Kesara's Blog

Kesara's Home Page - Online Again on kesara.galupara.com

2008-08-08T00:11:00.006+05:30

Since 1999 my personal web site was hosted on different web servers which offers free web hosting, until recent it was hosted on f2g.net. In the beginning of 2008 they terminated the free hosting. So my home page was down for sometime.

Many thanks to, Prathibha, the owner of "About Sri Lanka" who offered me free web hosting facility and domain name. Now backup of my previous web site is available in this new server. You can access it via http://kesara.galupara.com/. The web site is with some outdated which will be updated very soon.

Calculator.NET Version 1.1.0.1 - 500+ Downloads within 2 Months

2008-08-06T00:14:00.005+05:30

I'm happy to announce that Calculator.NET Version 1.1.0.1 has been downloaded 500+ times from Google Code project website within just two month after release. In addition to that it has been downloaded from Softpedia 300+ times and this program is also available on other websites too.
Download count is available on http://code.google.com/p/calculator/downloads/list

M.I.A.'s LTTE Connection

2008-08-05T23:25:00.004+05:30

M.I.A. is using her songs, albums, popularity and money for benefit of brutal LTTE terrorists. Above song is done by Delon peace loving Sri Lankan artists to expose the truth about M.I.A.
Don't take our word. Do a research by your self.

Links about M.I.A. and LTTE

Links about Dilon and His Song

Calculator.NET Version 1.1.0.1 Released

2008-06-09T01:51:00.003+05:30

Calculator.NET version 1.1.0.1 released today. Calculator.NET is easy to use calculator for home user with bunch of unique features. Calculator.NET is available only for Microsoft Windows platforms and users need Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or above to run Calculator.NET.
This new release includes several bug fixes, GUI enhancements and the main feature, keyboard input support which was lacked in version 1.0.

Blog Roll

2008-03-08T22:04:00.004+05:30

An introduction to some of the blogs that I read regulary... (most of them are maintained by my friends...) ;-)

About Sri Lanka
Regulary updated news blog which will be a good read to find out whats happaning in Sri Lanka.
Maintainers: Prathibha, Lahiru, Chathura

What is, Why?
A very informative blog covering computer security, web sites, networking and other IT related areas.
Maintainer: Kusal

Ramith's Blog
A techno blog, discover lot of new web sites via this blog.
Maintainer: Ramith

STUB
A mixed techno-auto-entertainment blog will be a good read.
Maintainer: Asitha

Words of Amaruwan
A mixed info blog but a very entertaining and informative read.
Maintainer: Dilina

Tharindu Mathew's Blog
Another good techno blog.
Maintainer: Mackie

The Nemesis Archives
Find out what Nemesis (the rock band) is doing and enjoy some good Nemesis music.
Maintainer: Mackie

MY SLIIT
A techno blog + information about SLIIT (Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology).
Maintainer: Kusal

Uganda Buddhist Center

2008-03-03T10:38:00.003+05:30

Links

Uganda Buddhist Center

You Tube Video 1

You Tube Video 2

You Tube Video 3

You Tube Video 4

Story

The Uganda Buddhist Centre is a non-profit organization founded by Venerable Buddharakkhita, a native Ugandan Buddhist monk, on April 10, 2005. It was created to introduce and preserve the Buddha's teachings within the context of African culture. So far, the facilities include: a meditation hall (yet to be completed), a small library and reading room, two single room accommodations, a property manager's house and others.

General Objectives:

The Uganda Buddhist Centre is a major initiative to secure a firm and lasting spiritual home for original Buddhist teachings, and its practice, on African soil. This is being accomplished by the establishment of the Centre for study and practice of Buddhism, thus creating the first ever Buddhist Centre in Uganda and massively increasing Buddhism in Africa.

Specific objectives:

To initiate and create programs to serve the community with social, cultural, ecological, educational and other humanitarian services that will assist people afflicted by violence or HIV/AIDS infection.

To create a stable and sustainable endowment for ongoing projects and activities

Dhamma Activities:

The Uganda Buddhist Centre is open year-around to anyone who wishes to practice and study Buddhism. Before coming to the center, you need to get in touch with us
by phone or e-mail.

