On Lazyness

After a long hiatus I have decided to post something on my blog again. Rejoice my loyal underlings readers!! The last time I posted something on my blog was an year and a half ago. A few things have changed around here since then.

• I got job. Just a week after my last blog post to be exact. (Maybe there’s some correlation there. Hmmm…)
• See all the Linux stuff in the previous posts? I gave it up after I got myself a decent computer capable of gaming. My computer is running Windows 7 now. (TRAITOR!!!)
• I changed my phone quite a few times. Since my last post I’ve gone from being a Symbian fan to being an iOS fan and then finally ended up with Windows Phone 7.

So yeah, this blog is going to sing a different tune from now on. Don’t worry, I won’t be singing praises to Microsoft all the time.

Moving on to the matter at hand, it’s been recently brought to my attention that I’m being too lazy to be called a human being. Which is complete and utter bullshit I tell you. Although my browser history would suggest my mission in life is to read all the posts ever posted on 9gag.

Anyway after working a year and a half on small to relatively large software projects as a .NET developer, I like to think I’m a somewhat experienced programmer now. I’m no Chuck Norr Jon Skeet obviously, but I can do stuff. Sort of.

The point is while I’ve been going on about FOSS and contributing to the Open Source community etc etc. in my university days I haven’t done a single damn thing after I started working. I’ve been too lazy to start on any project that was not related to my work. After I get home from office I just switch into idle mode where I aimlessly stare at my laptop for most of the time.

I have decided that this needs to change. Therefore I’m setting myself a few goals to complete in the next year.*

• Write more blog posts. Regularly.
• Learn proper web development. Not just the back end stuff I currently do sometimes. I want to learn how to do front-end stuff too. (Hear that sound? That’s the sound of all my web developer friends screaming in horror. My front-end developing skills are that legendary.)
• Create and launch at least one web site that will be beneficial to the community.
• Create and publish at least one mobile application. Most probably WP7 and/or Android.
• Exercise.

I think that’s enough goals. Although it seems like an year is too long time to achieve these things, I don’t want to be too optimistic right now.

*And if by any chance I fail to achieve these goals this blog post will be deleted without any sign of shame on my part.

Photoshop CS5 Content Aware Fill Vs. GIMP Resynthesizer

A few days ago Adobe released a sneak preview of a new feature in their newest Photoshop version, CS5. Content aware fill. I saw the video on Youtube and needless to say I was very impressed. And I couldn’t wait to try it out. You can see the preview below.

Today, I find out from a post in Omg!Ubuntu that GIMP has had this feature as an add-on and has been around for a long time. It has all the functionality of Photoshop CS5 Content Aware Fill and has more options to tweak it too.

To install in Ubuntu just type the command below in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer

To use it just select the area you want and go to Filters -> Maps -> Resynthesize

Well, looks like one-up for the open source world!

Google Chrome For Linux FAIL!!!!

Click on image for larger version

I have no idea how this happened. An extension or two crashing when I click on them is quite common as this is still in Beta and extension support is still only enabled for the dev channel users anyway. I was working inside VirtualBox and when I came back to Ubuntu every extension I had installed had crashed. Well done Google! This screams stability.

Safe Tweeting!

I highly doubt anyone reading this post would need to be introduced what Twitter is. Almost everyone has a twitter account these days though some people never use it. Anyways, this post is for the regular twitter users.

Part of the Twittering experience is using various twitter applications. I don’t exactly mean twitter clients here. There are loads of web applications for Twitter that do useful things like giving you conversation views, tree views or maybe giving you various statistics about your twitter usage. And there are some applications that are made just for fun. And some applications that might use your twitter account for their own purposes.

Most twitter web applications use OAuth to gain access into your twitter account instead of asking for your password. Twitter OAuth page displays a message asking you whether you want to allow this application access into your twitter account.

How many of you people actually read what’s in this screen before clicking on Allow? You’re granting some third party unlimited access to your twitter account here. It’s like giving someone else your password. Don’t you think you should pay a little more attention to what you’re doing?

Some applications once signed in to your twitter just do what they’re supposed to do. But the problem is some applications do somethings they’re not supposed to do. Once granted access these applications might spam into your twitter feed during regular intervals or even send direct messages to your followers with spam messages. If an application starts misbehaving in any way Twitter has given the option to revoke access to any application.

