root@geeklanka$_

For those of you who have noticed the lack of unstructured Sinhala poems (Nisadas) on this blog;
I used to work at Vesess.
Prabhath (the uber-designer) blogged at Nidahas.
Venushka (the uber-coder) blogged at Adahas.
I wanted to blog as well – lack of talent notwithstanding – and tried to come up with a name for the whole thing. [...]

This year you’re sixteen and you’ve only just got on the internet. Some chap from a Bradby playing school (where at some charity walk you will win the voucher to get you internet access) has tagged me to write to you.
No of course not, that link doesn’t work ‘cos it links to a site in [...]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
I recently had the opportunity to read Banker to the Poor – the story of the Grameen Bank by Muhammed Yunus. While you can easily find out the story of Grameen at its Wikipedia page, there are some points of interest in the book that don’t make it into Wikipedia:
The worm’s [...]

Passing along the highlevel road, I thanked my stars that the tank was full. Although, I might’ve just as well been better off with a diesel vehicle…

Not long after my serendipitous discovery of MobilePress, I wondered how cool it would be if all the Wordpress.com blogs that I visit via Achcharu/Kottu were more mobile friendly. Especially since I spend more time reading up on the blogs via mobile browser.
Turns out that Wordpress.com has taken a move in the right direction. As [...]

I’m fairly sure there must be some kind of demand for these things. With a heel of variable height, straps to hold the shoes in place and other features depending on the lady’s taste and enough protection to ensure that those delicate toes are well protected.
It’s either that, or there’s gonna forever be a new [...]

I know I really shouldn’t get hung up over this, but it just beggars belief.
See my post on how Daily Mirror has no clue about copyright, or even the Creative Commons licensing terms.
Now read what they have to say about the PTI allegedly copying their stuff:
The Colombo based reporter for the Press Trust of India [...]

Eat five fruits or vegetables a day! by st3f4n
A couple of days after reading on Indi’s blog about the effects of a low calorie diet and Rajaratarala’s posts about his latest misadventures in farming and the dietary habits of rural Sri Lankans, I came across the following TED talk by Carolyn Steele. (Embedded YouTube video. [...]

For about a year, my internet access was severely limited. Being far from the WiFi at home, I relied on my mobile phone for access. That sucked.
Using a Nokia 7260 as a GPRS modem wasn’t such a hot idea. Thanks to the Opera Turbo feature (then still in Alpha) helped a little, but it was [...]

So there I was feeling all upset that my crappy photo made it to the front page of Ada Derana without my being credited.
But why stop there? Turns out the people at the Daily Mirror (http://www.dailymirror.lk) aren’t very original either.
Barely a coupla days after my photo turns up on Ada Derana, it turns up on [...]

…of my intellectual property that is. What really hurts is that it’s not even one of my better works.

So I’m surfing the net on a lazy Sunday afternoon and I come across the pages of Ada Derana. I scroll down and find something that looks vaguely familiar (click on image for larger picture):

The [...]

Melting ice cubes by Stevendepolo
Following up on the maverick Junichrio Koizumi’s 2005 “Cool Biz” campaign it seems that that “the Prime Minister of Bangladesh has ordered public servants to ditch suits and ties for short-sleeved shirts to cut air-conditioning use in the power-starved nation.” (via the Freakonomics blog).
This brings to mind the subject of the [...]

The Island recently published an apology for stealing David Blacker’s interview with Dayan Jayatillake, misspelling the URL from where they had purloined it.
In the same paper, there was a Reply from a high ranking official in the police (I forget the rank) calling into question the authenticity of one of their articles on Sri Lankan [...]

Right above that Nalaka wheel alignment/tyre merchants joint in Colombo 02 is another branch of the famous Food Waves restaurant. This one’s called “Thiru Kumaran’s Food Waves” and it’s a vegetarian restaurant that serves South Indian food. Good food for good prices – enough reason to like it.
The reason that I wanted to blog about [...]

So recently I get a photograph in my mail of President Barack Obama checking out a young lady’s behind. While I’d normally shrug this off as instinct getting the better of the man, a friend also sends me the link where the situation behind it all is cleared through a youtube video, which proves Sarkozy [...]

Not so long ago I wrote about the scam involving the use of the AirTel name and the promise of an iPhone to harvest email addresses. It seems that any new entrant to the Sri Lankan market can be almost guaranteed that its name will be used for a scam.
Just consider what I found in [...]

Anyone who’s taken the Galle road will know how much fun Dehiwala can be. Used to be (haven’t taken the route in some time) that the traffic would extend somewhere upto Ratmalana in the mornings (to Colombo). Evenings are no better on the way back. The best advertisement for travel by train could’ve included photos [...]

After what has been undoubtably ages, I planned on actually posting something instead of just trawling along achcharu and facebook.
And then I came across xkcd on Jerry’s blog. The theme’s changed, so I think he typed IDDQD again.
After that, on FB I found a link to Gossip Aiyahs Juicy juicy mambalam Blogage.
Looks like I will [...]

I’m pretty sure that the Sri Lankan online community includes more than a few freelancers who primarily operate off the web. Even then, there’s probably just a handful of freelancers or even small businesses that have given any thought about their invoicing. I’ve seen plenty of individuals and SMEs sending out invoices which are clearly [...]

