“Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.” - Stephen R. Covey

Here is a list of choices I made :

Operating System : Linux

There are lot of reasons why you should use linux : easy access to software, no viruses/adware, fast, possibility of configuring every bit. There is also a long list reasons why you shouldn’t run linux, which I don’t agree with most of them, except some great Windows only(may be Mac supported) software like Photoshop; and few drivers.

Desktop : GNOME
Simple elegant interface. Pretty stable.

Window Manager : compiz (compiz-fusion)
Rather than the cool 3D effects, there are some really useful plugins in compiz. For example : Expo, Scale.

Web Browser : Firefox 2
Firefox 3 has some great fixes on critical bugs like memory leaks, but there is one flaw. Some of the plugins I’m using are not available/stable for Firefox 3. So, I’ll stick to Firefox 2 for few more months.

Mail Client : Thunderbird
I’m not a heavy user of the desktop mail clients. I only use thunderbird for one of my mail accounts. There is no specific reason I’m choosing thunderbird over evolution, just like the interface.

IM : piding / emesene
Pidgin is one of the best multi protocol IM clients available in linux(kopete is also nice). Depicts the fact it supports many protocols, that’s only basic features. Most of my friends are using MSN network, and emesene is capable of handling those, and thousand times better than the crappy aMSN interface.

VOIP : Skype
Just one word : clear

IRC : xchat
Nice interface.

File Transfer (ftp/sftp) : Filezilla/GVFS
If I’m using a separate client for file transfer, that would definitely filezilla, but it’s much easier to mount the shares directly using GVFS and use it like a local directory.

Word Processing : abiword
It’s a light weighted, really fast word processor. Even though it’s light weighted, all necessary features are there.

Graphics : Adobe Photoshop
Yes, Adobe Photoshop, that’s the best I’ve ever seen. I never got along with gimp. Anyhow, I rarely mess with graphical stuff, yet I still miss Photoshop.

Text Editor/IDE : gedit
Simple, clean interface and have syntax highlighting. I can survive without an integrated debugger.

Video Player : mplayer/vlc
Those will play almost anything.

Audio player : banshee
Banshee has a nice audio library management features. Similar artists + cover info rocks.
Worth mentioning : one of the best media library management softwares I’ve seen is Windows Media player.

Twitter Client : twitux
Very stable, with many features. twhirl is stunning, but adobe AIR still doesn’t support tray icons on linux.

File Sharing : bittorrent
The content is reliable - well you have to read the comments.

Torrent client : azureus
Many features + plugins. I’m using the webui plugin, with auto start init script. (If you are curious, there is a azureus command line option : –ui=console)

Email Service : gmail / Google apps
It’s the cool ajax interface. The usage of conversations instead of individual mails is also remarkable. I’m using google apps to handle my gunathilake.com domain.

RSS Reader : Google Reader
Easy to use. Rather than a desktop RSS client, I can access it from anywhere. When I’m at somewhere with an internet connection killing time, I always have something to do. The sharing feature is handy too.

Photo sharing : Picasa
It’s the desktop application - It’s easier to upload.

Blogging platform : wordpress
Wordpress is a solid, easy to use platform. From a developers point of view, it’s internal structure is amazing.

Bookmarking : foxmarks
I tried to use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. But I don’t bookmark much, so I just use the firefox builtin bookmarking. I don’t want to experience losing my bookmarks again, that’s why I’m using foxmarks.

Web Developer plugins : firebug / web developer toolbar
Just check the plugins - you’ll see.

Virtualization : VirtualBox
I’m using VirtualBox to access IE to test sites. VirtualBox has nice integration features like free mouse.

What I read
Except reading my friends blogs, here are few feeds from my RSS reader.

• Techcrunch - I believe they have spies all over the world. Anything related to startups, it’s over there. Easy to keep track of what’s happening on the internet.
• Linux today - Everything related to linux/open source
• Gnome planet - Some nice content over there, related to gnome.
• ReadWriteWeb - This is like techcrunch. Techcrunch gives you more news, this will give you analysis/comparisons.
• Smashing Magazine - A source to get inspired - collections of creative work all over the internet.