First you login to your Twitter web and go to the Settings page. Then click on the connections tab and you will get a page like the one below.

Displayed above are some of the applications I have granted access to my twitter account. If you want to remove any of the applications from having access into your twitter account then just click on the Revoke Access link below the Application name and that application will be removed.

I hope this post has helped some of you. Remember. Before you grant access to any application look around to see if it is trustworthy. Don’t grant access to everything that wants access into your twitter account. Safe Tweeting!

Best eBook Reader for Symbian S60 5th Edition

For a long time I’ve been used to reading ebooks from my phone. Its a lot easier than carrying around heavy books with me and I can always read the current book I’m reading during my free time no matter where I am.

I’ve always been a Nokia Symbian Series 60 fan and I’ve used the free Mobipocket reader to read ebooks. Up till the end of last week I’ve been using a Nokia N95 8GB but traded that in for a Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic for the bigger display that would mean I can read books more comfortably. But to my disappointment what do I find? Mobipocket reader doesn’t support the Symbian S60 5th Edition (that means the touch enabled version). – Insert long rant to Amazon with a lot of profanity for acquiring Mobipocket and cutting the development of it because it directly competes with their Kindle reader here — I managed to install Mobipocket on this phone despite the incompatibility warning and found that I can work with it with a few sacrifices. Because its not designed for a touchscreen when I switch to the fullscreen mode there’s no way to switch back. But because I couldn’t find a better alternative I sighed and settled for what I had.

And today while I was dejectedly still looking for an alternative ebook reader I stumbled across this article. It seems lots of other people had the same problem I had. And going through the comments what do I find none other than ZXReader (Translated version here). At first I was dubious whether to try this even. The website was completely Russian and looked dodgy. Anyway I decided to download the latest beta release of the software and installed it. And let me tell you, it was beyond my wildest expectations. This little piece of software could blow Mobipocket reader and any other reader in existence right out of the water. The following is a short review of ZXReader.

ZXReader is basically a text reader. But with a lot of customization options to suit your liking giving you the best reading experience. Along with all the features of Mobipocket like changing text colour, size and background colour, ZXReader also gives options to control screen brightness for the program only (very useful), finger scrolling, screen zones for tap navigation and text antialiasing. Yes, you saw that right. It has antialiasing.

All right. Enough with the words. Here are a few screenshots of the program in action taken on my 5800 Xpressmusic.

Portrait View

The little green book at the bottom is the menu button. There’s a progress bar at the bottom showing page number and percentage of the book being read. Also displays the time and the battery level at the bottom right hand corner. Sweet!

Screen Options 1

Screen Options 2

Text Options

Style Options

Control Options

Library Options

Download ZXReader for Symbian S60 5th Edition
Other versions download here. (Scroll to the bottom of the page)

Note: ZXReader also works well in landscape mode. Unfortunately my screen capture program doesn’t like me taking screenshots in landscape mode. I’ll upload a landscape screenshot if I can get it working.

If this post helped you in anyway don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

Are We Moving Forward?

You’ve all heard of Moore’s law haven’t you? You haven’t?? Really???… Well I’m going to tell you anyway. Moore’s law states that the number of transistors that could be squashed onto one single chipset doubles every two years or so. So that means our computers are getting twice as fast every two years. That is more or less truthful. After the Gigahertz race a couple of years ago everything capped out at around 3.6Ghz (A couple hundred megahertz more or less). Then started the multi-core race. Normal personal computers went from having single core processors to dual cores quad cores or even six cores in a very short time. Intel and AMD are in a neck to neck race to make the fastest processor. Maybe not neck to neck exactly. But AMD is keeping a close distance behind to give Intel enough competition to keep them on their feet. These days its hard to find someone with a single core machine.

Meanwhile RAM took its own course. While more and more memory was fitted into a single chip memory became more and more cheaper. Computers that used to hold 256MB or 512MB of memory suddenly had 1 GB, 2 GB or upwards of 4 GB of memory with the power of 64-bit processors and operating systems. Almost every operating system in the world today offer 64-bit versions. Most probably you would not see the next generation of operating systems in 32-bit versions.

