some pretty disgusting rules when it comes to apps. Their free apps are only available to selected regions. I have to get third party sites to download some of them, while some are available in the market.
Google maps update, Google voice search and the blogger apps are not in the market for my country. After an email to them, they told me to wait till they add Sri Lanka to their free app region. For heavens sake, even microsoft Windows is free here.
So I installed all those apps from third party sites. So much for security!

And yes, this post IS from the phone.

From a walkman to an Xperia

2011-03-08T20:21:00.001+05:30

My old walkman phone started to show wear and tear both in terms of physical and functional areas. It lacked the so called “smart” features that I needed to have right now. So I decided to switch to a new mobile.

Initially I was aiming at the two high end devices the Samsung Galaxy S and the Xperia X10i. But both of them had two huge disadvantages.

1. Both are darn expensive. Too big for a mobile. The prize is comparable to a lappy.

2. Both were 4 inch screens. Bad for mobility and hard to handle.

My next option was to go for a Nokia like 5230 or a XpressMusic phone like the 5800. But Gayan talked me out of it. (Good man!) and the x10 minis were too small for me.

So I decided to play the waiting game. Till there is an affordable android smartphone, I’ll wait up with the w810. Then the whole story changed when Suren came up with a X8. And it was affordable as well. So I jumped in and bought it. I actually waited till my parents came from an India tour to see if they find it cheaper there, but India proved to be the slum it is in the movies.!

Finally, I got the phone in my hand about a week ago. I waited to post this to see how it performs and how well it works with me.

I wasn’t able to get a black or a pure white one and all that was left was the shade of dark blue. But its not that ugly (considering there are worse colors with the shade)

The phone definitely has plus points with respect to the w810i. It has a better screen and faster internet and most of all, it has android. The phone came installed with 2.1update 1 but there was one more update from SE that i installed.

But unfortunately, it has the following cons;

1. The camera sucks! yes, it really does.
Compared with my old w810i, the camera does not have a flasher. So I lost the option of using the phone as a flashlight! and the photos are quite blurry and without AF, it cant focus a thing that is lesser than around 5cm!

2. Sounds Are not that good
The Walkman has spoiled me i guess, but the sound quality is far worse than the old phone. There is not much Bass to go with and the player also doesn’t suit me that well. But on the bright side, there are apps to make both these go away. So there is no hard limitation on these points.

3. Again, incompetent Geeks in SE! (as it was in Cisco back then ;) )
The latest firmware by SE is 2.1 update 1. Which is like the grandmother of android considering Honeycomb is also out there. The best thing surpassing the 2.1 are the Hacked ROMs in xda-developer.com. I have to give it a try, but the damn ROM lacks vid. recording.!

It came pre-installed with a good app from SE. Timescape.!

Timescape’s widget is not that cool, but what IS cool is that it merges contact pics of my Google contacts with the Facebook profile pictures. Get the name right, and the accounts are automatically bound together. You can manually do that as well, but you have to wait till he/she appears in that widget with some post! (There might be other ways too! I have to check)

But I really do like this phone and how it moves with me. Battery life is not that good too. But is lasts a day with me playing around installing apps and browsing most of the time. Have to give it some more time to settle down (and I wonder when THAT is!) The charging port is somewhat lame, but I think its necessary to cover the USB port to prevent dust from going in there. Wonder what I’m going to do when that rubber hinge breaks down!

new pal with old friends

I gave my w810 away for a small prize coz it’d do better with someone else rather than rot in one of my drawers.!

Final thoughts, I achieved the smart-phone target, without falling to the symbian traps and keeping my loyalty to Sony Ericsson and Android! That’s something worthwhile!

The new kid on the block…and she’s black!

2011-02-04T12:22:00.001+05:30

After selling my old and faithful Maruti 800 and waiting for a nerve wrecking 3 months, I’ve got the new car! A Suzuki Maruti Alto, which unlike my previous car, a brand-new chick with only 30km on the meter! (it was 27km when I started to drive)

Got some photos at home.

Apart from numerous people helped me to get this thing delivered before the actual dreaded delivery time of late February, Kasun helped to get this thing out of the yard faster than I could imagine! :D If it wasn’t for him, I’d be still in the yard!

The meter :D

The main things noticeable which differ from the old car is the feel of the suspension and the power steering system. But the wheel is a bit bigger than the Maruti so I cant get my fingers to cruise control. The brake is also a relief since it has a servo rather than rely on sheer hydraulic pressure.

There are a lot of stuff to install on this car. Will keep you posted when that happens!

Broadband speeds increased

2011-01-01T19:31:00.001+05:30

Happy new year to all you guys.

Either the SLT has given us a new year present or the warning issued by TRC has worked. The ADSL speed that is usually 52kbps in my PC now skyrockets to 120kbps!

The average is around 90kbps. Its felt when I load a lot of images like in facebook photos. So to check whether its me hallucinating, I did two speed checks.

Both the server in USA and the server at SLT report the same speed, nearly 1M downlink. :D :D

So I double checked the router;

Then a utorrent download to test the real thing! ;) Look at the graph hover around 100k for about 5 min I downloaded.

Looks like its true. But I dont have a set of values that used to be here. Hope this stays for good :D

New Firefox alert boxes

2010-12-27T22:10:00.002+05:30

After the Firefox 4 beta versions came out, there were a lot of changes. The most notable being the orange button on the top.
But today I noticed that the latest version 4b08 had the alert boxes revamped.
Look at the difference.


The old alert box	The new alert box
[Click to enlarge]

Cool change by the FF team. Since their change in the Javascript engine, most of the stuff has been changed and improved.
Love this browser!
Get it here.! [Fireffox 3.6] [Firefox 4 beta]

Black Ops, a total computing disaster!

2010-12-22T23:41:00.001+05:30

After a tiresome 7GB transfer of files, I didn’t get the satisfaction I thought I’d get with COD’s new title Black ops. Owing to several bad reasons, the gameplay sucked.!

Reason number one is my hardware! The old 9600GT is seeing its end of days as a top gun. The new titles aren’t just it’s capacity. After the Fermi releases with loads of GTX cards, the 9600 is going to be forgotten, in sands of time. Only it’s past written in the hall of fame will remain! Enough of that shit, back to the point! I owe this partly to the processor too. Its a puny 1.7G (1.6 over-clocked!) The Pentium Dual Core cant handle the heat, and the VGA has to get all the burden, with no backup. Activision recommends a E6XXX something. I’m really glad with the 15-20 FPS I get.

The second, is the game’s build itself. Activision has paired with some dorks! The game’s soul is nowhere to be found! COD is a game which you play with the NPCs, supporting them, and getting backed-up. I didn’t see it in the first levels much. And the engine! MAN! its heavy.

There are also a lot of complains about bugs and all too.

The first play session was a disaster for me. I couldn’t use the mouse to look when I moved! And the movement of the mouse was done ‘after’ I stop moving.! I thought the game was not playable at all. But after deciding I had a bad headache and was sleepy as hell, I left it for the day.

Then I did some googling today and among all the cursing of the forums I got this link, which is a good tweak-guide. I did the tweaks and lowered some settings and I could play at 1024 again. I bet the FPS is at around 18 most of the time and at about 6,7 at some. But the tweaks did work the magic and I can move like before.

When I said the soul of the game was gone, I meant it. You will see it the first time you die! No quotes! I guess Activision needs to get their bearings right the next time.

As COD used to say..”all that is needed for evil to triumph, is a few good men to do nothing!”

To the dark side and back. A walkman's tale by Tharaka Devinda.

2010-12-02T20:01:00.002+05:30

It's been a while since i wrote a post. A lot of things happened in the meantime. I sold my car and fell off the ceiling trying to repair a broken ADSL splitter.
But now i'm totally ok apart from the fact that i miss the car a lot. The order time for a new one takes three months!

The most happening thing to me was loosing the phone. Well, I'd call it to the darkness and back.
It happened when my father and i were coming home to Mattegoda from our new home at pubudu mawatha. We hopped into a three wheeler taxi and it had dropped inside the taxi. I figured it out the next day.
After giving up all hope I wrote the imei number and went to office the next day.
Gave the number to some of my buddies but no hope.

Then i waited a few more days and something strange showed up on my Gmail access log. An ip address that i haven't seen before.

I knew it was the phone since i didn't change the password of the account. Good old IMAP was fetching mail!

I did a whois search and got that the ip address was etisalat's allocated list for gprs. Now that i have the operator, all i had to do was to get the number out. While filing in a complain at the police station, i pulled some strings. Since our officers don't know the difference between gps and gprs, i had to do that in order to get my phone back before google releases android version 10.

But the thief in this case was dubious after me calling his number and all, he decided to hand me the phone back, despite him having used it for some time. But he told me that he was looking for the owner. I wonder how he was doing that with his sim card in my phone!

Anyway, this walkman was'nt going to loose me that time. I have to be more careful with my electronic stuff.

Bad Company 2 – My Experience

2010-08-30T22:49:00.001+05:30

I’ve been playing the game for about a week now and was trying to write something about it for the same amount of time. The problem was, I couldn’t get myself to write the blog in the time when I could stay awake and play! Its such a good game I had to wait till I finish it to write about it.

Bad company 2 is a COD style cold war era game. I’m not pretty sure about the timeline though.

There are many good things about this game, first being it’s lightweight. I’ve been playing 1024 all the way and the FPS only drops at about 19 where there’s an awesome amount of particles and foliage and a lot of enemies and buildings around. Whoever made this game was really conscious about the memory and processing power it needs.

There are so many cool stuff here. Take a look at this sniper shot. You have to wait till it thunders and cover the sound of the gun.

There are a lot of activities in-game. You not only have to point and shoot. You have to operate vehicles ranging from Remote controlled Arial vehicles to Tanks. I personally love the jeeps and dune buggies.

There are some intense cases as well. Take this trap for example. During this mission, we have to keep our eyes open for man-traps laid out in the open. They are so small and are hard to spot. [click to zoom]. Check out the trap wire near the crosshair.

The game’s physics engine rocks to the limit. Trees break apart and walls break down in the shootouts. And the best part is; buildings collapse when their structure is damaged beyond a certain point.! Take a look at this bombing. The ground troops mark the target and keep your eyes on the building in the incline where it falls out completely. Totally realistic!

The foliage and the surrounding is also exquisite. I guess I dont have to explain when you see the movie below!

There are some crazy-ass characters like this pilot. He dodges RPG while talking to the crew!

I’d say this is one great game I’d remember and talk about for a long time and when times come where other games make mistakes. This is one good benchmark. Good games like COD, Crysis and Bad Company are really rare!

Really annoying add-on Software

2010-08-22T00:16:00.001+05:30

Have you ever come across add-on software put on devices by the makers that is actually a pest rather than help? Well, I’ve come across many. Most of them are in Laptops. For an example, I remember two of my friends owning two acer laptops and one of them had some software that made windows arrange on the desktop. When one of them showed-off that feature to me I made the other laptop ‘without’ that add-on do the same thing by using “Arrange windows” feature in Windows itself!

So you see, there are some software developers out there that are somewhat dumber than you’d imagine.

The reason for this post was one such software I came across today.

It was on a Western Digital external USB HDD. Madhavi and Hasitha came over today for a chat and Mad was ‘sane’ enough to bring up her new toy from Aussie, an External HDD! All she wanted was some music but I didn’t have much. So I agreed to give some movies instead. So after they went home giving me the disk, I plugged it in (with the moral fear of her bringing me an array of viruses in her USB’s) and waited for it.

It turned out bad! The damn thing had some software that made the HDD look like a CD-ROM to the PC.! I assumed this was some mechanism to keep the viruses from the disk. So I used the software to install a driver it had inside and then tried to get the internal storage to unlock. The stupid thing won’t barge!

