Do you see the difference CANADA? We DON'T - Sri Lankans against LTTE Terrorism

"Brother" greets "Brother" in London... (Black Barack with Black Cop)

TV reporters are too busy focusing on the Queen receiving the VIP guests at Buckingham Palace. This was a "touching" Kodak moment outside Downing Street that won't be forgotten by this London cop.

Remember the cops on duty are not supposed to shake hands, but the two brothers couldn't resist the historic moment. The black cop never imagined in his wildest dream that he would usher a black American President (Barack Obama) into the British corridors of power. Nice!

Genius Beatboxers……..Nathen “Flutebox” Lee & Beardyman

OK…..here’s another genius musician….. When I heard this duo for the first time, I thought what??? Are they from another world???.............Yeah…..So awesome. Can’t believe how talented these fellows. Nathan “Flutebox” Lee, and Beardyman @ Google, London. These guys blow me away…….a blast………..yeah.
These particular types of musicians are called “Beatboxers”. Here’s what Wiki says about Beatboxing.

Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion which primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments. Beatboxing is connected with hip hop culture although it is not limited to hip hop music

PERRYS - Great deals on new & used cars, and vans (Site Review)

When I looked at the Perrys Motor sales dealership site for the first time, I thought that something missing on the index image. May be its too small? Just a tiny image of "PERRYS" and text "Great deals on new & used cars, and vans". I guess, a larger index image with some eye catching bright color match and a custom quote will work well with the site Perrys Motor sales. A quote something like "Great deals, low rates, with trusted resource", probably animated text in the index?

Secondly, the static random image in the center of the page. I liked the way it's designed and the placement, but a flash image or animated image with all those random images into one movie like animation will really suited for this place. And also may be the image corners with some circular shape like in the search for vehicle or the find dealership options? Same thing would be better for the More hot deals option. Instead of having static deals, probably an animated pictures and information galary for deals will be a pretty good addition to the Perrys site. Also I would like to see the prices with different options, I guess may be with dollars and euros?

I liked the color match in the "Search for a vehicle" box with shaded light blue. If this can be extend to the entire page? or maybe to the other two search boxes in the Perrys main site?
I searched the site with Vauxhall dealer and Vauxhall corsa, and loved the way how the other two search options changed accordingly. This is the first time I saw a cool feature like this, great job.
I like to see following options in the index page of the PERRYS dealership site.

• An option to get a free dealer price quote. A small option box with make, model and postcode with a Get Quotes button?
• A viewer box with "Most Researched" or "Most Searched" vehicles. This could shows a list of vehicles both cars and vans with ranking 1-10
• A tool, research and Explore, probably to do a search by a price range or by category, or by features, and an option to do comparisons with different makes and models.

Another missing item in the PERRYS motor dealership site is a custom search option. Say I want to search for a "Vauxhall dealer" instead of getting into the "Search for a Vehicle" option. I guess its good to have a separate custom search box to do other types of searches within the site. May be placing a custom search in the top right corner with the banner ad?

Overall, PERRYS motor sales dealership site is a pretty good tool for consumers. But I would like to see some animated site, when comes to vehicles, rather a static site like the current one.

Happy Sinhala Hindu New Year 2009........

Eastern Inspired Living (Site Review)

With the first look at the Eastern Inspired Living, I wondered what this term “LOMBOK” is. It is in the URL, in the main LOGO and even as a link to LOMBOK news? I feel bit misleading with it, and how this term going be related with the term "Eastern Inspired Living"? If it is an abbreviated term related to the web site, I guess better to expand it somewhere so that the consumers feel it close to what the site trying to provides.

When it comes to amenities for a luxuries living, one will feel more comfortable with surrounds, with more soft and smoother background. As a consumer, I feel the index page design is more edgee , with the square faces and rectangular menu selections. Color selection is more like neutral than a vivid feeling when thinking about Eastern Living.