Our Future:

The first phase in the establishment of the Uganda Buddhist Centre found support primarily from our Buddhist friends in other countries such as Japan, Thailand, and the United States. In the near future, our Centre will depend largely on generous funding from international sources until a strong Ugandan Buddhist community develops. For further information, please visit: www.ugandabuddhistcentre.org

source: http://www.youtube.com/user/go278

papercut updated - Version 0.1.1 is out now!

2007-12-26T10:38:00.000+05:30

I'm happy that there are 39 downloads of papercut-0.1.0 after 12 hours of release. And I had to release the papercut-0.1.1 for fix this CUP usage issue. papercut is the newest member of koolkit, a Rock, Paper, Scissors game.

Download : papercut-0.1.1.tar.gz
Arch Linux PKBUILD: papercut AUR Entry

papercut - The Rock, Paper, Scissors game!

2007-12-25T22:55:00.000+05:30

I'm proud to announce that have just released the second tool of koolkit. This is a command line based game, called "papercut". It is not different from common Rock, Paper, Scissors game. :-) Game play is piece of cake and game stores your statistics i.e. your wins, loses, draws. This program was developed using C programing language and vim editor. The program is still in beta state.

To find more about papercut,

Arch Linux with a new look

2007-12-23T21:05:00.000+05:30

Arch Linux recently held a logo contest in search for new logo. Thayer Williams' Archer logo. His art work is very good.The contest is over now. And the winner is, And from next year Arch will get a new look. :-)
More Info:

Calculator.NET Version 1.0.0.0 (BETA) Released.

2007-12-12T18:45:00.000+05:30

Last few days I spend my time refreshing my C# knowledge and watching Sri Lanka vs. England Test Cricket Matches. While refreshing my C# knowledge I started developing a new Free Open Source Software, a calculator. I named it as Calculator.NET because it uses .NET framework.

Calculator.NET is an easy to use calculator with some unique features like Text Pad, number history etc. Give it a try. Hope you will like it. :-)

crun 0.1.1 - beta is out

2007-11-21T01:39:00.000+05:30

crun 0.1.1 - beta is out now. crun is a light weight, easy to use, simpler cron like tool. It Executes a given program, a specified number of times, after a specified time interval. For more information look at this blog post.
Here are the main changes:

Minor Bug Fixes
Waits for last process to be executed
Error output is written to standard error (stderr)
Added "--help" and "--version" options

And some code clean-up also have been done.

Download: crun-0.1.1.tar.gz (beta)
Arch Linux AUR: crun
koolkit wiki: crun

crun 1.0 beta - Light weight, easy to use, simpler cron like tool.

2007-11-19T04:44:00.000+05:30

I'm very happy to announce my first real contribution to the FOSS world. I make available the intial version of crun through Google Code.

crun is a light weight, easy to use, simple tool which does the similer job as cron. But it doesn't run like a daemon. It is available for unix like operating systems such as linux and bsd. This tool it written in C. It would come handy when you need execute certain commad over and over again with several time interval inbetween thoes executions. For ex. let say you wants to run netstat -na command 20 times with in time interval of 1 second. Then you can use crun.
crun 20 1 netstat -na

Mind you that the project is in still beta phase. So if you find out any bug or need a new feature, please report them on koolkit bugs.
This software is made available trough koolkit. koolkit will be the unbrella name for the unix command line tools that I'm going to make publish in the near future. This blog will be the offical blog of koolkit.

More information about crun:

MySQL South East Asia Roadshow 2007 in Sri Lanka

2007-10-29T12:23:00.001+05:30

MySQL South East Asia Roadshow 2007 - Sri Lanka

Date : 9th of November 2007
Time : Not Mentioned
Fee : Apparantly Free
Venue : Somewhere in Sri Lanka :-)

Join David Axmark, Co-founder and Vice President of MySQL and hSenid Software International (Pvt) Ltd, the Certified Gold Partner for MySQL in Sri Lanka, for an exclusive seminar and networking opportunity to explore how your organization can benefit from MySQL's future plans.

Click here for more information.

