For all QUT undergraduate and non-research degree students who have @connect.qut.edu.au email addresses,

• Username: \firstname.lastname@connect.qut.edu.au
• Server: pod51000.outlook.com

For QUT staff email accounts that end with @qut.edu.au,

• Username: qutad\USERNAME
• Server: outlook.qut.edu.au

I’m doing my PhD at QUT, and all HRD (ie PhD and Masters Research) students have a different type of emails (similar to staff emails) which end with @student.qut.edu.au,

• Username: qutad\USERNAME
• Server: outlook.qut.edu.au

How to connect to QUT Wi-Fi network from an Android device?

• QUT Wireless (Works at all QUT campuses)
• eduroam (Works at all participating institutions)

Setup QUT Student, Staff Email on Android Devices is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Jack Charles is one of Australia’s highly regarded performers. An Aboriginal elder who pioneered Koorie Theatre in the early 1970s, he founded the first Aboriginal theatre company in Australia, Nindethana. Jack is an actor, musician, potter and gifted performer, but in his nearly 70 years, he has also been homeless, a heroin addict, a thief and a regular in Victoria’s prisons. A member of the Stolen Generation, Jack has spent his life in between acting gigs, caught in the addiction/crime/doing time cycle. In Jack Charles v The Crown, Jack returns to the stage to tell the story of his life with humour, warmth, song, truth and forgiveness.

I was thinking this show could be about Aboriginal culture, but rather it’s about the contemporary lifestyle of Aboriginal society. Jack Charles puts forward some strong points towards the Australian society, and I could see similarities within the Sri Lanka society and problem of total denial of any social issues.

Jack Charles v The Crown will be performed at Powerhouse Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse daily till September 10. Go to the event page for tickets and more details.

Brisbane Festival 2011 – Jack Charles v The Crown is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Mortal Engine is not just another dance performance. It is a dance, video, music and laser spectacular. More than the intriguing performance, I was amazed by the perfect marriage between art and technology.

Mortal Engine uses cutting-edge technology for movement detection and sound responsive projections. This triggers light and sound patterns based on dancers’ movements, and creates kaleidoscopic patterns and optical illusions. In this interview on InFrame.tv Mortal Engine’s Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek explains the inner mechanics of the show.

Mortal Engine will be performed at Playhouse, QPAC daily till September 10. Go to the event page for tickets and more details.

Brisbane Festival 2011 – Mortal Engine is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Beautiful Noise is a stylised aerodynamic performance by Brisbane’s Raw Dance Company and Sydney’s Legs On The Wall. It is a truly spectacular production where performers scale the walls and flying acrobatic dancers draw all eyes up to the night sky, rhythm masters of tap set the beat, while hip-hop artists smash the stage.

I was so into the performance, I wouldn’t have bothered to take photos or video if I had a camera, (and no photography at the venue). Checkout this video to get the feel for it.

Beautiful Noise will be performed at QUT Festival Theatre, Plaza, Brisbane Powerhouse daily till September 10. Go to the event page for tickets and more details.

Brisbane Festival 2011 – Beautiful Noise is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Here is the unedited long version of Riverfire 2011 videos.

There is lot more events and activities during Brisbane Festival 2011. For more details on other exciting events throughout the Brisbane Festival 2011, check out the official website. You can also follow Brisbane Festival more closely with frequents updates on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

Brisbane Festival 2011 – Riverfire is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Brisbane Festival 2011 will take place from September 3rd to 24th. The event packed three weeks of Brisbane Festival 2011 will kick-start tomorrow, Saturday September 3rd with the Sunsuper Riverfire. On September 3rd, more than half a million people will converge on Brisbane’s riverbanks to watch the city sky ignite in a continuous burst of spectacular colour, music, and special effects.

South Bank, Kangaroo Point Cliffs, and Victoria Bridge are popular places to watch Sunsuper Riverfire. I was on Victoria Bridge last year and it was hard to find a place to put my tripod, even at 3pm in the afternoon. I guess, I would go even earlier this time, either to Kangaroo Point Cliffs or to South Bank.

Photo: Copyright Brisbane Festival. All Rights Reserved.

There are so many activities during Brisbane Festival, including many free events around the city. I would probably miss out on most events as I’m travelling back home this month, but I’m still planning to catch up few events before leaving to Sri Lanka. I’m looking forward to the Beautiful Noise show, a stylised aerodynamic performance that is premiering during the Brisbane Festival 2011. I’m also interested in the Jack Charles vs The Crown show, that could shed some light into the Aboriginal culture and history.

For more details on other exciting events throughout the Brisbane Festival 2011, check out the official website. You can also follow Brisbane Festival more closely with frequents updates on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

Here comes Brisbane Festival is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Nimal with the Lord Mayor of Brisbane Councillor Graham Quirk

Photographs from: Leong Ming En

A Dinner with the Brisbane Lord Mayor Councillor Graham Quirk is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

We got on a Caboolture train from Central station and there were connecting shuttle buses from Caboolture station. We reached Farm Fantastic by noon. What’s a better way to start than with a lunch. We had some delicious burgers at the Outback Eatery with a flavor of Aussie country music. Some of us choose to top it up with some ice cream for dessert and my choice of passion fruit was ‘different’.