With the use of search term “log basket”, I tried to see how a general consumer looks up items from the web “Eastern Inspired Living”. Thumbnails are pretty much with details, but feel the size is bit larger compared to other consumer product supplier web sites. May be a reduced thumbnail size and a link to get all the results into a single page, will make the search feature a proper tool for the Eastern Inspired Living site.

Is there any option to view the search items price in other popular currency values, like American Dollars, or Euros? If the Eastern Inspired Living site is targeting international consumers, this will give kind of a feeling that the site is closer to consumers living style. As a consumer from the US market, I felt the site is far away and this will certainly affect the actual consumers who want to buy products. May be an option to convert currency values with the viewing option will certainly increase the consumer popularity of the site.

With search keyword lamp shades and laundry baskets, I found that the index showing the different lighting options bit confusing. Whenever particular sub category under the term Lighting is selected, the keyword background is highlighted with a grey color bar, which I felt more like a separation title than a selection among other sub titles.

Overall, “Eastern Inspired Living” web site provides an interesting consumer appliance sales portal and, with a bit of vivid touch on the interface and some developments based on the stated options, it will be a great place for people who looks for things out of ordinary.

No Reservation ( Anthony Bourdain ) - Sri Lanka

I like this episode of No Reservation, at my lovely home, Sri Lanka. We used to watch the travel channel lot, Bizarre Foods by Andrew Zimmenrn and No Reservation specially. Throughout this episode, I felt that something is missing, especially they showed the congested city of Colombo, tightened security, Burger community, Tsunami hit southern village???? I didn’t see any Sinhalese home? No Buddhist temple? No visit to beautiful up country, Kandy and Nuwaraeliya. No visit to great city of Anuradhapura, and Seegiriya??? No visit to “helmalu” paddy fields? ………………OK at least they showed we got pretty good food, and we are totally different from India…………and we don’t speak hindi…….
This is a quote from his final conclusion about Sri Lanka
“ This could be such a beautiful place if one could wonder freely from top to bottom of this country, it’s so amazing people were you seeing, they are lovely. The food after all my troubles earlier on what felt like the verge of death? Finally would able to actually enjoy it, a revelation. So distinct from Indian, so different from what I’d expected. And I guess and I hope when it all opens up, Sri Lankans settle their problems one way or the other, this will again be a place that a whole world will fall in love with”

……I totally agreed Anthony Bourdain………….cheers………..

I'm on Texas State CS department research spotlight - First South Asian graduate student on main page............

I'm humbly proud of myself getting into the CS department main page research spotlight. My heartiest thanks goes to my lovely wife Nim for her encouragements and my supervisor Dr. Komogortsev for writing and posting my achievements to the web, and writing a superb recommendation letter for the grant proposal. Also, Dr Denise from the Department of Physical Therapy for her help on editing (specially trimming it to 500 words, the most difficult part) and recommending my proposal for the Sigma Xi award. Finally Texas State CS department web team for posting it with most appropriate picture of me...thanks everbody..............

Here's the link for the CS department web site: http://www.cs.txstate.edu/
Read more about my achievements here at my personal web: Web Maze

Sigma Xi research grant award: I got it yehhhh....

Recently I won the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society Grant in aid research grant for my proposal on "Human Oculomotor Plant Modeling: Is there a significant change or deficit in oculomotor function of mTBI patients compared to normal vision in healthy subjects? ". This is the first time a student from the Texas State CS department won this prestige and competitive research award.

The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) program has been providing undergraduate and graduate students with valuable educational experiences for more than 80 years. By encouraging close working relationships between students and faculty, the program promotes scientific excellence and achievement through hands-on learning.

The program awards grants of up to $1,000 to students from all areas of the sciences and engineering. Designated funds from the National Academy of Sciences allow for grants of up to $5,000 for astronomy research and $2,500 for vision related research. Students use the funding to pay for travel expenses to and from a research site, or for purchase of non-standard laboratory equipment necessary to complete a specific research project.

A quote from Bowling Green State University Sigma Xi grant recipients page.