Me being allergic to these add-ons, I called Mad and asked her what she did normally when she used the drive and got the most unexpected reply. (Getting an unexpected reply wasn’t that unexpected anyway) She never plugged the thing onto the PC before. Making me the idiot who used it for the first time!

I asked her whether I should remove this piece of rotten meat out of the drive. And as always, her reply was “if you don’t burn it down, OK with me.”

So armed with clearance, I tried to use the software to get the disk to open again. But no detection from the software

Then I checked the Storage devices whether the partitions were really available. They were visible and it was clear that none of them were mounted.

So I came to the conclusion that the driver would not mount the partitions at all and I mounted one manually. And voila! The software starts to show up the drive’s storage.! How stupid was that? It looks like any idiot could use the software as long as that idiot knows how to mount drives up!

So I installed another software on the drive that was some kind of tray icon launcher. It told me to power cycle the drive, which I did and after that, the CD-ROM thing was gone!

I realized this was a no-good piece of crap which WD software guys wrote when they were using laptops in the bathroom. So I manually deleted all the partitions and then re-created two new ones one with 300GB and the other 404GB (ironic! 404 – stands for “Not Found” :D)

The drive was not fully usable. Named the partitions “Vidi” and “Vici”. I never went anywhere. It came to me! But I saw and I conquered.!

The copying speed was good as well. But not that good compared to my USB Flash!

Hope Mad can still use it when she plugs the drive onto her laptop. :D

Metro 2033

2010-08-14T20:32:00.001+05:30

Metro 2033 is the first FPS I got to play after HL2 EP2.

Its a bit more like Stalker. But this is better. In my viewpoint, STALKER sucked. No in-game sense of direction or any hints for help. But Metro has some sense of play. One could assume this is the way to go or this is what I need to do now.

But the game is overly dark. You have to use the flashlight a lot. They also know it. There is a flashlight charger to charge the flashlight as well. :D

I need to mention this as well; my 9600GT is an old granpa for this game. It runs at around 23~25 FPS and sometimes drops to 18. The video settings are at one level lower than the most detailed with 4XAA (lowest setting) at 1024x768 res.

Here are some screenies;

The menu.

This is a guy talking about Russia before the Nuclear weapons destroyed the world.

This game has nVidia physics support. This shattered glass will make sounds and alert the bandits if we step on it. There are traps made out of strings as well. But I’m still to see FEAR grade physics in this.

Here is another place.

The game title itself is displayed at many places. There are DVD boxes on desks of people as well. Its a bit too much sometimes.

Here’s an alien of some sort. Maybe a mutated human or something. Need to find that out by playing :D

Will post if there’s any other interesting stuff is there. I think most of you guys have played this and aren’t a Grandpa to Games like I am now. :D

Sally, our doggie pal…

2010-08-12T08:06:00.002+05:30

After looking all over for pet dogs Nadeera and I got our eyes on a female German Shephard who happened to be in a pet shop. It cost us a small fortune but both of us are happy that we got it.

We took around half a day thinking of names and Nadeera came up with this because it was called with no name for a long time and we were sick of that.

Richie is an active dog. But a bit stupid. It whines at the back door while the front is wide open and it just peed in the house not waiting 15 seconds till I open the door for it. I think with time, she will learn to do things. But for the time being, this dog hates the backyard and the front.

Whenever we put it out, she cries like hell in front of the door. :D

What to say other than…I love my dog!!!

..
PS.: She was renamed to Sally :D since Richie was a boy name!

The fall of a Giant…

2010-08-06T22:07:00.001+05:30

Too bad I have to write a sad story after a long pause! For the first time in nine years, my 40GB Maxtor hard disk has failed! It all began when I tested a new software called xcode which would have enabled me to write some test apps to the iPhone.

But I found out that my version of leopard was not compatible with the software. So I decided to install the long awaited snow leopard x86 hackintosh. So i made up my mind and shut the mac down. That’s when all the problems started to arise. Everything got stuck. Nothing was Force closable and nothing was responsive except the mouse pointer which gave the busy icon.

So I had no choice other than to reset the system. Then I swapped the boot priority from BIOS and booted into Win7. But it took a very long time to boot. Then I noticed that my 40G Maxtor and the DVD RW was not there in ‘My Computer’. That’s when the fun began. After playing a bit with BIOS and cable I got to know that the Maxtor was faulty.

Then I checked BIOS. It detected the disk as Maxtor ‘ARES 64K’, with something I’ve never seen before. The “ARES 64” actually Blinked in the screen. This was enough to trigger the internal debug mode of myself. I knew the disk was burnt the instance I saw that.

I downloaded a zerofill tool. But the tool was not able to detect my disk or even initialize it.

Look at the disk space reported by the software. LoL. I could’ve downloaded the whole internet if I had such a disk!

Windows was not able to initialize the disk either.

That was yesterday. I tried some zerofill utilities today but nothing worked. There is one solution from Maxtor and the damn thing does not run on x64! CRAP!

Then I got my hands on a Maxtor software called Powermax. It had only a floppy version and after some googling I got an ISO. Burnt it to a CDRW and booted. It detected and told me that the disk was failing and I should send the error codes and the disk to maxtor for repair. Hell.! Maxtor don’t even exist now! Its been bought by Seagate. After that, all the utility software in the downloads have been moved. Stupid Seagate.!

So I tried Zero-Filling with PowerMax. Then I struck on to the brick wall of coders’ lameness.! The software was designed to run on a floppy. When it starts to zerofill, it writes a log file to the floppy itself. The CD is ROM! Unable to write the damn log, the software gives and error and exits.!!! How bad is that!????

Now I’m going to try a more cunning approach. I’m going to get the .img of the same software to a pen, and boot. Luckily, it might work.. Will keep you posted.!

Duriyan

2010-07-01T22:27:00.001+05:30

There are two types of people in this world. Those who crazily love Duriyan and those who utterly dislike it. As for me, I belong to the fans!

Since this is the season, my Father found one fruit and brought it home. Nadeera wanted to have a bite but milliseconds after moving a piece near her, she went into the un-believers’ side.! Now all that is left of the Duriyan fans in my family are my Father and me! Since we moved to a new home, its just me.

This sign is from Singapore where they’ve banned Duriyan in a certain area. Looks like there are a lot of haters than lovers!

Duriyan is rich in Carbohydrates, Vitamin C and Potassium! Potassium is good for me since I’m a haven for muscle cramps!

My friend Sankha has a few trees at his place and despite the notorious price it’d give him if he sold them, he brings us a few each season. (Thanks man!) This time I booked not one, but two fruits.

But my Father is away in an office trip so I have to run this show alone!

One of the two was ripe. So as soon as I got home, I started the frenzy!

This is the parted fruit. [click to enlarge images]

The second one doesn’t look ripe. But the tell tail cracks are there to indicate that it is! Wonder whether it was caused when I took it home by car!

No matter what, I’m having the second one tomorrow. Who knows? it might get rotten ;)

Surf the net Ad-Free!

2010-06-02T23:03:00.001+05:30

Some of us surf the web a lot more than we do other things. Amongst a lot of other stuff, we expect our websites to be clean and ad-free as much as possible. That is if you’re not buying stuff on EBay. Ads are good when it comes to online marketing and stuff. But when ads pop up saying you’re the 99999th winner or something, or it flashes in your face telling you to play some kind of game, it annoys you.

For those who dont use Firefox, this is another pull towards the world’s greatest browser. (This is for you opera users and Chrome junkies and you safari fans. Not for IE guys coz i’ve given up on them :S )

Ad block plus is an extension that is developed by a person named Henrik Aasted Sorensen and was improved by Wladimir Palant.

The add-on does the exact thing as it says. It blocks those ads. Even mighty Google fails to pass this app! What it does is; it examines the URL of the HTTP object and it tells firefox whether to go ahead with the GET action or not. What we can do now, is to gather up all those URLs of Ads and then filter them on the browser. Not an easy task. The internet is HUGE!

Happily, the developers have come up with a solution. Subscriptions. They have a set of rules (filters) for specific areas that we can use. As an example, I use the subscription called “Easylist USA”

So whats the big deal not seeing the ads?

One main advantage is bandwidth. Ads take a considerable amount of your bandwidth. It is you who have to download the ad. With that ad, comes a lot of kilobytes. reduce the number of ads and you reduce the amount of data you download. If you are on a pay per downloaded data plan, you gain bigtime!

Another advantage you get is the neatness of the pages. Ads aren’t always designed by the person who designs the webpage. They may take away the aesthetic value and even some functionality in a page. So if you refrain from seeing/loading the ad, you see a much more organized page.

The third is a wonder point for notebook / netbook users. Adblock actually has proven to reduce the load off the browser and preserve battery.! The less computing power used by the browser means you save on battery life.

It will reduce the load time for a website as well. See the pics below for facebook with and without ad-block in Firefox 3.6.3 with Firebug. Notice there is a time difference. [click to enlarge images]


With Adblock Enabled (No Ads)	Without Adblock Enabled.

If there were a lot of ads, this time might start to feel even though its small for this load. Imagine when you load the FB pages 50,60 times. Adblock will save you a minute.!

The following screenies are from famous sites with and without AdBlock enabled. See the difference yourself. [Click to enlarge the images]

With Adblock	Without Adblock

The site ‘thepiratebay.com’ (our all time favorite torrent tracker) had banners on it’s side. It took me around a year to realize they were there. I never knew it. I got to see it only when I used to browse the site through another PC! Thats how seamless Adblock is!

There are the cons as well. For an example, you might miss on some important information in the ad. And Adblock has proven to be a killer in the internet business. Since all adsense and other ad content are blocked, users won’t click links. Which leads to site owners with less income.

So the final decision is yours.! Do you want those ads or not? :D

Wesak Celebrations 2nd Day

2010-05-28T21:07:00.001+05:30

After all the Dansal yesterday, as I promised, the eating continued! :D We went to the Ice Cream Dansala and then afterwards, had a walk in the housing scheme area.

The long line to the Dansala

Then we decided to walk to the Sumanarama Temple where a Pandol was being shown. But we decided that going by car would be easier. So we hopped in and drove to the place.

This is the Pandol. It shows the sixteen dreams of King Kosol; who dreamt of the forthcomings of his land and acted accordingly after consulting the Buddha!

There was another Dansala there, which we had coffee :D

Here’s a small video

වෙසක් අසිරිය!

2010-05-27T21:09:00.001+05:30

ඔන්න වෙසක් දවස ආවා! 2599 වෙනි බුද්ධ ජයන්තිය!

පුරුදු විදියට පන්සල් ගිහින් දන්සැල් වන්දනාව පටන් ගත්තා.

ඇත්තම කිව්වොත් ඉතිං වැඳලා, බෝධි පූජාවෙ බාගයක් ඉවර වෙනකොට මගේ එකතැන ඉන්න බැරි අමාරුව උපරිමේට ආවා! එළියේ මම ඉන්නං කියල මං එනකොට හසිතයයි මාධවීයි එතන! උන් දෙන්නා නදීරා ටත් කථා කර ගත්තෙ නැද්ද! ඉතිං කට්ටියම ඇවිදලා ඇවිදලා ආවා වතුර ටැංකිය ගාව බත් දන්සැලට. ඊට කලින් පන්සල ගාව තිබ්බ මඤ්ඤොක්කා දන්සැලෙන් හොඳට සප්පායං වෙලා කට්ටියම හිටියෙ!

පෝලිමේ ඉඳල කන්න ගත්ත! පේනවනෙ ගිලින හැටි!

මේ හසිතය විසප්පු ගෙඩි කිය කියා හොඳට අඹරනවා!

පේනවනෙ උගේ නොනත් ඌට දෙවනි නෑ. කිව්වට මොකෝ නදීරයි මායිත් කෑවා . හැබැයි අවුලකට තිබ්බෙ දන්සැලේ කස්ටිය බත් කන්න එළවලු දුන්නෙ අම්බානෙක අඩුවෙන්. බත් ටිකෙන් කොටසක් අහක ගියා ඒ වැඩේ නිසා.