Meanwhile internet speeds got a speed boost as well. While more and more computers are connected to the internet broadband internet connections have become commonplace. Wireless hotspots everywhere and wireless broadband or HSDPA technology is covering everywhere making sure you’re connected everywhere you go. And that’s at blisteringly fast speeds too. Every new mobile phone supports 3G speeds and touch screens which brings the world right to your fingertips wherever you go. Newer mobile phones are faster than early pentium class computers. Making them potentially as powerful as computers giving them abilities far beyond the original mobile phones ever dreamed of. (such as typing this blog post while going in the bus, say )

What does all this mean?

Computers are getting faster and cheaper right before our eyes. So that must mean we’re getting our work faster right? Right??

That’s where Wirth’s law comes in. I’ll get to that in a minute.

While all this was happening in the hardware field lets take a look at what’s happening in the software field. In the early days computers were ridiculously expensive. That made programmers write code that was optimized as to use all the juice a computer can provide as efficiently as possible. But now hardware is so cheap its a waste of the programmers time to spend optimizing code. If the code won’t run on the current system the solution is to throw faster hardware at it. Its easier for everyone. Because hardware is cheap and programmers are expensive.

Now we’ll get to Wirth’s law. He states that while hardware is getting faster, software is getting slower at even a higher rate. Modern software can bring even the most powerful computer to its knees. (case and point : Windows Vista). Gaming companies are throwing out games that require ridiculously high end hardware to play them on. Web sites went from being simple web sites to being complex web applications. Gone are the days web pages were designed with simple HTML. Now they’re loaded with Flash, Javascript. Ajax and god knows what else. Meaning they need more and more bandwidth.

So where does all this lead us? We’re paying for newer hardware every year or two and paying even more for extremely expensive software. In the end we have to ask ourselves what do we ultimately achieve from all this? Are you doing the same things you did on the old Pentium a few years back with your current Core 2 Duo PC with Windows Vista?

Technology is improving. No doubt about that. But are we, the general consumers, really moving forward?

Twittering via the Terminal

Ok… Quick note people.

Warning!! Extremely geeky. Don’t bother reading if you aren’t !!!

Thanks to Thameera for this tip. Then after a bit of searching I fount this. Thanks to him too. Ok. This is twittering via the terminal for Linux. First things first. You need curl for this. Install curl with the following command.

sudo apt-get install curl

Then open the text editor. Copy and paste the following code.

curl --basic --user "<User>:<Password>" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"

Replace the <User> and <Password> with your username and password. Mine would be…

curl --basic --user "chathuraw:*********" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"

Save the file as twitter. Now you have to move this file to /usr/local/bin.

sudo mv twitter /usr/local/bin

Then you have to give this file executable permissions as follows.

sudo chmod +x twitter

Well that’s it. Now you can just open a terminal and type twitter and tweet to your hearts content.

$ twitter "tweeting via the terminal.... Sooo frikkin awesome"

Cheers!!!

UPDATE : Another cool python script for Twittering from the terminal. I didn’t check this out yet though. http://jspr.tndy.me/2008/05/twitterminal-a-terminal-based-twitter-client-in-python/

Tech Highlights of 2009

Hello again… This I should have written a couple of weeks back when the news in here was actually new. But as I’m a lazy ass I didn’t write it. And I should really write this as sevaral posts but as I’m a lazy ass I’m writing this all in one post

Well where to begin? We have had some really cool things announced and released in the past few weeks and as most of this stuff can be found somewhere else I’ll write a basic intro and give links to the related sites so you can read more about it if u want to.

Project Natal

Lets start with Microsoft. At the E3 Gaming convention that was held recently Microsoft dropped a bomb on the game console world with the unveiling of Project Natal. Microsoft has been keeping this under wraps until then and I have to say, I was blown away. Project Natal is a peripheral you can connect to an XBOX 360 to have a completely new gaming experience. In a nutshell the future you will be playing games without a controller only using your body as the controller. Watch the video below and you’ll see for yourself.