"These students show particular promise in their research careers," said Dr. Paul Moore, a professor of biological sciences at BGSU. "This grant is a stamp of approval that they are doing good research," he added, noting that "the list of excellent scientists who got their start with Sigma Xi grants includes Nobel Prize winners and some of the top scientists over the past century."

The Grants-In-Aid of Research program is the oldest of its kind, providing undergraduate and graduate students with educational experiences since 1922. The program promotes scientific excellence through hands-on learning and close working relationships between students and faculty. "

If Obama was born in Sri Lanka?

This is hilarious, got this email from a chain letter, and see how funny it is. Yep. This is the reality of our government or better to say who ever governs the government get the power. See the Rajapaksha Regime, Younger brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksha Secretary of Defense, Elder brother Basil Rajapaksha MP and a Senior advisor for the president, and the power behind the throne, middle brother Mahinda Rajapaksha President/Defense and Finance Minister, Another brother Chamal Rajapasksha MP and Minister of Port and Aviation, brother in law chairman of the Sri Lankan Airline. This is only some of popular guys, but how many are there hidden?

The Da Vinci Code - second round

Today I watched the extended version of the “Da Vinci Code” movie by Ron Howard (I guess this is the second time, first when it released in 2006, a camera copy – too dark and wobbly, and now a crystal clear DVD rip with subtitles and extended clips thanks to torrents). When watching movies in a PC, its hard to stop yourself by dragging the mouse to forward scenes that we don’t wanna spent time, right? Whatever the movie I guess. But there are some limited number of films I watched for entirety, “National Treasurer”, and this movie “Da Vinci Code” are on the top of the lists. May be I go more with films kinda sci-fi, treasure hunting or detective/adventure stories like “Pirates of the Caribbean”, or “The count of Monte Cristo”.

The USA, TNT television is telecasting the movie again, it started on Friday, and I couldn’t finished watching it to the end. And its scheduled to repeat again tonight at about 7pm. Problem with watching a movie in a TV is you are reluctantly interrupted by advertisements and its really annoying specially if the movie is one you wanna watch so badly. So I turned to my good old friend torrent to do the downloading.

I don’t know how true the story is but whatever the way, it’s nicely done. Specially the scene where “Sophie”, the last descendent of the Jesus Christ, un-reveal the truth of her life, you feels like something stuck on your mouth or wanna cry loud, yehh I bet you felt the same when watching the movie. What I can’t believe is how the person who wrote this book imagined and related all this history to a legendary story like this, and it’s fascinating how each puzzle works and fit each other (even they are imaginations of someone). Same thing in “American Treasurer”, it’s so nice how they stick all those bits and pieces of history into a work of art. I’m impressed.

May be this I want to do someday, craft a book like this, a fiction like Arthur C. Clarks “2001” or something like “King Solomon's Mines”. Something rim to a truth, definitely not something like “Indiana Jones movies”. I liked the first one or two Indy movies but absolutely not this new one “Indiana Jones and the kingdom of Crystal Skull”, no way……..though I like the Indy PC games.

Driver License and Identification Certificate to Non-Citizens New Rule : State of Texas, USA (Bad news for international Students at Texas)

In July 2008, the Texas Department of Public Safety proposed a new administrative rule, Subchapter K, SPECIAL PROVISIONS FOR NON-CITIZENS, 37 TAC §15.171, concerning the issuance of driver licenses and identification certificates to non-citizens. This administrative rule recently became effective and implementation will beginning October 1, 2008.

This rule states:

§15.171. Issuance of Driver Licenses and Identification Certificates to Non-citizens.