This is my cousin Sashika, singing few songs. Enjoy!

Last week, proving one of the most effective open source successes, firefox hit 500+ million downloads. There are no arguments, they have definitely changed the world. Now, in honor of firefox downloads, they are going to change the world in another perspective by helping the Free Rice foundation.

Now, it’s your turn.

If you ever wanted to see mummies in Egypt, here comes the chance. Sri Lankan Olympiad in Informatics is calling for contestants. If you are a school student under 20, just go ahead and register at www.ioi.lk.

If you want more info on IOI, read the wiki.

P.S - The LK DNS is very promising.. but just in case, if you can’t access ioi.lk, try http://ioi.ucsc.cmb.ac.lk/

Just for the record, photo was not my idea.

Since the web 2.0 bubble expanded, a new word has been added to the dictionary (of course it has been there for technology geeks for a long time) called RSS. It’s so simple so that when combined with GNU naming schemes, you can call that “RSS Stands for Simple” (Note: in case you are wondering, yes, this is not the right term ).

The great thing about RSS is you can keep track of your favourite blogs, without ever going there to check for new updates. Just by using a RSS Reader(I use google reader), the newly posted items will be just there.

However, the “web 2.0″ concept is not just about AJAX or RSS or rather whatever technology. It’s more of the community, the bunch of people with same interests get together and use their creativity instead of automated robots to generated rich quality content. The same thing happens when you start blogging, people read your blog, then put comments, or rather write an offensive post on their blog, and so on… This blogsphere is what makes bloggers ticking.. what makes blogging interesting..

As with the Sri Lankan blogs, there is a great community built around kottu.org which has been there for several years. Niro also just started a blogging community for Sri Lanka called slblogs.org. They have just started, so at the moment there are not much of blogs there, but it’ll eventually grow. Although since the Sri Lankan blogsphere is relatively small, I’m not sure there is enough ground for a battle. In my personal opinion, It would be more interesting to see a blogsphere for growing number of Sinhalese blogs.

Paradox Server has been down for about a month :(.. we are back in business again…

Finally, I wrote an about me page. Still remember the old times, where we have been writing small my self essays.

Imagine you are in 5th century. How would you feel if you see a helicopter coming, then three men jump out of it (of course with parachutes), landed down safely, use their binoculars, take some photos, and shoots people who were freaked out and tried to kill them. People will exactly think they are some kind of people with super powers. But actually all those miracles happened within the frame of technology. So, when the technology evolves bit more, we would certainly see another set of super powers in our day to day life.

Now, let’s look at the possibilities.

Telekinesis

This is definitely the coolest super power ever (but not the most powerful). It would be damn cool to move things without touching them. But as far as I see, something like this wouldn’t come in the near future. Only technology that works like telekinesis is magnets, and that itself is not a technology. We don’t really control magnets. One day, if we (as in super power fans) are lucky enough, scientist will find a way to control the magnetic fields. If you can control the magnetic fields, then you would be like Magneto, not a telekinesis like Sylar. But, that’s the way to go: one step at a time.

Invisibility


Hello, meet Mr. Invisible. Damn.. Where is he? He was just there. Invisibility is not a strange concept for science. If we focus on how we see things, that’s the reflection of the light. So, if we can make the light to pass through us then, that’s the way. Well, it’s easy to say, but can we do it? Yes, in fact, some researches in Duke University have already done that to certain extent.

However, If you are a stargate fan, then you must have seen two types of cloaking devices, one is the goa’uld/azgaurd cloaking devices for ships, cloaking devices in ancient puddle jumpers. Those are optical cloaking devices, which means the real objects are there but the light is passing through it. This is what researches in Duke University have developed. So, when you are driving, if you suddenly hear a bump, then you should probably get and check whether you hit a invisible car or man. The next type is Sodan cloaking devices. Those devices takes the objects to another dimension. That’s kind of cooler than the normal optical cloaking, but it seems like it’s not going to happen in about next few hundred years. So far, we are no where near exploring a new dimension. It will probably stay in science fiction for another long time.

