Nipuna's Galaxy

Traveling in Malaysia

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Mon, 2 Jan 2012 17:41:00 +0530

When I first came to Malaysia, I thought the country was a ghost town… I came to this conclusion since I compared Malaysia with Singapore, which I visited before Malaysia. Now you must be wondering why I made such a statement, its because Singapore has nice public transport services which helped me to rome around the city and discover new places such as nice shopping malls and restaurants. But suddenly I had to visit Malaysia for my first project in this country. May be this is the main reason why I felt bad about Malaysia.

Now I have almost spent a year in Malaysia, and I would say it is a country in which you can live very peacefully without any matter. Country has got mostly everything… supermalls, playground, theme parks, rivers, mountains and even nice beaches. But I would recommend anyone to have a own vehicle if you are hoping to visit these places because I have realized that living in Malaysia without a vehicle is like a hell.

Since I didn’t have a vehicle here, I had to use public transport which is quite slow (but it is available everywhere inside KL). We can use MiniBUS, RapidKL and MetroBus services. In Kuala Lampur you get train services as well. MonoRail, Komuter, LRT and KLexpress are the main train services. MonoRai, LRT, MetroBUS and RapidKL are mainly dedicated for city service. KLexpress is running between the KL airport and the "KL Sentral".

Buses on the road

You can find main web sites of transport services here.

Malaysia has got few main bus stands which called "Pudu Raya" and TBS. Since the "Kota Raya" building is the city center, number of buses are stopping in front of "Kota Raya" and "MyDIN" shopping malls as well.

If you are traveling to Singapore or southern side of the Malaysia better go to BTS-TBS (Bandar Tasik Selatan). Or if you are visiting Penang, Thailand or Northern part of peninsula of the Malaysia better go to Pudu Raya.

Life will not be boring as long as you are not alone in Malaysia. :-)

References:

http://www.lipstiq.com/2011/12/a-guide-to-bus-systems-in-klang-valley/
Special Thanks:
Noelani Peiris

The Butterfly Effect

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 02:25:00 +0530

Sometimes you may have heard about the "Chaos Theory" which uses in study areas such as Physics, Economics, Meteorology etc.. this theory more to the nonlinear dynamic systems which highly sensitive to the initial conditions. If there are small differences in initial conditions will yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems. This effect is called "Butterfly Effect", I found the proper definition of "butterfly effect" in Wikipedia as follows.

"The sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state."

Chaos Theory has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.

This "Chaos Theory" condition discovered by the physicist Henri Poincare in the early 20th century. This latter idea is known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions , a circumstance discovered by Edward Lorenz (who is generally credited as the first experimenter in the area of chaos) in the early 1960s.

Even though these theories were used in educational areas, I feel that the concept can be applied even to our real life, if we consider our lives as nonlinear dynamic objects. If we take an example: from our birth to the death, we are meeting up different types of people at different kinds of situations. The way we treat them initially and the initial situation of the relationship between the other person and us always reflects the end result of the relationship. It does not matter what kind of relationship that we have. It may be a business-to-business, love, employer-employee, friendship or any relationship, but effect applies everywhere.

If we take another example, Any kind of relationship depends on the "Trust" of each other. If someone tries to lie or cheat initially, it will affect to the final result of the engagement. Sometimes it will be a disaster.

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci759332,00.html
http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/butterfly-effect-weather-prediction-2234/

Photography... 3 tips which I have learnt so far..

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Sat, 2 Jul 2011 15:49:00 +0530

The terms of "Photography" and "The light" are bonded together.. we can not talk about photography without the word "light". So lets discuss three main items which helps us to control light while taking the photographs.

Aperture
Sometimes you may have seen a hole which opens inside the camera lens when taking the photograph. The diameter of that hole called the "Aperture". we can control the size of the aperture using camera settings. The lens aperture is usually specified as an f-number (ex: f/2, f/3) the ratio of focal length to effective aperture diameter. Size of the aperture can change as numbers and that number settings in the range somewhere between 1.4 to 32 (Depends on your camera).

Aperture photograph
comparison (Focus)

Aperture photograph
comparison (Light)

We can control two main things using aperture size. One is the density of the light that comes in to the camera body through the aperture at one time, using this you can make your object is bright or dim. Second thing is the "Field of depth" which means the background density or rather soft focus of the background. If you set the smaller aperture (f/16 to f/32) you can get photograph which has greater depth of field or rather very clear background with all in focus. If you set larger aperture (f/1.4 to f/8) you can get out of focused background with clear focus on your subject.

Sample photograph to show out of focus background and focused subject
(This photo has taken with aperture f/5.6, shutter speed 1/640s and ISO speed 100)

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed or rather exposure time is opening time of the shutter. Since we can control the speed of the shutter using camera settings, we can control the light which comes inside to the camera withing that "shutter speed" time period. For normal photography camera's shutter will stay open for about 1/250 th of a second. If the shutter stays open for 1/100 th of a second then more than twice as much light comes in. If the shutter stays open for 1/500 of a second only half as much light come in. Shutter speeds can be as fast as 1/8000 of a second (Depends on the camera).

Sample photograph to show the difference of shutter speeds

ISO settings
In photography term for this setting is called "Film speed". The meaning of the ISO is "International Organization for Standardization". The relationship of this setting to the photograph is if you are shooting in bright light you'll want a low ISO rating i.e. ISO-100. If you are shooting in low light, perhaps indoors or an evening setting, you'll want film with a high ISO rating i.e. ISO-1600.

