What is, Why?

Borderlands on ATI Radeon HD 4550 512MB

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 07:52:00 +0000

Confessions of a freelance web developer

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 07:11:00 +0000

Happy new year to everyone!

It has been just over 2 years for my freelancing career. Even though it’s a rough ride you’ll be amazed to see how addictive the freedom can be.

It seems like a bold move in Sri Lanka where society measures a person with his/her permanent job and office kit.

I was so pissed off working under people/companies. In any place one or more of the following is guaranteed.

Your freedom is owned by the company
Dumb office politics
Chubby, heartless boss or manger
Working long hours and on holidays with no extra pay
Crappy office rules and a HR
Promotions are made for favors not talent.
Brainless/zombie daily routines
Under value your importance by threatening that there are many people to take your place
Only way to succeed is to betray your self-respect.

Hey, but who am I to judge. They own the f...ing business and I’m just an employee. The only way out was to start my own thing. So I did and never looked back.

The freelance road is rough and filled with obstacles. It’s the price you have to pay if you value freedom the most.

Finding projects are not easy (sometimes you don’t get work for weeks) this is mostly true when you just started freelancing.
You have to fill in multiple roles (boss, accountant, sectary, HR, marketing, developer)
Handling shitty clients face to face
Sometimes you work so hard on projects for long periods of time, you loose track of time and social life.
You loose track of the beard, hehehe

View from top of Sri Pada (Adam's Peak)

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 07:18:00 +0000

Swarnavahini Megastar Final Battle - Video

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 21:12:00 +0000

The ugly ending of Swarnavahini Mega Star Finals. Seems like Marvin Silva started the fight.

Check DirectX version - dxdiag

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:31:00 +0000

Its very easy to check your DX version.

Go to the START Menu -> Run -> type dxdiag

F.E.A.R. 2 Reborn on Asus 9400GT

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:52:00 +0000

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Asus EN9400GT

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:14:00 +0000

At Last Completed the Minesweeper Intermediate Level :D

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 20:31:00 +0000

yes its the old xp game that actually no one really plays. But I find it a really good time passer. I was able to finish the intermediate level after trying for few hours lol.

Best Paypal alternative for Sri Lanka - moneybookers

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:01:00 +0000

I waited for a long time to see Paypal in Sri Lanka, Now I actually do not need paypal because moneybookers has all the features I want, Even a quick checkout payment gateway. I have been using
moneybookers for several years now to receive my freelancing payments. Till now I haven't had a single problem. Only frustrating bit with moneybookers is the verification process to increase the account limits. Other than that its the perfect Paypal Killer.

www.moneybookers.com

Transform Captcha Into a Ad Unit to Earn Cash and Revenue - Solve Media

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:31:00 +0000

Solve Media has come up with a brilliant idea to monetize your website captcha. The concept is really simple, without displaying some junk of letters and numbers publishers can display actual ad where a user has to type a message in that ad as the captcha.

Pretty cool ahh..
Publishers earn money + avoid spammers
Much more powerful than traditional banner ads for Advertisers
Simple to crack and read for Users

Everybody is Happy :D

http://www.solvemedia.com

Playing Old Dos Games in Windows XP - dosbox.com

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:03:00 +0000

Today I stumble upon a game I really liked those days - Jazz Jack Rabbit :D
I remember playing it in my old Cyrix machine for hours. Yes I know, don't ask wtf is Cyrix.
After downloding the game from dosgamesarchive.com I tried to run it and was getting a runtime error. The simple solution is to use dosbox a DOS emulator
http://www.dosbox.com/

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New Freelance Project Search - freelanceprojectsearch.com

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:32:00 +0000

freelanceprojectsearch.com is my new freelance project search portal website. It currently uses Freelancer API to gather project results. I will soon integrate the oDesk API as well.

Installing Windows XP in Asus K40IJ

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:52:00 +0000

Installing Windows XP maybe bit tricky in Asus K40IJ Notebook laptop.

If you already tried you may get a error during the installation process. That is because XP cannot detect the SATA hard drive in K40IJ.

First goto bios by pressing F2 when the machine boot up.
Then goto Advanced -> IDE Configuration -> SATA Operation Mode -> default is Enhanced (Compatible/Enhanced) -> Change to Compatible.

Then you can install XP without a problem.

But this method will slow down your laptop.

