Geek with an attitude

They didn't think we'd do it. We didn't think we'd do it! But we're gonna do it ... tomorrow. For a change, we are gonna temporally hold off on telling you to switch away from the Windows platform and instead tell you how you can make your Windows experience so much better. Guess who's sponsoring? Its those guys from Redmond - Microsoft. FOSS-Ed for windows will show you how you can save time, money and be in control of the software. There will also be plenty on interoperability with other Operating Systems & other applications. Why flush hundreds of thousands of Rupees down a proprietary product when there are many free alternatives to choose from? For more info http://www.foss.lk/events/2007/fossedforwindows Ok now that the "advertisement disguised as a blog post" is out of the way :), I'd like to invite your guys interested in using FOSS on Windows to drop in for the event. The pricing is a pretty good deal considering its a 3 day event with...

Yesterday I attended Prof. VK Samaranayake's funeral proceedings which took place on a gloomy onset, as if the sky was about to break down and cry but was holding off so to not cause any discomfort to the event. Many from the Academia, IT industry, Media, Government Bodies, Students, Family and friends had come to bid farewell to the "Father of IT in Sri Lanka", whom to many will remain a hero and a role model. A quick look at the online condolence guest book is all thats needed to see the variety of people's lives he has touched.

Desperately seeking Micro$oft makes some dubious claims when it accuses that GNU/Linux and FOSS violates some 235 of M$'s patents. With each passing day it is evident that this latest of a series of unsuccessful maneuvers on M$'s part is done just so they can create enough FUD to possibly kill off the threat or make some money off of Fortune 500 companies through licensing. As I posted earlier , you could only do so as long as you don't disclose the supposed patent violations that GNU/Linux and other FOSS apps are said to be violating. So this is turning out to be a new business model for M$, where they can sit back and Steve Balmer can play Tony Soprano and make extra cash. Well its about time Micro$oft put up or Shut up! Either disclose the so called patents that we are supposedly violating, sue us or just shut up! Since the former doesn't seem to be happening a couple of people started signing a petition called "Sue me first". It only takes one person to ...

I was wondering how many photos I had on flickr. Because with the free account, 200 was all I could see. The first time I tried to fulfill my curiosity, a couple of months back, to find myself utterly disappointed and annoyed that I couldn't just pay the $24.95 and unlock my photos, because Paypal didn't recognize Sri Lanka as a country worth doing business with. So I gave up, even though I was aware that you could get it done through someone who had an AMEX CC. Anyway long story-short is I finally upgraded and was amazed to find I had a little over 500 photos! (more than twice the limit). So if you know me and want to go down memory lane or just want to see how crappy I was at taking pictures then (not that I'm a lot better now), check out my Flickr Photo Blog . Don't forget to click the last page :)

I've just returned home from watching the block buster hit, Spider Man 3 and thought I'd blog my thoughts while its still fresh on my mind. A word of caution for anyone who hasn't as yet watched the movie - don't read this if your like me in that you don't like to have any pretenses about the movie before you watch it. While I promise not to outline the plot, if there was any, chances are your going to have a pretense. This is also why I generally don't like to watch movie trailers, read reviews before watching the actual movie, though I won't necessarily shy away from them should I accidentally bump into one. On the other hand if your the type that researches before you spend time and money on a movie, then read on. I had high hopes for Spider Man 3, so much that the second I learned of its existence in town, I immediately wanted to book tickets. So for the first time I tried booking an e-ticket using Dialog's much advertised, 444 service that was exclu...

It was the worse day of my (ipod's) life. It drowned a feet under water for god knows how long. What probably was 5 - 10 minutes must have felt like an eternity. As of now, my ipod is in a coma, waiting for me to wake her up. It all began a little under 36 hrs ago, when it was raining hard. I came home yesterday a little earlier following a wedding and thus managed to avoid traffic and more importantly the heavy rain. After a little bit of relaxation listening to the rest of a podcast from my drive back home, I began to settle into reading a book, when my sister said she was about to go off to work. She being a doctor, has to generally deal with a crazy time table. By this time it was raining hard and fast. So I offered to drop her off, which she accepted gladly and as usual took my ipod along to keep me company. We didn't get too far before land was nowhere and water was everywhere! This was not my first time crossing a pool of water by car, so I wasn't as scared as I sh...

I'll let the screenshot speak for itself. But just in case your wondering this is Gentoo GNU/Linux running the beryl Window Manager (WM), on top of KDE desktop environment, with screenlets as widgets/gadgets, kiba-dock for an OSX like dock and kbfx with a dark theme as the next-gen kde menu. That's it really!