A fruitful day of voting to all of you voting in the Western Provincial elections today!
Just make sure you know who you’re voting for, what symbol to vote and wear your glasses!
A few years back a friend of mine listened intently to my impassioned speech on why the JHU should be voted into power. Entirely [...]

Years ago, firecrackers were lit to chase away evil spirits.
Today, firecrackers are lit to herald the arrival of politicians.
The irony of it all…

The first time I came across the Opera browser was somewhere around 1998, just around the time I’d gotten access to the Internet. It was trialware and therefore not usable for long, but compared to my other options - IE and Netscape - it was so much better. I especially loved the way I could [...]

I was reading Seth Godin recently on Demonization. Whilst he writes  what would be interpreted as a marketing-centric post, he makes a very valid point.
The closer you get to someone, something, some brand, some organization… the harder it is to demonize it, objectify it or hate it.
Reading through Achcharu today, I also came across some [...]

The allure of books written by millionaires or billionaires is that there might be something in it that’ll help the reader along the same path. Of course, reading alone won’t get you far, but it helps understanding how some people made it to the top.
Jon M Huntsman is a billionaire who has written a [...]

Facebook and Privacy
I was recently reading about the furor about Facebook’s new Terms of Service and its subsequent repeal.
All this made me a little worried about what happens to my content, until I remembered that being slightly paranoid pays off.
Not being the most social of people, I stayed out of the Hi5 and MySpace networks [...]

Just when I thought that things couldn’t get any weirder…

The glorious thing about the internet is that even non-experts like myself can plough on and put forward silly notions on any variety of subjects. Therefore, allow me to present my proposal for future ODI visits by the Indian cricket team to Sri Lanka:
In future, there will be no need to fly in all the [...]

During my days at Vesess, making presentations was pretty much 80% of what I did. Design support was from Prabhath, while tweaking the overall focus was done with Lankitha’s support.
My experiences in debating lent themselves to an advantage in presenting in front of an audience, which sometimes led people to think I had an innate [...]

Lifehacker did an article on Windows performance myths sometime last year which mentioned that RAM optimizers/defraggers were the equivalent of snake oil.
However, the benefits of defragmenting the hard disk haven’t been debunked yet (or at least not as per my cursory googling), so my obsessive weekly/monthly defrag runs haven’t been in vain.
One tool that would [...]

January 12th saw the launch of Bharthi Airtel in Sri Lanka. That tune which was so familiar on Dialog TV (ironic, I guess) began to feature on the local TV channels as well, with Sharuk Khan greeting Sri Lankans with a cheerful “Hello Sri Lanka”.
It was not long after this that another ad did the [...]

Occasionally, I surf the web using a Suntel CDMA connection. On such occasions, watching paint dry would possibly be less time consuming. Even with images switched off, Firefox takes some time to load pages. That is why I want to find out where I can get my hands on the much vaunted Airtel data package [...]

I came across an article on the Freakonomics blog today about the difference between autorickshaw (3-Wheeler in Sri Lankan parlance) drivers in Delhi and Mumbai.
According to law, autorickshaw drivers must only go by the meter reading that is reported after a commuter’s trip is finished. However in Delhi, there are hardly any autorickshaw drivers who [...]

Not so long ago, a number of people fell for a clever prank. An email did the rounds, promising its forwarders the opportunity to win an Apple iPhone along with the launch of AirTel. Of course, everyone wants an iPhone, so Thomas, Richard and Harold’s local counterparts were sending out the email with some obscure [...]

The first thing anyone who’s set up a blog would want to know… well, generally it would be something like “How many people actually check this out?”. This is where web statistics come into play.
Previously I used Tracewatch, which was quite a handy piece of work. Now I use the Wordpress Stats plugin, as well [...]

As I may have pointed out before, the consistent feature of this blog has been upgrades to Wordpress and its plugins.
Rarely have I taken the time to actually add anything of note to this blog.
Beginning May 2005, Nisadas was launched from home on my dial-up connection and featured a mashed up theme that borrowed (stole?) [...]

Since I started blogging, I’ve always kept an eye out on what Prabhath, Venushka, Indi, Ian and Neville have been upto. I’ve only actually ever met three of them, but being in the same age group meant that it was interesting to know what others my age were up to.
So it was with great interest [...]

If it’s not procrastination, another thing I’m pretty good at is stopping chain mails. At office I’m the guy who googles the latest “forward this” emails, calls up supposed promotions etc etc to check out if it’s true. “Forwards” land in my inbox and die a quick death. That is by choice.

I’ve always found “tagging” [...]

The last time that I got involved in Nisadas was to upgrade to Wordpress 2.3 or something like that. The next thing I know, my next spam-deletion visit was met with the news that 2.5 was out and my spanking new upgrade was obsolete! Ah well, so there I went and upgraded…

To be honest, it’s [...]

It’s going to be a helluva September…
Dhanuka pathirana has started things off with a bang - 277 runs off 72 balls,
The Twenty20 World Cup 2007 is starting soon in September, which means a lot more action on the cricketing front.
When it comes to contact sport, the Rugby world cup kicks off on the 7th, with [...]

It doesn’t help very much when the monitor needs constant gamma correction to work. When the RAM just dies and I’m left with half of the full complement (another good reason to have two DIMMS) things just get ornery.

Then there’s the constant trouble with the network adapter, generally fixed with a reboot. Ditto for the [...]