(a) An applicant who is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States must present valid documentation issued by the United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State, United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, or any successor agency of the aforementioned that shows lawful temporary admission to the United States.
(1) An applicant whose lawful admission period is more than six months but less than the full term of a driver license or identification certificate will be issued a driver license or identification certificate with a status date displayed that coincides with the expiration of the applicant's lawful admission period in the United States.
(2) If the lawful admission period in the United States indicated on the document presented by the applicant expires in less than six months from the date of application, no driver license or identification certificate may be issued.
(3) If the document presented by the applicant to demonstrate lawful temporary admission indicates an indefinite expiration date, the driver license or identification certificate will be issued with a status date displayed of one year from the date of application.
(b) In the event the applicant's status is updated or extended, the applicant must present valid documentation of such status change or extension to obtain a duplicate driver license or identification certificate with an updated status date.
(c) The driver license or identification certificate will be cancelled if within 45 days from the status date the applicant is unable to present valid documentation showing a status change or extension of admission period.


Note: Yep. This is really really bad rule for internatioal students, because, they have the status as d/o, that is for duration of stay. This is for indefinite expiration date, and due to this rule, students with D/O needs to renew their driver license or state ID once a year (with a renew fee). No rule or law for those f****** ilegal mexicans. They can drive, they can hit and run they can work..........all this shit is for legal international studnts with legal visa status.....Shame on you Texas.......................If they can grant duration at least for 2-3years (Consider minimum degree period for MS 2years, and Bachlars 4years, Phd 5years). Or else, they can grant it for the duration of the visa expiration date!!!!!I'm glad that I got my license long before this rule, and glad they are not gonna do anything for those people. So, hope they are not gonna impose this rule when we are ready to renew our Drivers License??????

Launching the new personal web site: Web Maze

Finally I’m done with my new personal web site. Name, “Web Maze”, and I’m damn proud it. Yehhh.After number of initiatives, and different designs, this looks better, I guess. Just finished the final touch-up with a Guest book, php server support from the CS department. I used to upload all my previous web stuff into Texas State web server, but find out they have no support for the server side scripting. But our CS department web server is fully functional with mysql and php plus, remote login to the server, what else to expect ha?

For a long time, I was thinking about doing something like this, with all my stuff, research, academia, personal into one place and have a professional looking web site. Yeh….finally I’m there.

Check out the web : Web Maze

Hurricane Ike – Hope this will stay away the 150miles as expected?????

Yep. First experience with a hurricane like this. As I learnt, the closest we can expect this going to be from our location is about 150miles. I mean the center of the Hurricane Ike. Today, (September 11th) it’s about 700 miles away from San Marcos, TX, at the Gulf of Mexico. And the land fall from the coastal area of Texas going be Friday or Saturday morning, probably Freeport, TX.

I’m just wondering, how big this going to be? Hopefully not bigger than the 150miles of radius, right? Our college web states that for the moment, all classes are on time and no changes, but they are on continue monitoring with the situation, due the fact that the circumstances can change at any time.
This Saturday 7am, the Hurricane Ike center will be 40miles away from Houston, TX. Hope things won’t be so ugly like Hurricane Katrina.

Here’s a nice web site to check the current situation and the path of the Hurricane Ike. U can click on each predicted center position and get the distance from it to other locations. Nice work.
http://www.stormpulse.com/

"Google Chrome" web browser- Awesome

I just installed the new Google web browser "Chrome". Its awesome, page loading is super fast. Some problems are there working with sinhala fonts, thats fine this is just beta right folks?

I like the interface pretty much and its quite simple design, i guess that may be the reason for fast performance.

We'll see how the things moving.........

Update: I kinda settled with Opera :)

What Hurts the Most - Boyce Avenue (another different view)

Another song from my wife’s favorite picks, end up in my most wanted list. “What hurts the most”, a country song, with that breathtaking violin part, I feel pretty much close with country songs now, I guess this is because of my bond with acoustics (just a wild guess). It was bit confusing because there are two official versions one from a band called Rascal Flatts, then Cascada. So, I tried the help of Wiki to see who’s original was this, But I wanted to share with you a different version of the song, with a different band someone not popular but extremely extremely fantastic how they are playing this specific song. The band called Boyce Avenue. I think my liking is different, same thing happened when I picked the Hallelujah song, it’s how you feel the song in yourself. I don’t care who played the song first, but I follow what I feel most. I guess my wife Nim too agreed with that……………………

Here are some quotes from Wikipedia.