Learn GTK+ - The Art of Creating Cross platform GUI.

2007-10-20T02:11:00.000+05:30

These days I'm learning GTK+. GTK+ means Gimp Toolkit. It is one of the popular widget toolkit for creating GUI (Graphical User Interfaces). It is free open source software released under GNU LGPL. But it is not restricted to one platform. You can use it on Linux (or any OS which uses X Window System), Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Mono (Cross platform framework with C#) also use GTK+ implementation called GTK#. Read more about GTK+ on wikipedia.

I'm learning GTK+ by following GTK+ 2.0 Tutorial available at the official GTK+ website. The tutorial is easy to follow on and it doesn't make use of any IDE (Integrated Development Environment) so you have to code everything. But it is fun. :-D You will need good C knowledge also. Implementations for other programming languages also available but Tutorial uses C. If you are going to learn C, I recommend you to read Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie's "The C Programming Language". This book could be hard find, but up to the point. :-)

I'm using vim editor for GTK+ programming and I recommend you to install gtk+ syntax highlight script for vim. If you are searching for rich IDEs that support GTK+ . You will be interested in, Anjuta DevStudio and Glade (Glade is not a rich IDE but it is a easy to use user interface designer even Anjuta uses it.).

Two Storeyed Luxury House in Malabe for Sale.

2007-10-17T02:48:00.001+05:30

Elegant and stylish house in Malabe is for sale. The house is located in a residential area with beautiful sceneries. Call 0718199123 for more information.

Specification/Features:

4 Bed Rooms
Dining Room
Living Room
3 Bathrooms
Fitted Pantry
Shatter Door Garage
Fully Tiled
Windows with Grills
Elegantly Landscaped

Size:

10 Perchs
Total Floor Area: 1900

Location:

2km from Malabe Town
Highly residential area

Address:

55/M/26
Suprime City
Kanthota Road
Malabe

Inquiries:

0718 199123 (Sri Lanka)
+94 718 199123 (International)

Google Experimental Search

2007-10-14T07:45:00.000+05:30

Google is experimenting several new features for its most valued service, "Google Search". These features include,

Tabbed user interface to time line, maps, additional information relevent for your search.

Time-line Demo (depends on you search history)
Map View Demo

Info View Demo

Keyboard shortcuts. (Keys: J - Selects the next result, K- Selects the previous result, O - Opens the selected result, - Opens the selected result, / - Puts the cursor in the search box, Removes the cursor from the search box)

Demo

Left-hand search navigation

Demo

Right-hand contextual search navigation

Demo

You can only participate for one of above four experiments. When you participate for such experiment, your normal Google Search user interface will be changed. Don't worry you can always leave experiments too. To join experiments and find out more information, visit Google Experimental Search.

My New Sinhala (සිංහල) Blog - Helians (හේලියන්ස්)

2007-10-01T01:02:00.000+05:30

I created a new sinhala blog. It's name is "Helians", "හේලියන්" in sinhala. It uses sinhala unicode fonts. I add posts to it using Linux, Gnome with SCIM Sinhala Support.
If you don't have Sinhala Unicode fonts installed you will only sees some squares.
If you need sinhala fonts... then that blog has all the info to how to get them.
Check it out.
URL: http://helians.blogspot.com

NalandaSara 2007 - FM 96.1 Colombo and Worldwide via SHOUTcast

2007-09-21T11:02:00.000+05:30

The Communication Unit of Nalanda College brings you

NalandaSara 2007

FM 96.1 in Colombo

Listen online at http://www.nalanda.sch.lk

From 21^st to 23^rd September 2007

Online Song Requests

Windows Media Player (versions 9, 10, and 11) – You can download Windows Media Player from here

Copy the appropriate NalandaSara URL from the list above (e.g. http://202.82.202.140:8000/)
Start Windows Media Player
Click File -> Open URL
In the dialog box paste the Copied URL (e.g. http://202.82.202.140:8000/)
Click OK
After a brief period of connecting and buffering (duration may vary depending on your Internet Connection speed) you will be able to listen to NalandaSara 2007