ඊට පස්සෙ ගෙදර ආවා හෙට අයිස් ක්‍රීම් කන්න දන්සැලට එනවා කියලා!! මෙහෙමත් කෑමක් නේද?

මේ අපේ ගෙදර කූඩු! කීර්ති බාප්පාගේ සැකිලි ටික අපි දෙන්නගෙ ඇලවිල්ල හා තාත්තගෙ ආලෝකකරණය!

Rain and cars

2010-05-20T10:14:00.001+05:30

Its common practice for people who have cars to use it on rainy days. Even when you don't use it in regular days, in a rainy day its used. But these days, I ended up doing the exact opposite!

I think there are others out there thats doing the exact same thing as I am. Whenever it rains these days, it pours like hell! Which floods most of the roads and my tiny car can't handle that kind of water.

So after a certain threshold of rain, its the bus for me!

Bullying the Chinese a bit more!

2010-05-02T22:06:00.001+05:30

Here is a message I just got from a Chinese seller on ebay. These guys should find some free software to check what the heck they’re sending to their consumers…!!

Dear buyer: Are you got the goods? If you already got please give us a feedback. If the good dont arrived.Maybe your item delay arrive your address. don't worry it. it will arrive in 12-30 days in USA,UK,CA,AU country, other country need 15-35 days. We will refund the full money to you if you still have not got the item exceed 35 days. you can get the delivery time on our system. http://delivery.gamesalor.com.cn Best Regards

“maybe your item delay arrive your address. Don’t worry it”? Of course I’m not going to worry the item.! How can I make a cable worried? I’m worried about the damn thing not coming to my postbox!

Cleaning up Conroe’s Mess..!

2010-04-28T11:54:00.001+05:30

Yesterday when I tried to copy my Wedding and Homecoming DVDs to duplicate DVDs, I did some stupid thing on the second copy. I ran JetAudio when the disc was burning. Some IRC error must’ve gone up an alarm was coming from the PC.! It was a buzzer type alarm which I never heard before. Neither could I get what it was nor was the burner spinning the disc. So I assumed the worst, and ejected the DVD, sacrificing the DVD for the ROM!

I use the free software called CD Burner XP (yeah on Win7!!) to burn CDs coz I’ve had it with Nero! So, the application itself was stuck! So I restarted. The alarm didn’t go away! I shut the PC, then removed the case and rebooted again. In the process, I looked at BIOS settings and PC health counters for any abnormal activities. Then I saw something else.!!!

I ran CoreTemp to check the temperatures, thinking it was a high temp alarm. It wasn’t. But, the values were at 50 something Celsius!!! That is unheard of in my PC. It was 50C when I ran some benchmark Anusha gave me and I stopped it there. Now the PC was running at that temperature!!!

That is when I looked at the CPU! Man! It was a mess. All the dust from the external fan with light was on the cooler. That must be a reason. All that dust must be doing something. So I decided to clean the mess up.

First thing in the morning, removed the case and tried to remove the fan. After some tries, I managed to get it removed. In the process, I managed to loosen one of the CPU heatsink bases. It came off. I was scared that I had to run all round looking for arctic silver if the compound was damaged. Hopefully no.!

These are the pictures of the fan and the heatsink before I cleaned them

So I took the vacuum cleaner and then started sucking everything up. Careful not to suck the resisters in, I did the best I could. Then I noticed something else.

The VGA’s fan was blocked by the old POTS modem in front of it. So the air coming into the fan was
1. Partially moved away because of the blockade.
2. Was already hot from the modem’s own heat.

That’s bad. Since I no longer use the modem, I removed the card and then taped up the opening in the back.

After the clean-up operation, the heatsink and looked like this;

And the temperatures? Look at these values; (click to enlarge)

Now the Idle goes at around 35C. Phew!! That’s a relief!

Banana shots

2010-04-25T14:44:00.008+05:30

Some banana shots

Resting under a tree

2010-04-16T14:27:00.001+05:30

My car taking a rest after 200km of fast heated road.

Chinese Idea of ‘Safe’

2010-04-13T10:51:00.001+05:30

I have this Chinese power supply extension which I use for distributing power to my ADSL router, my room’s fan and the speakers of the PC. Its connected to the main power extension cord which gives off power to the PC(UPS) and the rear speakers. Yes, you got it right.! When I said Chinese, it is Cheap Chinese Crap.

When I bought this extension cord, the LED of it won’t light up. It was there for a few years before I was not lazy enough to remove the thing and check! Holy cows to the power of n!!! No wonder this LED did not light up! It was connected to the same ends of the power terminals. The + and – was in the same end (I don’t remember whether it was Live or neutral).

So as usual, praising the Chinease for their great craftsmanship I changed the ends and the thing lit up.! Now I know when the crappy thing was alive.! This was about several months back when I didn’t have the monitor (which means no work to do at the PC, the real reason I had time to remove that)

Today, I connected the vacuum cleaner to the second cord and worked it out for a few miniutes before the room’s light flickered and the Vacuum went off. I knew something was up. So I connected the vacuum to the main cord and continued work. After the work, I removed the crappy pappy once again! To my amazement nothing was burnt!

This is the outer view. Notice the word “Safety” on the plug

[click the pic to enlarge]

This is the inside. As you can see, there is NO SAFETY inside. There is no fuse, no nothing! Its just wires! NEVER TRUST A CHINESE ADAPTER FOR FUSES AND SAFETY!

[click the pic to enlarge]

So what made the vacuum turn off? When I checked, the inside end of the adapter’s power cord did not have any power when it was plugged to a live terminal! Which meant the power cord did not pass the current through! So what’s the safety feature?

The power cord of the extension somehow burnt INSIDE it because of the high current. There was nothing wrong with the extension’s interior. So the Chinese expect their power cords to burn out when the extension draws more power! Well I’d eat my hat!

Subaru Defends its honor!

2010-03-25T22:28:00.001+05:30

Another downtime and I came to office just now to do some maintenance. On the way it was a boring ride until....I saw a Subaru Impressa in the Thummulla Junction. It had a huge spoiler on the back and had a black boot and a body of some other color. (Some other color? Yeah, read on..you'll see why I didn't see that well)

I thought, "Ok, time to screw this guy as well." Since I passed a heap of vehicles going at snail's speed. Most of them cars with around 2,3 times my CC capacity!
Boy was I wrong!
The strip after Thummulla to Townhall is one way upto until the musaeum. As you know, that half a mile track is a FOUR lane road with zero traffic in the night.! The Impressa's driver got the same thought as I did. DRAG baby DRAG!!!!!!!

I was on 4th and trying to pass the guy at 40kph! What was I thinking. I heard a small screech in the tires off the impressa and whoooooooooosh! It was gone. ! I was in front of the post office of the Colombo uni when I heard the sound. By the time my reflexes got me to shift back to 3rd and chase, he was cruising at about 140kph near the Thurstan Collage!

I chased him alright! I averaged to about 80kph on that strip. I never saw the impressa. Not a sight!

Well Done Subaru. You have made my favorite car even more appealing!!! What a night. Hope the servers wont screw me up!

First cross river swim

2010-03-21T14:29:00.012+05:30

Just had a bath in Kalu Ganga (River). This is what I could not do for a long time even after numerous visits to Kasun's place.

The river is about 30m wide as i could assume. On the other side is a huge rock. The challenge is that i cannot stand or put my foot down in the middle since its too deep. You have to swim without stopping in that area.

Step by step execution was successful. Well if it was not, i wont be posting! Its not deadly dangerous but its not safe for a novice.

As always i had to come out about 15min earlier than my friends due to a cramp. But it was damn fun.

Red diggers

2010-03-20T12:06:00.001+05:30

I found these on a tree trunk which is rotting in the backyard.

There is a considerable amount of activity under the bark of the tree. Wonder whether they will leave anything behind for me to make something out of that trunk!

Default Gateway

2010-02-18T11:43:00.001+05:30

No its not a problem with my IP settings.

We had to remove the old gate in our place at Pubudu Mawatha and install a new gate. The problem with it is that we don’t still live at that house. Its still under construction and we seldom go there these days. The welder needs about 3 days to complete the gate. As we’re planning to use some of the old Amana sheets from the old gate, the welder has to remove the gate.

The result? No gate!

Thats bad. For once all the stray dogs will be in the garden and another reason is security. Since the house is still under construction there are some valuable stuff laying here and there. So I needed to make some cover for the gate. At least it should be a logical gate if not for the strength! So here goes.

I took some 3 inch concrete nails and the hammer and some other stuff there and started hammering. With the help of some leftover wire, I was able to secure the aluminum sheets.

Here’s what is looks like;

Sure, both of the sheets are suspended with wire. I had to do that because its damn hard to nail the concrete columns. It would withstand a decent wind. And here is the gate I made to get out.

I almost got stuck trying to do that. But It would be for just that once. It would be taken down on Sunday when the “real” gate arrives!

Chrome Screenie

2010-02-17T09:49:00.006+05:30

This is the only screenie I was able to extract from ChromeOS. I cant delete this file as well as take new screenshots. I dont know whats wrong!

From Tharu's Blog

Google Chrome OS

2010-02-15T22:00:00.003+05:30

Here comes the OS season again! This time, the Google Chrome is here. I won't be commenting on this until I get a decent installation running. I'm running it right now on the USB stick and its darn slow. Not to mention the stupid resolution as well. It gives me about 800x600 but even the tooltips on ch

Thats all I was able to finish in Chrome.! Back in Windows! Chrome got stuck while I was writing the post!

There was no mouse on the login screen, and if you want to go past the screen, I suggest you have your router on DHCP and login with your Gmail username and password. That default username "facepunch" did not work for me. Every time I pressed TAB after entering the username, it appended "@gmail.com" to the end.

The UI was buggy because it ran on a USB stick! I'll try to eliminate OS-X on my secondary drive and run the OS from there. And I frekin' don't know how to take screenshots. (Too lazy to use the phone). I'll post some later

Google's Endeavors

2010-02-11T20:56:00.001+05:30

Its been a while folks, but I'm still alive and kickin'! and I know you already saw the wedding photos :) Its the first official post as a married man. (Married MAN that sucks, aren't there married boys? Guess we're getting old in one way or another)
Okay, now for the fun stuff....

Google launched its new service Buzz today. (at least it came to my inbox today) Buzz aims at one thing! Social Networking. Google is late to touch this area in the internet but its better late than never. Anyway, my first Buzz post "Lets kick Facebook ass" now feels like an empty statement. Google has a long way to go to get to something like Facebook in it's area of expertise.

The first thing to complain about Buzz is the privacy settings! Its public by default and a lot of people see the buzz posts others do. Privacy was a problem with another service Google launched couple of years ago, which was Street View. A lot of people complained about it.

Another thing is that it might be overly complicated with who follows who! I mean, there are about 30 something people "following" me and I follow some others; including a few from the list who follows me. Which means we're going in circles???? Anyway, its too complicated compared with the linked Friends list of Facebook.

And last, but not least, the usability. There's Hi5, there's Live Spaces, WAYN, and an array of social networking gadgets we don't use as much as Facebook and most of them are on the decline.! Why do we need something thats between Twitter and Facebook? Here too, Google has a similar product. Wave.
Wave was launched with much amazement as Buzz and how many things do you do with Wave?
Wave is a good tool to mach up with things like Cisco's Web-Ex and DimDim. Yet, both those tools are not used well in the market to a great extent.

So will Buzz become just another backdoor to your day-to-day hacker for the people who dont know how to use it, will it become a nuisance in the Labels list, or will it rock? Time will tell. The best thing is to wait and see. The browser war ended, and now starts the Google domination, where will you be?

Nadeera at homecoming

2010-01-28T18:29:00.001+05:30

Another exclusive photo!

Awesome...

2010-01-25T08:35:00.001+05:30

Nadeera at the wedding! Exclusive photos!