So basically you can control the light (which comes inside to the camera through the aperture and shutter) using this ISO speed setting as well. But keep in mind high ISO speed means high noise.

So basically when you buying a camera check above three parameters. If the camera has wide range of options in each parameter, then it is a good camera. ex: Aperture 5.6-32, Max shutter speed 1/8000, ISO 100-3200.

Becoming a Malaysian... so far...

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Sat, 4 Jun 2011 10:51:00 +0530

When we are staying outside the country, sometime we need get adapted to the culture of new outside world. Since I’m working in Malaysia, I’m also trying to be in same culture and trying to learn the language (Bhasha Malaysia or rather basha Melayu). So today I thought to share my living experiences in Malaysia.

History and culture of Malaysia
Before the rise of the European colonial powers, the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago (cluster islands) were home to empires such as the Srivijaya, the Majapahit (both ruled from Indonesia) and the Melaka Sultanate. The Srivijaya and Majapahit empires saw the spread of Hinduism to the region, and to this day, despite being nominally Muslim, many Hindu legends and traditions survive in traditional Malay culture. Mass conversion to Islam only occurred after the arrival of Arab traders during the Melaka Sultanate.

Malaysia is a multicultural society. While Malays make up a 54% majority, there are also 25% Chinese (especially visible in the cities), 7.5% Indian and a miscellaneous grouping of 13.5% "others", such as the Portuguese clan in Melaka and 12% of indigenous peoples (Orang Asli). There is hence also a profusion of faiths and religions, with Muslim 60.4%, Buddhist 19.2%, Christian 9.1%, Hindu 6.3%, Confucianism, Taoism, other traditional Chinese religions 2.6%, other or unknown 1.5%, none 0.8% (2000 census).

Learning the language
In Malaysia, the 1957 Article 152 of the Federation adopted Johor (Malacca) Malay as the official language (Bahasa Malaysia). The name "Malaysia", in both language and country, emphasized that the nation consisted of more than just ethnic Malays. In 1986 the official name was changed to Bahasa Melayu, but in 2007 it was changed back.

Most of the Malay people says, BM (Bahsa Malaysia) is easy to learn. So far I was able to catch only 6-7 phases and 20-25 words. For me, most useful phase in Malay is “Di mana tandas?” which means “Where is the toilet?”.

You can find BM teaching website here http://www.bahasa-malaysia-simple-fun.com/.

Moving with people
Malaysian people are friendly and they respecting to others, but sometimes they are proud. Every race in Malaysia has its own weaknesses. As I heard from one of the Malaysian Indian person, there is a Malay proverb quote.

“If a Malay is not lazy he cannot be a Malay, If an Indian is not talkative he cannot be an Indian, If a Chinese is not collecting money, he cannot be a Chinese”

The Malays are known to be too lazy. The Chinese are known to be very civil, disciplined and sometimes too hardworking. A Chinese who gets his/her pay, will tend to keep it for emergency or future use. A Malay in the other hand, would usually spend it immediately. Indians are very talkative and they talking too louder.

I have noticed, most of the Indian taxi drivers are rarely uses taxi meter and always asking more money from passengers but majority of Malay and Chinese taxi drivers are always following the taxi meter and respecting to the passenger. I have heard there are some mafias in Malaysia, still I was fortunate not to became a victim of it.

So when you come to Malaysia, sometimes my tips will be helpful to you.

Most of the numbers and historical details from :
1) http://wikitravel.org
2) http://en.wikipedia.org

Day to day fire fighting and QOS

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Sat, 28 May 2011 23:52:00 +0530

During last 5 years I have seen lots of fire fighters in IT related companies. Today I thought to write about them.

Who are the firefighters
If fire is some where then firefighters also around and when we thinking on other way round, that also true sometimes. That is, if firefighters are there that mean definitely fire is going around. so basically without fire no firefighters and they are always starting to stop fire when only fire got started.

When we come to the IT industry, most of the time employees working with end customers are firefighters. They always facing to the firings from customers due to many reasons. Sometimes may be delaying releases, unidentified bugs and various system failures.
Sometimes they getting cross fire from company management team and from the client. Client firing on the breaking the promises of project requirements and management start firing on when profit of the project getting down.

I've got above image via email few years back. I can say main reasons for firefightings are described in above image. Obviously, at the end of the day victims are the client and project delivery team.

How to identify?

You can identify these fire fighters, when they speaking about their experience and technical skills. When they are saying, they have experiences in project management and software development.... that is the first indication of being the fire fighter. If you continue the discussion, you can hear that they are expertise in system engineering and networking too... Sometimes they are doing sales and marketing as well. So basically they are all-rounders, because of handling many projects and playing many roles.

If you are the onsite project coordinator and If you couldn’t see these characteristics, then you cannot find them until you getting involved to the cross fire of company management and the client side. So I warn you on following things, because if you do followings that mean you making your hell out there.

Trust firefighters dead lines
Believe firefighters skills
Documents signoff on time
Believe firefighters project time lines

Birth of fire fighters

Normally birth of firefighter is happening due to failures in management of the company. I’m saying that due to two reasons.

Managers with poor and plaster management skills are making a mess out of job roles and employees have to play many roles.
If company management targeting only the profit, then again employees have to play many roles. Because management is restricting the recruitments and asking employees to generate more and more profit using limited recourses.

If the company following global standards and properly manage the resources, then every employee needs to play his/her allocated job role only (which is happy scenario). When single employee playing many roles, it’s good to make short term profits but in long term he is being high skill individual player and company needs to depend on him. Sometimes when he is making his personal decisions, that feels to whole company management. Then you can find the birth of fire fighter (sometimes you may know him already before he came to this stage).

