Secure Sri Lanka ?

I don't know how much knowledge I have to discuss these problems. But I always wanted to express my ideas about some cases, openly. This is also a moment that my mind opened to the outer world. Before you read this any further please keep in mind few things. I'm not against Tamil nation. I have many friends who are tamils from SL and from other countries too. I'm not encouraging people to fight. I hate war. I'm not representing or promoting any political party or any organization. I don't like the polluted politics here in SL. No one told me to blog this, no one except me responsible for this ideas.

Still Reading.... ? Good. :-) Sri Lanka is a beautiful country. I love it. But because of this LTTE rebels this country have become a battle field for the last two decades. Prabakaran is trying to succeed his personal goals by sacrificing innocent Tamil, sinhala, even other nation's lives. First question I asked from my self was, why some tamils here in SL don't understand this and join the LTTE carder? When I move with the time I found that very few people join that rebel force by their desire. Most of them were taken in to their unit by forced and they brain wash those people. We hear from the media of kidnapping young Tamil people by LTTE. Which made me think, "my god.. Few people's (Prabakaran and his friends) war, is dragging by thousands of innocent people. LTTE leaders are not fighting for the democracy of the tamils. They just practicing what they are capable of. Killing. Since they have failed by their own, now they have put others in to the war and watching the show. I personally know tamils are very intelligent. So I hope at least the new people will end this game. All tamils, if you want the democracy, just say "no" to Prabakaran. My parents says, they co-op with tamils peacefully in many terms, before this LTTE born. Think of this, a Tamil person (Non LTTE) comes from Kilinochchi or Trincomallee to Colombo or Gall, the person may go shopping, visit people, etc and person can go back without any problem. But can we (sinhala guy/gal) go to Kilinochchi and return alive? I don't think so. So Tamil's freedom is not violated in Sri Lanka, but Sinhalease freedom....?

Every Tamil person == LTTE member? No. Tamil is not LTTE. LTTE is a collection of Tamils, Sinhaleas, Europeans, etc. Some groups joined with them to do underworld trading. (weapons, drugs, etc). Some are trying to get the ownership of some parts of the country. Some are trying to achieve cheap political goals by promoting LTTE. All I can say is, this is a collection of people who are educated to kill people, have no responsible for what they do, and have no clear goal+ No future.

I will say something I know and you may already know this too. This war could have ended a long time ago, when general Densil Kobbakaduwa was in the battle field. But there was some high class people who wanted to continue this war. So they let the LTTE to raise there power. So this war never ends and those people can survive. Unfortunately there were few people inside the military who needed this war to go on. I feel some of them are still inside. The are like Trojan horse computer viruses. Pretend to be a soldier but a terrorist in real. We can't say "this guy is a terrorist". But they are among us.

But now the time has come. This war should be stopped now. But if we want to live peacefully, LTTE should be eradicate. So now our three forces (Army, Neva, airbrush) are counter attacking to defend and clearing the areas in danger. We all should give our fullest support to them.

There is another thing I always feel upset about. The media culture in SL. The media is being a threat to the National Security. They publish what ever they want without thinking of the bad side of the news they publish. Take an example. If a military person or a Policeman done a great duty, they are highlighted in the news papers and TV, Radio., with all there details (Registration Nums, Full name, etc). Yes it's good to appreciate people on their good work. But you are automatically providing some sensitive information of that person to the terrorist too. How many of you know people in the intelligent forces? I know some of you know them. But is that the way it should be? There are some information that should kept as secrets. Media guys should think that terrorirst also read news papers, they also watch TV, they also have Internet. So I'm begging from you media guys, please don't publish sensitive information of military personals in any term. They will not get upset with you for saving their lives. Be more responsible.

Guys/ Gals we all have to think of this case seriously. We talk about Freedom all the time, even related to software :-), but do we really have a freedom in this country? Can we walk in a town without praying for god to keep us safe? Bomb blasts, Gun shoots, kidnapping, has become a part of the culture.! Hey I suggest you to carry your NIC with you. Always cooperate with the military. Respect them too.