Looking out for LCDs

2009-12-24T21:57:00.001+05:30

My monitor went alright for about a week and now its started the hiccups again. I will have to buy a monitor very soon if this continues. But for now, it does some turning off on the first half hour and stays stable afterward. I have the option of waiting till this goes out for good.

The main reason for keeping me back is the cost of monitors. After all this time, its of no use if I buy another CRT. So I'm aiming for an LCD. Will have to wait and see what happens...maybe I'd try another trip to Eranga who repaired it earlier. He'd give it some magic touch again.

Monitor Back to normal..

2009-12-15T19:11:00.001+05:30

The monitor is now back to normal after a repair. Thanks to Eranga aiya, who repairs these stuff its working like magic.

I’ve wondered all round what to do for the display when I finally decided to repair it.! And guess what, a good clean-up and some expert touches at Athurugiriya where Eranga is, the monitor is alive. As he put it..”Q.C Passed!”

Seriously, if you have broken monitors, you should consult this guy…(Mail me if you want to)

Office 2010..my experience

2009-12-14T21:18:00.002+05:30

I’ve been waiting a long time for office 2010 to show up. And no thanks for participating in the E-mail program, I got to know that the Beta was launched!
Damn those developer guys for not sending me the alert mail!!

Anyway, I got it some time back so I decided to give it the shot since there were no pending work that are critical in office apps.

I downloaded the x64 version of the setup and started installing it right away when I was hit with the first hurdle. The 64 bit version will not install on top of the 32 bit Office 2007. So I had to remove it and install from scratch.

The installation went smoothly. But MS guys should have made this more responsive. The setup stopped in the middle for a long time. When I mean it was stopped, even the glowing of the status bar was gone. Suspecting that it was stuck.! Task Manager reported a task with no identification too. This made me find another piece of information! Office 2010 x64 setup is actually a 32 bit program..!!! I even thought about aborting the setup but waited a little longer.

Stuck!

Then it sprang to life once again and finished.

After the installation, I checked out when this thing goes “lights out”. I’ve been here once before with Office 2007’s Beta program and it got expired right when I had a report to write. Looks like this thing will last longer than my copy of Windows 7. The expiration date listed here is 31st October 2010.

Then, I stared off with Word. Its however, the core of the Office Package and what we need it really for…

You can see here that the screen is no different from Office 2007’s word application. But there is one BIG change..!! Don’t see it yet?

Where’s the office button ha?? Well, it had it’s time and now its gone for good I guess.

All the office apps are now equipped with an additional Ribbon which has all the tasks listed. I thought it was stupid at first. But, like the button, it will have to have some getting used to.

This is word after changing the color to the good old Blue theme..

You can hide the ribbon if you want.

This is an open document with Word. The new pane on the left is the navigation bar. When typing large documents like a report, it will be a lot of help. See how my BIT report looks in it? A lot of titles and stuff. Easier to navigate within the doc.

Search opens the navigation panel automatically, its easier to search pressing “Enter” after each hit. No small pop-up blocking your view anymore.

Excel and powerpoint hasn't changed a lot too. I didn't check them into details since I use them very little.
This is excel when opened.

Excel has the bottom at XFD - 1048576. What I don't remember is whether this was the same with 2007. Its definitely larger than the 2003's range.

This is powerpoint with it's Orange Appearance. Its a striking color when put to the new interface. Those designers at Office has done a great job harnessing this color.

This is what it looks like in the editing area

Then onto Outlook. The e-mail solution a lot of us use and continue to get problems with too..
A major change came into outlook in the roll-out of 2010. The ribbon was introduced to Outlook with this version. For some reason, the ribbon was not there in the 2007's outlook client. It is here now.

I've got my eyes into two major features here.

1. Threaded view of E-mail.

All the mails that are related to a certain topic will now be grouped together for viewing convenience. If you like GMail's orgnanization of E-mail, you will love this. You can see the threaded mail in two modes. The first time you click on the drop-down-like arrow to display the threads, it will display all the mail from your contacts. Press it again, and you see the items from your "sent items" folder. Cool? You betcha!

2. Automated replies.

You can specify automated action buttons for routine tasks. The best example for this are the FYI e-mails. You get an Email from your boss about some new thing and you mostly forward them to your collegues saying "FYI", and assume mails like this come a lot to you. Now you can specify a task in the Quick Steps to do just that. Outlook will even add the FYI and fill the TO: field for you. All you need to do is to press the Quick-step, and press send.

Keep in mind that this is not a mail rule. You tell outlook when to do this.!

Another change was for the Send and Recieve button. It was nowhere in the Home tab. There is a separate tab in the ribbon called Send Recieve. Now this is a headache.

But again, office enables you to change the ribbon the way you want it. So I simply added a new Send Recieve component in the Home tab and I can press it anytime I like from the default screen :D

Looking at the overall picture of the software, I'd say this time Microsoft has done a good job. Its been a good year for the development team I guess. After the successful roll-out of Win 7, Microsoft's Profit will go sky high with Office 2010. As for my rating, I'd give it 9/10.

If you have a 32 bit copy and have more information on other products, please leave a comment here. I'd love to see some real excel reviews. They said there were some changes in pivot table (no idea what they are)

Good day to you.!!

The monitor strikes…again!!!

2009-12-01T19:58:00.001+05:30

I’ve had a heap of problems with the CRT display (HP 5502) I’ve been using the past 3 years. At first, it’s resolution. The problem arose in all three Operating systems XP, Vista and Win 7. I’ve fixed the issue with different approaches in the past. Tweaking the Drivers, Keeping the monitor off while booting and best of all, using incompatible forceware.!!!

And then came the problem of the hourglass! The display made an hourglass shape when it was turned on every time. Something wrong with the H-sync IC's I suppose.! But I solved it the stone age way! Bashing the casing! it was later found out that if I place something to counter the weight on the rear side, the issue would dissapear!

Well, its been there now and then but the hourglass is somewhat solved. But all of a sudden, the monitor turned off while watching “Band of Brothers” (Wonder whether this is made in Germany)

I turned off and all the options LEDs started blinking. Indicating some failure in it’s system. So the error was detected by the internal system of the monitor. Otherwise it would not do that! Anyway, I turned it on and off a few times and in one or two occasions, a blue only and red only display appeared.

Which points to the ICs again! But after a few hours, it turned on again! I reverted to the max display of the monitor which is 1024x768.! (That sucks!)

I tried to go to the tweaked res, but the error came again.! So for now, I’m going to stick to the manufacturer's specifications. I’ll have to buy a new display soon, but that will be after torturing this one to give out its best.

First stop will be a service place. I know a person who does these kinda stuff, I’ll have to take this to him! Wonder if I’ll be able to finish the BIT report with this!

Shit Happens

2009-11-27T21:59:00.001+05:30

Sometime, shit just happens. This is one of those times. When I burnt a DVD with some videos, this was the outcome. Another DVD lost. Take a good look.

The PIF is over 110 !! Unusable to the last bit I guess. The videos were supposed to be deleted after burning this. Good thing I only do that AFTER the Kprobe tests.

Well, I’d have to throw this one away! These are the errors a normal person would not catch. If this disc was used and the files were deleted, that data may have been lost for ever!

What’s inside what? Virtualization!

2009-11-18T20:11:00.001+05:30

I got introduced to Sun VirtualBox from friends at office. One being an Expert on ISP related stuff, he had a similar problem which I had. The VPN! And he had solved it. His problem was; when the VPN is connected, he can’t use the typical connection in the PC to browse internet. Most of the issues have fast answers to problems in the net.

There was another who wanted to keep the IT guys formatting his PC all the time and loosing data every day. He uses VMs to be in the Network Domain and use Ubuntu as the base OS.

My problem is the incompetency of Cisco Geeks! No VPN for 64 bit OS’s. The Virtual Box was the answer to that too.

So I installed the VirtualBox and installed my old WinXP installation.! (Yes I know its old but it had to do) On that, I installed the VPN client. After playing with the networking settings I could make the VM work just like it was a PC plugged into my router using the bridge mode. Now I could connect to the VPN at office and voila.! remote desktop to my PC at office.

At office I had the Virtual Box installed and there was an Ubuntu Box. So running Ubuntu there means I go through many abstraction layers.!

Win 7 –> VM –> XP –> Remote Desktop (XP) –> VM –>Ubuntu.

Feeling dizzy? Look at this!

pretty amazing! :D

So Bye Bye OS-X for VPN!

Kitty!

2009-11-17T17:03:00.001+05:30

Its not technically our cat. Nadeera named it kitty. He hangs around the house all day. Wonder whos cat it is. Anyway its a very nice cat. No bad habits and no special liking to food.

Firefox 3.6b1 brings Win 7 integration…more of a headache than a feature

2009-11-08T22:43:00.001+05:30

Firefox 3.6 beta 1 is here and it has brought some windows 7 integrations. The first thing to notice is the taskbar. Whenever a new Tab is opened, a new instance of Firefox is shown in the taskbar. Which for me, is a headache. Tabs are tabs.! The very reason IE was not preferred over FF is ruled out here. I used it for about 5 minutes and switched back to 3.5.5.!

This is 3.6b1 showing the tabs as instances.

This here is what was before in 3.5.5

They should at least give us the option to choose between whether to show the tabs as instances or not.

Until that is sorted out., I’m into 3.5.

Arachnid

2009-10-28T22:58:00.001+05:30

This is a spider i found at mawanella. Looked like a widow spider. The male was also in the web. But it was way too small to get on my phone cam. Add the fact that i found them in a smelly toilet! :D
Nature is all round us, if we care to look!

A Space!!! That took enough time..!!

2009-10-25T23:00:00.001+05:30

I was doing my adjustments to the code for my BIT project. You' can’t imagine the bugs I create with this coding. It took me the whole evening to figure out an error in the code.

<div id="expiry0"><input type="text" onclick="javascript:showDateFrame(0, 'exp', 'MED1');" size="10" readonly="true" id="expiryTxt0" name="expiryTxt0"/></div>

This piece of code defines my expiry date input. its labelled expiryTxt0. But there was a space after the “0”!!! Javascript kept saying there was no such object as expiryTxt0. Took me about 3 hours and firebug to figure out there was a space in thr html code which made the id “expiryTxt0 “ instead of “expiryTxt0”.

That’s software life!!! Phew!!! I’m happy I got it without doing major changes to the code trying to avoid the error.

Statcounter Code

2009-10-09T22:38:00.000+05:30

I've been dying to install the statcounter code to the blog from office. Seems the proxy server at the office is not letting the blogger scripts through. I could not save any of the Javascript tools from there. Finally, my counter is back! After a long time too..!!!

Found the 4 channel audio culprit

2009-10-04T18:39:00.001+05:30

I’ve so far been able to play 4 channel audio only with other players like Jet Audio with Windows 7. I’ve been able to get a good output with Vista. But something kept me from hearing stereo audio only from 2 speakers. Well, after reading something off the web, I checked out whats up with the drivers. Well, this checkmark has been the culprit. I’ve had it checked. But the drver somehow must’ve got some bug and ignored it.

After un-checking and checking it again, I get 4 channels.. whooppiee!!!

New Appearace...

2009-10-01T19:55:00.002+05:30

The last theme for the blog has not satisfied me well. It had more writing area but there was white strips in the sides. So I've added a new theme. This is a more simpler look to the blog.

I hope to modify the theme and customize the styles myself so that I can play with the CSS in it. Hope anybody who reads find it ok. :D

The USB Hub, Made for a purpose!!!

2009-09-29T21:13:00.000+05:30

This one goes for Damitha, Devinda and Anusha...
Guys, you remember that Hub I took home after sorting which leftovers were whos? Well, Its serving it's born purpose.

First of all, I remember Devinda taking it as the soldering pad and Damitha taking it as some other holding thing. I've been on the Hub's side and yelled at you guys whenever the hub got battered with heat or weight. Looks like it was born that way.

