Some birds can't fly!

Two books, two women and two countries

2012-01-25T03:42:00.000-08:00

I read “A Thousand splendid suns” (TSS) by Khaled Hosseini some time back and it was a “Splendid” book by all means. Book is mainly about story of two Afganistan women who face cruel challenges of their lives, which lead not only by cultural and social factors, but political atmosphere of the country. Beneath the main story, I also learnt bit about the Afgan culture in a different angle, which couldn’t be caught in usual western media.

Recently I was lucky enough to read the book, “Disobedient Girl” (DG) by Ru Freeman. It was a very nice book which I enjoyed a lot. This book carries two distinct stories of two Sri Lankan women who struggle with their lives.

At a glance, it is like comparing Apples and Oranges if we try to compare Afganistan and Sri Lanka.. Its meaningless.. They are of course different entities.. Afgan society is an Islamic society while Sri Lanka is very much a Buddhist society. How women are treated is far different in these two countries, which clearly shows in these two books. This contrast is obvious and nicely grasped by someone who read both books in a short period of time. Credibility of that ground level information is the fact that those writers were born in those soils. Khaled Hosseini was born in Afganistan and Ru Freeman in Sri Lanka. At least they are not reporters who jump in to a ground with an agenda, but story tellers with roots. But now I am trying to see some similarities in between these two books in a different angle. This could be controversial.

Both books discuss about life stories of two women that head towards merely tragic ends. In both books it shows how their lives are being critically influenced by political unrest of the country. TSS shows how their society was badly beaten by terrorism (Taliban) and unstable governments greatly influenced by major powers of the world (US and Russia). In other hand DG highlights how Sri Lankan civil society was affected by JVP insurgency in 89 and suffered from a civil war for decades.

Most of all, I think, both countries had to struggle with the influence of first world since both countries are very important in terms of their location in the world map. During the cold war and afterwards, western countries badly wanted to have leaders for these countries, who can be handled by them. In order to gain the control, both countries were deployed terrorism. Their cultures were challenged and social structures were destroyed. Destroying the fundamentals of culture is the base of destroying a nation. Though it is different the way those women suffer in two books, roots remain the same.

According to western media, both countries are degraded to a lower level. (Thankfully, Sri Lanka managed to get rid of the terrorism afterwards) But reality is far different. Both countries were pushed to such situations... both countries have their own culture and social structure... as same as women in London or Paris, women in troubled countries too, have their own desires, dignity and feminine character.. Jealously, love, kindness, bond with mankind, emotions... TSS tells how Afgan women risked their lives to enjoy TITANIC movie in hidden televisions, even after usage of televisions were banned and killed who were found to be watching.

In search of Seahorses in Tasman Sea

2011-12-29T20:30:00.000-08:00

When I first speak to local diving expert, Peter, he simply said “it’s definitely not tropical...” So I understood that I am going to face a challenge here. In Sri Lanka all my dives were in tropical warm water, but now I am going to dive in cold waters (19 c) of Tasman Sea. In fact, it’s challenging. Below is the comparison of this sea surface temperature distribution with Sri Lanka.

Then I contacted Menaka, who is our expert dive master in Sri Lanka who was in Europe at that time and asked about the extra gear I needed to use in this kind of cold seas. Also I read bit about health issues including Hypothermia. Then also I realised that, too much preparation would lead me to a panic. So I just arranged things to start my diving following weekend.

It was totally a new experience. When I wear 5mm wetsuit, boots, hood apart from usual gear, I felt like an astronaut. My poor “skinny type” body (with respect to other divers who were present) was hardly holding those and I wanted to just jump in to the water as soon as possible... at least to get rid of painful weight of the gear!

Clifton gardens of Chowder bay was the selected diving site and its speciality was the chance of watching Seahorses, which I have never seen in their natural habitats. It was a great experience to see them in nature. There were some more other fishes, which didn’t take much of my attention. Obviously, you shouldn’t expect colourfulness of tropical coral reefs in cold water habitats, but there are some unique things to watch. 5mm wetsuit was good enough to protect you from cold water for a significant level. Also, you should not expect the visibility of a tropical sea in most cold waters.

Chowder bay had been used as a military base some time back and there were some interesting objects down the water such as a motor bike and wreck of a small boat which should have been used by then.

The Garden Village

2011-12-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

The Blue Mountains is a famous mountain range of New South Wales, Australia. It’s a world heritage site with a lot of important fauna, flora and etc. Honestly, I am not much impressed with those due to my “tropical” mentality, but for magnificent geographical formation and history that bound to old aboriginal heritage. By the way, I am also impressed with some small towns lies aside the Blue Mountains Railway line and Great Western Highway.

Leura is one of such nice small cities, about 100kn from Sydney that I really like to hang around. It’s also known as the Garden Village. It contains small colonial type cafes, Antique shops and beautiful gardens. Below are some photos I captured in my recent walk through this small city. The name Leura comes from the Aboriginal word meaning "lava".

In fact, I don’t hate bush!

2011-11-28T05:04:00.000-08:00

These are three popular figures with their label?

Bush is a bad man. His family business is war. Obama is a smart guy because he came in a long difficult path and became the US president. Again Hilary Clinton is a bitch because she interferes in independent states to empower US agenda. So that’s it. Why it happened that way?

For an example Bush not only killed civilians to invade oil resources of other countries, but approved torturing of war prisoners ignoring human ethics. Under his government, in 2007 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) practiced inhuman torturing techniques against prisoners. Bush government initiated a program (SERE program) just to discover new torturing techniques! Just as you and I worked in our respective professions, two contracted psychologists were busy finding new ways of torturing for Bush. CIA just used them towards prisoners. Torturing methods such as Waterboarding was used too. Waterboarding is a way of torture in which water is poured over the face of a captive, thus causing the individual to experience the terror of drowning. In 2009 Obama banned this... Rationally, he is a good man...

Waterboarding is demonstrated by activists..

If we agree that Bush did all for his greed, we need to accept entire USA including CIA were just watching WTC was blown and pride of USA was destroyed for ones wish. Probably Bush is paid better than Obama for those dirty jobs. There are a lot of benefits of maintaining a bad guy that ugly work could be credited. Bush was born bad and Obama was born good, because “birth” is carefully crafted to do a historical job. I am not happy to call this hidden hand as CIA, because it can be another label/proxy, which could be dumped by another “hero” like Obama. Today’s biggest myth is going after individuals, because Bush or Obama or Rumsfield is not a reality. Since this regime wanted to have a fresh figure with much credibility, western media were the first to criticize Bush and lead people to start go against him. America is good and Bush is bad! Once Bush is gone, again America is clean? There will be a day CIA is bad and it will be dumped too. People would clap for another up-coming hero for dumping CIA. Then again, America is clean and fresh!

This luxury is not with most other countries, including (so called?) poor countries; unfortunately not even with Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan voters vote to change the power while Americans vote to change the facade of power. Power in other countries is person centric. Probably, that’s the reason, a defeated president leave the role with a smiling face in first world while it’s far different in third world. If Obama leave presidency tomorrow what will happen to US? If Mahinda leaves his role, what will happen to Sri Lanka? Wouldn’t it be far different? In USA power is a hidden constitution/scenario and leaders are like virtual realistic models. Not like in Libiya or Iraq this regime is not shown... interfaces are being created time to time, so that anyone can blame them. It can be Bush, Obama, CIA, FBI, Area51, Chupakabra, Alien Colonization or anything... how about UN!

Though, Obama was made to perform differently, war is still continuing. Is this what people expected when he came as hero to the stage in the election time, I wonder. In the election time, famous theme of Martin Luther King, “I have a dream” was used in Obama’s campaigns. Martin Luther King was a leader and activist who believed in non-violent actions towards winning civil rights. This is what he told soon after his visit to India and meet Mahatma Gandhi; "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation." Obama is continuing the assignment he has been assigned and enjoying the brutal killing of a state leader (i.e. Muammar Gaddafi) today. Saddam Hussen was at least brought to a court, though media was covering his death like a flock of vultures who flying after a carcase. Martin Luther King’s dream has nothing to do with Obama for sure. Obama is not a good or bad guy. Just like Bush, he is a facade.

World wars we saw are like Black and white pictures. Cold War too is something we can understand. Current scenario (war?) is far different from any of the earlier eras. This is a fight of manipulation by all means. Afghanistan war was there as it is...it’s not to win or lose. Knowing them as the biggest enemies, all poor countries are meant to listen to World Bank and other organizations...We are programmed to eat poison while we have healthy food in our backyard.. Money is sent to us as "Loans" with a plan to use them.. In a way, it’s better to call this mechanism as “The master plan of manipulation”. Since I am not good in economics or politics, I would like to ask from intellectuals, is this a predicted outcome of corporate capitalism? Are we evolved to accept this?

