The Four Wheel Drive Club and the Nuwara-Eliya Motor Sports club organized the anual off road challenge on the 17th of April at Nuwara Eliya. We (me and my brother Sanjaya) missed the last similar event organized by the Land Rover Owners club at Water…
Why does anybody want to live in Sri Lanka, if there are other choices? Why deal with corruption, stupidity, headless bodies and bodiless heads, if you have a choice.
These are questions that seem to come up more often than I like.
What did the great sage of India have to say about location? I turn to […]
Last Saturday I had the chance to get involved in the first Honda Meet in Sri Lanka and man there were some ’seriously’ riced up hondas there. As a guy who is more into the ‘clean’ outlook as opposed to the ‘ricey’ look, I loved the elegant, black Hond…
(Ulpothagama, Madatugama)Naamal Uyana” is an extremely rare forest replanted with Ironwood Trees (Mesua ferara) in the 8th Century AD by King Dappula. The Ironwood Tree is endemic to Sri Lanka and the replanted forest is over 200 acres in extent. The…
The island of Sri Lanka has been blessed with over 1300km of coastline. This guarantees year round sunbathing, swimming and water sports on the Island. The western stretch of beaches from Negambo upto Hambantota are at their best from November to April…
The one thing that makes systems work (apart from bribery) is networks. And no one knows this better than Sri Lankans. Everyone here is someone’s-someone’s-someone. And this is why the ‘Hi!’ magazine is such a hit. It caters all too well, to ou…
Zehra is back in New York and is complaining that I haven’t blogged anything for a while.There are a number of reasons for this-1 Busy (ness) - the amount of STUFF to doAnd I have been doing stuff… work is busy, and we are trying to recruit more staf…
I see there are howls of protest at Il Presidente’s decision to ban screenings of ‘The DaVinci Code’ in Sri Lanka. I have only this to say to him: thank you.Yes of course, it is a terrible thing when a Government tries to control what and how it…
*f* has restored diplomatic ties once more.- Kahuna, using a regular expression to represent Libyan Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi due to excessive English transliterations of the latter’s name being available.You realize I’m the only clown on the planet …
Hey folks!!! Most of you will be expecting another “geeky” post… if so you may be dissapointed… ;^) I have decided to include not-so-geeky posts (without photographs even!) and maybe even some creatvie works as well… anyway here goes…Anu, Madu,…
Hey folks!!! Most of you will be expecting another “geeky” post… if so you may be dissapointed… ;^) I have decided to include not-so-geeky posts (without photographs even!) and maybe even some creatvie works as well… anyway here goes…Anu, Madu,…
The session I did on Linux GUI programming with Gambas, is available online now, along with most of the other sessions. This tutorial should help as a starting point for guys familiar with GUI development in VB to migrate to Linux programming.Happy Hac…
Sri Lanka’s scenery is characterized by beautiful white sand beaches, lush rainforest covered hills, and ancient cities and remains.Bentota beach is on the western side of Sri Lanka and is one of the main tourist resorts. Galle on the South coast is …
National Flag of Sri Lanka is the Lion Flag. A Lion bearing a sword in its right hand is depicted in gold on red background with a yellow border. Four Bo leaves pointing inwards are at the four corners. Two vertical bands of green and orange at the ma…
Sri Lanka offers you the chance to have one of the most beautiful & meaningful ceremonies availble anywhere in the world. The perfect destination wedding for an adventurous couple. With spectacular scenery and very friendly and hospitable locals, you’l…
Climate Low Lands – Sri Lanka has a pleasant tropical climate. The average temperature of the low lands ranges between 25-30 degrees Celsius.Central Hills – cooler, with temperatures dropping to 14C. The south-west monsoon brings rain to the wester…
Well, this is it. I’m leaving Kungshamra in a few minutes. Although I’m happy to be going home, I’ll definitely miss everyone here. Bye bye Sweden… 
Sri Lanka is an island in the Indian Ocean, located in Southern Asia, southeast of India, in a strategic location near major Indian Ocean sea lanes. It has a total area of 65,610 km², with 64,740 km² of land and 870 km² of water. Its coastline is 1,…
Sri Lanka’s history is one, which faded years ago. It is known mainly in two ways firstly as a Buddhist country and secondly as demon Rawana’s Lanka where Lord Ram skipped to rescue Sita. It’s actual history starts from 4th century B.C. when Sinhalese …
Bud, Arunan and I have decided to launch a GNU/Linux magazine for the Sri Lankan GNU/Linux newbie. My article on Kaffeine is available from yesterday. The next article due by me is on amaroK. However, I need to do a dist-upgrade from my Ubuntu Breezy t…
His Excellency has decided to ban all public screening of the now infamous movie Da Vinci Code due to the pressure applied by the Catholic Church.