Effects on QOS

If your company has higher number of firefighters, that means providing less quality of service. Because of the high demand on single resource and spending less time on service, QOS getting lower. This is the main reason for clients to get guns on you. And this is the only reason which management never understand... ever...!!
Today lots of companies are getting many projects promising thousands of features. Funny part is management allocating only few people to do all of projects and at the end of the project, they delivering some shits to customer and start firefighting afterwards to get covered.

Moral of the this post is "Never start the projects without enough resources, otherwise you're giving the birth to firefighters".

So be careful with fire fighters and making fire fighter in your company, Otherwise you will feel some "Awesome" feelings at the end of the projects :-)

Operating systems' Past and Future

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:47:00 +0530

Writing a blog is quite fun and interesting, I can give two reasons to do so, one is sharing information with my friends, second is I like to listen the outcome or rather feedbacks about my blog posts. By the way today I thought to write about operating systems.
Most of the people are thinking Microsoft Windows is the first and only operating system in the world. Reason for that thinking is, may be MS Windows is the only operating system that they are using and heard about. After Ubuntu came to the market, now people are getting known there are other operating systems in the market too.
The earliest computers did not use operating systems (Such as differential engine); Later a simple loading program was loaded into the computer - via front panel switches or punched tape, the loading program would load the actual program to run. Some years after that, few operating system kind of systems were introduced by IBM and other scientists (according to the web sites).
I found following lines from “FORTRAN Anecdotes,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 06, no. 1, pp. 59-64, Jan-Mar, 1984”, that says about world first operating system.

There is an interesting, but little known, relationship between the first FORTRAN compiler on the IBM 704 and the early development of operating systems. In 1955, what was probably the first operating system had been developed and was in use at the General Motors Research Laboratories. Called the I/O system, it was a three-phase system in that a batch of jobs was processed entirely with regard to input formats, then the entire batch was processed for execution, and finally the entire batch was processed for output conversion and printing. There were no higher-level languages in that system.

Can you believe that OS for General Motors?
After that next highlighted operating system was Unix, which is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie. The Unix operating system was first developed in assembly language, but by 1973 had been almost entirely recoded in C. The second edition of Unix was released on December 6th, 1972, today's Unix systems are split into various branches.

Some years later, in 1981 IBM did the most stupid work in the world (I think, I can say so) by letting run MS-DOS in IBM PCs. That was the birth of Microsoft and its Windows. If IBM could do the work alone, IBM could be the most revenue generating company in the world. In early 90’s Apple started work with Microsoft and Windows 1.0 came out, then later Microsoft Windows 2.0 released by copying Macintosh, I found following lines from Steve Jobs’ famous talk in Stanford University, 2005.

The Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

After the Rechard M Stallman’s FOSS and invention of the Linus Torvalds’ Kernel, GNU/Linux started in 1991. That is the beginning of new era. Nowadays Linux is everywhere. It’s not limited only for computers; you can find Linux even inside the routers and other hardware devices. According to the statistics still Windows covering the more than 50% of desktops in the world but when we come to the servers Linux/Unix is the #1.
Next generation desktop operating systems are cloud based online systems. Now Ubuntu has UbuntuOne cloud device, Windows has Skydrive which provides the cloud services for storage but next version will be the online web based operating systems like Google’s chromebook (which going to release on 2011 June 15th). I guess this will quite similar to the eyeOS.

So get ready to use online operating systems. :-)

Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

Where we go..??

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Fri, 13 May 2011 23:11:00 +0530

I thought to put some comments under this topic, since I have seen a post on one of my friend’s blog in same topic and also during last 2-3 weeks I had to go through some next generation web technology news sites. I believe this topic is quite curious and still covered and unclear to most of users of the internet and mobile technologies.

1G -> 2G -> 3G -> 4G.. What next in 5G???

Nowadays 4G (which is expected to be finalized between approximately 2011 and 2013) is a HOT topic in Sri Lanka and as I can see telco operators doing a big marketing war top on that.

Here I’m not going to explain what is the 4G or 5G, but if we are talking about briefly on that; fourth and fifth generation wireless mobile systems are commonly known as 4G and 5G. They are expected to provide global roaming across different types of wireless and mobile networks, for instance from satellite to mobile networks and to Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). 4G is an all IP-based mobile network using different radio access technologies providing seamless roaming and connection via always the best available network (Multihome).

The fifth generation communication system is envisioned as the real wireless network, capable of supporting Wireless World Wide Web (wwww) applications in 2013 to 2020 time frame. According to the technology specialists, the 5G (or beyond 4G) systems will be capable of supporting wwww allowing a highly flexible network such as a Dynamic Adhoc Wireless Network (DAWN). In this advanced technologies including intelligent antenna and flexible modulation which are keys to optimize the adhoc wireless networks. 5G systems should be an intelligent technology capable of interconnecting the entire world without limits. An example application could be a robot with built-in wireless communication with artificial intelligence.