When I first saw this I had my doubts. Is this accurate enough for a worldwide commercial release? But some of the worlds leading tech bloggers got their chance to experience Project Natal backstage and based on their reviews Project Natal is definitely ready. Microsoft has taken gaming to a whole new level and Nintendo Wii MotionPlus and Sony’s EyeToy have no chance of keeping in a level playing field with Microsoft (Even though they try to downplay it. ). This is definitely technology we haven’t even dreamed about. You can read some of the reviews of Project Natal in the links below.

Gizmodo – Testing Project Natal : We Touched the Intangible

Kikizo | First-Hand with Natal: Why it’s a Bigger Deal Than Critics Think

Palm Pre

This phone generated a lot of hype when it was first demonstrated saying it was the iPhone killer and whatnot. Even though it didn’t sell half as well as the iPhone it does bring some competition to the table with its new WebOS. The demo of the Palm Pre can be seen below. It’s a bit lengthy though.

This was a pre launch video at MWC 2009. According to most reviews the WebOS is impressive. But the Palm Pre’s construction leaves something to be desired. (I read somewhere that you could cut cheese with the Pre’s bottom edge ). And even though an official SDK hasn’t been released yet homebrew applications are showing up online. Gizmodo has put up a nice review matrix for easy comparison of what everyone is saying about the Pre. You can see it from the below link.

Gizmodo : Palm Pre Review Matrix – What everybody is saying

Google Wave

Now this is the product I’m really excited about. Did you know Email was invented almost 40 years ago? Trust me. It was. Google thought “How would email be if it were invented today?“. And following on that idea they created Google Wave. It’s a rich environment for users to share messages, pictures, videos and more. Google’s demonstration video can be seen below. But I warn you. It’s a hour and 20 minutes long.

For those who do not want to waste the time you could have watched a movie or something the highlights of the show can be found in the below link.

Lifehacker – The Google Wave Highlight Reel

Did I mention this is going to be Open Sourced? Well it is. Google wants everyone to implement this open standard much like email is today. Google is currently giving developers who want to develop extensions and such for Wave access to Wave at www.wavesandbox.com. If you’re interested you can fill out a form and hope for Google to approve your request. FYI its still very buggy and requires refreshes now and then

iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0

Been debating with myself whether to put this here or not. But the hype this announcement created when Apple finally unveiled it at WWDC 2009 was too hard to ignore. Apple is making its way to creating a real phone now. Now it has SMS forwarding, MMS and Video recording too. Amazing huh?!?

Anyway, Apple has improved the hardware somewhat as well. The iPhone 3GS (S stands for speed) comes with a 3.2MP Autofocus camera that can also capture video with VGA resolution @ 30FPS, a faster processor, hardware 3D acceleration and more RAM. Here’s the iPhone 3GS complete feature guide from Gizmodo.

Gizmodo – iPhone 3GS Complete Feature Guide

Despite all the hardware and software improvements the iPhone 3GS is still far from perfect. My main complain is “WHERE THE HELL IS MULTITASKING??”. I mean, come on. Is that too much to ask for? Other phone manufacturers had that like 8 years ago. This is where the Palm Pre really outshines Apple with its multitasking capabilities.

Hmm. I guess that’s it for today. I’m really tired as well. You can thank me for telling you stuff you already knew about in the comments below … Cheers!!!

The Browser Saga : Part 2

Hello guys… Ok… This was sudden… I didn’t even intend to write a blog post today. But once more I have tried another browser and decided to write about it. (Yeah. I like browsers. It’s the most used application on my PC..)

Well. I had installed the Chromium developer build on Ubuntu a couple of weeks back. That wasn’t really usable. Specially without flash and still a lot of functionalities are marked as to-do. Yep. Instead of the options in the options panel it says TO DO .

Shortly after that experience Google released a pre-beta build of their Chrome browser for Linux (Which is based on Chromium). Tried installing that today. It’s currently supported for Ubuntu or Debian only. Get it here. There’s nothing much different there actually. It’s basically the same as Chromium with Google name on it and it sends everything we do to Google. (Typical).

Anyway the reason I started writing this post today isn’t Google Chrome. I tried another browser today. Yep. Another one. Opera 10 Beta for Linux. I’ve heard Opera was a nice browser. And although I haven’t really used Opera on my PC before I knew a little bit about it’s features. But today I actually tried the latest version and lets say my reaction is absolutely positive towards this browser. . . . Let’s see what it’s got.