Evolution of civilization gives man "shocks" in different eras. I am interested in analysing those in terms of expressionism. Anti-art movements were developed as a result of those shocks. Artist becomes a surrealist for a reason. When a painter illustrates a man without limbs and women with a vagina in her face, it gives a serious message about the society. With world wars, again mankind was shocked with depression and the holocaust occur in front of their eyes. This frustrating condition built further unsafe feeling and lack of belief in religions including god. So art media was further curved to express these deformities of the civilization.

In Sri Lankan context, we faced different shocks with open economy, two lost revolutions and activities of terrorism which challenged the foundations of social structure. This replaced “Piyadasa Sirisena” with “Ajith Thilakasena” in literature; replaced “Lester” with “Handagama” in cinema; replaced “Sarathchandra” with “Jayantha chandrasiri” in drama; and so on... whether said or not, big difference of the context of the art done by contemporary artists are parallel to social changes. Will I see empty canvases in next art exhibition in Lionel Wendt art gallery since artist wants to show the emptiness of current situation... or modern Art done with human flesh to show the cruelty of current capitalist society!

What I am really wondering is, whether current art media is enough to express context of hegemony. Am I seeing crocodiles in my tea cup or is there more people who feel this helplessness. If so, are we in front of next era of Anti-art (or x-art)... As an individual, I only feel that I am unable to express this situation through any media. So called modernism is becoming traditional and legacy in front of current complexity. Modernism is no more modern... Surrealism doesn’t express it...

Can Picasso’s Guernica express any of the dynamics of war in Afghanistan?

Even under this feeling, I too have more open questions without answers. Why environmental problem is not addressed by the master plan? (Everybody knows that USA has heavily invested on knowledge) As we know, lives of different people have different prices. So it’s understood, that some of the genocides may have been planned that cost human lives with less economic values, but global worming or ozone depreciation should have been considered seriously, since that decides the common fate of the mankind. Quite democratic! It caters everybody in the same spoon.

Also I am thinking, whether the economic growth of China a mistake? My absurd though hints me of different economic model rather than current monitory system and is master plan already working on it! Finally, China is becoming the richest...while USA is more concerned about the governance of world resources such as Oil... Richness of China is just an agreement (Money is a manmade entity) made through a created concept of the civilization. Does this tell something?

What is being put in store for Sri Lanka. Is it a flight crash for president? , Or another attempt of revolution through new fraction of JVP party.

As a society, we seem to have accepted a force and become wheels of its mechanism. Since we don’t have any other alternative, we have become fake... don’t we...

Probably, I am suffering from mild condition of Schizophrenia, else we all have only one question. Are we real or fake?

Australian Based LTTE Terrorist Network

2011-11-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

What She tells..

Who She is..

Meals Ready

2011-10-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Today my Punchi (Aunt) sent me a nice clip that made me start my day with a nice though in my mind and tears in my eyes. Please check.. whether it will do the same for you..

1000 journals

2011-10-11T04:28:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to do something with Graffiti. I believe it as ultimate expressionism. Today all art media have some kind of connection with monitory system. Movies, Books or Paintings are commercial entities. So I like graffiti because it is done just to express something... no rewards.. it’s very powerful, dynamic and people-centric; No rules at all. Recently I found information about a nice self-assign project done by a person to reveal such expressions done by different people in different geographic locations of the world. This project is called 1000 journals.

Andrea Kreuzhage was fascinated about the creativity kept beneath people’s lives. As he says he has been always thinking about what people scrawl on bathroom walls and story behind them. He started a project to pass 1000 journals within people/strangers to express their story in it through a writing/ painting/ abstract or any other way and pass it to next one. This exposed an exciting result. It ultimate became a story of modern mankind; an honest expression of thousands of people who live on earth today. Above clip shows some of the art work done by those unknown people.

please find the full story here.

Poplar trees of Hanthana

2011-09-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

Dedigama V. Rodrigo is just a name, that we used to see in the second page of most Russian books (translated to Sinhala) found in Sri Lanka. I called him “just a name” due to reasons. We have at least seen photographs of other translators and have managed to collect some information about them, but not about Dedigama Rodrigo. Dedigama Vincent Rodrigo himself seems to be an untold story.

Sri Lankan readers have been influenced by Russian literature than any other stream of literature. Specially, when we were young and youthful, we were amazed and addicted to the true beauty, romance, power and progressiveness of the contexts of books by Aithmathaw, Gorky, Austhrovski and etc. They really touch our hearts and they were helping us to identify new emotions in us. Russian books translated to Sinhala by Dedigama was like a comprehensive example for the influence, books can made to a community.

One day, when we were having some tea at Colombo public library canteen, while chatting about Russian literature, we decided to find out some information and probably to meet this legendary person. Our attempt was not successful since the first clue we could collect was about his death.

Very recently (in 2010), I could read a little bit about Dedegama’s life from an article published in Divaina Paper. Though, I knew he was a communist party member who lived in Russia, just with the objective of getting Russian literature to Sinhala, I didn’t know he was initially a doctor who left the profession for his noble task.

Though it is controversial, I too agree with the idea that Sri Lankan society was well-fed with ideology of a fair society through literature that lead to a revolution in 1971. It was a society without many developed audio/visual communication and information media we enjoy today. Luckily, Sri Lankan society was maintained with high rate of literacy than most other developing countries; in fact, it was a good background for development of literature. One should do an in-depth study on the reasons that Russian literature reached each and every layer of the society than English literature, considering the fact that we were under the administration of Queen for a long. We have adapted to most Victorian traditions, but not English literiture. In other terms, I wonder why “Tale of Two cities” didn’t reach all the layers of the society, but “The Mother” of Gorky and “The first Teacher “of Aithmathaw. One reason should be the context which is friendly for our agriculture based society. Other reason could be the clever translators like Dedigama.

The First Teacher (Guru Geethaya) was one simple example for a Russian book, which captured the hearts of young readers in Sri Lanka. It is a masterpiece for me and most of my friends who like literature. Once I visited my brother at Peradeniya University. My brother was one big fan of Guru Geethaya. There was an amazing view of Hanthane Mountains from my brother’s hostel room. From there we could see two significant trees, which they used to call “Poplar” trees, which was a well explain symbol in the book. Sri Lanka hasn’t got Poplar trees, but they live in the hearts of the youth!

Below poem is one of the nice once that shows poets passion on this book and its characters, which I saw in a Blog recently.

(Duishane and Althenai are the main characters of Guru Geethaya)

It’s not an exaggeration, if I say, we lived with Russian literature than one can imagine today. Some characters became our heroes. We tried to grab some characteristics of them. We loved the way they think.. We wanted to be brave as them.. We wanted to have the commitment of Duishane in us.. We tried to find Althenai within the girls we liked.. I was wondering whether Steps plains is far different from Horton plains..
Anyway, this is becoming the history since, reading is very much lacking in the agenda’s of the generations followed afterwards. Literature was also removed from school curriculums since J.R Jayawardena though it’s nonsense. As he wanted, new generations didn’t have “fantastic” heroes we had, but “real” heroes like cricketers and Super stars!

I recently met a Russian lady and had the chance of asking some questions about their literature. Surprisingly, she hadn’t read some of the Russian books I have read in Sinhala. So I had to explain how Russian literature influenced us and the mysterious person behind it.

This faded image is the only one, I could ever find of Dedigama;

Shame on You

2011-07-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

e-Bird database - Beyond the field note

2011-07-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

This post is for people who do birding. Now we have a complete online system to manage the bird watching records. It caters every aspect of maintaining an online birding database. Please try http://ebird.org/content/ebird/
May be you are a recreational bird watcher, whose birding records will not go beyond your field notebook. Through this system you are sharing your valuable data with others who are more serious in the subject and need more data for their studies. For your point of view, your data is stored somewhere safe to refer from anywhere, whenever you need. What I like most is capabilities of analysing my own data and data of all other bird watchers.

Please see few ways I can analyse/summarize my data;

1) My records of Gray Hornbill with locations

2) Ceylon Jungle fowl observations throughout the country

3) Bird observation list of just one birding field trip

These are a very few simple data presentations I prefer as an armature birder, but you can have your own charts and graphs of your choice. Also you can download your data to an excel sheet that enables importing your data for another application.

Credibility of Data

If everybody can freely submit their data, what could be the guarantee we have on data? This is also being handled by e-Bird org carefully. Observations submit to the system is being monitored by a (volunteer) country reviewer who is an expert ornithologist. In simple terms, if you report you observed Blue Magpie in Maradana, you will be asked to discuss and produce your field notes.