I can't get my monitor to stop sqeezing the display without tapping it (well, it becomes bashing after a few taps :D)
So I found out, if I held the power cable in such a way, it will be ok. Even when the table shakes, like usually, the display will not sqeeze. Till I get this to the Unity Idiots to fix, guess whats holding that power cable in place....

GRID Clips

2009-09-25T12:33:00.002+05:30

Here are the GRID clips;
Nissan Skyline:

Mustang:

Enjoy :D

Covering Every Grid on the board...!!

2009-09-23T22:53:00.001+05:30

GRIDs been my pastime for a few days now. I'm Still playing the career mode of the game called the "GRID World" and I've tried some online gaming too. I suck at Online tracks and the players there might be going nuts over the guy who hugs all the fences around!!

Here's some cool screenies I was able to get with FRAPS. I'm emphasizing on the special effects of the game here. Controls will be dealt with later when I have a way to encode my video to suit you tube :D

This is the first thing you will notice in GRID...SMOKE ! There's so much smoke; sometimes cars appear through smoked areas like bullets, the next thing you see after that is the next thing I like in GRID! Damage!

This is the transformation which happens when you try to start the race by picking up!!!

Notice the smoke? And I guarantee you, all this time, my frame rate was over 30..!! This engine is cool and lightweight on the Video Card. (I play this at 1024x768)

The damage comes in both the forms, Visual and Physical. Ring any bell? Yes! This was a setting in Need For Speed 4 (High Stakes). Grid people managed to keep it that way with the increasing weight and complexity of the car models.!! While NFS slowly dropped it till Pro Steet came and sucked bigtime!

Here you see visual damage, the buffer will hang like this until you get a jolt to the car and it will fall off.

These are impacts. They result in minimal and in the second case, some serious damage

Notice the tyres in the sides and the particles of the rear of the car. This is the flashback mode, where you can correct your errors by rewinding the game, in the in-game pause menu!

When the car is too damaged, some parts may break for ever. In this stage, you have three choices, Restart, Rewind and use the game's replay flashback, or Retire!

Notice the broken wheel and hubs.!!

Then there are the shadows.. look at this!

The cockpit view is also awesome. But it is very hard to manouver the car in this mode. I've only tried one race with a Skyline because it had Right hand side Driving!

Modelling of the cars is also good. Look at this Skyline, perfect model with lighting applied.

All in all, GRID proves to be a good game developed with care for the weight of the graphics and the FPS. Then there are the effects. Keeping these two in balance is a very hard task.! As for me, I'd give 9.5/10 for this game...!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Shift is SHIT!!!

2009-09-21T23:51:00.001+05:30

Finally found a workaroud to bypass the error in Shift starting...
Am I happy? I was, before I played. All I got for NFS this time is a bunch of complains. Face it guys... NFS's golden days are over.!!

These are the issues I got in it:
1. Gameplay: Exactly as GRID. I'm glad I played GRID before this. These suckers even laid a line on the track telling the driver about the best lane to take in a turn.!!! Idiotic!!! Looks like EA did the same thing as Microsoft when they saw OS-X. Copying!!!

2. Graphics: i'm not going to complain much about this department. I'm in the cheap category for Display drivers (and yes the 9600GT is now cheap).
The game has NO world to render as much as even in Mostwanted, Carbon or I think even in Pro Street. This game runs at about 15FPS in my PC. Wonder whats the reason... :S Like I said, this is just nagging, not a valid complain.!!

3. Menus: You cant quit the game from a race!!! @#@$@#$%!@#!@#

There are heaps of other reasons for people I guess...

This is the first time I heard an idiot talk about NFS in the intro movie. This time even the Intro sucks in my standards.!

All in all...it looks like I wont be playing shift until I'm fed up with GRID and there is no way for me to lay hands on FEAR 2. :@

EA.... you should stop the series and keep the reputation of NFS and yours if you are going to continue like this! First Pro Street and now this??? Pathetic!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flaming rubber after a long time…

2009-09-21T22:39:00.001+05:30

Installed both Need for Speed Shift and Race driver GRID onto my PC on
Sunday. Shift proved reluctant to run and gave an error. So what! I had GRID,
which was supposed to be the real source for NFSS although it was a bit older.

I was having my dinner while installing GRID and after it came up, I keyed in
and got it to a race. I didn’t set the Graphics as I normally do, but they
seemed quite OK. I’ve seen GRID but not to the extent that I play it even a bit.
It was in an exhibition in BMICH I saw the game. I knew it was hard to
handle.

But look at this!!! I didn’t expect that Cockpit view to be that good and
certainly did NOT expect the driving to be in the Right hand side!!

Got some basic screenies while playing. The damage in this game is awesome.!! More will come some time laters!!! :D

This is before the start of a race while the countdown...

And this is when the cars pickup... you know the deal when the musclers pick up.!!

Smoke is a killer.! Sometimes it becomes so thick, and when you've spinned around, the guy behind you appears from the smoke like a bullet, hitting you again !!

This is the mustang before it took that Red paint.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Installing Leopard again...

2009-09-06T00:10:00.003+05:30

I had to install Leo again on the secondary disk. This time it was not for testing the OS. But I needed some x86 software to run the CIsco VPN client. Installing XP or Vista would've been ok but my XP DVD is not in a good shape. And Vista x86 version sucks.
So I went to a clean installation of OS-X 10.5.1. This is the same Kalyway installation I used back then to test the OS.

But the DVD has some error I guess. There is no Audio. I'm done debugging this. I have what I need. The VPN client runs. Stupid Cisco guys really need to build a good 64 bit VPN client for us 64 bit OS users out there.!!!

Here's a screenie for completion :D

Almost Lost the Pen drive

2009-09-02T23:03:00.001+05:30

I needed to install MAC OS-X 10.6, the latest build named Snow Leopard. So I downloaded a copy of the dmg file. The method was not that straightforward like installing Leopard. The DMG was more than 5GB in size. So I had two options. One was to find a dual layer DVD and burn the image. The other was to use a secondary disk.

The DVD was out of the question since it was costly. I was sure this can be done with zero cost. So I read some web articles saying I can use another disk in the system. I’m installing this to the smaller HDD the MAXTOR. There is no way I’m going to use the Larger 500GB Samsung and risk all the data, including my BIT project.!

So I read somewhere I can use the flash drive and I did.! I copied all the data to the smaller 4GB drive and formatted the 8GB one to the MAC’s GUID file system.

Bad luck. The installation went crap and I had to abandon the project till this BIT project is over. And I needed the flash drive back.

Up springs the problem.

Windows cannot and will not format a partition already formatted with GUID!!!! CRAP!!!

Lucky I had the Leo Installation handy in the smaller disk. I booted into Leo and erased all the partitions and returned to windows. Again, disaster. The Drive registers as 200MB, and there’s another 7.2 GB partition, again, un formattable!!

Back in to Leo, erased all partitions and left the drive as free space.! Again CRAP! Windows is not able to recognize the actual size of the drive.!

Back into Leo!!!!! (Yes, it did make me dizzy and I know you are now too!)

Partitioned it back to FAT! Phew, Win 7 was able to recognize the ol’ Duckling Once again! It was like freefalling and struggling to pull the para cord! I’m glad the chute finally opened!

I almost lost BIOS settings too while trying to install Snow Leopard. It did some crap to BIOS! So project snow leopard is left alone for now.! Maybe when the projects are done, a clean, non-beta distro will be there.! Until then, its Win 7 and Leo!

The use of an OS which cannot play mp3

2009-08-29T21:38:00.001+05:30

I’ve installed Ubuntu loads of times and the experience I’ve got is not that good in terms of user friendliness. Problem Number one exists in it’s lack of functionality. It can’t do many things if the computer is not connected to the internet. I’ve seen this in most of the Open source crap OS’s. Yes, that includes Red Hat and Fedora.

Their Holy grail of problem solving lies with yum, apt-get or some other geekish term which the users need to connect the PC to the internet and type some stupid term or download from an array of packages which god knows what they do.

Their OSs might be damn great for stability. And the product may be the best one for the buck. But what if it doesn’t do anything.? You just splash the OPEN SOURCE banner at people.?

This is the best example I can give. After installing ubuntu, I wanted to test the speakers. This is what I experienced for Charith Abeysinghe’s great song “Sarath Sande” from Julia.

Who the heck designs an OS without the MP3 decoder? Idiots of course.!

I’ve run Win98, WinXP, WinVista, Win7, OS-X 10.4 (Tiger), OS-X 10.5 (Leopard), Fedora 9 and none of those OSs told me this!

Ubuntu, if you’re the human technology, you’ve got to figure out that humans listen to music! :P

Downloading windows Live Essentials without using the web installer

2009-08-25T14:07:00.002+05:30

When you need to download the Windows Live messenger and the other tools that come with it, Microsoft offers you a web installer which downloads the selected components from the web and then installs it on the PC.
If you are in a situation where you need to install it on a PC without internet (or offline for some reason) you are in some trouble.

But if you have an internet connection elsewhere which can manage a few 100 MBs, there is a workaround which you can use.
Go to the live downloader and select to download the typical way. The site will give you a link which will download the web installer. Copy that download link and replace the wlsetup-web.exe with wlsetup-all.exe.

That will give you the whole 135MB package with all the components which you can install offline anytime.

Hope this helps.

Assassins Creed Screenies

2009-08-22T23:20:00.001+05:30

Here are the screenies I got playing assassins creed. For those of you who don’t know it, its a third person game which the story goes in the medieval times where the Knights Templar and other parties made war with one another. I don’t give a damn about the truths about these stories, but the game is good. I’d give it about 8/10.

In the first half after about 2 missions you grow weary of the horse rides you need to make. But in the middle, they allow you to ‘warp’ to the destinations, saving a lot of time.

Enough talk, here are the pics;

A view from the highest viewpoint I could find

Taking up the assignment

Hiding among the scholars

Climbing to get a viewpoint…

Walking on the rooftops.

Entering a town on horseback. This is the part I previously noted as boring after a few goes..

A place in the Assassin’s Base.

Every person you assassinate, talks to you in their last moments revealing bits and pieces of the story.

Judging from some of the screenshots, you will notice the game features a lot of good graphics. The Graphic engine is rather good and performs really well on my 9600GT. It runs on DX10 mode and there are very little noticing points where the rate drops below 25. I’d say the engine is lightweight.! But I of all the people know, that is a very relative term. :D

There are some important places missing. Like the place where the animus is placed and the last episodes. But I’d leave it to you. There won’t be much fun if you don’t play the game ;)

Enjoy..!

My 25th Birthday

2009-08-03T22:00:00.001+05:30

I had my birthday on the 2nd (Sunday) and there was a small party-like get together at home. So I bought a cake and there were a few people.

Had some pretty good time.

Thats the cake!! was pretty sweet… we were all dizzy after eating all that chocolate. Nadeera and I had to eat more chocolate in the morning when I gave the treat to Damitha and Lakshitha!!!

Thats my Father.!!

and my Mother!

This is ‘you know who!’ no no! its not Voldemort! (See the size does not match with him) thats Nadeera!!!

And Madhavi…:P she had some huge piece of cake snapped off my hand!! Almost lost my fingers!

That’s my family and Lahiru’s

Again, my family and Nadeera’s

and finally, the Incredibles!!! :D From the left: The Nutty, the Geeky and the Fatty! :D

So Today when I went to office, my friends there also did some decor at my place and gave me a present too. Actually the decor is balloons and lot of scraps of paper on my desk!!! I had to spend about half an hour to make the place livable again :D

They named me as T-Haraka and posted these in the entrance and over my head.

And look at the mess they made!

Anyway, Thanks for all those people who sent their wishes and presents!!! I had a great time!

Adding to that, the fans I ordered from ebay was home! I had to spend some time to get it installed onto the casing! and hey, look at my pimped up PC casing!!!!