Regeneration

Wolverine in X-Men, Clair in Heroes, the super power they have is their accelerated healing rate. As soon as they get injured, their bodies regenerate. So, how does the science can help us to turn into a regenerating creature? According to Dr. Alan Russell, we all have regenerating ability within ourselves. We just have to learn to speak to body. For example, if we loose our finger tip within age of 1-2, then it will grow back, but we loose that ability when we get older. So, it’s just a matter of emitting the correct signals to the body. Fortunately, there are some medicines, which can emit those signals. We just have to put that gel into our wound. Those medicines only contains natural signal, nothing else. And amazingly those medicines work for diabetics patients also.

Invincibility


Super man, how much you shoot, how much you hit, it doesn’t even scratch him. Unfortunately science can’t do much about that. There is no sign of super azgaurd/ancient shields. But if you are a south Asian / have been south Asia, you have probably seen people do some freaking stuff without getting hurt like walk on fire, etc. Even some magicians do that, but these people don’t do that using tricks. Those are called as the miracles of the god, but actually what’s going on is a result of extreme excitation. Those people somehow manage to make them invincible. But unfortunately scientists only criticize them. They don’t really have a mental/physical way of going to that stage. However, Dr. Kovoor had some theories on those.

To summarize, if someone shoots you in the near future, you definitely going to get hurt.

Flying


First superman inspired us with flying. Then, Nathan Petrelli came along with a weird funny flying ability. But have you ever though, before both of them, birds inspired us by flying, and as a result we are doing that right now. Helicopters, Air Planes, etc. However, there are several ways of flying. The first is by manipulating air. That’s the current technology we are using to fly helicopters, planes, etc. However, rockets uses Newton’s third law, and speaking of rockets, we have personal jetpacks, specially in GTA(a game). Those are kind of cooler than helicopters, but for some reason those didn’t get really succeeded.

Considering the limitation of flying using above methods, the best way to do that would be manipulate the gravity. I guess that’s what superman do?? Scientist have already created some anti-gravity rooms, but that technology cannot be directly applied in the field, not so soon.

There is something else is going on in the world : Flying cars. However, those are not the science fiction flying cars which uses anti-gravity technology. Those can be explained as the next generation of helicopters. Anyway, with the evolvement of flying cars and may be little bit more of the anti-gravity technology we’ll able fly smoothly soon.(Not to mention that we are already flying with some heavy machines)

Super Hearing/Seeing


How would you feel if you can read a board which is several kilometers away. That’s actually very easy : use a binocular. There are very powerful binoculars. Some of those are using infrared so you can see in the night, and which can be also defined as a heat vision.

Have you heard about the ultra sensitive microphones? Yes, there are microphones which allow you to hear anything. And you can transmit those around the world using radio signals and may be satellites.

I have been using paradox server to handle my blog(www.sandaru1.com) and emails(AT gunathilake.com) for more than a year now. However, due to several reasons our server went offline by a timely manner. The problem is fixed now but the xmail configuration is not perfect either.

So, I decided to go for google apps. I have used that for about a week now, and so far the only problem I got was, since the mailing account is new some important mails are marked as spam. However, google really learns fast(or it has some hidden filters for each user) and by clicking on “spam” and “not spam” buttons managed to fix the problem.

So, overall the system seems pretty good and handles with out any errors. Another big advantage of the system is it has superb gmail interface.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t put something interesting here for few weeks. That was due to several reasons. One was that I was wrapping up all unfinished work I had to do. Then, more importantly, my laptop was struck by lightning about a month ago. Then, both home desktops were also got burnt (Probably the motherboard - I was too lazy to check those). So, I had a lack of personalized desktop environment, and also got restricted access to my old backup files along with the movie database because the old hard disks were IDE and the new desktop only supports SATA.

There is something I really hate; I was only using Windows for about a month. That’s why nothing interesting has taken place - What could you possibly do in windows? (However, I’m focusing on few web development activities, and will do a new blog post).

After thinking few days, the only thing I could come up sharing with you is this :