I wrote this, especially to encourage non-professional birders to manage and share their valuable data. I know some, who has got very important data, but they wannish with their field note books without any trace.

Sadness, Night and Moon

2011-04-12T05:06:00.000-07:00

Moon is a friend of mine! Moon has a very special place within the minds of poets.. anyway, I guess people prefer night when they have to do something with their emotions .. Specially when you want to be alone with the tiny tear drops hidden in the mind. In such occasions, moon becomes the only observer.

When I was young and started to dig the life in my early twenties, I understood the power of sadness and started to enjoy the lonely emotions bombarded in to my mind under the moonlight. It is the time we started to enjoy songs of Kapuge. I could still remember how I saw the tear drops of audience, glittering under the pale lighting of John de Silva theatre, when I first watched his show Kampana. (the shock). Hope Nilantha should be remembering that night we enjoyed the “passion of sadness”. Though I am a non-smoker, we smoked to see whether it will compensate our emotions. Since there were no buses available in the late night, we walked back to home under the moonlight. So whole this useless story was told to tell that I am someone enjoy sadness than joy. People who are in same mind would know the hidden connection among sadness, night and moon. For me moon doesn’t remind me of a beautiful face of a girl, but a very mysterious companion who shares my hidden tears.

Today I am alone and staying in a distance country. I am away from home, wife, baby and Mum.. In most of the nights, I become alone with my emotions and the old companion.. In northern hemisphere, moon is seen bigger than the tropics. In early nineties I saw in a paper, the best poem that tells my story, which revealed that I am not alone with my abstraction.. Its from one of my favorite contemporary Sinhala poets, Chandrasiri Dodangoda (see how Vini sketched it). I think, each word of this poem lies beneath my thoughts till I leave this world.

As a hiker, when I spend countless nights in jungles, I didn’t forget to be with my emotional space with night and moon. Today I am again feeling it. It’s already autumn in southern hemisphere, I can’t be walking outside in the night, but I don’t forget to look at it via my window. Is this sadness? Is this the tragic of loneliness.. I don’t know.
Famous dramatist Dayananda Gunawardena once told, dramas with enjoyable ends would more suitable for tropical countries while, dramas with tragic ends would suitable for countries with cold climates!

Dr. Nalin Suwaris had a very interesting idea about sun and moon. He thinks, sexually, sun is like Man and Moon is like Women. Moon has a cycle of twenty eight days and Sun simply comes to climax every day. In fact, when we look at moon in the night, are we becoming connected with Moon’s feminine features.. is it a healing for ones hectic life.. I know, I am not the only person who has this abstract thought; there are more to come…

Nudes and the City

2010-12-08T14:50:00.000-08:00

I have seen some of the photographs taken by Spencer Tunick, but I didn’t analyze or think of them much. They are simply a lot of naked people in different locations, particularly in cityscapes. Recently, I managed to go through his work very carefully with the inspiration came through a video watched about his work.

Spencer is not a nudist. His is a photographer! His work is simple and way he works too is very simple. His expressions are to blend locations with people.. people in the sense, people is a raw manner. Not decorated with clothes or anything, people as they are. It is a superb expressionism. I guess human body is one of the most powerful icons we used since visual art is born. His photos show the contrast in between human body and man-made structures of a city. In a way, it is a representation of nature and materialized and commoditized world.

Spencer started working in his art with very simple theories. What I like most was he didn’t use models or any selected beautiful men and women. He simply used volunteers who would like to take part in his art. He did his exercise in most of the big cities in the world and all the states of US. Number of people participate in the photo shoot is not predetermined; it is the number who accept his invitation. In a way, entire photo becomes a team work and work created according to the physical and social atmosphere. That creates amazing new dimension of getting photographs of human beings in modern civilization.

Before he became popular, Spencer does a self assignment to take that kind of photos in each state in US. What he simply did was, he got all the gear in to a van and traveled to different states with a couple of companions including his girlfriend. When he reaches a town, if he felt like taking a photograph, he simply walked through the roads and invited people he met to participate for his photo shoot. Of course, you can’t even think of such thing in Asia; it was not easy in USA either! He was virtually inviting everybody he meets; Young crowd, old people, pregnant women, fat people, slim people, black people, white people and everybody in this society. He simply doesn’t know how many people would like to participate anyway. Photo shoot is done with the available people. He doesn’t usually have any hard and fast rule to direct them. His simple guides along with background cityscapes make a wonderful photograph.

As I understand, Spencer is using the nudity for his work in very weightless manner. He is not talking or promoting nudism or any sexual agenda. He is an artist; strangely, see the beauty and way of expressing his ideas using naked human body. Not glamour or fashion in it. Just like Chandraguptha Thenuwara wanted to use Barrels (Barrelism) to express his arguments about military influenced society of Sri Lanka in the war time, Spencer’s trump used to express his idea is nudity along with cityscapes. He used more realistic raw materials than a fashion photographer who uses the body of trained beautiful men and women. While fashion photographer recreates the fantastic product together with fashion designer and model, Spencer “let it happen” in front of his camera lens. Theoretically, Product is influenced by the life experiences of men and women participate in it along with the view of the city. If there are a few people in the photo that means others have rejected to be in the photo, which also reveals something, since it is defined within the location. Nude body of an ordinary person who lives in the current society becomes the most powerful proof of that society than a model whose body is professionally maintained.

Don’t you think your body is the best living proof of your life… that carries all the good and bad times of your life? ...that reflects the tears and smiles of the story of your life? ..that archives everything happened since you were born? Spencer Tunick, as a photographer, carefully collects them into his photos.

Dark Romanticism

2010-10-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

After the dark experiences of a ‘lost revolution’ in 89, Sri Lankan civil society was filled with uncertainty. That was the time I was learning the idea of utilization of art media to express complex thoughts. Each and every painting, poem or drama done by young artists had the significant marks of the Dark Age.

Mostly poem sections of the news papers were flooded with remembrances of tears, bloods and frustration. As an art enthusiast, I like those expressionisms. I enjoyed. I was realizing, even the love and romance took a different shape which maintained the touch of the reality. Poets were scared to be fooled by sky high dreams but the harsh reality that hammered the community in an unforgivable manner.

I always like romantic arts. I like the most of the poems written in that era. I particularly liked the romantic poems written under this context. They were very down to earth, realistic, sorrowful, yet fascinating and romantic. One could argue they were something else, but not me. Of course, they were far different from beautiful songs propagated in 60 and 70 decades.

I still remember most of the poems I kept on reading again and again. Poem section (i.e. Kuw-Muthu) of Divaina Paper, (which is decorated by the sketches of famous artist/cartoonist Vinee Hittigoda) was a very good arena for upcoming poets to express their thoughts. I was among the fans who always wanted to discuss and enjoy. I guess that’s the time I spent most of my time enjoying poems. Such a nice time!

I had to tell all these because I recently read some of my favorite poems of that age and managed to spend hours with those memories. Then I thought of sharing this because, there could be some other people who have the same memory. Below is one of the best romantic poems I enjoyed most. May be Dananjaya, Rasika, Sama, Daminda or Ajith could still remember the words and how crazy we were for post lost revolution poetry of 89’.

The Whale That Ate Jaws

2010-09-08T20:57:00.001-07:00

Below is a video, that I though of sharing with you all. This is something really new to me..Really exciting too..

Dive in to Ship-X

2010-09-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

In one of my past posts, I have mentioned my enthusiasm and interest on adventures of Mike and Cleark. They are closely related to Trincomalee where they found an ancient "Swayambhu Linga” with spiritual power and change the history. (i.e. Legend of Mike Wilson) I always wanted to dive in to the waters of Trincomalee that revealed a past history that had been hidden down the lockers of Davy Jone! When it came in real, it was like surfing through the past legend.

Recently, I had the great time diving in the coast of Trinco (Actually Nilaweli and Irrakkakandy). As usual Menaka was leading the diving team and our team was consisted of a Russian Underwater videographer/ Padi instructor from Moscow, a teenage girl from Switzerland, Devana and me. Menaka is the most capable dive master I have ever dived with.

Our diving plan was to dive the Pigeons Rock first and then to the Irrakkakandy ship wreck. When we dive in Pigeons Rock it had perfect conditions that gave us the best opportunity of feeling the fantastic beauty. Corals were so live and perfectly coloured. Marine creatures were all over. We managed to observe number of new fish species that we have never spotted in Hikkaduwa. Perfect conditions gave our videographer to capture the beauty without any obstacles. It was not that deep, so we managed to spend 78 minutes under water!

