root@geeklanka$_

The state of Java and MySql are changing. In case you missed it. Sun bought MySql and Oracle bought Sun. I’ve been working on Java for over 10 years and MySql for over 5 now. I’m not happy with what is happening.
The Java and MySql websites have changed. On the mysql.com site there is no [...]

Please don’t email me prayers or jokes with hundreds of people CC’ed. There is a very high likelihood I would delete them without even opening it.
I’m serious. You wonder how you get spammed so much its because you forward very free iPod giveaway email to all our buddies and get them in the spam ring [...]

The first thing you notice in Mac Finder is there is no way to show hidden files. In Windows Explorer or Gnome this is in the menus. On mac you need to set a environment variable called “com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles” to toggle the state of hidden files.
I manually changed this a couple of times, but its [...]

I’m not that savvy on the BlackBerry yet but I’ve discovered these few shortcuts on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 which are super useful.

alt + left shift gets you into number mode
shift + scroll selects messages
alt + scroll scrolls pages

Technorati Tags: blackberry, shortcuts

Related posts:Quick Message Marking On Nokia E71
Make Windows Shortcuts with Cygwin
Coping with spam on [...]

Here is my list for 2010, its always good to have a list.

MongoDB sounds promising
The mobile web/app space.
Android will kill the iPhone star
Yet Apple will keep making products we want to buy
Virtual private servers and cloud services
Ruby on Rails is too significant to ignore for PHP/Java folks
Linux will not take over the desktop market
Mac will [...]

I use a plugin to post to twitter every time I post a blog post. I also have Facebook pull in my new posts and notes. This works reasonably well and I get some traffic from them.
You can also use twitter tools to post your tweets on your blog after a certain threshold. I don’t [...]

Hope you enjoyed my moving to Australia posts, cause just after posting those I moved back to Sri Lanka. I won’t get into “moving back to Sri Lanka” cause its pretty painful and I’m sure no one will want to read it.
Why move back? Well although its a bit crappy here most of the time [...]

Nokia E71 Grey Steel
There was a firmware update for my Nokia E71. Remember to backup using PC Suite before doing an update, and restore your settings after. This has been my primary phone for just over an year and I must say its been great. Its fast and gets the job done. This was [...]

I’m moving to Ubuntu (9.10 Karmic Koala) on my home pc. Its a big honking DELL Studio 1555 compared to my work MacBook 13. But hey it sits at home most of the time and grinds away at anything you give it.
It came with Vista. Hmm ya that wasn’t going to last. Within a few [...]

One of my friend’s mom has published a book about international cuisine. For more details and to order the book online go to her website at http://www.yvonnefernando.com/
The famous culinary expert Yvonne Fernando has compiled a book of simple and sensational international cuisine especially for you. This book is an invitation to feast on flavours from [...]

I moved to Aussie just over an year ago from Sri Lanka. Since then I’ve had quite a few Sri Lankans ask me about the move and other information about this place. I’ve tried to help them out where I can. I thought of sharing this information here so it might help out some newly [...]

I’m not really a writer. I prefer to code 100 lines than actually put down a sentence. But the blog thing was hot and I’m glad I jumped in the bandwagon at the time. I was once introduced as;
a fellow blogger that blogs now and then
and that fits me.
I’ve seen more than a few [...]

A company (in Sri Lanka) I know are looking for a .NET developer to hire full time or freelance. Please comment with your email I’ll contact you.

Technorati Tags: Jobs

Going native got Sinhala on mac going to read Kottu

Technorati Tags: mac, sinhala

Looks like something new. Only thing is once you are in a section how to get back to all results?

There is a new YouTube mobile app out for Windows and Symbian phones.

It works on my Nokia E71 now. Check your phone’s support.
Its not as cool as I expected. Mostly just a side scrolling. Oh well better than nothing.

I just setup a secure email account for myself. I needed one to exchange some passwords etc with a friend. Here are a few links that will help you setup one.
First you need an email client. My choice was Thunderbird. The rest of the setup depends on this so if you pick another client the [...]