For the next couple of hours we had to roam around Farm Fantastic, looking through a great range of exhibitors and entertainment and stopping by at few.

We had a great time at, I think this is a great way to link the country life to the outer world.

Brisbane International Student Ambassadors at Farm Fantastic 2011

Find more details on the Farm Fantastic website.

Photographs by: Leong Ming En

Another day out with friends: Farm Fantastic 2011 is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Photo by Michael Ruiz, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License

The main reason it’s a surprise is, I don’t normally do things for so long. However, blogging has always evolved along the time. I don’t no more blog regularly, but this has been a private space for me to vent out boiling thoughts. Twitter is for public, Facebook is for friends, + is still in the making and this blog is just for me.

I have written a whole range of different posts from my personal life to professional life. However, I’m again surprised with the amount of hits I receive for some of my occasional Tech Notes. It’s only because these post fill in the gap and thanks to Google, it helps someone out there. I have also stopped all types of monetizing from this blog from last year. I don’t think I’ll bring back any ads anytime soon.

There is nothing more to say in this blog, so just checkout my latest vlog.

Five years gone, I’m still here: Blogging is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

There are many obvious reasons for someone to migrate (back) to Gmail from a Google Apps mail account. Google Apps mail is used by many organisations, schools, etc. Thus, when we leave from that organisation, it becomes a necessity to migrate all our emails elsewhere.

So lets jump into this quick tutorial on how to migrate all emails from Google Apps mail to Gmail. There are few other mechanisms suggested across the internet, but the one that works smoothly is using “imapsync”.

“imapsync” software is a command line tool allowing incremental and recursive IMAP transfers from one mailbox to another. It is useful for Gmail account migration or account backups.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

• “imapsync” was a free tool, but now the author is charging almost $45 for a copy. It is affordable for commercial use, but for personal use the price is an overkill.
• The earlier versions of this software can be found on the internet and still be used without copyright violations. (DOWNLOAD the earlier version for FREE).
• This guide is based on a Windows installation. The use can be easily adapted to Linux and other platforms as we will be compiling from the Perl source code and running the software. (Those who are on Linux, you could simply follow the install instructions with the download file).

Step 1: Install Perl

1. Download and install “Strawberry Perl”. (Install to the default install location).
2. Double-click and Run the “update_env.pl” batch file to add the environment variables.

Step 2: Setup the Prerequisites

1. Open “CPAN Client” under Start Menu -> Programs -> Strawberry Perl -> Tools.
2. Run the following commands individually:
• install Mail::IMAPClient
• install Digest::MD5
• install Term::ReadKey
• install IO::Socket::SSL
• If this presents a warning with “Net::SSLeay could not find a random number generator” and “Do you REALLY want to continue? [Default: no]“, give “yes” and continue.
3. install Date::Manip
4. install File::Spec
5. install Digest::HMAC_MD5
6. install PAR::Packer
7. At this point you should be all set with the Perl setup and the following command should not give any errors.
• perl -mMail::IMAPClient -mDigest::MD5 -mTerm::ReadKey -mIO::Socket::SSL -mDate::Manip -mFile::Spec -mDigest::HMAC_MD5 -e ”

Step 3: Install ‘imapsync’

1. Download the earlier version of ‘imapsync’ for free from here (or buy the latest version from here).
2. Extract the downloaded file, if you can’t extract a tar.gz, use 7-Zip.
3. Open the “build_exe” batch file in a Notepad and change the folder path to the extracted folder.
4. Run the “build_exe” batch file.
5. This should have created a “imapsync.exe”.

Step 4: Using ‘imapsync’

1. Open “Command Prompt”.
2. Change directory to the ‘imapsync’ folder.
3. The basic ‘imapsync’ command is,

• imapsync --host1 mail.oldserver.com --user1 theoden ^
  --host2 mail.newserver.com --user2 'theoden@newserver.com'

4. For Gmail, change the following command with your Apps mail login and Gmail login details.

• imapsync ^
  --host1 imap.gmail.com --port1 993 --ssl1 --authmech1 LOGIN ^
  --user1 theuser@oldmail.com --password1 password4user1 ^
  --host2 imap.gmail.com --port1 993 --ssl2 --authmech2 LOGIN ^
  --user2 newuserid@gmail.com --password2 password4gmail ^
  --split1 100 --split2 100 ^
  --reconnectretry1 30 --reconnectretry2 30 ^
  --noauthmd5 --noreleasecheck ^
  --timeout 1200  --allowsizemismatch

5. Paste the modified command into the Command Prompt, ‘imapsync‘ should sync you mail accounts accordingly.
6. It could take, hours (or days) to complete the sync, based on your internet connection speed and the amount of email in your mailboxes.
7. For more ‘imapsync’ command reference run,

• imapsync --help

8. Once the sync is complete, you could also setup a forward all mails to the new Gmail account from the old Google Apps mail account.

This guide can look a bit more technical and for the ‘geek-handed’. If you follow the steps it should be straight forward.

However, if you are afraid you might burn your computer by doing this, just ask your friendly geek-next-door, and s/he should be happy to help you.

Happy migrating back to Gmail…!

Back to Gmail: Migrating emails from Google Apps mail to Gmail is a post from: Nimal's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.