About me
Greetings!
Finally, I decided to write an about page. I’ll start from the basic information. I’m Sandaruwan Gunathilake(සඳරුවන් ගුණතිලක), born in 6th of December, 1986 at Ratnapura, Sri Lanka. Currently I live in both Nugegoda and Ratnapura. I have two brothers, Yasaruwan and Jayaruwan.
I went to Mihindu Vidyalaya, Ratnapura for primary education. Then, after getting through the grade 5 scholarship exam, I went to Sivali Central College to continue my studies(If you are not from Sri Lanka, even though the name says college, Sivali is a high school - This is common in Sri Lanka). Actually, almost nothing happened in my school life during grade 6 to 11. I was normally going to school, coming back home, had some hanging with friends in school. To be honest, it was pretty boring 5 years in school time. Then, I did O/Ls at 2002, and started A/Ls in Maths. During the A/Ls, I involved in lots of societies, was a senior prefect in school, thus got some experience in those areas. However, I finished A/Ls in 2005 and started higher studies in IIT (Informatics Institute of Technology) - Software Engineering.
During my school years, one of my great achievements was representing Sri Lanka in IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics). I was a member of Sri Lankan team in 2003(USA), 2004(Greece), 2005(Poland) and 2006(Mexico) and grabbed two bronze medals in 2004 and 2006. The experience I gained from IOI was and is very useful in many aspects.
Year 2004 was another turning point in my life. Several of my friends (Nayana, Parinda, Sukitha, Amila) and myself started building a search engine (for searching sinhala content in the internet) for a competition (NBQSA - National Best Quality Software Awards). All those guys are from national IOI pool and somehow we successfully managed to build the search engine. Then, somehow we managed to participate the competition in business category(We participated as UCSC), and won an award. Since most of our competitors in the business category were big companies, we also decided to use our knowledge in business aspect. So, we get together and formed a company. That’s the birth of Paradox Software. Since then, we have evolved so much, done some great projects and specialized in web 2.0 technologies.
(Nuwan is in the back)
If you are wondering how I suddenly managed to participate in IOI, and do software projects, I’ll tell you bit about my computer experience. The best way to start is, my father is a computer consultant. So, there were lot of computers and computer parts around our house as long as I remember. That’s the start of my computer career. That was around late 80s and early 90s which is the era of MS-DOS. That’s where I started love command prompt or shell. There were lot of games installed in my father’s network(It was an old Novel network). So, by the time I was about 7-8, I have played enough of games and it was not a mania any longer. Then, I started playing around BAT files, then that BAT file mania slowly went to VBScript with windows.
So, as I said, grade 6 - 11 was pretty boring at school, but not at home. That’s when I laid my foundation of programming. Those days, I was learning everything bit by bit. I started from VB programming, then VBScript, HTML, Pascal, C, C++, etc. Not only those programming languages, I also learned Flash, 3D Max, Photoshop, etc. and also Linux. I also learned about electronics, PIC programming, parallel port handling, etc. Then, in the last year or two of that period, Savindra and I started learning hacking and cracking. Since I didn’t have broadband those days, It was mostly cracking software. So, I spend several sleepless nights studying assembly code and playing around the code. Finally, those sleepless nights paid off, and I got fairly good at cracking software and creating keygens/trainers. But after all, now I see that’s kind of waste of time, but that was definitely fun.
However, learning bits of everything gave me a strong foundation to learn more. So, during next few years in my life, I learned lot of things, and learned much deeper concepts, theories, etc.
As you might have seen, as same as this learning everything concept is very useful, it might also be a weak point. So, in last few years, with the work of paradox, and latest trend in the world, I mainly focused my energy on web 2.0. That’s the only subject that I have been involved in so many years in a row. May be except linux. I have been using/hacking linux for a long time, but never did it in professional level.
So, my current interests in the web 2.0 field are AJAX, Web 2.0 services, Javascript libraries(prototype,jquery,yui,scriptaculous), CSS, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python Web Frameworks(django, etc). Then, in Linux field, python, gtk, dbus, avahi, telepathy, and little bit of kernel development.
Speaking of what I’m doing now, currently, I’m finishing up all remaining Paradox work bit by bit. Then mainly, this is my third year in IIT. We have to work in a company for a year as industrial placement. I’m working for Ulteo, France (remotely) as an AJAX developer. Ulteo is a ubuntu based linux distribution.
If you want to contact me, send me a mail at sandaruwan AT gunathilake DOT com. or catch me in IM, MSN - sandaruwang AT hotmail, GTalk - sandaruwang, Skype - sandaruwang. If you are looking for a telephone number, my home phone is 0452231550 and my friends always blame me for not having a cell phone. However last few months, I used a mobile (0713068525), but not using it now(august 2007). May be I’ll use that in the future.
Happy surfing.