I’ve finally got around to putting up a page (ya just one for now) showing my freelance work. I’ve been freelancing here and there since around 1996. Most of the things I built have been too small to mention.
I give you Open Path IT.
Just a basic start for now. Open Path IT (Information or Inspiration [...]

Welcome to 2009! There is nothing like a hot summer day to think about global warming. What we do in the next few years will hopefully reverse the effect or we are toast. Here are 2 interesting concepts I saw on kids science program* and sounded promising.
Supercapacitors are a hybrid of capacitors and [...]

I noticed on TechCrunch that Google Chrome has been updated. So I checked to see if mine was up to date.
Go to the spanner > About

Then on the About box you should get a Update Now button if there is an update.

Click that and you should be good to go!

Technorati Tags: google

Pradeep Kodikara is a young and hip Sri Lankan architect. I’ve known him for many years now since we first worked on the Sri Lanka Architects website (www.slia.lk).
I recently helped setup an online portfolio for him over at
http://pradeepkodikaraarchitecture.com/
He showed me this great house when I met him last. It seems so spacious yet it [...]

Quick tip i discovered while trying to delete some messages at once.
Hold the shift key and use the up - down navigation keys to multiple select messages.
Once you have marked them you can click the delete/backspace button to delete.

Technorati Tags: e71, nokia, tip

Indy was great day out. I posted some mobile vids here. Thanks to my friend who dragged me along
I’ve been stuck in Windows for about 9 months now. I’ve been trying to get things to work as smoothly as I was used to in Ubuntu with Cygwin etc but its not working.
Sometime [...]

I’m back. Boom and get-shit-done are our office catch phrases. Here’s Steve Jobs saying boom a lot.

I woke up last weekend with death cab for cutie in my head. I would have heard them somewhere so I looked them up. They sounded pretty good thanks to the free mp3s on their site.
I became a [...]

Its been a while. Looks like I’m not going to get around to writing the long post about how I moved out of Sri Lanka and how the grass is greener in Australia and stuff.
Well I moved the grass is about the same, just colder since its winter down here. Almost everyone I talked to [...]

Had a weird feeling this Monday morning when not many cars were out and about. Something was not right. Got some sms last night to be alert today. Never got those before. Was almost done getting through the day when we heard the blast in Dehiwala. It was faint and we didn’t think much of [...]

I’m pretty happy with moving some common Java libraries out of the project source folders.
I have about 4 branches of the same project checked out. Each of them were about 57mb a piece. I noticed this while I was trying to sync my projects to a remote server. (I hate slow running scripts)
I managed to [...]

I heard good things about Firefox 3. Now that I’ve got Ubuntu 8.04 I thought I’d try a few commands.
1. Get the places database
2. open with sqlite
3. query the bookmarks table

cp .mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/places.sqlite .
sqlite3 places.sqlite
sqlite> .tables
moz_anno_attributes moz_favicons moz_keywords
moz_annos [...]

Did you know that you can make Windows shortcuts with Cygwin and ln? I did not know this, just tried it out today and it works!
This is probably the smallest thing I’m blogging about, but read on you might get some new ideas (like I did) about file organization in Windows. I swear some days [...]

Actually I’m just selling my car. Its a 2006 Maruti (Suzuki) Zen. Its a pretty basic town car.

Here are some details.

Bought in May 2006 brand new KB-77xx series
Serviced by AMW till the the last time I went to Laughs.
Its a 1 liter MPFI (Multi point fuel injection) engine.
Does about 10.5-11 km per liter in Colombo [...]

Here is the link on Schmaps for Australia - Parks & Gardens
Here is the original pic.

Technorati Tags: photos

I had a problem on a PHP page that was supposed to redirect to another page after some process was done. This is the code I used.

header(”Location: http://example.com”);

This kept giving me a

Web: no gateway reply

So after looking at the PHP manual for the header function and HTTP status codes I managed to get it [...]