I think if all the political parties and people can come to a plan to stop LTTE, that would create a new chapter in our country. This can't be done with that high class people, they will not allow others to end this. But now the Army, Nevy, Airforce is doing there duty just fine. If nobody from the government or any other authority block there way, they can finish this war soon. They can stop the LTTE.! And there are few organizations and people who try to justify the LTTE. I suggest they better stop it now. Stop feeding the TIGER!

The LTTE might kill me for blogging this too. :-) But I have expressed my idea to the world and I'm happy. Soon or later I will die, only thing is I don't know how I die. I wish I can see a Sri Lanka that all the Tamil, Sinhala, Muslims, etc live like a one family.

This is it. This is only a few things. But I will not say more. May be in future.

So Boring...

I was little bit busy for the last two months. In the office as well as at home. Any way I think I did some productive work in the last two months.

Today I feel very lazy to type, I don't know why....

Last month, I went Kandy to attend the School Linux Promotion. I joined with Suchetha and Bikku Mettavihari at Swarnamali Girls College and Rahula College. Both teachers and students were there for the training. I taught for teachers for the first time in my life. In the beginning, I felt little uncomfortable when they call me “Sir” (In Sri Lankan Schools “Sir” is referred to Teacher). Because I still feel like a student when I go to my school or when I meet my teachers. Any way, that was a fun filled two days.

I'm sorry i couldn't take my camera with me, so no photos from that event.

LKING CAMP

I got a fellowship to attend the 2nd LKING (Lanka Internet and Networking Group) camp held at Sarvodaya Head Office Rawathawatta, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka (24 – 25 June). When I go to the location I saw so many familiar faces and also many of my buddies at LKLUG.

In the first day, we had few presentations at the Conference Hall, and Dr. Ashoka, My good old pals Anuradha and Bud delivered some presentations. Anu talked about Scientific Application for the next generation, and Bud talk about Educational fun with computer networks, which mostly related to computer network games. :-). We all had a good discussion sessions and gained some knowledge in areas of networking. And there was participants from Moratuwa University, UCSC, University of Ruhuna, and also from some institutes and business organizations. So we had a representation from several areas in Sri Lanka.

In the middle of a discussion, I heard the words Wifi in Sarvodaya. So Since my Debian installation is not ready to go wifi at that time I tried to hook in with the Windows XP. I was connected!! without any prob! But I was not happy cos this has to be done with Linux. I thought okay, I will get the tools download to the Win and install them later.


But in the afternoon when Anuradha came to the camp, we had a chat and saw my notebook connected and with windows. I asked him to configure the wifi in debian for me and he managed to download packages needed and he did the work for me!! :-) I also felt happy due to two reasons. First is that now I'm in Wifi and the second thing is that I'm still having a working wireless card even after I droped my laptop (Toshiba Satellite A60p) while I'm riding my Bike (Honda Custom CBX 125) at the speed of 80 KMPH. I couldn't connect to the Wifi at Excel world last time so I thought my wireless is broken due to the drop damage. It was not in the laptop case, it was in my office bag and the belt broke out. It felt on the road and thrown towards the road for about 15 meters. That's an old story. Many people knows about it.

Day two in the camp, we discussed about Internet in our native language, Internet security, Video Conferencing, VOIP, etc. Dr. Gihan Dias, Suranga, and a person from Millennium IT did some presentations. Then Chamil from IT Ambalama did a presentation about blogging and other community base Internet stuff. After that fellows gave some speeches about there situation in their Institutes. In the evening the General meeting took place. New members elected, and all went home with certificates obtained for the participation. A happy camp.