Technology/Feature	4G	5G
Data bandwidth	the maximum throughput at short distance and low velocity is about 80 Mbit/s, while the peak physical layer net bit rate is 100 Mbit/s.	more than the 1 Gbps
Multiplexing	CDMA	CDMA
Switching	Packet switching	Packet switching

So basically every phone or device will get an IP address and operate on the data network (not like previous circuit switching network). This trend will provide the stage to make strong and huge VoIP network which can do video conferencing and other hi-tech communications like Mobile TV.
I’m personally believing IT giants like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will be the next generation MVNO’s (Here I’m not referring current MVNO technologies, I think MVNO’s next generation is basically geo distributed telco software such as HLR can be in US and centralized IN can be in UK which communicate over the data network) and these giants will be control the mobile world afterwards. So basically what I’m saying is, in the near future people do not dial numbers to make phone calls and they will dial e-mail addresses instead.

Nokia and some of other telco applications and hardware vendors are speaking on Cognitive radio technology which is going to be the RF hardware layer for 5G. In following video you can see the technology introduction.

Above brief is enough to think on what's happening in next decade. So obviously mobile phones also will get upgrades since mobile networks are getting change. Basically we are much more towards to the era of advance smart phones which can do GPS navigations.. Content browsing.. etc.
These days many people are developing smart phone applications.. and hosting applications to earn money, eventually some of them are making money and some of them are losing out but the youth trend is there always. Hence I can say next decade is the era of content applications J as well.

Do I need to change my mobile phone??

I found above image from the internet and it shows what’s happening around us. You can see these days Android (Google’s open-source operating system) is hitting the market, respectively corresponding phone operating systems such as iPhone OS also sharing the other bigger portion of the market. Since Androd is open source, phone hardware companies like HTC, Motorola and Samsung can get the OS free for their phones. This makes big advantage for them to provide low cost mobile phones than the others.
HP brought the Palm recently and now they have came up with WebOS as well as Blackberry also has came up with their own tablet device last month (Sony also announced they going to provide tablets), so hopefully within next few years we can see some low cost tablets and high-end smart phones in the market.

That means definitely I have to change my phone, otherwise I could not survive on the growing mobile network (Using Nokia 1100 on 5G network will be a quite rare case).

How about mobile development platforms??

These days biggest trend is Cloud services, some companies says they are providing SAAS some says PAAS, actually some of companies selling bullshit saying cloud services. I know a company who says their applications are SAAS, but here hilarious matter is, that cloud application needs to install separately and manually on each and every individual customer (no cloud concept automation in the installation at all – just imagine Salesforce application platform installing separately for each and every customer.. smiler scenario is happening here). So currently most of the small software development companies uses name of the SAAS (or other cloud services' names) only as business model or to do the sales, these companies do not implement SAAS technically. Hence I do n't think that kind of companies can be a challenge for other bigger software development companies any more.

As I think, Mobile TV, SIP phones and other ordinary contents like news, sports and music will integrate with mobile platforms using applications. Since networks are so fast and connectivity errors free, downloading and use of these applications will not be a big issue.

Most of the 4G platforms and modern web applications uses Web 2.0 technologies such as web service, JSON and DOM. If you are going through the internet standardizing web sites (you could see business 2.0, telco 2.0 and web 2.0 terms), so nowadays we are spending the version 2.0 age. I guess after 2013 or 2015 version 3.0 will start. According to the web sites related to the web technologies are says Web 3.0 includes TV-quality open video, 3D simulations, augmented reality, human-constructed semantic standards, and pervasive broadband, wireless and sensors. That means most of the mobile application content and web sites will be much more attractive and innovative.

What about PSTN??

In the above paragraphs I talked more about mobile phone technologies, if we think on land lines and Fiber channels next biggest technical milestone is VDSL or VHDSL (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line). Currently we using ADSL2+ which is recently released and speed is approximately 1.5 Mbps to 1.6 Mbps (telco people says speed is 2.0Mbps). VDSL providing 50Mbps to 100Mbps. According to the telco news sites VDSL2 is providing 1Gbps speed and still under testing and research.

So I think sometimes combination of Web 3.0, VDSL2 and 5G world will be more virtualized.

I have got a dream.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Thu, 12 May 2011 14:47:00 +0530

Yes, that is true J I have found 10 places on the earth to visit in some day of my life. I know some of my friends have already visited some of these places.

I do not know whether I can make it.. but it is just a dream J

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_River,_Guangxi

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon

5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Falls

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas

7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)

8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Par%C3%ADcutin

9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge

10) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordfriesland

Sometimes these links may help you to find your dreams also J

My research on Facebook :-)

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:10:00 +0530

I did not really mean it, but I did a small research kind of thing (or rather analysis) on the Facebook during last few years. I found following quite curious facts on Facebook marriages. I found 3 types of groups among them. [Please note that.. this is only for Facebook marriages]

Group #1

1. When young girls are changing their profile pictures quite frequently and suddenly, that means they are finding partners. Sometimes they are uploading quite sexy pictures, with widen hair + smiley faces or with short skirts etc..
2. #1 not applicable to young males but you can catch them when they are putting comments on photos or wall posts of specific “single status” females.
3. After sometimes you can see they changing the relationships.. and "like" each other’s posts.. etc..
4. Next step most of the time will be the engagement or wedding, if they are quite facebook addicted couples, then you can see the wedding pics as well.
5. If they are tooo FB addicted.. You can see their honeymoon pics as well in FB.
6. Sometimes they are keeping only single FB profile for both of them and they are naming it by putting their names together.
7. After one year.. Or may be few years later you can see the second generation of them on Facebook. Sometimes parents are creating second generation’s FB accounts since they are too small for the FB ;-)
8. People who are in this group are always updating the FB.. and taking care of friends pics and profiles posts as well.