(These Photos are from the web)
The Ship-X

After having some rest in the Pigeons Island we sailed to our next destination; the Irrakkakandy ship wreck. Ship wrecks: always mysterious, historical and my favourite.

Even though, visibility had vanished while we were descending, sunlight became brighter in the next moment. Wreck was lying beneath the shallow sea about 12m down.

It was a massive ship with no records at all! Indeed it is a mystery. No one has ever discovered the identity of this ship and whereabouts. While I was diving, I was imagining, what can be the tragic story of this ship and its sailors. What made this sinful mistake?

This ship should be fairly old but one can identify the remaining as parts of engine room and so on. Live corals had changed the shapes of most of the artefacts scattered on the sea bed.

One experienced diver has written about this ship in the dive Sri Lanka website and he suspects this as a ship with a British origin. I am now waiting till I meet our friend, marine archaeologist, Rasika Muthukumarana to see whether he can give us some hints on this mysterious ship. According to the local fishermen, wreck is still being watched by its captain’s soul.

While I write this report today, I am in my office, looking at the mighty Indian Ocean through my window and the ships that emerge from the horizon and sail towards Colombo port. Still my mind is full of unanswered questions about the Irrakkakandy ship and its tragedy. Can remaining of the ship help a historian to solve the hidden story? I don’t know! What I know is I really need to dive in to this mystery again.

Below photos were taken during our expedition;

Getting ready with the gear..

New Irrakkakandy bridge

Pigeons Island
Resting at Pigeons Island before the second dive..

Beginning

2010-08-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

Watching the sun rise from the east coast of Sri Lanka is a unique and heavenly experience. I managed to capture below photos while I was experiencing it very recently near the beach of Nilaveli, Trincomalee. (In order to show the real colors/light none of the photos were edited using digital techniques.)

Golden Rose

2010-08-06T02:02:00.000-07:00

I am very much influenced by the books I read since my small age. Apart from my education, books play a big role in building my life. In fact, writers are my heroes!

Russian writer Konstantin Paustovsky has written, probably the best, book on the role of a writer; their responsibilities and commitments. Book is called Golden Rose. This book has been translated to Sinhala by Ariyawansha Ranaweera. It is a great book. This book is focused on preparation of a person who plans to become a writer; required generous commitment, patience and other characteristics.

Paustovsky tells a nice story to explain the commitment one should have in order to become successful in literature. A Trash collector spends two years gathering the grains of gold dust from the trash bins of a jewelry shop. When he has enough gold, he smelts it into a beautiful golden rose as a gift for the woman he loves. Writer should have such a commitment to grab the right raw materials to write a book.

Anyway, recently I started to find the faces of some of the writers I like most and created below facebook! Most of them are died by now, but they all have a very special noble place in my heart.

I guess some of them have a special place in your heart too. Can you identify them?

Corporate Monarchy

2010-07-20T01:51:00.000-07:00

As US is the most powerful country, British Petroleum is the fourth biggest corporation on earth. Now both are two different faces of same entity. This Video reveals about special kind of armed people who never say to whom they report. This is not a movie!

Can we even think of democracy, if the fate of most powerful country is this pathetic!

I am so keen to see what the Sri lankan champions of human rights has to comment on this. I personally didn’t see any such comment! If a porn movie is banned in Sri Lanka I can gather 1000 human right activists to Lipton circle in no time!

Deep in to Yala.

2010-07-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

Exploring Yala block two is a very nice experience. Not only is the wild exploration, four wheel driving experience too is amazing. I enjoyed it very much and really want to make it again. In order to make it, you are advised to use two four wheel drives with more than two backup wheels. You will be provided an experienced guide from the department of Wildlife. Our guide was Samaranayake (alias Ali Samare) who was an expert in wild elephants.

Most importantly, this track runs through bit of un-disturbed forest lands where you need not disturb the wildlife there. Not like in Yala Block 1, here you will notice some wild animals get really upset with the sound of vehicles. Once a herd of Buffalos, disturbed by the noise of vehicle engines, ran towards our vehicles.

Typically, people who do this expedition got though the Yala National Park and cross the Kumbukkan Oya and enter Kumana National Park. When Kumbukkan Oya is flooded this expedition is not allowed. Spending a camping night in the banks of Kumbukkan Oya is a very rare experience. For me it was one of the great camping nights.

Team Who Participated including Park Warden Mr.Thisera

Hoppoe, One of the magnificant birds in Yala

A flock of White Ibis

Nest of a Fantail Flycatcher

Black winged stilts

Crossing the Kumbukkan Oya

Camping in the banks of Kumbukkan Oya

A herd of wild buffaloes, disturbed by the noise of vehicles

Chat with the officials at Okanda range office

Photographs by Roshan Kumara and Nuwan Kurulagama.

Rhythmic Tree

2010-06-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

While I was in Akka’s place I noticed that the wall colors are artistic in the guest room I am provided. Also I saw some rhythm in the tree like figure used to decorate the cover of the pillow. So I took a photo of it with background of the wall and it became so beautiful and artistic. That’s how my photo Rhythmic Tree was born. Today it became the Staff Choice of usefilm web site. It’s a gorgeous achievement for an amateur photographer like me…. Today is my day..!

Photo can be seen here.. http://www.usefilm.com/image/1584981.html

A good answer to international community

2010-05-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

Big markets

2010-05-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

We are the victims of marketing! It has different shapes and different scales. Most developed countries are having more developed (say so) market systems. Again they have better legal frameworks to maintain some levels of marketing and to protect consumers from extremes. Anyway, due to big competition their marketing and branding is becoming more and more creative. Billboards, name boards and displaying of products/services are really attractive. In other terms, they never bombard their message in raw manner.. even the colors used for a name board are carefully selected. In my quick excursion in Melbourne city, I managed to capture some of those which remind me think of the shape of branding in such big markets.

Save migratory birds in crisis – every species counts!

2010-05-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

I have been writing about bird migration and related experiences bit often. Even the last post was about another birding experience. Anyway, I feel I didn’t urge that much about the conservation of these birds and what threats they face. In the worldwide context, biologists and ornithologists are talking more and more about the conservation of the migrating birds. I also feel that the parameters affect the survival of migrating birds could be bit different and hard to estimate.

World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) was initiated in 2006 and is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the protection of migratory birds and their habitats. This day comes in every year on the second weekend May. Each WMBD focuses on a different topic and this year’s theme is “Save migratory birds in crisis – every species counts!”

Protecting the habitats will be the core of conservation, but a lot more steps are to be taken. Will start from our gardens.. will keep some space for the birds..this won’t cost much..

Till next migration season comes..

2010-05-06T01:00:00.000-07:00

When I heard that the winter is so critical this year, I simply understood that we are getting a better chance of observing migrant birds in Sri Lanka. As I assumed, we could see a lot of migrants this season.

We suddenly decided to do some birding in Annaiwiludawa, not only to observe migrant birds, but mainly our friend Ulinda badly needed to capture some good bird photos during his stay in the country. (Most of the photos displayed in this post have been captured by him) His incomparable photographic gear was supportive of his enthusiasm.

Anyway, we spent a nice birding time at Annaiwiludawa this season. Annaiwiludawa Tank Sanctuary has been appointed as one of the Ramsar site due to its importance. Protected land area consists of 1397 hectares.

Now time has come to say Bye to this un-invited winter visitors! Till next winter..

Below photos are to keep our memories live till then.

Today is earth day!

2010-04-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

We have number of “days” for different reasons. People criticize this because, we allocate days for objectives where we really don’t work for it. There is a women’s day for men who never treat women with the right respect. Peace day is important for people who put the seeds of war.

It is high time we need to think about our earth.. one day is not enough.. survival of life on the earth depends on this.. so we don’t have an alternative!

Please watch the video from greenpeace;

Ban Ki Moon, the defense secretary of USA !

2010-04-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

Many people has slammed the US saying it has blood on its hands after a shocking video showed a US aircraft firing indiscriminately towards civilians in Iraq killing atleast 25 of them including two journalists.

Please watch this video.

Now western media together with other intellectuals has started to discuss the impact of existence of the media like Wikileaks in terms of the threat to the national security of powerful governments. Authenticity/ truth of the video is not seems to be taking in to consideration by any of the entities including UN, who is having the responsibility.

Being the first nation in the world who truly irradicated terrorism, Sri Lanka is still suffering from various allegations bombarded from westerners. We need to ask Mr.Moon who is so enthusiastic in that practice, what he is going to do for this even after murderer was caught with bloody hands.