FOSS in Paddy Fields

I went to Ampara to attend to a wedding. I represented the bride's side. The wedding was in Ampara city, but bride's house was in a village called Uhana (8Km away from the city). They had a nice big paddy field. So I wanted to take a photo like this. :-) Please notice that the little brown bottle next to me is not BEER.!!! (Zoom and see the name).

I always talk about taking FOSS to the rural areas. But still couldn't succeed. There are only few people who use FOSS in Ampara at the moment. But I haven't quit promoting FOSS in Ampara, actually my self, Kunchana is the Only active people out there. Kunchana is advocating, and actively promoting Linux and FOSS among friends. He managed to install Linux on few Destops and Laptops which belongs to our friends. Actually we are not in a try to inject (by force) FOSS to the community, because we want only those who are interested and find a value in FOSS to be join with us. But advocating is important.

By the way, I didn't forget to visit my good old buddies (Manju, Kassa, Kunchana). This time we couldn't have a beer out, cos I was little bit busy at the wedding house.

I kept my self silent for a while.

I was thinking and thinking during the past couple of months, about this world. Of course I did many things apart from 'thinking' as well. Never mind about them. When I look at this fast moving world, I see people loose their human qualities day by day. Many of us may not notice that we also have lost our qualities.

What do you need to have a quality life? If someone questioned from you, what is your answer? If we asked this from ten people, we'll get ten answers. Having a good education background would be one answer. being wealthy is another one, having many girl/boy friends would call people as a quality life. But I think combination of all those would help to have a quality life. Yet there are some other things we should consider as well. We should build a good faith in our heart. We should be honest and transparent. I don't say we should tell all over personal stuff to outer world. We should be the person who truly sees by outsiders.

When we growing old and old, we become more and more selfish. We don't tend to help others, we don't like to see other peoples success and happiness. We don't want want others to pass us! (I don't like when people overtakes me when I'm riding my bike, how ever I try to overtake the other vehicle, he/she tries to overtake me, this creates a street race.). Which is not good.

No need to fill this blog with my boring ideas. But one thing is true. That we all have to leave this world soon or later. At that day, what we all take with us is the goodness and badness we collected during the life span. I'm trying my best to live a balanced life, and also I'm trying my best NOT to become a trouble to other people.

Live a useful life to you and to everyone.! And die leaving a good name among living ones.

Don't use pirated software

I didn't know I was doing some thing wrong...
I was just sitting infront of a Windows XP computer...
Didn't even touch it...
But suddernly MS agent and Police broke in and grabed me...
And I was under arrest for using a pirated Win XP copy...
Don't use pirated software...

Disclaimer : All these are my ideas and my own activities. And those doesn't have any relationship with any other party.

FOSS-ed

February 13 – 15 was some action filled three days for me. I was representing The Linux Center at the FOSS-ed conference held in the Excel World Colombo. The conference was held to bring awareness to Free and Open Source to the public. The event went well from the very first day and we all (LK-LUG) had a busy but joyful event.

There were some speeches and some presentation from various key note speakers (local and International) and also from our own LUGers. I had the chance to talk to the Confounder of the world's most popular web server Apache, Mr. Brian Behlendorf. He was a key note speaker in the event. The crowed we aimed was mainly business people, universities and other educational institutes and any other party who wish to come! :-) Well we had a reasonable number of participants.

As a third world country (still developing) we should think about the Free and Open Source Software more and more. We can save more money by using this FOSS alternatively to the Proprietary software. But still in Sri Lanka all the software can be purchased under LKR 150 .00. So still people are like 'crabs in the boiling water'. And due to use of illegal software, we will need more prison chambers for the future Sri Lankan IT Professionals. :-)

Conclusion : Migration to FOSS is need in deed!


FOSS-ed After effects:


Janaka and Suchetha...

Janaka became a 'she male'...

Janaka had a high demand after the event..

A short ride to Ingiriya.

