PHP to work better on Windows?
CSS based web sites advertising free software?
Web 2.0 applications released “on time”?
Could it be Microsoft?
OMG! WTF? and a few other acronyms comes to mind. I’m still in shock, read all about it at Techcrunch.
Maybe by admitting Windows is not going anywhere, good things can come out of Microsoft.
8:22pm, October 31st, 2006
I have been playing around with my blog cos my mind was not functioning properly for a few hours, so I couldn’t concentrate on work.
I changed the theme and totally mucked up my settings. I added a few more widgets as well. I thought my earlier theme was too blue!
I even uploaded an image and created a custom header. First time I played this much with my blog. I used one of example images that comes with Wondows XP as I could’nt find any other images on my laptop. So I guess it’s time I step out with my camera, looking for an image for the header!
Wordpress.com has come up with the ability to give a first-level domain name to the blog for a price. I was seriously thinking about buying one but then decided against it for three reasons. First, I could think of a few other things that I could do with the money and two, I could’nt think of an interesting enough domain name and three, I like my current sub-domain under wordpress.
Hope this new look sticks around for a while. This is the fourth theme I am using on this blog.
4:31am, October 31st, 2006
I’m soft launching Sri Lankan Holiday today. Kottu has got a lot prettier and cleaner I figured I had to do something too. 
I hope Kottu comes up with a rating system and a heat map of tags. Those are my 2 top wishes for Kottu. If they are not done by the time I get back I’ll get in touch with them and get it done.
I hope the 2 local diggers get along and build either a single hot links site for Sri Lanka or find their separate niches.
Back to Sri Lankan Holiday. It’s still in the making as it is. It uses Drupal on the back end so it’s super easy to change the site live.
Right now it only supports adding of hotels. I’ll be adding more elements as I get time. If you want to list your business use the contact me and I will get you on.
Currently I’m not charging for business listings. If I’m profitable with advertising I may never charge for basic usage. Anyway let me know what you think.
7:49pm, October 29th, 2006
12:55am, October 29th, 2006
8:51pm, October 28th, 2006
Seagull Softwares was a company that was prmoting a work at home data entry job system in Sri Lanka. They charged a registration fee upfront which was 1.5 times the monthly pay, which meant you become profitable only after you complete two months with them.
But apparently teh work was pretty easy. You could buy work slots and for a computer savvy persona slot was only about 10 minutes of work per day. So this would have become a method of easy money in most people’s eyes.
It also offered a convinience like no otehr earning opportunity. It was flexible and it required not special training. Also, it allowed a lot of those who were unable to work an opportunity to earn. Specially given the fact that part-time work is virtually non-existant in Sri Lanka.
So they had a great demand. I heard that people stood in queues to register themselves in this scheme. There had been people who had bought hundreds of slots and was employing others to do the work.
Guess what, about a three days ago the Police has busted the place. The scammers have jumped the country. Apprently it was a racket which was run by a couple of Indians. The web site is registered under the name of Raj Sekr in Chennai. They have not made payments to people for the last month or so for the work performed. And there ahd been a lot of people who have registered but who had not completed one mon ths work to become eligible to pay.
Somehow another smart fellow has managed to scam a lot of people and vanish with thier money.
Who said there is free lunch? Or rather easy lunch…
10:21am, October 27th, 2006
![[Wink]](http://www.nazly.net/smiles/icon_wink.gif){kind=icon}
10:52pm, October 26th, 2006
This is a good week for open source. I’m loving the spell checker on Firefox 2.0, Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 is out and Oracle announced Unbreakable Linux.
8:56pm, October 26th, 2006
SeagullSoftwares.com, a privately owned internet based outsourcing firm turned out to be an internet fraud scheme after turning thousands of its customers defrauded of millions of rupees. Tensions grew outside its head office in Mount Lavinia yesterday, when some fifty members of it crashed the gate and the inside door of the office. The Mount Lavinia police arrived the scene immediately on report of the incident and took away three employees who were working for the company for investigation by the CID.
Mount Lavinia police stated that the operators who ran the scheme have fled the office and they had no idea how many people had joined the scheme. The operators claimed it was a BPO operation. The firm had offices in several other locations in Sri Lanka.
Mohamed Imran, a victim said “I invested 650,000 rupees and I was supposed to get my first payment yesterday”.
Two Indian nationals who were king pins of the scheme are now believed to have fled the country.
Several members of the SeagullSoftwares.com are believed to have developed a website to discuss the issue at www.seagullmembers.com.
Related Information:
How To Avoid Investment Scams That Target Groups
File a Complaint with the U.S. SEC
SeagullSoftwares.com on Lanka Business Online
Domain Information – seagullsoftwares.com
10:59am, October 26th, 2006
8:05am, October 26th, 2006
8:01am, October 26th, 2006
Finally Firefox 2.0 is out. I say finally because I’ve been waiting for it for a few days now. I heard on Buzz out loud that some people had found 2.0 release on the FTP site before it officially launched on the web site.
People are so eager to get it. So go and get it. But wait! You might want to wait until all your extensions are ported over. Nah I’m getting it.
Update: So first of it doesn’t look as great as I thought I would. That’s ok since 1. I could get used to it or 2. I could get another skin or 3. I could make my own skin.
Looks like AspellFox and Tab Mix Plus is not supported in 2.0. But then it’s own spell checker looks good and I think most of Tab Mix Plus functionality is already included in the main program now.
I installed over my 1.5.x and it was a breeze. All my other extensions seems work, will report back it something goes bad.
6:42pm, October 24th, 2006
Turning some of columns into rows was one of the tasks had to be done recently. Even though I couldn’t use “SSIS UNPIVOT transformation” for that, I had a chance to play with it. As it is really a useful data flow item for some operations, thought to make a post on it.
The given below is the data contain in a text file.
ProjectName equipments transportation rental software hardware
CCN 54632.56 78433.00 9876 0 0
FX5 100547.55 205465.00 99526 78000 45465
Assume we need to load above information structured like below.
ProjectName ExpenseType Amount
CCN equipments 54632.56
CCN hardware 0.00
CCN rental 9876.00
CCN software 0.00
CCN transportation 78433.00
FX5 equipments 100547.55
FX5 hardware 45465.00
FX5 rental 99526.00
FX5 software 78000.00
FX5 transportation 205465.00
Simple create a SSIS package and add necessary source (for the text file) and destination items. Then add a UNPIVOT transformation item and set the source output path to it. Open the UNPIVOT transformation editor and set equipments, transportation, rental, software and hardware as Input Column. Do not select ProjectName. Set “Amount” for all Destination Column of all Input Columns. The Pivot Key Value will be same as Input Column name. Enter “ExpenseType” for Pivot key value column name. Set the output of UNPIVOT transformation item to the destination. It is done!
Since my requirement was little bit different, I had to load them to the SQL Server temp table and use UNPIVOT TSQL command. But for scenario like this, this method can be easily applied.
You may be adding Data Conversion item to convert data if the destination is SQL Server.
5:46am, October 24th, 2006