Free media and human rights are two main themes used by powerful governments initiated by US intelligence to interfere in third world countries in order to break their economies. Now it is our time to see how Mr. Obama and Mr. Ban Ki Moon would sit together and sort this out.. Whatever the stories created by them will be spread by western media like nothing.

I personally think, UN hasn’t been this fail in credibility of their work in the past.

This is truly pathetic and dangerous.

Tech: Two bugs in Visual Studio

2010-03-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

I recently encountered two bugs in Microsoft VS (2008 in my case). I will share it here since someone else too could spend hours of their valuable time on them.

1.Same name, different case variables

Theoretically, we can declare two variables with same name, if they were declared in different cases as below;

Variable1 : Memberid

Variable2 : MemberID

Anyway, better don’t do that since practically this gives an runtime error. Error message would be something like this;

“ambiguous match found”

2. Maxlenght of Multiline text boxes

When you declare a multiline textbox (a server control) as below, you can see the Maxlenght attribute as you are used to see it in other kinds of textboxes. In this case it is set to 10. Believe me, this never works! And problem is not with your code, but with implementation VS.

We have to add a JavaScript to eliminate the problem. I used below one.

Wish Microsoft will fix these things in coming versions..
Happy Coding!

Loss of a true environmentalist !

2010-03-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

I was so shocked to hear the demise of Piyal Aiya. Mr. Piyala Parakrama had finished his crucial role in Sri Lankan environmental conservation arena, on early this month. It is always sad to hear deaths of good people in times they are needed most..

I first met him when I was a school boy while organizing an activity for world environment day. I think that’s soon after he returned to country completing his studies at Lumbumba Friendship University. Piyal Aiya soon became a very helpful resource to our school environment society.

Afterwards, I identified him as a person with a genuine need to fight back against the ongoing environmental issues. He held a number of positions in various organizations, but as a person he was not bound with any organizational framework. He believed something and he bravely worked to achieve it. That’s his passion.. he worked with government to achieve something, but next day he could be seen in a rally against the government to show his disagreement towards something..

Last time I met him at Jayawardenapura Hospital when I was rushing to see my father who was in critical condition. Piyal Aiya had come to some other matter, but he joined me to visit my father. He wished my father a fast recovery and treated him with his unique pleasant smile...!

I think, Piyal Aiya’s loss is for the country.. Nature and Humanity..

Very sadly, we have to say Bye to this noble person, untimely!

Fed up with monetary system?

2010-03-11T04:45:00.000-08:00

Dive Log - Upath Diyamba Gala

2010-03-11T01:24:00.000-08:00

Upath Diyamba Gala is a new diving site in Hikkaduwa and we started this seasons with diving in to it. Site was average by every means. Even though visibility was not that favorable we managed to notice some fishes.

Malfunctioning diving gear!

Anyway, I was not happy with the dive at all because I had to start the dive with some difficulty. When I start descend, I found water coming in to my mouth through the mouthpiece. So I came up again and position the mouthpiece (of second stage) correctly again in my mouth and started to descend, but nothing changed. Then I did one of the biggest mistakes I have ever done in water.. start breath fast with small volumes of air in an increasing momentum which lead me to "lack of oxygen" in body. Actually this is medically an "asphyxiation". I came up again and informed this to the captain of the boat but his advice was what I tried a couple of times already. Anyway, then I switched to alternative air source and get problem solved. While I was doing all the struggle, other buddies were waiting down the anchor line wondering what has happened to me.. That’s the poor start. Anyway, dive was quite good at the end. Anyway, you should never dive if you are not sure about equipment.

I managed to do some swimming though the reef with a snorkel and found a lot of fishes near the coast and that was a good sign.

Diving in Colombo

I guess divers are amazed to hear that a lot of new diving sites have been identified just near Colombo. This is wonderful news and all the credit should go to divers who worked hard to identify those. One stop online diving guide has exposed them here.

Hope of the east

Since, east is now attracting lots of travelers; new diving stations are to be located in east side also. This is a good new too. This makes us dive throughout the year.

Exploring Nuwara Gala – the second leg

2010-02-24T19:53:00.000-08:00

We all were quite amazed to explore Nuwara-Gala when we saw it for the first time. I revealed about it in one of my past posts. We decided to have an excursion again in November 2009, after the terrorism problem is over in the area.

As usual we left Colombo very early in the morning and head to Pollebedda via Maha Oya. We were aware about the severe drought in the area and got prepared with necessary drinking water with us.

Once we stepped in to the village we saw a lot of changes. We spent our first night in the school (Pollebedda Maha Vidyalay) and it had been developed so much. Last time we saw only a couple of poor buildings, but it had been converted to a big school with an increased number of students. Even the village economy seemed to have gained some growth may be with the Rambakan Oya irrigation project. Such development projects occur with the villages could even make devastating changes to day to day lives of the people and their society.

We couldn’t meet the old Wedda chief Gomba this time, but we heard that he was so old and spending most of the time on a wheel chair.

Wijaya who guided us to the Nuwara-Gala last time, also joined us with two other experienced trackers, (Gunabanda & Dharmadasa) who are very friendly and experts in the subject as same as Wijaya. We started our hike following early morning and it was so hot and weather was as dry as could be. Forest hadn’t experienced rain for last 6 months and strong wind was quite unbearable when we go up the top of the rock. Spending the night in the cave where we used last time, seemed quite impossible with the increasing winds in the late hours. So we spent (mostly sleepless!) our second night on the rock surface. We time to time changed the locations to find safe places from the wind, but it wasn’t possible at all.

Forest was not with much difference, but as we explained in the previous post this forest is very much exposed to illegal timber traders and poaching. Positive change was, water in the pond on the top of the rock was bit more cleanly and we used them for washing.

Anyway, I guess, it is high time to take steps to conserve this historically valuable place for future generations. Under current condition, anyone can destroy the ruins and historically valuable entities.

It was as tough as last time but we managed to get the real fruit of the dry zone hike. Mostly we were better equipped with knowledge about the area and relevant surrounding through Dr.Spittle’s and Mr.Douglas B.Ranasinghe’s books.

Below are only few of the photographs taken by Uresh and Roshan.

It’s a good walk through the dry grassy lands

Only fresh water spring lie in this thicket

A lot of room for photography!

Man made pond on the rock surface on the top

Cave which we used to spend night last time.

Some Birds Can’t Fly 2.0

2010-02-10T20:01:00.000-08:00

This is the second version of my blog! Actually this is nothing much but a better user interface. (I believe so!) Actually, I was bit of hating the previous appearance and started to find a new one, but unfortunately I found I was so choosy in that exercise. Anyway, I am still struggling with converting this to exact thing I really need.

Previous version of Some Birds Can’t Fly (i.e. SBCF 1.0) was successful and I gained a lot from sharing the information and thoughts with people. I measured it basically through the comments given by readers and friends. Of course this blog is like a “Cocktail”! This contained articles on Wildlife, Nature, People, Web development technologies and uncategorized stuff, but all they are my life experiences.

Thank You Very Much!

I have written around 50 posts. Actually, this blog didn’t attract a very big crowd but a decent number (2,505 Visits as at 2010/01/19), but from very different locations (From 67 Countries). I am happy! Thank you very much for being with my blog and encouraging me.

Act now - Change the future !

2009-12-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

View All banners

United Nations Climate Change Conference is now taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark. People around the world are now looking at the great leaders, what they going to decide for common future of the world. It seems this could be the last chance to pay our attention towards a generous initiation to act. This is the last chance to change the future.

Environmentalists all over the world are already forcing the authorities to act immediately and genuinely, because they have a lot of doubts, whether leaders would make themselves changed to think in much nature friendly way from their profit oriented thinking pattern. In other words, if Obama does as Bush did, world would be much un-fortunate!

Will hope for the best..! this is the ultimate fight in between profits and sharing.. Cruelty and kindness.. Anyway, this will decide the fate of mankind..

(Above banner is one of the banners viewed in Copenhagen airport as a part of the campaign of forcing the leaders to act today)

Role model in Conservation of Wildlife

2009-12-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

Officers of the government sector are being hammered by most of the media and people due to their inefficient working pattern and lack of positive attitudes towards the duty they got to perform. Department of wildlife is only one such government department which is being criticized by so many ways. While I started to hang around wild places since I was a school boy, I simply realized how hard their job should be. Any way, all the claims raise against them are not just speculations; there are a lot of corrupted and unbelievably lazy people in the scene.