My uncle, Lesly, is a building contractor. This time he got a contact in a temple, at Ingiriya, a nice village passing Horana. My family (dad, mom, me) were invited to spend a day at the temple. Dad couldn't come due to his duties. It was last Saturday (11-02-2006). I also had some work to take care of before I go. So mom went with my aunt by her van and I went to the office. My cousin sister (Yasi) also wanted to go there, so I took her on my bike (Honda Custom CBX 125) and had a 47KM ride within 45mints. I always love to ride at 100KMph or more when the road is clear!;-)













Ingiriya was a calm and cool village and surrounded with paddy fields and Rubber estates. My cousin brother Stephen (Poriya) also was there working with uncle Lesly. In the evening we went to take a swim in a stream at Nachimaley (few kilo meters away from Ingiriya). The water was so cold and we had a long bath there.

Stayed the night at the temple, watched the moon and stars, and I loved the tropical environment, and the fresh breeze. I relaxed few hors under the stars. It's good that I came out from the busy city for a while and got a bit of relaxing. In the next day morning returned home with a relaxed mind, to start a new week with a big smile in the face. :-)

Dear moon,

How are you keeping? I'm fine. When are you comming to see me again? I was waiting in the balcony, just to see you once again, and to say good bye, but you went down the sky without looking at me. So I send you this mail to say, "Good bye".

Earth man.

I got few public holidays, thought of visiting my home town (City of Ampara). So I went to Kandy in Thursday (12/01/2006)morning and took a bus to Ampara from there. When I look around for known people, (cos this bus is leading to my home town so, I could find some people I know) I met several guys from Ampara and a special person too. I saw my class teacher- when I was in my year 4 and 5 at Sadhdhathissa College, Ampara - where I schooled up to year 5. It was year 1989. I went to her and spoke, she was really happy to see me after 17 years. You know what, she still remember the naughty little boy! I still respect and love my past teachers.

I reached Ampara in the evening, went to my buddy's place, Kunchana, where I stay. And call over my two pals Kasun and Manju, that day was Kasun's Birth day (13 January - friday the 13th - "wake of evil") So had to have a party. That night we went to Kasun's own restaurant “Rathna Rest” and started to celebrate. You know there is nothing to tell after that, we kept on chatting and had a cool time, and got drunk- no excuse! As I thought in this new year, I took care of a lot of beer. That makes me feel cool.... You know it's very nice to be away for a while from the rush and busy city. And also to meet some people who close to me. We stayed till 1.30am and after my newly wedded buddy Manju received the fifth and final 'warning' phone call from his wife, we split for the day. We don't want any trouble here lady ... ;-)

I proud to say that we four were together for more than 10 years, and still mango friends. Girls friends are coming and going from our lives when they are not satisfied, but true friends never leave until it's end of our lives. I'm so lucky to have such true friends.

After we split Kunchana and me came to his place. Did we sleep? No way, even though we was drunk up to maximum level, we sat in front of the computer and started explore the system-Linux. Yeh, can't stay away from it. After reading several manual pages and some other stuff, we created a blog for Kunchana too. We took some photos, I felt sleepy and crashed on the bed at 4.30am. Didn't have any dreams.

Got up at 8.30am and had a quick breakfast. Then started to visit my relatives, and some of my Suda's relatives that I loved. After all these visits, I packed up my self and started to travel back to Colombo, in the evening bus. Kasun and Kunchana came to say tata to me, and I left my home town. Reached Colombo at 5.30am(Saturday). That was a short but sweet visit.

I say good bye to...

I say good bye to year 2001,2002,2003,2004,2005.
I say good bye to all my bad feelings.
I say good bye to all my sorrows.
I say good bye to my old PC (AMD K6).
I say good bye to witness of my love “The Full Moon”.
I say good bye to many of my memories.
Finally,
I say good bye to you my Suda.

I say hello to...

I say hello to GNU/Linux.
I say hello to FOSS.
I say hello to beer.
I say hello to the world with computers.