Group #2

1. In this group, girls are quite silent characters, basically they are doing nothing. They are keeping simple profile pages, sometimes no profile images
2. Here boys always buzzing females and putting comments, like posts and pictures.. etc.. It looks like he trying to get the attraction from the girl but actually not, that girl already fallen for him and he is trying to manage the situations.
3. These people do not put any wedding or honeymoon pics in FB.. but after the marriage they will change their own profile pics to couple photo.
4. Rarely they put second generation pics on FB
5. After the marriage they are almost dead people in FB :-) no sound anymore

Group #3

1. People who fall under this group are almost silent in FB.. no sound at all.
2. They start the relationship by poking each other.. And sending messages.. And chatting etc..
3. They are always careful on posting and putting pics.
4. You will not find this group of people until they were got married ;-)
5. Sometimes even after that, they will not put any pics of them or their second generation

Sometimes my research report will help you :-)

mChoice Soltura as a Managed Service

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:35:00 +0530

mChoice Soltura, You may have heard about this before, it is a user friendly and highly customizable mobile based software application platform which can create your own mobile applications without getting anyone’s help. Your application can be a mobile SMS voting application or just a SMS quiz application or else… now it is easy to create with mChoice Soltura, without knowing any computer programming language.

mChoice Soltura for Application Owners

mChoice Soltura has four separate valuable service protocols such as SMPP, WAP, USSD and MM7. Your application can use one service protocol among them. It can be chosen while you create the application.

Let’s say when you create your voting application, initial forms will prompt you to select the service type for your application. After you create the application you can do further changes using the application control panel. The application control panel will be shown once you logged-in. There you can manage most of the settings of your application.
mChoice Soltura now allows you to change your privacy settings such as listing the subscribers of your application. You can keep black listed users and white listed users in two separate lists. When you need to change the list you can login to the application control panel and change the list as you want. After you create your application, it will appear in mChoice Soltura’s App Store which is called mChoice Vishma (Which is free and open source software). Your subscribers can rate your application and write review comments in app store. They can recommend and share details of your application in any community web site and you also can embed the application details in your blog or web site.
Once your application is rated as a good content providing application and once it could collect more subscribers, you can earn more money. All sending / receiving messages and share amount of each message can be seen in the reports of mChoice Soltura. You can take subscriber detail reports daily, weekly, monthly and yearly and can analyze the application usage details graphically.

mChoice Soltura for Telecommunication Operators
mChoice Soltura has allocated a considerable throttling size for sending and receiving messages of each type. According to the allocated size you can broadcast your information throughout your subscriber base. To broadcast messages mobile phone subscribers should already be registered with a particular broadcasting application.
Telecommunication operators can configure the charging mechanisms according to their own plans. Charging can be applied either to MT (Mobile Terminating messages) or to MO (Mobile Originating messages). All the messages which had gone through the mChoice Soltura can be seen using the Soltura reports.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Mon, 9 Nov 2009 14:55:00 +0530

Skype 2.1 sounds not working with Sabayon Linux.

In my laptop this happen due to pulseaudio software. After uninstalling it, skype is start working. I followed steps which noted below to get skype work.

killed all pulsaudio processes.

following command will kill all processes which related to pulseaudio.
ps ax | grep pulseaudio | cut -c 1-5 | xargs kill -9

removed pulseaudio start up files from /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ directory.
or you can remove execution permission from pulseaudio, using following command.

chmod -x /usr/bin/pulseaudio

reinstall the skype (because sometimes without reinstalling skype not working)
goto skype options and check the driver.
now Skype should work.

This is happening with other linux OS as well,

I could see people facing to similar issue who used the Ubuntu.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 06:09:00 +0530

Xen Paravirtualization using NFS mounted iso images.

Here I'm going to explain how to install paravirtualization using iso images. Right now paravirtualization not supporting for direct installation of iso images but full virtualization is doing.

We have to mount iso image locally and need to give the iso mount path to virt-install script as NFS mount point.

Here I'll explain whole process in a step by step guide.

1. First you need to create disk image, inside your hard disk. XEN standard image location is "/var/lib/xen/images/", but you can create it in anywhere.
You can use following command to create it. It's 6GB file and block size is 1MB

dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/lib/xen/images/CentOS.img bs=1M count=1 seek=6144

2. Format the image file using ext3 partition type. You can use following command.

mkfs.ext3 /var/lib/xen/images/CentOS.img

3. Mount your iso image locally. (I already placed my iso image /usr/local/VM/CentOS-5.4-i386-bin-DVD.iso)

mkdir /mnt/CentOS

mount -o loop /usr/local/VM/CentOS-5.4-i386-bin-DVD.iso /mnt/CentOS/

4. Edit NFS server 'exports' file, put there "/mnt/CentOS *(ro)" this will mount the partition in read only mode.

vim /etc/exports

if you cat the file, you can see it like this.