Winamp (version 5.x) – You can download Winamp from here

Copy the appropriate NalandaSara URL from the list above (e.g. http://202.82.202.140:8000/)
Start Winamp
Click ADD -> ADD URL
In the dialog box paste the Copied URL (e.g. http://202.82.202.140:8000/)
Click Open
After a brief period of connecting and buffering (duration may vary depending on your Internet Connection speed) you will be able to listen to NalandaSara 2007

RealPlayer (version 10.x) ) – You can download RealPlayer from here

Copy the appropriate NalandaSara URL from the list above (e.g. http://202.82.202.140:8000/)
Start RealPlayer
Click File -> Open
In the dialog box paste the Copied URL (e.g. http://202.82.202.140:8000/)
Click OK
After a brief period of connecting and buffering (duration may vary depending on your Internet Connection speed) you will be able to listen to NalandaSara 2007

Can we make profit from FOSS (as a developer)?

2007-09-04T18:04:00.000+05:30

Today I had a little conversation with one of my friends, Kusal about FOSS (Free Open Source Software). So I thought to start a conversation on making profit from FOSS...

Commercial Companies

They make money by selling services.
Those services include customer support, product customization, consultancy services, training and selling licences.
The examples of companies which have gain lot of revenue are,

MySQL AB

Major FOSS Products: MySQL
Revenue: US$ 40 million

Red Hat Inc.

Major FOSS Products: Red Hat Enterprice Linux and Fedora Linux
Revenue: US$ 278.3 million

Novell

Major FOSS Products: SUSE Linux
Revenue: US$ 1.2 billion

Non-profit Organizations

These organizations do not make profit from their products.
But you can make money as a developer by working for a such organization.
But these organizations have lesser number of recruited developers and large number of developers outside who contributes to it.
Examples:

Apache Software Foundation

Major Projects: Apache Webserver and lots of related projects

Mozilla Foundation

Major Projects: Mozilla Firefox Web Browser and Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Client

PHP Group

Major Projects: PHP

As a developer

If you are a developer you can still make money there are lot of opportunities.
You can get some revenue by placing advertisements in your software home page.
You can promote your other commercial websites using your product or website.
Your work may help you to get scholarship for higher education.
Your work will be an advantage on any job interview.

I think "Free Open Source Software" is the best thing that has happened to Software Industry, it is a community service, but by contributing to FOSS you can also make money and their are more advantages too.

This article is "AFAIK" kind of article. In other words based on my knowledge... so feel free to criticise me or add something to this.

zLevel.info BETA

2007-08-11T04:09:00.000+05:30

zLevel.info Beta a web site about computer/video games is now available. Users can register and use forums and other services. But remember still in Beta phase so expect the unexpected. ;-)
Feel free to register at zLevel.info and add a post. :-D
And don't forget to leave your valued suggestions too.
Enjoy!

Software Metric Tools (RSM Alternatives)

2007-07-28T23:16:00.000+05:30

For the Software Engineering Tools & Metrics of Curtin University IT degree program has a assignment to find a bottle necks of a Free Open Source Java Project and submit a report with the solutions and various kind of metrics. We have been given a Image Cafe software developed by our University, in a case that we couldn't find a suitable project. ;-) Anyway most of us use the given program as our test program. We are using java -prof command and analize data to find any bottlenecks and solve them.

One of the major problems we face is, we have been instructed to use RSM (Resource Standard Software) which is a commercial tool to collect metrics.

RSM Home Page
RSM Documentation
RSM Demo

Demo is available for both *nix and Windows platforms but it has a restriction. That is it can be only used with project with maximum of 10 source files. Image Cafe has more than 10 source files. :-(
So I found some Free Open Source Java Metric Tools.
First of all I must say I still didn't try any of them, just downloaded and don't even know if they are working or usable or are they really comparable with RSM.
But I think it is good have something than nothing. ;-)

CyVis - Software Complexity Visualiser (No need for source files can work with compiled files)

NetBeans Profiler - This is special purposes it uses java -prof function and visualize data, so need to copy prof output to OpenOffice.org calc or any other spread sheet program and format them. To be used with NetBeans IDE.
I will put up some comments after using them. Good Luck! ;-)

Unity Plaza Computer Hardware Chain - Security Issues, Customer Misleading and Cheating

2007-07-10T21:36:00.000+05:30

My U.S.Robotics 4 Port ADSL Router was broken on 07th of July. Since I had brought it about 9 months ago and I had 1 year warranty, I went to Unity Plaza, Bambalapitiya to claim my warranty. I have brought it from the shop called "IT LAND" in the ground floor, even though their are lot of shops of with different different fancy names; most of them belong to same chain. Their technical center is situated at the 2nd floor of the same building.