This is how the casing now looks when the PC is on!

Look at that light is makes on the wall when the lights are turned off!!! The only thing that has a problem with this fan is that it has a damn huge noise!! I have to figure a way to reduce that!

nVidia…still fails me…

2009-07-28T22:13:00.001+05:30

I know its about time I got a new monitor and let the things at rest with my resolution problem. But money is a big factor this time. So I’d have to work out with what I have.!!!

nVidia released the newest version of their forceware drivers 190.38. So I went ahead and downloaded the files and installed it. Well, I knew it was a long shot but I had a little dream that nVidia might have optimized the communication with Windows 7.

But unluckily, the issue with the custom resolutions was still there. They’ve changed the UI and all other stuff to make me hit the brick wall at the monitor detection. If the monitor is not correctly detected by the System, the option to override resolution will be grayed in windows. Which makes the Forceware driver’s attempts to override the native monitor resolutions to be stopped.

So it seems I’d have to wait a little longer. And this is the x64 driver that I tested. I know that my system works with the Win Vista x64 Forceware version 182.06 which I use. So I’d have to try the 32bit version of this new forceware and see whether they have fixed the issues.

රාවණ යළිත් කරළියට…

2009-07-15T21:25:00.001+05:30

අපි හැමෝම දන්නවා මහාවංශය කියන්නෙ අපේ රටේ ඉතිහාසය ගැන ලියවුණු ඉතාම වැදගත් පොතක්. නමුත් මහාවංශයේ කියල නැති අපේ රටේ ස්වර්ණමය යුගයක් තියන බව දන්නෙ කීයෙන් කී දෙනාද?

විජය ගෙන් සිංහල ජාතිය පැවත එන බව කියලා හෙළ නමට කරල තියන අසාධාරණය කියල නිම කරන්න බෑ. විජයාගමනයෙදි කුවේණි කපු කටිමින් හිටිය කියලා ඒක එතනින් අතෑරල දාන්න තරං අපේ සමහරු පෙළඹිලා. ඊට පෙර අපේ ර‍ට කොච්චර දියුණු වෙලා තිබ්බද? වාල්මිකී ගෙන් පටන් අරං අද ‍CNN, BBC හා යුරෝපා රටවල් වෙනකන් ලංකාවෙ හොඳ නම කැත කරන්න උත්සාහ ගත්තා.

උන් නොදන්න එක දෙයක් තියනවා. මේ රට බුදුවරුන්ගෙ පාද ස්පර්ශය ලබපු රටක්. ගෞතම බුදුන් විතරක් නෙමේ, කාශ්‍යප බුදුනුත් වැඩපු ර‍ටට වින කරන්න ලේසි නෑ.

නමුත් හෙළ රජුන්ගෙ නම් දැන් දැන් එළියට එන්න අරං. රාවණා ට මේ අතරින් විශේෂ තැනක් හිමි වෙනවා. දැන් දවස් කීපයක ඉඳං Elakiri.com එකේ කට්ටිය මේ ගැන සාකච්ඡා කරනවා. ආසාවක් තියනව නම් කියවල බලන්න.

http://www.elakiri.com/forum/showthread.php?t=216360

සීගිරිය, දඬුමොනරය ‍වගේ දුලබ දේවල් ගැන ටිකක් දැන ගන්න පුළුවන් වෙයි.

Visit to the zoo…to see some sad sights!

2009-07-12T14:31:00.001+05:30

Friends gathered yesterday (Saturday) for a picnic, actually to the zoo. There was Devinda, Anusha, Damitha, Saumya, Nadeera and of course me. We had a good time watching the animals, reptiles and birds. Got some great shots of a peacock too.

What joy would it have been if this peacock was in the wild and I got the photo from there?

But it concerns me about the condition of the animals. Some big cats were just left in a cage no bigger than my room. Take note a carnivore in it’s natural habitat owns several acres of land. Claiming its territory when another competes with it. Marking the boundaries… but here…! Its a sad situation for even some lions and tigers. I saw 5 full grown Bengali Tigers, all of them in huge pit like cages. With no trees and only concrete walls and steps to entertain them.

They deserve more space. And not just concrete surroundings some water and grass perhaps?

Its a sad sight indeed. The government or the Wildlife department need to consider the situation of the animals more than they do now. Considering the fact that most of these animals are not endangered, the death of a Bengali would mean disaster for the world as well as the zoo. India would never give us any animals again if they are treated this way… We need to do something about this, and fast.

And remember, if you ever visit the zoo, don’t rouse the animals. They live their entire lives in a small cage, just for us to see them about once a year! And don’t feed them crap! It might kill them too. Love all things. Humans kill for their religions which none of them follow correctly.!

How to remove “New” list entries in Windows Vista and 7 and save your time…

2009-07-06T21:13:00.001+05:30

When you right click on either the desktop or on a window, you get a menu called “New” and in this menu are options to create new items. Most used of these are “New Folder” and “New Text Document”. But there are some other entries in PCs that are unused and slow the popping up of the menu altogether. Whenever you need to create a new folder, it takes ages for the menu to appear because of these unwanted and unused entries.

To remove these entries in XP, there is a cool tool called “Tweak UI” (Please read the page before installing it if you need to). It has some built in stuff to tweak the look and feel of XP and speed things up. And its a must-use for you speed hungry people I suppose.! :D

For Vista and Win7, there was a tool called Tweak VI, but it is too complicated to use and there are too many menus even I couldn’t find the place to do this removal of “New” lists.

Therefore to do this, you need to do some manual registry editing. First of all open up the Registry editor by typing “regedit” in the run window or in the start menu search bar.

Then the registry editor will open up. From the Registry tree, navigate to the sub tree HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

You will see a list of extensions in the submenu. Now, go to the desktop, and right click and go to the “New” menu. Take note of one entry you need to remove. Lets assume you need to remove “New BMP image”. In HKCR menu, select the “.bmp” submenu and under that you will see another submenu called “ShellNew”

If you need, take a backup of the “.bmp” tree before you do anything. (By right Click and then select “Export” and give a location to save the structure") Then after that delete the “ShellNew” folder altogether. Now go back and see whether the entry is there in the “New” menu. It should be gone.

Do this to all unwanted entries. If you don’t know the extension of the “new” thing is going to create, create it and check the extension from file properties and give it the shot!

One of the tricky entries in Vista and Win7 is the “Windows Live call” Entry. Its located in HKCR/.wlcshrtctv2

The removal of the entry is shown in the pic below.

Hope this will clean out the “New” menu and speed your system up!

Removing the phone…

2009-07-06T15:24:00.001+05:30

My phone had some issues with the Earphone. A lot of people complained after taking calls off it, that the earphone volume was so low. Even after getting used to, I felt it too in noisy surroundings. After seeing what the phone shop guy did to the old NOKIA 6630, I decided to remove the phone myself rather than pay money to stupid guys who know nothing. (A guy at Liberty plaza took the 6630 to ‘replace’ the charging unit and what he has done was scratch the contacts to the phone from the charging jack!)

My toolset

Since I had the right tools to do it, I decided to go ahead. Watched a demo from youtube featuring a chinese guy removing a K750i. The phones are similar and I took off.

The hard part was to remove the clip-in parts/ I didn’t have the tool to remove them. The original tool has a flat plastic part which you can put in between the parts and take the things apart. For this, I used an old SIM card. It did the trick!

The bad news was that I had to go up to the final point of removal to get to the earpiece speaker. That means removing the Display and the keypad base. Both of which had ribbon connectors to them. And I also had to remove the mainboard which also had a ribbon connector from the camera coming to it.!!

The Display and the key base. Although they’re on top of each other they are two different parts.

The phone before taking off the Main-Board. The Ribbon coming from the Camera is visible in Silver color.

The board and the casing Notice the ribbon from the camera, which is on the casing.

The button which connects to the camera key. This button has 2 stages focus and shoot. Observe the LED on the right side of it, which lights up the button when the camera is turned on.

Phew.! After a lot of effort I was able to remove the mainboard and I cleaned the contacts to the earpiece.

This is the back of the mainboard where you find the contacts to the earpiece.

Observe the buttons for power on top, Play/Pause on the lower side and Volume Up/Down on the top side of the picture.

After cleaning everything, the hard part was to put it together. (as always :D)

The ribbons are the hardest to re-connect. They are in the most hard-to-reach areas in the board. The removal is easy coz you just have to pull it out. But fixing is hard. Luckily Nadeera was around so I asked her to hold the flashlight of her phone till I fix the ribbon of the Key Base and the Display.!

After all things were in place, I tested the volume. I think its gotten a little better. But not to the amount I expected it to go. What the heck! I removed a phone and put it back together and it works. That’s all the fun I’d need!!!

Hiding Live messenger and Live Mail in the Notification area in Windows 7

2009-07-04T22:24:00.001+05:30

Source: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/15/workaround-to-hide-and-minimize-windows-live-messenger-iconbutton-to-notification-area-system-tray-in-windows-7/

Windows live messenger and Live mail don’t hide in the Notification area in Win 7 like they did in Win Vista. They linger in the taskbar when minimized and there is no option to tell it to hide. It appears with a hidden window with the contact picture with it.

But you can override it. All you need is to run Live Messenger and Live mail in Compatibility mode for Vista.

To do it, Close Messenger and Live mail and open the start menu and then type “live” to list the live Messenger (or Live mail) and right click it to open the menu.

Then select properties and go to the Compatibility

Select any one from the Vista list and click OK. Then re-open Live messenger (or Live Mail if you did it for Live mail)

Messenger will give a some messages saying its installing and then it will start. After that, you will no longer see the hidden window and the Messenger and Live mail will be in the Notification area and you have the option to choose to minimize them to it.

Live mail will also minimize and you can choose from the Notification area whether to do it or not.

Happy Win 7.

After a some time and many events…

2009-06-28T20:14:00.001+05:30

Lot of things happened in this week and the last. I’ll start from the top. It was the Batch get together on the 20th of June and we all go together at Palm Village Hotel in Uswatakeiyawa. I went by my car and Anusha and Lakshitha came with me in Anusha’s car. After a lot of Off-Road action because of Lakshitha’s Superb Navigation skills, we arrived at the place (with a mud-clad Maruti and a beaten up Corolla of course!)

We had some good time there. Several of our batch mates who went abroad were also there because the convocation was on the 25th.

This is a picture of the lawn of the hotel. It was a good place. But could have been better with the food varieties ;)

The first to arrive at the scene.! Thanks to Anusha’s Omnia i900 and Google Maps and some serious Navigation by Lakshitha!

This is a part of the lot!

We had some fun till the evening and went home. It all ended fine. But the events did not!

On the 24th, I got a call from Nadeera, saying her Grandpa was sick. He didn’t seem quite well the last time we visited in the weekend before that, and I also thought it was a minor hiccup which he has from time to time. But Granny was desperate for us to come. But by the time at about 7 am, when we went there, he had passed away!!

Sad time indeed.! I had to skip going to work and take some necessary action needed.! After the Grama-Niladhari (The Sherriff equivalent Sri Lankan role) came in and gave the report, I helped the parlor guys to take the body for the necessary preservation actions to be done before the body was brought back home. I had to go to Awissawella on that day for some office work, and by the time I was back, seeya’s Body was home from the parlor.

I stayed there with my parents till it was about 11pm and we had to leave, coz on the next day, the 25th, it was my convocation!

And what a day that was! To start with, I got collided with another car on the road in the morning on the way to the ceremony. Left fender was bent like a creek! Damn these idiots who drive like maniacs. The car driver suddenly put the car across the road for a U-Turn despite my signals and horns! He didn’t even see me.! All he saw was me screeching towards his door and hitting it!!

I had the senses to get into the scene and take some photos.

Why did the idiot cross the road? Answer: To take a U-turn!

Anyway, the insurance guy came after a few minutes and we went to the police station and informed that we will come in the evening and put the report in, which we did.