[root@nipuna ~]# cat /etc/exports

/mnt/CentOS *(ro)

5. Start NFS server, and run exportfs command, it will show all exported mount points.

/etc/init.d/nfs start

exportfs

6. Use virt-install command as follows. --ram set the memory size and --vnc will enable the vncviwer. Give --location as nfs mount point with IP.
This Command will prompt the installation, just follow it.

virt-install -p --name=CentOS_01 --ram=1024 --file=/usr/local/VM/images/CentOS.img --vnc --location=nfs:192.168.0.61:/mnt/CentOS

7. Now you have installed the virtual machine. You can use 'xm list' to view the Virtual machines, virt-manager also a good tool to manage virtual servers.
You can use this command to connect with installed virtual machine.

virt-viewer CentOS_01

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Wed, 1 Apr 2009 11:51:00 +0530

How to connect LDAP and SAMBA using smbldap-tools

Download related software
First you have to download latest samba server, BDB, Perl and Open LDAP server, in next step you can install them just compiling the source code (./configure, make, make install, enable package support according to your requrement, ex: ./configure --enable-ssl). else you can do 'yum' (for redhat/fedora/centos) or 'apt-get' (for Ubuntu/Debian).
ex:
yum install samba
apt-get install samba

Configure OpenLDAP

Copy samba.schema to /etc/ldap/schema
Add "include /etc/ldap/schema/samba.schema" into /etc/ldap/slapd.conf under "# Schema and objectClass definitions"
Change the suffix "dc=nodomain" , this depend on your domain name, let say if you use ldap.google.com, then suffix is "dc=ldap,dc=google,dc=com"
Add "index objectClass,rid,uid,uidNumber,gidNumber,memberUid eq" and "index cn,mail,surname,givenname eq,subinitial" to /etc/ldap/slapd.conf, this is using while searching the entities.
Here I have linked my slapd.conf for your reference.
Change ldap.conf by adding HOST and BASE, HOST should be your LDAP server IP address and BASE is your LDAP BASE DN suffix.
Here I have linked my ldap.conf file. This is using by ldap clients.
run slapd to start the Open LDAP server

Configure smbldap-tools

Get SID using "net getlocalsid" command and add the SID to /etc/opt/IDEALX/smbldap-tools/smbldap.conf (This path may depend on your installation)
Change Master and Slave LDAP server infomations in smbldap.conf
Change ldapSSL and ldapTLS to '0', else you have to set security certificates as well other wise smbldap tools will not connect with your ldap server.
Here I have attached my smbldap.conf.
Add your slave and master DNs and thier passwords to /etc/opt/IDEALX/smbldap-tools/smbldap_bind.conf (This path may depend on your installation)
Here I have attached my smbldap_bind.conf (This ise usful to bind with ldap server, bcz this authentication details of admin DN).
Finaly you can use smbldap-populate command which is comes with smbldap-tools to add initial records to your ldap server.

Configure Samba

Here I linked my smb.conf, it has all the ldap related parameters.
restart the samba server and type following command to bind samba with LDAP serevr. Secret is your ldap root DN password.
smbpasswd -w secret

After installing all the stuff in correct way, you can use smbldap-useradd to add users.
I can recommend to use phpldapadmin and JXplorer tools for manage your ldap server.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:41:00 +0530

Charlotte's Web

I think you have already seen this film or book, by the way Charlotte's Web is a children's book by acclaimed American author E. B. W hite. First published in 1952, it tells the story of a barn spider named Charlotte and her friendship with a pig named Wilbur. The book was illustrated by Garth Williams. It may also refer to the following:

Charlotte's Web (1973 film) – an animated film adaption of the book, released in 1973
"Charlotte's Web" (song) – a song from the 1973 film
Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure a 2003 direct-to-video animated film sequel to the 1973 release Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web (2006 film) – a live action film adaptation of the book, released in 2006
Charlotte's Web (video game) – a video game based on the 2006 film

Today I have heared one of the song from this movie, its very very nice and meningful.

check it out... its name is "Ordinary Miracle"

It’s not that unusual
When everything is beautiful.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

The sky knows when its time to snow,
Don’t need to teach a seed to grow.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

Life is like a gift they say
Wrapped up for you everyday;
Open up and find a way
To give some of your own.

Isn’t it remarkable?
Like every time a rain drop falls,
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

Birds in winter have their fling
But always make it home by spring.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

When you wake up everyday
Please don’t throw your dreams away;
Hold them close to your heart
Cause we’re all a part
Of the ordinary miracle.
Ordinary miracle

Do you want to see a miracle?
ohh ohh ohh, ohhh ohh ohh...

It seems so exceptional
That things just work out after all.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

Sun comes up and shines so bright
And disappears again at night.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
ohh ohh ohh, ohh ohhh ohh...
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.

This is Ordinary Miracle song (2006 film)

most of the details from wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:08:00 +0530

How we can organize using FOSS.
I have used lot of commercial and free software tools for make my works easier. Here I'm going to point out some of FOSS tools which we can use for our daily works.

For plan our projects :
OpenProj tool , which can easily use for project management.
you can download it from http://openproj.org, its a very easy and useful tool for plan our project works.

Office tool kit :
You can find nice free office tool kit in this url http://www.openoffice.org/, it was made by Sun Micro Systems. No need to pay and you can feel the freedom of the FOSS.

Image manipulation tool :
I think you may have experience with this application, because GIMP application is very famous,
http://www.gimp.org

3D Animation tool :
Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.
http://www.blender.org/

Rough note keeping tool :
Visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/globonote, its a simple tool for keep sticky notes.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:08:00 +0530

මෙ වැඩෙ නම් පංකාදු පහයි.
ඔන්න මමත් සිංහලෙන් ලියන්න ප‍ටන් ගත්ත, ඇත්තටම එක පංකාදු වැඩක්. ජීවිතේ පලවෙනි පාරට සිංහලෙන් බ්ලොග් එකක මොනා හරි ලියන කොට දැනෙන හැගීම මට නම් වචන වලින් විස්ථර කරන්නත් අමාරුයි. ඉංගිරිසියෙන් මොනා හරි බ්ලොග් එකේ අමුනනවට වඩා සිංහලෙන් එක විස්ථර ඇතුව ලියන ‍කොට දැනෙන දේ බලන්න ඔයත් සිංහලෙන් බ්ලොග් එකක් ලියල බලන්න. වැඩි විස්ථර www.sinhalabloggers.com වෙබ් අඩවියෙන් ලබා ගත හැකි අතර සිංහල කේත www.fonts.lk වෙබ් අඩවියෙන් ලබා ගන්න.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Mon, 2 Jun 2008 04:40:00 +0530