Ooops it happened again! The second cross patent licensing deal between M$ and another company - Samsung this time around. While this deal may not be as controversial as the first deal between M$ and Novell, its nevertheless going to have a bad taste with the community. But I just realized GNU/Linux might actually be a ticket out of this whole patent mess we are in. It goes something like this: A claims to B that by using GNU/Linux B is violating patents of A. B in return reminds A that it too might be violating some of B's patents because A also happens to use GNU/Linux. A and B come to an agreement not to sue each other over patents. C comes along and does the same with A & B In other words A, B and C can cross license their patents without actually having to disclose the patents they are cross licensing in the first place. This is because if any company (A, B or C) discloses a patent which Linux is supposedly violating, that piece of code will be instantly removed, leaving ...

Sure it doesn't beat watching the match on the big screen. But wouldn't it still be cool if you could didn't have to always sit in front of the tv all time as the match went on. Well today I decided to play around with the idea since Sri Lanka wasn't playing anyway. Now my home isn't physically networked in anyway so I have to rely on the slower WiFi to do the job. Worse still is the fact that my WiFi Router is upstairs where our phone line happens to terminate, (it doubles as an ADSL Router) and so the signal reception is pretty bad (about 40%). Its been a while since I played around with VLC and I knew it has improved somewhat since I last had a go at it. Mainly the addition of H.264 for better quality at lower bit rates. So after playing around with several codecs, I settled with h.264 (AVC) after discovering a combination that worked (you can't just mix arbitrary video encapsulation containers with a given codec and expect it to just work). Following are th...

The Sahana project , a large scale disaster/relief management software developed soon after the Asian Tsunami and subsequently used during several other disasters, has won an award titled "2006 social benefit award", from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) . I myself feel proud and fortunate to have been involved with this project during its inception, and wish it will continue to be useful during unfortunate times. At the same time, I wish, there would be a less need for the deployment of Sahana, as a result of lesser number of devastation disasters. I think those now directly involved with the project wish for the same thing. More info (with pics at): Sahana wins the 2006 social benefit award Anuradha Weeraman's Photo Blog

Inspired by my favorite Linux podcast, " The Linux Action Shooooooooow " (thats how its pronounced), where each week Chris would talk about some new cool gadget that supposedly runs Linux. On the same spirit, I'd like to announce, the above. I managed to install Linux on my somewhat recent 30GB video ipod. While ipodlinux has been around for quite some time now, the newer 5.5G (Generation) ipods weren't supported. Well all that has changed as of late February 2007. Installation was quite easy , and I didn't even have to backup my data and repartition anything. Installation was actually quite easy due to the fact I had a Macpod (an ipod formatted using iTunes on running on my Mac Mini's OSX) which had put an hfsplus file system. Since hfsplus was a UNIX file system (POSIX compliant), I could just install Linux over it. In contrast, for the majority of people that are running their ipod on FAT32, the process is slightly more complicated, required a separate ex...

Last weekend, we had our first FOSSEd on wheels event in Kandy . It was organized by the faculty of science, University of Peradeniya and was held on the 3rd and 4th (Sat & Sun) of March. Since I had other commitments, I was only able to attend the event on the 3rd. I did a small presentation on deciding to choose a GNU/Linux distribution, a task that can be quite overwhelming, considering the hundreds of distributions out there . Nevertheless, I think I pulled it off by recommending they initially just try the Ubuntu distro , that was distributed to them at the event. Just to make things a little bit easier, I demoed a live Ubuntu installation (using VMPlayer), which took only a little more than 15 minutes. There was good balance in the number of attendees from universities, schools and a few from the industry who participated by asking questions as the event progressed. All in all, I thought it was one of the best FOSSEd events we had in a while. Check out the following links fo...

When I read the, once "Highly Confidential" - but now public (as a result of the Iowa anti-trust case), email thread from Redmond, it just cracked me up. Sounding much like a bunch of kids fighting over who's daddy is better, this is further proof that M$ is so damn uncertain of its self. Here are some funny moments from the memo: "This is just life. I am not giving up. I don't have a penguin in my basement. I LOVE windows which is why I want us to face this so we can figure it out." "Did Russ Holt know you were there, I can't imagine he would be this blatant against us if he knew you were there. " "I was sitting right across the panel from him. We waved at each other briefly before the panel started." "I want them to think very, very carefully about when and which forums they decide to push Linux very, very hard. Today, they do not. When they do, you can bet, behaviour will evolve." "He said Windows three times during ...

There is a darker side to Vista, one that far exceeds, beyond the dark theme that greets you after login in! Vista has taken, "Restricting the user's rights to do what they can", to an unparallel level, never seen under any previous OS to date. Most of these restrictions, were designed to set the stage for the inevitable, widespread adoption of technologies such as HD content that are currently at a bleeding edge state, thus expensive and not widely used. As a result, for many of the early users of Vista, these defective restrictions are likely to go ununnoticed and then it will be too late... for all of us. What am I talking about? you ask? Is it about activation thats got a number of tries attached to it? Or the fact that you can't change your motherboard without Vista considering the license invalid? Or perhaps the fact that you no longer can install Vista inside a virtualized platform such VMware or Xen? While all of the above restrictions can be thought of as bei...