Let’s see. Where do I start? Let’s start with the most prominent feature shall we? The speed dial screen. Now this is similar to the new tab page of Chrome. (AFAIK Opera had this screen before Chrome). But instead of showing the most visited sites like Chrome this page actually gives us the chance to decide what goes here and what doesn’t. Here’s my speed dial screen after I added the sites I want to it.

(Hmmm… most of this stuff seems to belong to Google…)

And Opera has Widgets too. Did you know that? It’s pretty cool. Obviously I’m still pretty new to this so I don’t really know which widgets i could recommend installing. But the video downloader is one widget I found that’s definitely useful. Here’s a screenshot of how widgets are installed.

Another very very cool feature I found in Opera 10 is the search box. While there is a normal search box as in Firefox, Opera also supports typing your search queries in the address bar as well. But that’s not the really cool thing about it. You can select which search engine you want to use just by typing a letter in front of your search terms. For example to google for flowers you would just have to type “g flowers” in the address bar. And these keys are customizable as well. See the search preferences screen in the screenshot below.

Ever used the Firefox plugin called “Reload Every” ? It’s a plugin that allows us to reload a page automatically in a given time period. Very useful in starting torrents at Imageshack. Well, Opera has that feature built in. Like I said, I don’t know whether this is new in Opera 10 because I haven’t really used this browser before.

Unfortunately like every other browser Opera has downsides as well. It’s not nearly as fast as Chrome or Safari. But Opera is widely known for following web standards precisely. Passed the ACID3 test with 100/100. Anyway, downsides. . . Opera does NOT render sinhala unicode properly at all. This is a very big minus in my book because I visit quite a few sinhala sites every day and I get emails in sinhalese too. See how Opera displays sinhala below.

Anyway. Other than the sinhala problem I’m very impressed with Opera 10. As I’ve mentioned it’s still a beta so there might be some bugs. And I’ve played with it only for a short while and might have missed another cool feature or another problem. Let me know in your comments. Until the next post then (Whenever that might be). See ya

Nokia and Stupidity!!!

Hmmm… Long time since the last blog post. I was so up to my neck in work and other stuff I didn’t have the time to write one. Didn’t have anything to write about anyway. But today I’m writing a rant just because I’m in the mood to …

Anyways as some of my twitter follwers might be aware of I’d been grumbling about needing a new phone. My trusty old Nokia N73 ME gave out and I had to get rid of it. Spent about a week or so without a phone of my own. Well yesterday I finally got a phone that I could afford and do the stuff I wanted it to do. (Or so i thought)…

Well… The phone i got was a Nokia N95 8GB. 5MP Camera, Bluetooth, Wi-fi, HSDPA, A-GPS, Symbian S60 3rd Edition with Feature Pack 1 blah blah blah (I’m sure you’ve heard about some of this before. And yes, I know the phone is nearly a couple of years old. But this one fitted my price range )…While I’m more than satisfied with its features there is something I really really hate about the bloody thing. Just shows How much a good phone can get screwed up because of one stupid mistake the designers make.

Before choosing the phone I looked through the internet and read some reviews about it. But not one… NOT ONE… not even the trusty and very detailed GSM Arena review thought about mentioning this. OK…Before you get fed up (If you haven’t already..) I’ll get to the point. Take a look at the following picture.

Notice anything out of the ordinary? Nope? Hmmm… Not even I thought of it. Take a look at the next pic.

As you can see the 3.5mm headset jack is positioned on the left side of the phone. When the headset is plugged in its poking out nearly an inch. HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO LISTEN TO MUSIC WHILE THE PHONE IS IN MY JEANS POCKET???? Forget listening to music with it in the pocket. Can’t even pocket the damn thing with the headset plugged in. I usually travel a couple of hours a day back and forth and I listen to music while doing so. Which is one of the reasons I went for this phone as it has 8GB of storage which is more than enough for me. But with this headset jack placement I have to keep the phone in my hand. Grrr…. It can be pocketed with a little difficulty of course. But the headset won’t survive the procedure for long.

Well… That’s it. I just wanted to get that off my mind. Stupid Nokia!!! Don’t ever do that again!!!

P.S :- Other than the above mentioned reason can I just say I’m positively in love with the phone?