You can find more useful info here

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Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) Land Phone Line Area Codes

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:05:00 +0000

Sri Lankan Phone Area Codes

Galle 091
Kandy 081
Colombo 011
Ampara 063
Anuradhapura 025
Avissawella 036
Badulla 055
Bandarwela 057
Batticaloa 065
Chilaw 032
Gampaha 033
Hambantota 047
Hatton 051
Jaffna 021
Kalmunai 067
Kalutara 034
Kegalle 035
Kurunegala 037
Mannar 023
Matale 066
Matara 041
Negombo 031
Nuwara Eliya 052
Polonnaruwa 027
Ratnapura 045
Trincomalee 026
Vavuniya 024
Nawalapitiya 054
Panadura 038

fb dominating Sri Lankan market (MunuPotha)

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

I remember there was a time when you were super cool if you had a Hi5 account. Those days are now long gone and many newcomers don't even know what Hi5 is.
fb or Facebook or in plain Sinhalese MunuPotha is the king and doesn't seems like loosing its crown any time soon. I'm not sure how it came to be but introducing application oriented approach must have been a big help.

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Cheap Calls to Sri Lanka (Land, mobile) using new Gmail Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:50:00 +0000

This is really an awesome move by Google, Now you can call US / Canada for free using your Gmail.
For Sri Lanka the rates are super low as $0.12 per minute to any landline or mobile number.

https://www.google.com/voice/rates#S

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ModernLanka.com - Sri Lanka Real Estate Listing, Video Ads, Property for Sale, Rent

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:38:00 +0000

Just launched my new Real Estate Listing website.

This site is not just another real estate listing site, ModernLanka.com is the first site to offer users to publish their video ads.

Any comments, ideas, bugs are welcomed :D

whether you are buying, selling, renting (houses, land, buildings or apartments) modernlanka is the best place.

ModernLanka.com

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Micromax and Cricket

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Micromax has sponsored several cricket tournaments this year, for that we are really grateful. but making the cricket commentators talk about the Micromax phone features during the match is really dumb and annoying. It's really sad to see my favorite commentators waste their commentary by sounding clueless about the phone features they are talking about lol.

just my two cents.

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Browser Choice: Technical Vs Non Technical Users

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:17:00 +0000

When analyzing two of my blogs, whatiswhy.com (Mostly non technical user traffic) and my sliit (Mostly technical users) we can easily conclude that technical users prefer to ditch IE as you may have already predicted.

whatiswhy.com browser stats (one month)

My Sliit browser stats (one month)

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Play snake on YouTube (Easter Egg)

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:59:00 +0000

yes you read the title correctly, YouTube has recently added (as I know) a new easter egg that will let you play the old school snake game. Here are the steps..

1) Goto YouTube and load any video with the new YouTube player.
2) Pause the video (it worked while playing also)
3) Press or Hold the left arrow key until the snake appear.

You can also check out the video tutorial I created.

Capture your screen in seconds

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Murali first cricketer to take 800 test wickets

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:18:00 +0000

Muththaiya Muralitharan Sri Lankan's champion spin wizard go into record books as the first person to take 800 test match wickets. He took the 800th wicket at the last day of the first Test match against India in Galle. It is really sad to see him retire from Test cricket today.

We Are Proud Of You Mrali!!!

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Browser Shortcut Tool Tip

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:46:00 +0000

IE8 - Finds and display information and websites on the Internet (Not bad for a crap browser)

Firefox 3.6.3 - What?

Google Chrome - Sweet And Simple

Safari - Nothing

Opera - What?

Battle of the Immortals - Closed Beta On April 13

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:45:00 +0000

Battle of the Immortals is a Free to play Fantasy MMORPG. BOI will launch its closed beta on april 13. Sign up now and get your beta key right now. Will post screenshots when the game launch.

http://boi.perfectworld.com

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Create your own South Park Character Online

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:17:00 +0000

Using http://www.sp-studio.de you can create your own South Park Character easily and quickly with lot of options to customize with.

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Get An Alert When Your Site Goes Down - Uptime Robot

noreply@blogger.com (Kusal Arthanayake) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:14:00 +0000

For webmasters uptimerobot.com would be a valuable tool to get a quick alert when your websites goes down. Free to singup and you can add up to 50 websites to monitor.

http://www.uptimerobot.com

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