In the convocation, the proceedings went well. But I had made the grave mistake of paying the Photographers the money for all the shots.! We had to wait in queues for three hours straight! Damn! If you haven’t got the degree, guys (specially you chamitha) don’t pay for the photo guys those are in the Uni when you go to collect the cloak.!!! Take your photos from somewhere else! For heavens sake, use a Digi cam and put a good background and print it! Saves money and time!

When we asked whether we can take the photo on some other day in their studio, the bloodsuckers at Jonathan’s Studio asked FOUR TIMES the initial amount (thats 6000 rupees) to take the same photo in the studio! If you’re taking photos for some occasion, avoid the Jonathans!

Old pals together once again! Its hard to get all four in one place at once!

This is what those Jonathans guys asked 1500 and 6000 for! Good shooting Anusha!

So we came back at about 6pm.! Straight back home and then to Siddamulla coz there was still work left to do!

On Friday it was seeya’s funeral but I missed it by 30 minutes because of the bus was so slow! Man! this week has been a damn bad one!

But I was able to get to the house to give some help to serve the visitors.

Its been a hard week but I’m still intact! Hope to get the car fixed in the next week and bring back things to normal situations!

ශ්‍රී ලංකාව ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණය වීම!

2009-06-15T21:11:00.001+05:30

මම wiki එකේ සිංහල පිටු හොයල දෙක තුනක් හැදුවා. ඒ ගමන් ලංකාවෙ ප්‍රධාන පිටුවෙ මමම දාපු කොටි ගැන තිබ්බ වාක්‍ය හදන්න ගිහන් තමා මේක දැක්කෙ. දැකපු ගමං කරකවල දැම්ම වගේ. පස්සෙ තමා වැඩේ මීටරේට වැටුනෙ.

පුලු පුලුවං විදියට අපේ සිංහල අඩවි යාවත්කාල කරල තියන්න. අපේ භාෂාව උඩට ගන්න වැඩ කරන්න ඕන අපිමයි!

Call it ‘The Tsunami’ if you want…

2009-05-31T10:02:00.001+05:30

During the past, many attempts were made to stop the war in our country, but this time was different. We stood adamant, and we never listened to the people we should not have listened to and we listened to the ones we should have, in the past.

The techniques used in the war was entirely different as our Army chief General Sarath Fonseka states in an interview with the state media. When faced with a question why he did not use a fancy name like “jaya-sikuru’, ‘desert storm’ or any other like that, his reply was fascinating.

His reply was; “People do that to gain popularity and political gains. I have no intention of doing either. Besides, naming operations is a thing like doing tele-dramas. But now that you ask for it, when the terrorists were once powerful, they used to call their offensive as ‘Prabha’s un-stoppable wave’, so I’ve thought that when people write history, if they need a name, they can use the word ‘The Tsunami’ if they want”

In the same interview he stated that we lost nearly 5000 brave hearts for the cause of freedom and we had a lot more permanently injured. It is them now we have to turn our attention to. Those men gave their lives to protect not only their country, but to protect us!!

The international community has not yet given up trying to make our country poor and helpless. They will try in many ways. When Human rights issues fail, they will try the war crimes slogan. When that fails, they will try to do something else, till we do something long term about those oil reserves around the country, we have a huge risk of becoming another Gaza strip or another Zimbabwe! And don’t fall for the sweets of US, EU and others, they want the oil and they want us dead. Vigilance is the way to go!

My prediction about the economy has come to light! Our stock market is going haywire with numbers. Let’s see my next one becomes true as well, SL being the key to getting out of the recession.!

All hail motherland!

Turning a blind eye on Terrorism

2009-05-22T21:15:00.001+05:30

It is quite obvious that Australia, Canada and the UK are turning a blind eye towards the incidents related to the abuses that happen to Sri Lankans that live in those countries. This fact is proven again and again by the attacks to the Sri Lankan places of gathering and interest in Canada and the attack on the Sri Lankan couple in Australia and there were some reported incidents in the UK as well.

Canadians never accepted the true nature of what the LTTE is, therefore, they can be clearly categorized as a breeding ground for all sorts of terrorists. With less law enforcement and less action taken on violence, it may become the next safe heaven for the terrorists that cannot live in other countries, making Canada impossible to live for other people.

But it is alarming how the Aussies are turning a blind eye onto the events that took place these days. For once, the LTTE showed off their might in the center of Sydney, which was merely out done by our patriotic Sri Lankans living in Aussie. Cheers to them, they kept the LTTE scum in control for all this time, giving their time, money and even risking their lives in the process. You are all heroes who deserve credit in this process of stopping terror in Sri Lanka.

If this continues to happen, us Sri Lankans will have to take some preventive measures. It is high time that these countries did something about the incidents and we give some good talking to their ambassadors here.!

Australia, UK, Canada, this is your call, help us stop this cancer, prove for the last time, that you support humanity, not Terrorism.!!

Paradise Reawakens…!

2009-05-19T21:19:00.001+05:30

After a fierce battle, our valiant soldiers have won over terrorism. Yesterday, our president announced that the country was free from terrorists and it is once again, under a single flag! Today, forces recovered the body of the terrorist leader who ran a 30 year long war against humanity, killing tens of thousands of people.

After three decades, humanity won over terrorism. My country is once again free. No one shall live in fear, no one shall come and tell us what to do and how, we are free…

As the stock market went high up in the sky, I feel that the long awaited economic stability is once again coming to the country. Sri Lanka may very well be the first to conquer this world economic crisis as well.

People will move along with little concern about what dangers await them. Now that the security situation has improved, the barriers and barricades will also open up in a few months time.

But we must not let our guard down. Mostly for us, who stand guard in the cyber realms…for us, the fire was only stopped, it is up to us to put water on the embers.

Sri Lanka will grow to the friendly nation it was once again, and people will come from world round, to witness the nation who stood against the most ruthless enemy…

All heroes who gave their lives are not forgotten. They will continue to guard us from heaven, watching over our land, our pride.

Welcome to Paradise…the Pearl of the Indian Ocean…

Got the screen resolution at last.!!

2009-05-17T22:43:00.001+05:30

I was dying to get the bigger 1160x870 screen resolution on Win 7 for ages. I was running it on Vista and it was the single thing that kept me from installing win7 as the main OS. And I was able to trick the monitor on the 3rd OS, to run a resolution it was not made to display!

I didn’t actually get the 1160x870, its 1160x871. I was unable to un-tick the checkbox that said “Hide modes that this monitor cannot display” in display properties, it was grayed. So what I did was to install the drivers for the monitor, reluctantly that is! It was my only option. The only thing that was on the net as help. But alas!, that did not work. But I was adament to get this done. So I installed the previously removed nVidia Drivers. This time, the checkbox was not grayed!

So I did the tricks and tried many resolutions and failed. But getting this odd one was possible.

So I think I have to plan a migration this week. Win 7, you’re about to go hot!

Road to Victory…Brave soldiers of SL turn the impossible to inevitable !!

2009-05-16T21:14:00.001+05:30

As of the time writing this, Sri Lankan Armed forces have cornered the bloodthirsty LTTE leaders in an area lesser than one square kilometer. News just arrived that two LTTE terrorist leaders ‘Swarnam’ and ‘Shashi master’ are dead.

The tendency is that the war will be over in just hours time. SLDF was trying to get the final operations done before the Indian election counts were over and their government was in place. But unlike the Sri Lankans feared, the ruling party has become one that is friendly to Sri Lanka and one that supports the humanitarian missions. But now, it does not matter for the war. But for the international presence of terrorism, we have to have all the ties that help us.

The world should be in debt to Sri Lanka, because we are the first to defeat a modern terrorist outfit and win over a war that ran for a long period of time. Even advanced countries like UK went for a compromise for their problem. UK, US and other countries should learn that Terrorists are not humans. They are a mal-bred community that should be irradiated, a pest that should be wiped out.

All hails to the brave hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces. You are our guardians, our saviors, our friends, our gods…!!

For all the brave sons and daughters who gave their lives in war, I wish they attain Nibbana…you will never be forgotten, the country will for ever remember you as long as we linger here in this world, we will remember you.!!!

Sri Lanka Starts to wade off the terrorists..

2009-05-15T00:36:00.001+05:30

the 55th and the 59th Squads of the Sri Lankan Army has entered the Civilian Safe Zone where the LTTE Terrorists are holding them as a human shield. LTTE has fired phosphorous clad weapons towards the fleeing people, clearly violating the Geneva convention.

As I write the Fara 3 ship which was hijacked by the terrorists has been recovered by the Army. The troops are spearheading the NFZ in search of the terror leader Pirabaharan, who claimed to be the liberator for the Tamils but later ordered the execution of many innocent people who tried to escape the war at their will.

The LTTE is a Terrorist Organization that has been fighting for a separate strip of land for the beneficiary of the terror leaders and Drugs and arms traffic. But the Sri Lankan Army has put the battle to the limit and the beginning of the end has come…!

Win Seven RC – 1

2009-05-13T21:29:00.000+05:30

I’ve been waiting for this quite a while…you know what this is right? Its the Windows Seven Release Client One. The 7100 build that just came out of Microsoft. I was able to download the whole OS in about 8 hours thanks to the internet connection at office which gave me almost 1M throughput ;)

So I got the latest Windows live stuff from there too. I had to trick the messenger site to give me the redistributable of the live clients. It just gives out a web setup. I was adamant not to waste bandwidth at home and tricked the site to give me the real setup.

So I’m running Windows 7 RC –1 with most of the typical software I use with Vista. Skype was a bit buggy. I have to get the latest setup and see. I’ve installed the live mail and it works really well with the Google IMAP and Hotmail’s HTTP. There are no hang-ups like in Outlook when I use IMAP.

I’m now using the live writer to write this too..

This is how it looks like :D The low score for the HDD is because I run the OS in the smaller and slower HDD. If I install this in the main HDD, The lowest score will be my teeny weeny processor the E2140.

Still have to see what it does with Games. I haven’t tried to run any game yet.

So far, the Live Writer has been great. Wonder where its going to put the pictures I’ve put here!

Long weekend for Wesak, Lot of work and play

2009-05-10T21:03:00.001+05:30

We got a 3 day holiday for the Wesak festival. Although I didn't go out to see the lanterns like last time, this time, I had a lot of work to do. On Saturday, we had a small get together at Aruna Aiya's place. It was to celebrate the little girls' birthday and to get together for the new year, which passed a few weeks ago.

So the usual happened. Since I had the car, I took a ball and some spare clothes with me too. Obviously, to play cricket :D
You might remember we did the same thing in the same place on the New year last time. Same team too :D Me, Lahiru and Chamidu.

But we had some spectators too. Lille Savini watched us getting all dirt clad and one tennis ball hungry dog, Blacky, was keen on the play. Actually what he was after was the ball. He eventually managed to get it once. We had to give him lunch to make the guy let the ball go!

See, the pitch is just yards from this playful puppy. :D He's friendly but likes the tennis ball too much. :D

While we played our muscles to the limit, our parents and relatives chatted... What kind of stuff they talked about; god knows! :D

In the evening, it was the birthday hour and everyone got together for the celebration of a dual birthday of the lil kids
Savini;

And Thevini.

Aruna aiya got hold of these birthday hats from some place and we just had to wear them... and like always, I tested two of them on me :D

and the others weren't left out too ;)

so we sang a happy birthday and gave the cake some attention ;)

This is the whole lot that participated.

And then onto Sunday, thats today :D
Today was work-day :D
Not that I had to go to office. Because Punchi amma and family was moving to a new home. Both the new and old houses are in Mattegoda and they are nearby. So we shifted all the stuff mostly by hand. Today, Aruna aiya and Podi mama came along and we did some renovations in the new house since they were supposed to move in at the auspicious time tomorrow. I had to endure the pain in my body from yesterday's play (Playing after about 3,4 months) and do some serious heavy lifting. From Cupboards to beds and from clothes to Refrigerators.