Two remarkable wild-life videos
In September 2007, National Geographic sent the Battle at Kruger filmmakers, David "Buzz" Budzinski and Jason Schlosberg, back to South Africa to film a documentary focusing on the video. The documentary, Caught on Safari: The Battle at Kruger, was shown on the National Geographic Channel on Mother's Day, May 11, 2008, at 9pm EST.
Taken from a vehicle on the opposite side of the watering hole with a digital camcorder, the video begins with the herd of buffalo approaching the water, unaware of the lions resting nearby. The lions charge and disperse the herd, picking off a young buffalo and unintentionally knocking it into the water while attempting to make a kill. While the lions try to drag the buffalo out of the water, it is grabbed by a crocodile, who fights for it before giving up and leaving it to the lions. The lions sit down and prepare to eat, but are quickly surrounded by the massively reorganized buffalo, who move in and begin charging and kicking at the lions. After a battle which sees one lion being tossed into the air by a buffalo, the baby buffalo — still alive, to the astonishment of the onlookers — escapes into the herd. The emboldened buffalo then proceed to chase the remaining lions away.

Following video is also from Africa, its for victory of zebra.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:15:00 +0530

The Angel with a Violin
Her name is Vanessa Mae , She was relatively famous in the United Kingdom throughout her childhood making regular appearances on television (for example on Blue Peter) mostly involving classical music and conservative style. According to Guinness World Records, she is the youngest soloist to record both the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky violin concertos, a feat she accomplished at the age of thirteen.^[1] During this time she attended the Francis Holland School in central London. Here i have attached one of the my favorits. This music song called "Destiny" (released in 2001).

This beautiful young violinist Vanessa-Mae was just in her mid-teens when she shattered the mold of the classical virtuoso with the release of her first fusion album The Violin Player, forging a new style that has made her a multi-million-selling worldwide phenomenon and the breakthrough artist who virtually defined the fusion of classical and pop that became known as crossover. At the age of 25, she has been a superstar for a decade.

She has been made her Sony Classical debut and marked a new musical direction with the release of Choreography, a highly original album that celebrates dance rhythms from around the world. Original pieces and fresh arrangements have been created for the album by the Oscar-winning Vangelis, Bill Whelan of Riverdance, Indian film composer A.R. Rahman (the musical Bombay Dreams) and Tolga Kashif (The Queen Symphony), amongst others. Choreography was released internationally in September 2004 and in the U.S. in early 2005. After that music album, I did n't watch or listen new creation from Vanessa.
Following music song called "Reflection" and I love it so much.

Most of the Details from wikipedia.org and http://www.vanessa-mae.com/

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Sat, 24 May 2008 05:01:00 +0530

Once upon a time I went to Brunei

It was March of 2008, I got a chance to kept my foots on Brunei (BSB). I think I'm so luky to visit BSB (i.e. capital of Brunei, Bander Seri Bagawan). I went there for my office work (hSenid). First I should thank hSenid Software International for send me to Brunei.

Brunei is one of the richest country in the world. Reson behind the richness is Fuel. Brunei has lot of oil mils. Actually Brunei is Muslim country, but Bruneian are very flexible people. They are not like middle east Muslims. They respect to other religious as well. 70% of population of Brunei are Muslims. There having Buddhists and Catholics as well, most of Buddhists are Chinese.

When I was in Brunei , I went to walk inside BSB, its very small city which having lot of facilities. Lot of moles were there and also so many big and small mosques inside the city. As I think Brunei Sultan is the richest king around the world. He has huge residency which having 1500+ bed rooms and 5000+ vehicles (cars)

According to main museum, first sultan of Brunei and his people were outsiders. they were found Brunei around 14th century.
Near to the BSB, there having water village (Kompong Ayer). It is one of the ancient village which appear after the third sultan.
In order to preserve Kampong Ayer as Brunei Darussalam's most valuable heritage, the Government through the District Office has provided it with numerous facilities including foot-bridges, concrete jetties, piped water, electricity supplies telephones, a school, mosques, clinics, a police station and a marine fire station. All of the six water village mukims (districts) are collectively known as the water village (Kampong Ayer) but are identified as separate mukims for administrative purposes.
As I think Bruneian use lot of gold for decorate their mosques. I went to see Empire Hotel (6th Star hotel in Brunei) which build by current sultan's brother. Actually it was the most beautiful hotel which I ever seen in my life. That hotel also decorated by lot of gold.
I think Brunei is one of the most peaceful country in the world. Brunei has not disturbance even from environment (like earth quacks and Cyclones). I think geographical position of Brunei is very good.

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Mon, 5 May 2008 21:15:00 +0530

How to compare two files using shells script.

This shells script can compare two files word by word. Normaly you can use diff command for compare two files, but I think this shell script good for your requrement. Here "mdp" and "agora" are the two files which I used to compare. You can change that file names.
check it out.