The guy in the technical support took the router and told me that it would take about 3 days and call them before coming again. Since it was a Saturday, I wouldn't complain on such delay.

In the Monday morning, I called the technical support and they took the job id and told me that if router is ready they will call me in the evening because they send all the job ids to check by noon. And they said that they will inform me only if router is ready. I found it very inconvenient and surprising because at the customer support they are pretending that they enter all the information into their database and looks like they have no way to simply check if a certain job is done or not. :-)

Anyway I decided to goto Unity Plaza in the Monday morning and I have to wait about 45 minutes after the technical division guy took my receipt and till he brought me a working router.
I never thought they gonna give me a new router, but that guy gave me a router and told me it is a new one. Actually I didn't believed him.

Actually It was a used router, It had one or two small scratches on the surface... and it doesn't matter to me. When I plug-it, it connected to internet, even before I had configured it. Actually their all new router had added all the required all the required information to connect to the internet and it had the it's previous users ADSL user name and password.
I guess the previous user is from Maharagama area since the user name starts with MGM.
Actually the user name is mgm2248896@sltadsl.lk. I can provide the password also but I think it is unethical to do so.

They intensionally mislead me saying that it was a new router and I would rate it as cheating. And they have violated the privacy of the that previous user of the router, by giving me his ADSL user name and password.

I'm really not happy with the customer service or the equipment sold at most of the Computer shops in Unity Plaza, but I have no choice but to go their since they got the lowest price trash.

Finally I Won... Minesweerper Expert Level!

2007-07-07T22:45:00.000+05:30

Minesweeper is my favorite game that bundle with Microsoft Windows(TM).
And finally today 07/07/07, I won an Expert Level game for the first time...
I feel I'm so lucky today. ;-)

Last Cut! Live or die?

At last Made The Correct Choice!

What a mine field!!!

Final Scoreboard!

Future Userbility Problem in Oracle Y2K Solution

2007-07-02T23:01:00.000+05:30

Today at the Oracle Class we did about Date formats in Oracle. And the Oracle's solution for Y2K Problem is RR instead of YY.
Here what happens,

	If the specified two digit year is 0-49	If the specified two digit year is 50-99
If the two digits of current year is 0-49	The return date is in the current century.	The return date is in the century before the current one.
If the two digits of current year is 50-99	The return date is in the century before the current one.	The return date is in the current century.

Examples:

Current Year	Given Date	Interpreted (RR) - Year
1999	03-MAR-85	2085
2001	03-MAR-95	1995
2007	03-MAR-09	2009
2048	03-MAR-50	1950

The usability problem occurs when you reach the middle of the century, in the example I have noted in red. In 2048, 03-MAR-50 is interpreted by 1950. But in 2048, 03-MAR-50 will clealy mean 2050 in common use. So according to my knowledge their is a future usability problem exists in Oracles's RR date format. It's solutions for the Y2K problem.

References:
Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL (Student Guide - Volume 1) - 2001 - Oracle Corporation

Oracle is a trademark of Oracle Corporation.

zLevel.info - The Game Begins... ;-)

2007-07-02T22:45:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I brought my first domain name www.zlevel.info, I brought it from GoDaddy!. And I'm thinking of dedicating zLevel.info for Video/Computer game lovers. At the moment zLevel.info is pointed to my Gentoo Server via zoneedit Dynamic DNS. I'm hoping to use a Drupal Site with a forum, community book and a blog.
You can see the my current drupal site from zLevel.info. Your comments and suggestions are highly appreciated.
Wish me good luck! ;-)