One could hardly expect anything less from a president whose whole political philosophy seemed to be nothing more than simple populism, add to that the possible repercussions of not heeding to church pressure on an issue where there is no counter pressure from any other religious element.
It’s the Catholic Church who should be criticized for their unjust curtailment of freedom of expression not to mention the pure stupidity of not understanding the move would only be counter productive as this would result in otherwise unprovoked curiosity which could and probably will result in increased DVD sales of the movie which are already available as ‘camera-copies’. The church should have learned that from the whole ‘Hollywood Buddha’ protests that the Buddhist elements once organized some years ago even after film-maker removed the controversial poster and apologized.
On a more personal note, I, myself being a practicing catholic don’t think anything depicted in the movie (or the book) will change my prospective on the religion I was brought up on. The fact that Jesus could have been married and had children with Mary Magdalene is irrelevant to the philosophy of Christianity I believe in.
The Da Vinci Code is just a good story, many of the so called ‘facts’ in the book have been since proven to be inaccurate. However the best way the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka or elsewhere should have handled this issue is to have not handled it at all.
The KINROSS Swimming & Aquatic Club veterans gathered at the 60th Year Anniversary Celebration.Note: The Scribe Allister Bartholomeusz & Helen were unable to attend as he was hospitalised in Melbourne.
Do I feel much smarter? Not at all. Am I glad this university business is over and I will be back in the work force again? Absolutely!A few weeks ago I was notified that my career start date has been moved up to July 31st because they want me to atten…
A very productive two days at the FOSS-ed ended yesterday. The first day was graced by Professor Lawrence Lessig , a co-founder of Creative Commons who did an excellent presentation on the concept of ‘commons’ and the importance of ‘freedom’ for innova…
I was right. I did make a mistake. I’m single again. I’m sad about that for now, but give me a few days and I should be fine (hopefully.).On Saturday morning I found out that V has been cheating on me since last week with one of her work colleagues. No…
As we were leaving FOSS-ed for Hackers, Suchetha told us (Bud and me) that the ICTA here decided to host an event with Prof. Lawrence Lessig speaking to musicians, actors, writers, etc. regarding Creative Commons. Since we had already witnessed a fanta…
As we were leaving FOSS-ed for Hackers, Suchetha told us (Bud and me) that the ICTA here decided to host an event with Prof. Lawrence Lessig speaking to musicians, actors, writers, etc. regarding Creative Commons. Since we had already witnessed a fanta…
Kinross 2 Mile Sea SwimThose in the pic above taken after the two mile sea swim on the beach outside the club are: L/R: The late Tissa Ariyaratne (KINROSS LEGEND), Aubrey Van Cuylenburg, Tony Fernandez, Chandra Seniviratne, Vijith Kulatunga, Ian Kelly,…
When I returned to room after having dinner, I found an interesting creature in my room. It’s a Praying Mantis, also called Praying Mantid, so called due to its positioning of fore limbs. Mantis means Prophet in Greek. But do not get misled by it’s hum…
1795 British offer a treaty to Kandyan king for control of seacoast and monopoly of cinnamon trade 1796 British oust Dutch 1796 Public Works Department formed 1798 British East India Company is compelled to take over administration of the island and…