"What Hurts the Most" is a country music song written by Jeffrey Steele and Steve Robson. It was originally recorded by American country music singer Mark Wills on his 2003 album And the Crowd Goes Wild. It was to be released as a single, but he was dropped from his label before the song could be released. In 2006, country music trio Rascal Flatts released the song as a single for their album Me and My Gang, and it became their fifth number-one single on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. In 2006, country music trio Rascal Flatts released the song as a single for their album Me and My Gang, and it became their fifth number-one single on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.

Boyce Avenue >>>>


Cascada >>>>



Rascal Flatts >>>>

Andy McKee

Its hard to stop blogging about this awesome guitarist. Its kinda sensation, which keeps on taking you to the YouTube videos and keep watching him playing. Yep I mean it. Here’s some of feats from Andy McKee legendary finger style guitarist. Need a testimony? Read some comments at the original YouTube post, then you’ll realize. Yep that’s for sure.

One thing that needs to realize on these performances, hard to believe but there is no background instruments whatsoever playing, just Andy McKee, his acoustic and awesome fingering believe me on this........................

Andy McKee - Rylynn



Andy McKee - Drifting



Andy McKee - Ebon Coast



Andy McKee - For My Father

Heathrow London, Paris France Transit Visa - Overnight Stopovers

***Update: I have a new post regarding transit visa here.

This is to help people who are regularly querying to know about stopovers in Heathrow London Airport. Last winter, precisely on January 10th, me and my wife spend almost 15hrs in London on our next flight to USA which is on next day morning around 10.30pm. I’ll try to give you some guidelines and advices as much as possible and that’s your responsibility to make your arrangements accordingly.

First of all, I’ll give you some idea on my visa and background issues. Me and my wife both graduate students at Texas State University San Marcos, and we both on F-1 student visa status. Our trip was from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Austin, Texas. Almost 2 stopovers throughout the flying, first in London Heathrow about 15hrs, and second in Chicago O’Hare 9hrs. This was our return flight from the winter break at Sri Lanka.

When we fly to Sri Lanka on December 13th 2007, we had a 9hr stopover at Charles de Galle Paris. Before our trip, I researched on the transit visa issues and couldn’t find precise information on Paris transits too. So, I’ll give you some idea on Paris transit visa too, in case someone needs to know on it. As I can remember we landed to the terminal 1 and depart from Terminal 4. Our flight f USA was from United Airlines and we thought we don’t wanna go out or do anything, and just stay at the airport for the next connecting flight. For the transit visa’s, there was no transit visa whatsoever required (at least for US F-1 Student visa holders) to stay 9-10hrs at the airport. But I don’t know there is change when you want to stay overnight at the airport for connecting flights. In case of the Heathrow London, you cannot stay overnight at the airport. I’ll come to this next. So, about CDG airport, its better to have at least 4-5hrs transit time if you travel to another destination. Don’t worry about spending that time if you are not in a hurry or in a business trip. In case our trip, we spend almost 9hrs in the next terminal (I guess it was terminal 4). Have some snacks ready, b’se we spent almost 10E (almost$20) for a yucky, ice cold sandwich. Everything really really expensive, so be prepared. Specially in terminals, for boarding there was a big line, so my advice is, if the boarding is started, try to clear that as soon as possible. If I’m correct the terminals are called satellites so don’t be confused with the names. So from my experience on this travel, there is no need of transit visa if you have a stopover at Paris, France (US valid Visa holders traveling from or Travel to USA).