Well, I can finally fall asleep, (in bed) while browsing the net on my PSP over wireless. Thats right ADSL has finally come home. I was waiting for it to come to our neighborhood for the past two years or so. For those can recall would know that I had to go through several painful temporary solutions with nothing much to settle on. At last now, I can finally disconnect that CDMA piece of crap! Getting the ADSL connection wasn't painless either. Since it was my dad who owned the phone line, I had to get him to sign the forms and even submit a photo copy of his ID since he couldn't be there in person. The real problem was that I only got to know about it, only after trying to handover the filled form. So I had to make two trips over two days just for them to accept the application. But that wasn't the end of it. I initially handed over the form to the WTC Teleshop, and waited for about a week before calling to check on progress. Thats when I realized what seemed to have bee...

Been really really busy the last couple of weeks at work that I really wasn't in the mood for blogging. But what better way to break the ice, and kick off blogging in 2007 than to do it on your Birthday. Yes! you heard me right folks, its that day of the year, when your not sure whether you should be happy and excited or anxious and lost. I've just hit 30, a couple of hours ago and at this point, I'm still contemplating how I should feel about it. Should I declare myself as an old person or as a (not so old) person. Oh!, how the passing of a few hours can try to change your (outlook on) life :) And thats' sort of how I feel about this year. I'm very excited about 2007, from a technological standpoint, but not so sure with the way the world is ticking. But first, here are some things why I think things are going to be exciting this year: Linux Desktop Effects : Compiz and Beryl blew away the competition, and excited anyone who saw them. Expect more exciting develo...

Nvdia makes great drivers, awesome drivers for Linux. Those drivers are so great that no one has been motivated enough to write a good Open source driver for it. OK, I'm kidding, there is a good Open Source driver for Nvidia cards already but they only support 2D functions. So if you want 3D hardware acceleration, you have to settle for the official driver . So whats wrong with that? you might ask. Well if you are a Linux user, you might have come across the inconveniences involved with of upgrading the Nivida driver or the Linux kernel. But thats really a minor price to pay, compared to the freedom lost as a result. An year or so ago, Nvidia dropped support for some of their old graphic cards such as the Riva TNT2. The result - you either had to upgrade your graphic card or use the last driver they put out. Chances are that last driver doesn't support any of the recent kernels. So your also stuck using an old kernel. Your freedom to keep up is lost. One of my friends had an Ap...

Came across this article that featured KBFX, the alternative application for KDE , which IMHO is a whole lot more appealing than what KDE and Gnome , for that matter currently has by stock. The KBFX project, by the way was started by our very own, Kandy resident, Siraj Razick , but now has few other developers & graphic artists contributing from around the world. KBFX is quite popular because it enables one to theme the menu system in addition to providing a much cleaner UI to find all those apps. Popular eye candy portal, KDE-Look , even has a separate KBFX Theme category . Anyway check out the article: http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/74/Ktools_Kbfx_Menu.pdf

Been a long time since I've last blogged. Kept my self extremely busy at work and home, and I guess been a little lazy to blog given a couple of newer developments. So I thought I'd share the main developments that kept me away from blogging... My new ipod After battling with the idea of whether I should buy an ipod or not, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new 30GB video ipod . When Apple came out with these slightly improved babies (models), I figured that if it was good enough for all those million users then it was good enough for storing my mp3 collection. After accidentally repartitioning the ipod, becuase it didn't seem to show the partiton using fdisk -l on Linux, and then finding out that I had just destroyed the the firmware partition, I had to go through the hassel of downloading the latest version of iTunes for my Mac mini just so I can download and install the firmware from within it. But on a positive note, that process installated the firmware on an Apple...

FOSS on Wheels got on to a lazy start yesterday. We waited for the bus (though it made it on time - 4pm), waited for people (LSF guys were late!) and then went shopping! After a couple bottles of Mountain dew, Pringle cans and Kist fruit drinks among other things, seemed about right to start moving. Traffic down high level was high as usual, and we made it to Ratnapura close to 9:00. We had a tasty mix fried rice dinner, at a restaurant just close to the Ratnapura police station. Apparently this restaurant was a famous spot for concluding business deals among Gem dealers, though that didn't seem to be the case on that tonight. Couldn't do much after dinner, especially with the PSP batteries dying on me, so I dozed off instead. All I could remember was us making several stops for "nature call" sessions. Finally we made it to Buttala. The room had a row of beds waiting for us to lay upon. The first thing we did was to reserve a bed for our beloved gadgets that needed to...