Any way, there are some counter examples, who have committed the maximum to serve the country and do their job accurately. In one of the past posts, I revealed about one of the great wildlife officers I have met and his tragic end. (i.e. Mr.Kumarasinghe) There was only one another officer I can recall, who was inspired to do the job so cleverer. That’s Mr.Wasantha Pushpananda. End of this officer too was not with much difference from Kumarasinghe’s. Kumarasinghe was killed by poachers while Pushpananda was killed by terrorists! This world is not a fair place at all.

I first met Mr.Pushpananda while he was the park warden of Gal Oya National Park. I was on a visit to Gal Oya with few other guys from University of Colombo. When we expose our enthusiasm in wildlife and conservation, he was so happy and extended his full support to our work within the park premises. I have never seen such an efficient, dynamic and systematic person on this earth!

He kept park office as clean as a temple. No once could enter it without removing shoes. He was so fast in what he does. For an example, I have never seen someone who drives so fast in wild trails like he does. In other hand, he was so rigid with his laws and disciplinary procedures.

When ceasefire agreement was declared, government wanted to re-open Wilpattu in 2003. Pushpananda was assigned the massive task of converting this neglected park in to a functioning one and he was appointed the warden. I think, his energy and managing skills were well-shown with this unrealistic task. He had to renovate the old bungalows and re-shape the old roads to motor able once. When we visited Wilpattu Pushpananda explained his development plans with us. Specially he was talking to Dr.Dayawansa and got his opinions on his plans.

When he rehabilitates Wilpattu National Park, he didn’t depend on government money. Sometimes he personally went to business people and managed to get some financial supports. He managed to get the help of youths of the area when he needs extra labor force. He was a happy man and he was enjoying when Park was developed step by step. Willpattu became his home! With his efforts, Willpattu became one of the most famous Parks among wildlife enthusiasts very soon.

His death was so tragic! He was killed along with his team consist of wildlife rangers and army officers when he was on the way into the jungle to repair a drinking water tank for elephants. Bodies were found with gunshot injuries and server cutting injuries that showed signs of torture. Pushpananda died within the Park he loved most.. he died within the park he nursed to rebuild.

We couldn’t personally attend to his funeral due to an official matters. Anyway, we wanted to convey our condolence to his family members and we head to his village at Diyakitulkanda (off Mathugama) in the following evening after office duties. It was so dark and about mid-night when we reach his home. There wasn’t electricity in that village and we saw a small lamp had been lit in front of the house. When we spoke to his brother, we got to know the things we didn’t know about this great person. He had been so simple in his life; any of the villagers didn’t know about his massive important role in Sri Lankan wildlife. His brother started to cry when we expose our condolence.. Tears of a male are always heavier!

Since we have a peaceful surrounding today, Willpattu will be reopened and come up to the pinnacle of its state as a very important Wild Life Park in Sri Lanka… Only few would remind that, the soil of Willpattu had been fertilized with the tears, sweat and blood of a true hero of the nation.

Dutugamunu: a taboo topic?

2009-10-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

Jayantha Chandrasiri has started a massive cinematic task. He is going to take King Dutugemunu’s character to Cinema. It’s going to be a challenge definitely. Apart from making the film, he is also facing the challenges of critiques already. I wonder this is the first time in the history in Sri Lanka; someone has encountered this kind of criticism even before starting the shooting!

I guess, there is a hidden agenda in this suppression. I don’t know whether this film will be a success or not, but trying to stop it even before doing seems very suspicious. I received a couple of e-mails that criticize the film so aggressively.
When Handagama’s film was banned by authorities, there were a lot of activists and Independent Media movements who talked and showed their disapproval. No one seems to be rescuing Jayantha. What is the difference in between two scenarios?

Some of the critiques say Jayantha is doing this for money and this is supporting extreme nationalism. Jayantha was making dramas/movies based on historical events for a long time. Actually, at that time, no one was much interested in history or such attempts. Now everybody knows that country itself is having new awareness in national ides and rethinking of our own ways of solving the problems. Under current context, a lot more people, media and groups have changed their colors to show their brand new patriotic faces. Now Jayantha has no rights to do what he has been doing?

This case tempts me to analyze the situation this way.. Jayantha has been quite successful in his movie making carrier and significantly he is the only one who didn’t run after international awards. People of Sri Lanka always loved him for what he did. There are some "too much internationalized" entities that always did their best to drag down the true national awareness in Sri Lanka throughout the history. They are not sacred of Handagama, Prasanna Withanage or Vimukthi because they are actually passively promoting their needs. Those people should be really scared that Jayantha would do a better job, otherwise they will not try to hammer him even before starting the initial work.

I have seen some other group who has been criticizing the film because they simply don’t agree with selection of actors. They simply say actor who has been selected for role of Dutugamunu is "not majestic looking" enough to represent the king. They blame Jayantha for doing Anti-national acts through the movie!!

If we summarize the facts, Jayantha is being beaten by both nationalists and anti-nationalists! In a country that “Per person independent movements” are so high.. no one is there to protect his right to do his art!

This harsh criticism has increased my inquisitiveness about the movie.

This movie can be a success or failure... but I really can’t understand the ethical base of hammering Jayantha based on speculations, even before examining the product.

Tech: Custom Web Service for Microsoft SharePoint Server

2009-10-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

Microsoft SharePoint Server has become one of the leading packages for document management. Apart from tasks we do using the wizards we need to do some developing to accomplish certain customization in SharPoint Server. To do that we have two options;

- Using the built-in Web Services of SharePoint (some limited operations)

- Creating a Custom Web Service (this gives all the flexibility)

Writing a Custom Web Service using SharePoint Service 3.0 object model is bit tricky work. MSDN library explains it here, but I find some lack of clarity in its explanation. So I am going to explain the steps in much detail manner.

Coding the ASP.NET Web Service in Visual Studio 2005

Start a new ASP.NET web service project. I select c# as the language. This automatically creates a solution as well.
Create a new Class Library project under above mentioned solution. Start from “New Project” And select the check box for “Add to solution”. (I also selected the Path too to the above solutions folder)
Add the reference to System.web.Services in the class library project.
Replace the class file of the Class Library project with the default service class in the App_Code folder of the service project.
- In solution explorer, drag service.cs to the top node of the class library project.
- Delete class1.cs in Class Library project and also the Service.cs in App_Code folder.
Create a strong name for the class library. (go to the properties of that project and select “Sign the assembly”
Right click the Class Library project and build it.
Now put the Class Library DLL to GAC of the SharePoint Server by dragging it to c:\\windows\Assembly or using GACUTIL tool.
Now open the service.asmx and change the code behind attributes as below.

Here you can see that public key token is giving correctly. You can right click the DLL installed in the step g. in GAC and get the public key as blow.

Also the class name (with namespace, if any) and DLL name has been added to it. Please see the below built-in service.cs file with hello world method. Here the class name is service.

Here is the place where we need to write our own methods to accomplish the requirements.
Now we can rename the .asmx file as wish.
Now my solution is like this.

Generating and Modifying the Static Discovery and WSDL files

Copy the .asmx file of the service to below location\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS.
Generate the Disco and WSDL files using DISCO too, though below commands
- CD C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin in command line
- disco http://site_url/sites/sumedha/_layouts/ServiceWS2CL1.asmx
(sumedha is a subsite name)
Replace the first xml tag of the both .disco and .wsdl files with below code.

Copy from MSDN
In Disco file, replace the SOAP contract tags by below text.

Copy from MSDN
In .wsdl file, replace the soap address with below text.

Copy from MSDN
Rename the respective files in below manner changing the formats.
ServiceWS4CL1.disco -> ServiceWS4CL1disco.asmx
ServiceWS4CL1.wsdl -> ServiceWS4CL1wsdl.asmx

Copying the web service files to _vti_bin Directory
Now Copy all three .asmx files to below location;
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI

Now web service should be visible when browsing below URL.
http://site_url/sumedha/_vti_bin/ServiceWS4CL1.asmx
Testing the service
Now we can add the web service using the URL as the web reference to any project as below.

Below sample calling of method would show how the method was called.

Sunil Madhawa & my 89

2009-10-09T01:51:00.000-07:00

Most of the people who called themselves as journalists today are not journalists! But Sunil Madhawa Premathilake is a journalist. He is a sensitive person and he had a limitless love for the country and man-kind. He was brave enough to fight against powerful capitalist governments on behalf of liberty of the community. Most of all, he knew the responsibility of a journalist. His thirst for literature, passion of revealing the reality and committing any personal possessions for the betterment of others raised him to an honorable platform.

My memories on Sunil Aiya (most common way of calling him) go back to the dark age of 1989. It was the time that young generation took violent steps to challenge the government while unrest of the civil community was so high. In return, counter violence from the government was so terrible and that trend was targeting thousands of civilian lives also. This cyclic effect was making things worse.