I wish all the best and success for our geeks at Lanka Linux User Group.
I wish a very happy year 2006 for my relations and friends around the world.

Cheers!

house party @ Rivendale Resort

My buddy Suchetha invited all the LK-LUGers for a party at his place “Rivendal Resort”, a marvelous facility near by the Bolgoda lake. It was 30th December 2005. We sat under the stars with the guitar (Viraj's) and a hand drum (Who's was it?). You know what? we 'managed' to sing few songs, and I managed to 'grab' some chords for songs. Actually, after Suche's mom sat down on the mat, the party really got a kick!

We took care of some beer bottles and fine tuned the event. Some of our guys crashed on the mat, after few hours of singing.

Our gang: Kosala and his wife, Sanjaya, Deependra, Arunan (mango boy), Ruwan, Viraj, Buddhika, Chamil, Changa, Nandalal and his wife, Suchetha's parents and their friends, and also Suchetha's dogs (bow wow). I'm sorry if I miss any names.

I came bit late to the premises and it was already dark and I didn't see Suche's garden well. So in the morning, after a comfortable sleep at Rivendale Resort Mango boy, Chamil, Ruwan, Suche, me went to look around. It was a wonderful environment and I invite every one who missed the party should visit Rivendale Resort before you die!

I like to thank Suche's parents specially his mom who was in the back stage of this party and made it joyful. And the food was excellent! I would like to say that few of us was lucky to have our breakfast from there too. I came home with a fun filled heart and a bag full of DVDs (Suche's Collections).



"No idea of going to own houses?"





"Cathy (spot bow wow), I love you"

These days, I’m in a training program at University of Colombo School of Computing Sri Lanka. This was a fully sponsored course by JAICA and we are the first batch. I was interested in participating this course because they have a subject part about Open Source Learning Management System, which I’m hoping to implement in my department in near future. We didn’t come to that part yet. So here I am in the training. (to be precise blogging). Course will move till 17th December 2005

In the mean time I went to the Lanka Software Foundation (Sahana Project) to see few LUGers (actually yesterday). I took my official notebook computer to get Debian installed in it. As Pradeeper took the responsibility of doing it, he started, As usual Sarge gave the message “kernel panic” and halted, but he didn’t give up, I had Fedora installed in another partition and Pradeeper had took the kernel of the Fedora and installed the Debian system. Any ways now Debian is up and running in my notebook ;-) I need to upgrade the system (apt-get it.).

As I said before, you know I never forget my favourit. (the green bottle!) We started the small party around 22.00 hr and went up to 02.00hr. I was pretty well with the guitar by that time and played well. (says me;-)) I have to make this blogging bit shortt, cos I am in an Internet cafe. Cos I'm still on leave and attendig a training program in UCSC. I will be back in the office on 17-12-2005. So I'm offline for that time period.

Ya hooooo.....

I had a nice electoral holiday.

I got three day duty leave to vote! cos my home town is 375KM away from the city. (City of Ampara). But I didn't go there, cos I thought of utilizing the leave in a better way. So I went to my aunt's place at Kandy (katugasthota) and had a nice time with my brothers there. I can't uploaad all the pics cos some are too much!

My aunt and sister from Katubadda (colombo) also joind with me in this trip.

Ya hooooo.....

Past Actions...

I learned the first C lesson from suda :-)
part of it.....

#include "stdio.h"
main()
{
int i;
char j;
printf ("Enter any number...");
scanf ("%d", &i);

switch(i)
{
case 1:
printf("\nEnter any alphabet...");
fflush (stdin);
scanf ("%c", &j);

switch(j)
{
case 'a':
printf("\nIf you love something...");
goto out;
case 'b':
printf("\nSet it free...");
break;
}
break;
case 2:
printf("\nIf it returns, it's yours...");
}
out:
printf("\nElse it was never meant to be.");
}

Still Suffering ;-(

I was totally down after breaking up with Suda (my love). But my family and friends, even Suda's friends helped me a lot to recover my self. Thanks to them, and thanks to my religion I saved my life without getting in to any foolish decisions. But I'm still stuck with some sad feelings. Lets see what we can do about it!!