But for the big stuff like Beds and fridges, we hired a small lorry and we took the stuff in that.
Thats me enjoying the ride with all the stuff loaded.

Look at all the dust and sweat... :P

Its damn tiring to work these days. Adding to my muscle pains, comes the heat. its damn hot in Sri Lanka these days and the humidity was unbearable. But at the end of the day, we were happy...thats the whole plan of getting your hands dirty. At the end of it, you feel fun to have done all that work :D

What a weekend..!

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Giving the Mouse a new life

2009-04-29T21:50:00.001+05:30

I bought my 5 button Mercury mouse almost 5~6 years ago. I still use it. The great thing about it is that it has two more programmable buttons than the normal 3-button scroll mouse. Speaking of scroll, that was the thing I had the problem with.!

My scrolling wheel got haywire about a year back. I'm now so used to scroll bars I don't need that scroll wheel much. I used to switch weapons in games with buttons.!!!
But I got the chance to repair the broken wheel when I found an old mouse. Actually, it was one of my friends at office, Keshaka, who threw that old broken USB mouse coz it didn't move an inch. After the cleaning lady came and checked Keshaka's dustbin (when he was not there) I told the lady not to throw it away. I thought it had fallen off the desk to the dustbin. When I found out later that the mouse was broken, I got the idea of the wheel and I took it home (Thanks Keshaka!)

So I removed the covers and used my old soldering iron to remove the small shaft-encoder that was in the USB mouse. But I was not satisfied with the work. It damaged the PCB too much, and the last thing I wanted was a damaged PCB in my working mouse. So I asked my pal Sanka to bring the Sucker today to remove the encoder of the Mercury.

The removed encoder from the Mercury

I got to know that the encoders were different in height and I had to use a lot of time cutting the Aluminium parts to suit the Mercury's dimensions...

After a little effort and some soldering, the thing came togethter.... and I did some test runs.!

and guess what! It worked like a charm.!! I was right to guess the error in the shaft encoder. Yippee... I got a 100% working 5 button mouse now... I just HAVE to play Unreal 3 with this.! I couldn't play ANY game's weapon change or sniper zoom without the wheel...now I can do it.

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Phone Call with no CLI?

2009-04-20T22:00:00.001+05:30

I got the Screen capture tool from Gayan's link and guess what I caught on it!!! I was upstairs for some work and there was a missed call from a withheld number. Those calls are banned in Sri Lanka and I wonder who made that call. This may as well be a glitch in the switch! But I'd like to answer it if it comes the next time :D

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Pirate Bay Founders ordered to be Jailed!

2009-04-17T21:06:00.003+05:30

Sad days indeed for sharing fans. The court in Sweden has given the verdict that the Pirate Bay founders are guilty for copyright infringement. But its rather questionable that how many want it to happen. Sure its true that the Warner Brothers and others has lost quite a bit of revenue from it.

As the founders say, they won't pay and they won't give up...as they told on thepiratebay.org;

So, the dice courts judgement is here. It was lol to read and hear, crazy verdict.

But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing hollywood ever taught us.

Hope that they get out of this for good. Even I need that site to watch movies :D

On Screen Ruler

2009-04-16T19:38:00.001+05:30

I needed to measure a Photo that I printed for some documentation of the car. I couldn't find any of my rulers anywhere in the room. I do know what I need is an organised room, but instead, I turned to this little guy. An on-screen ruler. Its a small app that is stand-alone and friendly. Add this to your standalone apps list.

http://www.spadixbd.com/freetools/jruler.htm

Just download and unzip the Jruler.exe and place it anywhere. You'd need it some day..so better keep it handy

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Phone stuff

2009-04-15T22:35:00.001+05:30

Since Anusha is having a bad time with the phone and the battery and running all round the country looking for spare parts, I decided to take a look in to my phone too.

I have a w810i, which I bought about 3 years back.

Well, its scratched too. Like Anusha's I also used it without a cover. Actually I used to have a cover for a few months and decided that I don't need an extra 20 or 30g in the pocket. The worst damage to it came when I fell with it about a month back on the pavement in front of my father's office. Yeah! stupid me.

Considering the stuff I do with the phone, even I am surprised. I use my phone for a loads of things including...

Calling
SMS
E-Mail (Instant retrieval with Gmail's IMAP. Which means I get the Blackberry's flagship feature for free)
Chatting with MSN, Yahoo, Skype and Gtalk contacts with Nimbuzz.
My Digital Camera. (Think phone cams suck? Check out the photos I took on the Ella trip)
Emergency Torch ;) (Put the phone to cam mode in no time and press the *. Its a torch! The menu is too far away, that is the best method for me)
Contact manager for Google's Contacts (Discovered recently with Google Sync)
Walkman (saved me from quite a few Bus-Songs)
Calendar
Notebook
Compass
Scientific Calculator
Dictionary

The list goes on.. These are not just the available features. That list is too big. This is the list that I use.

I just love my phone and I love Sony Ericsson. Like Anusha, I won't be switching phones for a long time. And when I do, I'll head straight to a SE. And unlike Nokia, this battery goes on for 2 days whatever I do on it. The most annoying thing happens when I use it for less things it tends to go for about 2.75 days :( thats when the battery dies on the way home :D

All in all. I love my Phone.!

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Google Sync for Sony Ericsson

2009-04-15T14:05:00.001+05:30

Google has rolled out sync for mobile devices. I have always wondered what the sync profile meant.. this is it. They are offering just contact sync right now. But I think they need to put up calendar sync very soon. If that is the case, I can use that to sync the phone with my PC and Google. Keeping the PC and Google in sync in the process. :D

This is how you set the sync settings for a SE. (I have w810i, they say it works for most SE's)

# Click the 'Menu' key and open the 'Organizer'.
# Select 'Synchronization'.
# Select 'New Account' and enter 'Google Sync' or any name of your choice.
# Enter the following values:

* Server address: https://m.google.com/syncml
* Username: your Google Account username, e.g. you@googlemail.com (or @gmail.com like I used)
* Password: your Google password
* Connection: select the Internet access point for your carrier
* Applications: mark 'Contacts' only and click 'OK'
* App. settings: open 'Contacts' and for 'Database name' enter 'contacts' (lower case), leave other fields blank
* Sync. interval: choose how frequently you would like to synchronize with Google
* Leave other settings unchanged

# Click 'Save' to exit this screen and save your Sync profile.
# Highlight your new Sync profile and press 'Start'.

Happy hunting...

All it takes is one idiot.

2009-04-14T11:55:00.001+05:30

This is the result when people with less talent gets the drivers licence. As you might know, my car was hit by a bus. When I asked for the compensation, the owner told me to go to courts and ask for it. Hell i will. I'll make sure that he learns a lesson. The paint guys asked for 28k for the repair. Lucky i get the insurance claim for this.

New Look for the blog

2009-04-12T21:58:00.001+05:30

I decided to have a new look for the blog.. Geez its hard work. All those stuff I have accumulated for the time I was blogging had to be backed up and the scripts!!! the scripts I had on it had to be re-written. Manually!! The search option for the blogroll gave me a headache.! I had to edit the Theme XML to put a Clear button on the search bar to make the hits go away once they populate the whole screen.

Man this is hard work! anyway, this is the new look. Comments anyone?

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Metabolism mode

2009-04-12T19:12:00.001+05:30

This is the Sinhala New Year Season and all we do these days is eat!! and eat!!! and eat a little more so that we forget what we ate the last times!!!!

So I think I'll have to go into metabolism mode to keep my thin body intact.!! Each time I get a little fat, I get sick! Its become a habit. So I think I'll do some cleaning and washing to get the energy burnt up! :D Happy Happy! :D

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The Zone

2009-04-09T21:15:00.003+05:30

No I'm not talking about the Zone in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which I gave up playing because its a stupid game with very little user to game information exchange, I'm talking about the No Fire Zone here in Sri Lanka.

People should get one thing straight! The Zone exists because the LTTE Terrorists refuse to let the civilians out of a battle Zone, Clearly Violating the Geneva Convention (which might be now out-dated coz no one cares about it!!). Media sources like the BBC state there are people dying in the NFZ because of the Sri Lanka Army, which is outrageous!! Its a known fact that the BBC and most of the International press has been Pro-LTTE (The BBC is almost LTTE!) from the begining of this humanitarian missions, but to put Idiotic statements like "Civilians die in Sri Lanka Zone" is totally unacceptable!

Countries like Norway and UK are waiting till we declare peace talks, to get to the LTTE and strengthen them again. They have been feeding terrorism for a long time, not to mention the help Terrorists gained from NGOs like CARE.

One thing is for certain, neither our Army, nor us, are going to give up this fight. You international assholes can put your pants down in front of Terrorism, but we Sri Lankans are NOT going to do that.!!!

Stupid bus drivers

2009-04-09T20:36:00.002+05:30

One of them hit my car on the side on Last Sunday and I had to do loads of stuff to make sure I get the thing fixed. I still haven't put the car to the garage but all the documentation stuff is done to make sure I get all the money from the insurance to pay for the damage. Its from MY insurance and the @sshole owner of the bus didn't agree to pay me a cent. He told me to go to the courts and get it.
He might be under the assumption that I won't go to the courts because its inconvenient. Well he's going to be damn surprised! I don't get any benefit from going to the courts, but the bus owner and the driver has lots to loose, including suspension of the driver's licence for some time..!! I am SO going to do this!! Stupid bus drivers must be dealt with!!

Speed Record

2009-03-31T22:30:00.001+05:30

Forgot to mention in that last post. My personal speed record in my car just went to 90 km/h. I won't be able to catch Nushy, but who knows? one day I'd be able to get to 100.

I have done more than 100 in other vehicles. But doing it in my car is another story...

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My Car getting a bath and a fix-up

2009-03-31T22:28:00.001+05:30

I had to get the car to the service station for a good bath. Another reason that I went to that place is that it also has a garage. The place belongs to a friend of my Dad's and I needed to fix the gear lever's problem that made it rocking in every position I keep it.

Last weekend when me and Nadeera went for a ride to see an exhibition, I was hardly able to change the gear too. The clutch won't disengage the gearbox from the engine. It just refused to let me put the gear to the 2nd. I had to use both my hands and push the gear into position a few times (I'm darn glad dad had that old 504 to train me with driving...this feels like a toy) I also had to attend a homecoming that night so I HAD to fix it.

So I asked Nadeera to assist me after we came home (with a reasonable pain in my left shoulder pulling that gear)
I put my head inside the engine area while she pushed the clutch and I realized that the cable adjustment could fix it. I had to try about 5 times to get it right. So the Clutch now disengaged the gearbox from the engine. But, the rocking gear lever problem was still there.

I was able to see the damage done by the lady who owned the car when we lifted it up at the service station. The Bushes and joints that kept the gear in place were all worn out. All that was left was some rubber pieces.

So I bought the equipment from a shop and the guy there installed it. Now the gear is still. Peace to the mind and the shoulders.!!

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Asterisk on Ubuntu

2009-03-24T22:42:00.003+05:30

I installed Ubuntu to try out some VoIP stuff. As a start I installed my old friend Asterisk. Its been quite a while before I used the Soft PBX. Actually, its been about 3 years. I didn't remember a thing. But some came to me like instinct. Like the command that is used to enter the Asterisk CLI once the PBX service is stared (asterisk -r) came to me from nowhere. I just typed it in..and then wondered there for a few seconds what I did and why I typed it!!

Took almost 15 minutes reading the extensions.conf and I gave up. Backed it up and then omitted the stuff from the file and created a simple file with only two extensions. Downloaded X-Lite and had my father use the other end from upstairs.

After a few mishaps and errors calls got through..yet, I have to get the mic working in Ubuntu and my Father doesn't have one! :/ So I had to stop there. Until I get the hardware, I'll have to find some other way...