None of the remarkable interferences were come through so called “international community”, but some of the artists and writers were doing their duty even without thinking of their lives. Sunil was one of the key writers who wanted to write against the dictatorship which was rising.. Sunil Madhawa became a giant in this manner.. He couldn’t exist in his position in most of the traditional newspapers because of the contexts of his writings. He left one by one.. there wasn’t any media to publish his bold ideas.. Sunil with few other brave writers gave birth to the trend of “Tabloid papers”.. they were actually not much focusing at profit, but it made some room for writing the reality.. people gathered around them while government kept on threatening the journalists who wrote the reality. Sunil became the target of few brutal attacks but survived with injuries.

In this time, I was just a student at Ananda College and was so inspired by literature and youthful radical ideas. As a group of amateur writers, we too were writing in our scales. Sunil Madhawa was a big hero in our arena. We were operating a writing circle in the college and we had some frequent activities, where Sunil Madhawa became a useful resource person. Sunil Madhawa’s passion of writing against suppression came to a climax by translating the book “Cry Freedom” (story of Steve Biko) to Sinhala (as Handanu Mana Nidahasa). Sinhala readers accept it with a great gravity since Sri Lanka itself had been showing the mirror images of the dictatorship and killing revealed in the book. Anyway, this book dragged his life to a great risk.

I used to visit the office of Lakdiva tabloid paper at Borella. Lakdiva editorial team was fabulous. Some of the famous people were blooming in it. Famous Wini Hettigoda was the cartoonist. Dalas Alahapperuma (minister in current parliament) was one of the writers. There was another special person called “Vimalasiri Gamlath”, that was Wimal Weerawansa who is playing a big role in today’s politics. His literature skills were tremendous. I wonder why he is not writing much today.. I call it a crime! Sunil Aiya was not much interested in anything else than literature and writing, but hanging around public bars. People were claiming that Sunil was addicted to alcohol. Sunil told that Bars are the best place to meet people; common people like factory workers, government servants, thieves, thugs, prostitutes and people of all calibers. Once, I wanted to ask about this and he honestly told that he is not addicted to alcohols, but to Pub societies. Dialog we had could be well-explained in Sinhala as it was;

I started an Open Wallpaper in school where I too started to reveal my radical feelings about what is happening in the country. I too understood it was time to go beyond Gamperaliya/Sinhabahu; our paper was bit aggressive. Aggressive enough to question the school whether it is justifiable to have a big-match fun while our motherland was on crisis! There is something else I need to tell, a lot of people around me was not approving this aggression. I guess they simply couldn’t accept this harsh criticism or they might have judged it as more political. I was “political” since I was schooling. I invited Sunil Aiya to visit my wallpaper and he came with Professor Somarathne Balasuriya (he is the translator of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”). He went through the pages and gave some comments. By the time he didn’t forget to convey a warning message too; “You are so young, be careful.. this is not a good time”.

In the meantime, one of the students invited me to write to a weekly magazine and he didn’t mention what it was. (Later, I found out that he was lead by a JVP activist)

I didn’t know the scale of trouble I was heading to, but one incident clearly gave me a red light. I was hanging around Kotte where I had a lot of friends. Actually, I was sitting on a half wall talking to the friends.. We saw a couple of people were at a distance with a broken down motor bike as it was shown.. One of my other friends was coming passing those two strangers and he asked me whether you know those fellows.. I said “no, seems their bike is giving trouble” He replied with an amazement “But they were telling your name in a whispering voice and pointing at you!”

Everything came in to my mind with a flash. What Sunil Aiya told and etc. I understood that we were playing with fire. I simply stopped writing much radical type things and updating the Wall Paper was not done.

It was a dark age in deed. Youths were killed and burnt with tires here and there. Apart from the rebels, a lot of people died without any reason. Both rebels and government bodies sometimes diverted their guns to stop all kinds of rivals.. Sometimes to stop journalists, artists and for personal reasons too! In one such incident, a dozen of school children was labeled as rebels and killed for a personal reason lead by a minister (namely Nanda Mathew!) Not only him, most of the powerful people got their personal things done and accounted to the revolution. Some of the civil activists and intellectuals left the country for their own survival. Still I feel pathetic to see some of the ministers who approved brutal killing, being the members of that cabinet in that era, are now behaving like very honorable politicians. (this included our current speaker in the parliament Mr. V.J.Mu Lokubandara!)

Now it is 2009! No one talks much about the lost revolution and the crisis we faced 20 years ago, but I have my emotions with the tragic incidents happened in front of my eyes.

When I recall those past incidents I see Sunil Madhawa Premathilake as a great giant who fight against authorities on behalf of people.. he is a role model of a great journalist!

Recently, I saw Sunil Aiya at Borella bus stand. I knew he is with his noble dreams of a better world..!

Reality of Exercise machines

2009-09-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

Most of my friends do have different kinds of exercise machines such as Ab Shapers, Orbitrack and etc. Anyway, 90% of them are not being used. Everybody wants to maintain their stamina and stay in the right shape, but it is becoming a challenge in very fast, money driven life we have today.

It can’t be achieved just through an exercise machines alone, but it needs a collective effort of few more areas combined to our lifestyle. Namely Exercise, Food, stress/relaxation and awareness are more important.

As I see, selecting a healthy food and maintain healthy food practices are becoming far more difficult. Food verities in KFC, MacDonald’s, Pizza restaurants and famous Chinese (Sri Lankan type!) restaurants have been produced just to attract people and sell. Protecting our children from these food practices would be a big challenge in near future.

Anyway, I wanted to share this Video clip with my friends who need to stay in right shape. This Video seems to be revealing some truth.

(Prabath, thanks for sending this.)

Eco Tourism and Responsibilities

2009-09-04T02:26:00.000-07:00

Once I was passing Galle, I saw a large gathering who is watching some different kind of a game. I identified both local and foreign players playing elephant-polo with assistance of mahouts. That game seemed funny, because some of the elephants were not aware what was going on but mahouts had to drag them to the ball and do according to so called players’ wish. Some elephants were seen exhausted and frustrated. Anyway, I was thinking this is a very inappropriate try. We should not drag our majestic looking elephants to this pathetic situation. Elephant is a cultural symbol and I don’t like to see it as a funny puppet. So this was my vision on Elephant Polo.

After sometime back I heard that an elephant had become so violent during such a game at Galle. This simply supplied a proof that Elephants were actually not playing the game but they had been forcefully dragged to the ground. This is not the way we should treat wild animals. I guess, after this incident Elephant-Polo wasn’t tried. (Please correct me if I am wrong) So this should be taken as a warning message for people who think of ways to use animals to earn some dollars by the sake of eco-tourism.

Elephant is giving its message in a violent manner!

Responsibility

Eco-tourism is a very good trend which can be used to protect wildlife while enabling people to enjoy the nature as it is. I find it as a very sensitive trade. If you do it wisely everybody could get advantages.

Sri Lanka is now targeting a rise of tourist industry and there is a big room for eco-tourism. Sri Lanka is one of the best places to earn a big money if you invest in that area and a lot of service providers are already doing their operations. Apart from earning money, eco-tourism should contribute towards conservation of wildlife and betterment of the native people of the country. It should not challenge the social and cultural values of a society. Authorities should be aware of this.

Kandalama hotel has been built in a catchment area. According to our culture based on Weva*, catchment area is a most protected place and it was allowed only to collect medicinal plants by Wedamahaththaya/doctor. Kandalama hotel itself is being operated in very nature-friendly manner as they say, but it doesn’t payback the cost of disturbing a catchment area of a Weva by a massive construction, for the first time in the history. Before building the hotel, it was a heritage of all, but now it has become a private property, only moneyed people can access.

Just like Kandalama Weva, when it come the need of infra-structure for eco-tourism, a lot of heritages of common people are to be converted to private properties, but authorities are to be wise enough to maintain a sustainable level.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Weva* - Weva is translated to English as a “tank”. In Sinhala, Weva is a physical structure that bound to a whole domain of cultural activities and values. But in English, Tank is just a physical structure. We should challenge this inaccurate translation.

Nuwara Gala – a hidden fortress

2009-08-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

One of the old posts, I discussed my experience with Dimbulaga exploration. It should be one of the hidden fortresses like places in Sri Lanka. There is another rock full of ruins of a massive fortress and this is also a hidden one by means, till today. Now we are going to talk about “Nuwara Gala”.