#!/bin/bash

#File no. one
FILE1=mdp

#File no. two
FILE2=agora

MINSIDE=`cat $FILE1`
AINSIDE=`cat $FILE2`
for i in $AINSIDE
do
for j in $MINSIDE
do
if [ "$i" = "$j" ];then
echo "$i -> $j [mached]"
fi
done

COMCOUNT=`grep -w -c "$i" $FILE1`
if [ $COMCOUNT -lt 1 ]; then
echo "$i [unmached]"
fi
done

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:08:00 +0530

I have stepped into Singapore as well

Yes, Last March I went to Singapore as first time in my life. Actually it was transit, while going to the Brunei. It is marvelous city, but I hate is speedy life style. Salaries are higher than the Sri Lanka and expenses also very higher than the Sri Lanka.
All the facilities were near to hands except non busyness. If you going there visit Jurong East Bird park and Merlion.
There was a island called Sentosa,I'm not recommending you to visit there, because they only collecting dollars, there not having big fun according to the payments. Underwater world, 4D film theater, Dolphin show and sky ride were fine but very expensive.

I did lot of activities in Thailand wonderland which cheaper than here.
According to the china town museum, The first records of settlement in Singapore are from the 2nd century AD.
This picture was taken by Steffen Röhner early 1970's.
The island was an outpost of the Sumatran Srivijaya empire and originally had the Javanese name Temasek ('sea town'). Temasek rapidly became a significant trading settlement, but declined in the late 14th century. There are few remnants of old Temasek in Singapore, but archaeologists in Singapore have uncovered artifacts of that and other settlements. Between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Singapore island was part of the Sultanate of Johor. During the Malay-Portugal wars in 1613, the settlement was set ablaze by Portuguese troops. The Portuguese subsequently held control in that century and the Dutch in the 17th, but throughout most of this time the island's population consisted mainly of fishermen.
On 29 January 1819, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed on the main island. Spotting its potential as a strategic geographical trading post in Southeast Asia, Raffles signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah on behalf of the British East India Company to develop Singapore as a British trading post and settlement, marking the start of the island's modern era. Raffles's deputy, William Farquhar, oversaw a period of growth and ethnic migration, which was largely spurred by a no-restriction immigration policy. The British India office governed the island from 1858, but Singapore was made a British crown colony in 1867, answerable directly to the Crown. By 1869, 100,000 lived on the island.

Singapore has no big history like Sri lanka, I think that was the reason behind the success of Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew was first Prime Minister in independent Singapore, I think he is the creative and most successive man in the entire world among 19th century.

Some of the historical details from wikipedia.org

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:55:00 +0530

How to find the difference between two times using ANSI C
Here I have attached the C code, which gives some idea about taking difference between two given times. Final result is giving as Years. You can change the values which given inside the parenthesis - (60*60*24*365)

#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
struct tm t,tt;
time_t t_of_day,tt_of_day;
double dif;

t.tm_year = 2009-1900;
t.tm_mon = 0;
t.tm_mday = 3;
t.tm_hour = 0; /* hour, min, sec don't matter */
t.tm_min = 0; /* as long as they don't cause a */
t.tm_sec = 1; /* new day to occur */
t.tm_isdst = 0;

tt.tm_year = 2007-1900;
tt.tm_mon = 0;
tt.tm_mday = 3;
tt.tm_hour = 0; /* hour, min, sec don't matter */
tt.tm_min = 0; /* as long as they don't cause a */
tt.tm_sec = 1; /* new day to occur */
tt.tm_isdst = 0;

t_of_day = mktime(&t);
tt_of_day = mktime(&tt);
dif = difftime (t_of_day,tt_of_day);
// You can change the outcome by changing following line
dif = dif /(60*60*24*365);
printf("Time Difference between %s and %s is %.2lf \n",ctime(&t_of_day),ctime(&tt_of_day),dif);

return 0;
}

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:16:00 +0530

Firefox Sinhala Dictionary Plugin

Do you have ever seen this before in your computer life?? this is not a joke. Colombo university students has been done it.
Following features are available:

Simplicity:
- Translate English words just hovered by mouse.
- Translate selected words.
Automatically de-inflects verbs and adjectives.
Replaces translated words choosing one from its translation.
Pronounces English words. (Pronunciation of English words requires the installation of Real Player, and ability to run JavaScript.)

This extension is licensed under GNU General Public License v2.

visit: http://www.ucsc.cmb.ac.lk/ltrl/projects/EnSiTip/

As a help for developed guys if you can please put a review on following URL.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6422

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Tue, 5 Feb 2008 18:47:00 +0530

How to Connecting to Google Talk using Kopete

First install QCA-TLS plugin for SSL support
If your using debian or ubuntu run following command as root or supper user.

apt-get install qca-tls

* In kopete go to settings -> Confiure Kopete and click on New from Accounts tab

* Click on next on the introduction screen and choose Jabber from the next screen

* Enter the following information on Basic Setup tab:
-- In the Jabber ID enter: USERNAME@gmail.com
-- Check Remember password and enter your password

* And these information on Connection tab:
-- Check Use protocol encryption (SSL), Allow plain-text password authentication and Overide default server information
-- In the server field enter: talk.google.com and 5223 for the port

noreply@blogger.com (nipunap) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:20:00 +0530

We WON the match....!!!!!

I think you'll not believe this, HR team of my company was organized Cricket Tournament(hSenid Happy Cricket Tournament). They asked for teams which having 6 members including one female member, but we played without female member. My team was CRUSADERS, Actually I didn't wish to win this tournament, but fortunately we could won the tournament. Most important thing is here, I was the captan and I did not have good picture about cricket.

Some pictures are I added to the my picasa space. click here to visit there.