Next information is for the Heathrow, London Airport. I’m not sure if you have a stopover at day time, then what is the situation, but definitely if you have a night stopover (in our case 15hrs) you needed to go through the immigration to get 24hr visa to go out from the Heathrow. So here’s the deal. Whenever you arrived at the airport, if you wish to go out or get 24hr visa, hurry up and don’t waste your time on going for restrooms or getting some break. Run as soon as possible to the immigration section, why? Because there’s a big line of people ahead of you if you wanna get your visa done. Especially if you have a limited time of stopover at London, then this is a must. This is crucial; we stayed about 1hrs on the line to get the visa done. There is no need of special paper work to get 24hr transit visa at Heathrow London.

But you need following documents mandatory for that.

1. Unexpired Valid US visa
2. Unexpired Passport
3. Immigration documents for USA, in our case (for F-1/F-2 student/dependent visa holders) I-20 issued by US College

4. Air tickets stating that you have prior arrangement to leave UK and your stay is just for transit via UK

The immigration officer didn’t ask anything other than this and it was just 1min interview to get the document stamped with 24hrs visa. Important thing is remember to get ready for your connecting flight and plan ahead. We stayed at Becontree, London and its about 2.5hrs from Heathrow. Believe me, next day we arrived just 1/2hr before the flight and needed to sprint through the airport to get the flight on time (Thanks to a helping hand from the United Airlines Officer at the check-in desk).

Let me know if someone needs more information on this. My email sampathid2003@yahoo.com

Windows Vista – How to Organize Start Menu All Programs

My first PC with windows 98 was with very much messy All Programs menu. I remember who told me and showed me to make it organize and clean. Thanks to Charith Gunasekara(Pola), I learnt one such a good habit. Make it clean your Start Menu All Programs list. I did this easily with all previous Windows Operating systems, except Vista which took some learning cycle due to not looking at the exact place. Windows 98, 2000, XP resembles same way of locating the start menu programs by going in to Documents & Settings and selecting the particular user and then start creating folder list to make it organize whatever the way you pleased (Not sure that the correct location in Windows 98, b’se its way back sometime).

Vista is bit different to do the same task. I tried to locate it in the same way in C:\ drive, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I did some Googleing to find it but no success. Lots of people suggest locating it in C:\Users…… or some other locations, but I couldn’t find those places. Oh one thing mine is Windows Vista Home Premium (64bit OS) with Service Pack 1. After some learning curve, I found we can easily do this without going to details in C:\
OK. Here’s how to do this,

1. Click on Start Menu and then right click on the All programs
2. Now from the popup menu, click on “Open All Users”
3. This will Open the window for your start menu all programs
4. Now create whatever the folders you wish to be at your all programs list. I usually create folders for Office, Entertainment, Programming, Graphics, Utilities, Internet etc…This is as you wish
5. Now close the window and go back to the start menu all programs and now drag and drop appropriate programs into each folder in the list. This is little bit different in Vista, where you need to wait a second on top of the folder name to open the list, then only you can drop your item inside the folder itself.

Again thanks Charith for enlighten me on this organizing thing; it makes the Start menu experience so much easier.

Free Asia cup Live Streaming ESPN360 – USA Only

Update (March 13, 2012) - This is one of my previous posts and you won't be able to use the stated espn link to watch the Asia Cup Cricket match online. I'm providing you 2 free links for that. Happy Cricketing. Don't forget to share the post in facebook, tweeter, google+ etc.

http://www.webcric.com/
http://lankacricketlive.blogspot.com/

Oh my God! This is unbelievable. All the sufferings for searching free live telecast on blogs and all sort of sites, online streaming interruptions……..everything gone. I wanna kiss whoever did this on ESPN360.com. Hey guys and gals in USA, here’s ur chance to watch ASIA Cricket series LIVE for FREE. ESPN360.com going to give you exclusive chance to watch free cricket on ASIA cup. Thank GOD again again and again. I don’t know is there any restrictions on internet service providers. But definitely Grande Communication is gonna support (cheers Grande). I saw this news on Cricinfo.com so thanks for cricinfo too. Remember this is only to USA.

Here’s the link : http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/espn360
Happy Cricket ……………..cheers Sri Lanka , no doubt you are gonna win the ASIAN Cup.