Music keeps me alive

Last month, I bought my self a new Box Guitar. (photo's will come soon, cos my digital camera is out of order and I have to buy a new one) I can play Keyboard (Very Well), Thabla (Very Well), Drums (Well), Flute (Little Bit), any instrument can be played after touching it for few days. ;-) So now I can sing and play the guitar for few songs, Like, Sealed with a kiss (J. Donavan), Duka Hadu Dena Raye (Mr.Gunadsa Kapuge) And some of Mr. Clarence Wijewardene's songs. As I have sang in Local Music Bands for several years, singing part is not an issue. ;-) I am organizing a “Paduru party” (a classical music party) in the Faculty, where I work (Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medical, Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura). This will happen on 31^st December .

I want to learn C

After installing a stable GNU/Linux system in my official notebook, I did some XHTML, PHP etc. After I started my IT career, first thing I thought was, “I will not become a programmer”. But... now I realize that programming is very essential, cos I have to submit a software for my final year project (Degree of BIT). ;-) So I borrowed a C book from my friend (Kunchana) and started coding. I hope I will write some good codes in future. :-)

Promoting the “Revolution OS”

I developed a departmental intranet in the office for students a year back. I ran the web server in Window$ Server 2003, (not a legal copy) and all other machines (including mine) was running under XP. But after I realized the power of GNU/Linux I kept promoting it among my friends and some authorities in the University. Now I'm happy to say that my desktop and some other machines at office are powered by Linux. And some of the higher level staff come to me and getting the Linux OS installed in there machines. But still I'm running my web server in the same way cos, there are few things to be learn before I change the system to a Linux box. But I'll keep up the good work!

uploaded this photo just for fun, and I will upload my photos later.

I was on (still on) a bad mood ;-( after my most loved Suda left me on July. I think it's all my fault and no blame should go to her. The major error I made was loving her truly, deeply, madly. Other error was I expected her to love me in the same way. But she always say she's happy without me and my love, bla bla... bullshit. So I have a big challenge of healing myself. I still love my Suda and that will last for ever.

Thank you, for being my whole life.. ;-(

FOSS Week.

I involved in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) week held in Sri Lanka from 5^th to 11^th September 2005. I'm so happy to take part in this national event. I was in Majestic City Shopping Complex for three days (8^th, 9^th, 10^th)with some of my friends from Lanka Linux User Group, and promoted GNU/Linux. I'm so happy to say that most of the Sri Lankans have realized the importance of FOSS.

Linux and me...

I was using Windows for 7 years. In 1999 my cousin Lashi (Menaka Lashitha Banda- www.lashi.org) sat in front of my computer and said “what is this? throw this windows sh.. away and use Linux”. But those days I was impressed with Windows and refused his word. But when time moves on, and when I started my career in IT field I saw the revolution, and changed my PC OS to Linux. I don't want to criticize Windows, but Linux is my personnel choice now. I can do all the things I did in Windows in Linux, and I'm still exploring the Operating System.

I joined the LKLUG mailing list, actually my friend Anuradha Rathnaweera (www.linux.lk/~anuradha/) added me to the list, and met so many Linux guys and they helped me a lot when I need help in Linux.

Suda and me...

She was a cute little girl who loved dolls a lot. We played together, we grew up together, I was a dear brother to her, she was a dear sister to me, we became lovers, she was one of the most valuble persons I had, we dreamed about our future, we walked a long way together, holding our hands, with happyness and sorrow. But now we are apart. Where is my Suda?

Nothings forgotten; Nothings ever forgotten...

It started...

After trying many other options, I also thought of blogging. I'll update my blog with more facts soon.