1505 Dom Lourenço de Almeida Portugese Viceroy of Cochin’s son anchors off the coast of Colombo 1518 Portugese build a small fort in Colombo 1539 Portugese defeat Malabar Muslims to take control of the Cinnamon tradeMap of Portugese Forts in Ce…
1505 Dom Lourenço de Almeida Portugese Viceroy of Cochin’s son anchors off the coast of Colombo 1518 Portugese build a small fort in Colombo 1539 Portugese defeat Malabar Muslims to take control of the Cinnamon tradeClick for a map of Portugese…
500 BC Vijaya lands in Lanka 437-407 BC King Pandukabhaya built the Abhayavapi tank (now called the Basavakkulama) in Anuradhapura 306-266 BC King Devanampiya Tissa built the Tissa Wewa, it has a dam two miles long and is 25 feet high.274-302 King M…
I refused to jump onto the Skype wagon even when I heard about it over a year ago. However, while finishing up some research for my VoIP Project I came across this article:Skype Introduces Free Calls to Traditional Landlines and Mobile Phones in the U…
Get it here Just got the toolkit up and runing along with a project in Eclipse. I have been trying all sorts of javascript libraries trying to develop a satisfactory AJAX PoC for a while now. I was not very happy with the results.With the Google Web T…
My Very Personal Tribute to Henry Perera.Henry was one of life’s rare ‘gentlemen’. Quiet, always unassuming, never pushy and ever prepared to help anyone in whatever way he could. Like so many of my lifelong friends we grew up together under the stern …
This article appeared in the 60th Jubilee celebrations of the Kinross Swimming & life saving Club souvenir of 2002.Kinross Swimming and Life Saving Club – Special People.1955 Two Mile Swim“Your scribe believes that the unsung hero of this event was…
Scattering Ashes of TISSA ARIYARATNE in the sea, opposite Kinross Club, Sunday 22nd June 03’ 12.00 noon.From today TISSA’s ashes will continue to swim in the company of Mike Sirimanne, Rodney Jonklass and Vicky Athukorale as often as they did toget…
http://drunkenmaster.altervista.org/Files/pingpong.swf ping pong artistshttp://www.english-atheist.co.uk/clap.htm about george and his insanityhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6304447980554417691 gross natural gashttp://video.google.com/videopla…
Over 2,500 years ago today, The Buddha expounded the Dhamma, and exhorted us to use it as a tool to free ourself from suffering. Today, we “Buddhists” remember him as we celebrate (sic) Vesak, by lighting up lanterns and decorating the city with colored light bulbs. Actually, our priests, as the official custodians/guardians of the Buddha word, should probably be pointing out that what we are doing isn’t Buddhism, but it appears they are busy.
Vesak is the Buddhist festival of lights and today is celebrating 2550th Buddha Jayanthi. For me it means chilling out in an apartment in Colombo with Byron (go visit his blog by following the link… its funny). We’ve eaten chicken soup, Sarah Lee che…
hhehehe..can’t wait for the 23rd of May, c’mon Shioni bring me the windsurf, PLEASE!!!! I can’t remember longing for something like this since I was a kid…actually I am behaving like a kid..or worse…people laugh at me but who cares, they have no id…
Well let’s see… In the last episode Katharine and Chris were the bottom two, and Chris was voted out… So, as far as crowd favorites go, it’s about Taylor Hicks, and Elliot Yamin.
The ubergeeks at Tomshardware have figured out how to run a dual core Pentium D 805 clocked at 2.66 Ghz, at a whopping 4.1 GHZ! Yoikes. Is this the new Celeron 300?
[Ed. some clarifications may be necessary for ordinary (normal) people…]
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