In my school days, once I am given a very nice book about expeditions by a team of wildlife enthusiasts, who tried to explore nice natural places of Sri Lanka. Actually that book made me interested in hiking and nature expeditions. This book was almost a basic guide book to young people who wish to explore such beautiful places. Mr. Douglass B. Ranasinghe (a reputed bird watcher and wildlife enthusiast)* is the author of this book called “Maki Yana Wana Peth” (i.e. vanishing trails). It contained a chapter that illustrates how they explored this massive yet hidden site a long time back.

It took us decades to do the same expedition, since the relevant area was highly affected by the LTTE terrorist activities. Anyway, we headed to this wonderful site in 2002 sepetember, when it was the ceasefire and quite safe to enter the location.

First, we went to Pollebeddha School to prepare our stuff and spend the night before starting the hike early next day. It was a very nice place and principal too was a very nice gentleman. The Vedda chief Gomba came to see us in the same evening when he got to knew that some people had come from Colombo. He was so old than we saw in pictures in the book. When he was having a leisure chat, he revealed about his interactions with Dr. Spittle and good old time stories. Most of all, he told how much he miss Dr.Spittle and he at least wanted to see his daughter.

Old Chief Vaddha, Gomba was telling me his good old stories..

There is something else I want to note here: These Veddha’s life conditions seemed so pathetic. Their lives had been vastly affected by poverty. May be due to lack of knowledge on family planning, their families had become unbearably big, yet they didn’t have any means of earning money to feed them. We just shared some of the food we brought, but it showed the need of a long term rehabilitation program for this community. Not like Veddas of Dambana, this community seemed to have a lack of knowledge on outside world and lack of communication with authorities.

After a couple of years, I saw in the newspapers, that Gomba had been awarded the Kala-Bhooshana award for his contribution towards the culture of Sri Lanka. Of course, it is admirable since they carry some historical and vanishing cultural values to Sri Lankan society, but steps are to be taken to improve their living standards too.

We started the hike the following day with two guides from the village, namely Wijeya and Sadhathissa. Wijaya was an expert on jungle life with unbelievable instinct. He said he was hunting animals for his living. He was with a mysterious and weather beaten face. Our theories on wildlife conservation seemed inapplicable for these people who have day to day confrontations with bitter poverty. We walked behind him and he was leading the team; walked without any noise or talk; carrying his illegal shot gun. Each time, we met a wild animal, Wijaya managed to give us notice in advance! I think he had very much developed ability to smell or hear those in a distance. Sadhathissa was a much talkative small-made person who managed to tell us their experiences with wildlife and some narrow escapes from terrorists!

Under the shades of terrorism, tree-cutting had been done massively and naked earth had been exposed to intense heat of sunlight which made our walking too so difficult, when it was reaching noon.

Our initial plan was to go up to the top of the rock and see the historical pool full of clear water and then we spend the night in the nearby cave right down the ridge of mountain facing a dangerous looking steep.

We had done a big mistake by relying on one spring of water. When we reached, it had been dried and drinking water we carried was not enough to spend two days! I was already dehydrated, that made me difficult to move further. Anyway, we decided to find some more sources for water but I said I need to sit and rest so others could proceed with searching. Due to the threat of wild elephants in the area, keeping me alone for resting seemed foolish and Dr.Nihal volunteered to stay with me with some fire-crackers to use in case. Anyway, search hadn’t been successful, but we came up with the bright idea of using the water in the pool up on the rock for drinking after boiling. I felt much better after some rest and consuming some dried date fruits and Jeewani. We reached the top of the fortress around 3 pm and it was a fantastic feeling!

It was quite hard to believe that a man made pool full of water could remain in such a high altitude. This was a marvelous piece of evidence for the prosperity and high life style existed in the past within the fortress. Mr.Ranasinghe’s book says that water was so pure that they managed to have a nice bath in it, but we saw the pool had been infected with algae and bathing was impossible.

We heard a very strange story from Sadhathissa which explained how this pond got polluted. It was as below;

“It was 1989, where whole country was having a dark time with the rise of young generation against the government. We were coming towards Nuwara Gala for a hunt.. When we reached the top we saw some uniformed people are occupying there.. we also saw a helicopter and few civil people and I identified one of the famous politicians son within them… in a little time those armed people started shooting at us.. We vanished through the bushes and came straight to the village and hide… After that we observed they had tried to pump water out and find something… we didn’t know whether it was treasure, anyhow water within the pool got polluted after this incident!” (Note :I can’t guarantee about the truth of this, but this is what I was told)

After spending some time near the pool we came to the cave and spent the night. It was a Poya day and night was as amazing as could be. View of the jungle towards the steep was like a water color painting.. moon light had given a fantastic glittering effect which made us watching it for a long time before going to sleep.

Next day, we came back in a different route which was rich with most of the ruins and rich historic structures.
Night I spent in Nuwara Gala cave is one of the best nights I have ever spent in wild!

Team before starting the hike (with Vijaya, Sadhatissa, Gomba, Principal and another teacher of the school)

Man-made pool on the top of the rock.

Valuable artifacts to be studied by archeologists

Dangerous yet, beautiful steep down the cave

Note
* After sometime, Dr.Nihal Dayawansa introduced us to Mr. Douglass B. Ranasinghe and we told him how his book infected us with enthusiasm for exploring the wild. We also managed to discuss and compare the changes we saw in Nuwara Gala after decades. We wanted to visit this site again as an one group consist of both generations, but couldn’t materialize it till today.

Pledge to go fur-free!

2009-08-20T01:53:00.000-07:00

Consumers everywhere need to know the truth about fur. When people learn that millions of innocent animals are beaten, boiled, hanged, and electrocuted for their fur every year ... when they learn that every fur coat, lining, trim, or fur cat toy represents the intense suffering of several dozen animals? and when they learn that furriers intentionally mislabel fur as not taken from dogs and cats or as fake ... then every decent human being will want to go FUR-FREE.

Peta.org is working to educate people of the world about this barbaric trade. If you want to see the real situation please check the Videos in the site. You will be shocked.

Please make sure you are not supporting this trade by any mean.
Please sign the pledge.

Exploring Kudumbigala

2009-08-03T21:20:00.001-07:00

Kudumbigala is one of the wonderful places I have ever explored. It is an old monastery which had been re-discovered in recent past. Most fascinatingly, it has become one of the most interior monasteries, where Theravadhi Buddhist monks are occupying under very basic facilities. They just focus on their meditation and ignore the life threats that would come at anytime through a wild animal, especially from sloth bears. They just live a very basic life in the monastery, which is surrounded by bushes and beasts. They say that they are not attacked by any of the animals since they practice the meththa of Buddhist teaching all the way.

Kudumbigala is a very beautiful place with extraordinary tranquility and peaceful surrounding. It had been built in a land of boulders that provides caves, which had been converted into isolated facilities for meditation. Apart from what monks are using currently, there are ruins of very big constructions all over. The whole site is an artistic creation. Historical value of this site is to be revealed by historians and take the necessary steps to protect those artifacts.

Re-discovery of the site had been done by Thambugala Ananda Thero, who first visited the site in 1954. I simply can’t imagine his determination because he had started to stay there alone for years. His famous book “25 Years of life in the jungle” explains his wonderful experiences in wild.

As we did, one can plan an expedition to visit Kudumbigala and Kumana together. There are a lot of other fascinating places in the area, such as Okanda beach and the famous kovil. We spent a couple of nights in the monastery and spent one camping night in banks of Kumbukan River (Near Gal Amuna). Kumana is another massive site which always gives me a mysterious feeling.

Remaining of Kumana village recalled me the last chapters of the famous novel “Village in the Jungle” by Leonard Woolf. Village which had been the background for that novel, Baddegama too said to have vanished within the bushes of the jungle….!

Below Photos were captured by Roshan Kumara.

Okanda Beach

Thambugala Thero’s book was referred on the way…

Dr. Aruna is preparing some Beetles for chief monk.

Devotees use to come there for almsgivings..

Sri Lankan Sand Boa (Kota pimbura) Gongylophis conicus brevis.

Okanda Kovil

Remainings of famous Bambaragasthalawa Buddha Statue..

Kumana Willuwa

Kumbukkan Oya

Encounter with RegSvr.exe Virus

2009-08-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

My whole Sunday was eaten up by this virus. First I am informed that the PC was very slow. When I check the task manager, I observed, CPU usage was 100% and it wasn’t coming down at all.

I was unable to start msconfig. So I had to check and kill the process first and check the msconfig to see the unwanted programs in the startup. I simply unchecked the regsvr from the startup list of the msconfig and did the reboot, but regsvr was again in the action! Then only I realized the severity of the problem and check the web for assistance.

I simply found a tool to do this here. This worked for me.

Anyway, there is a nice article that explains how to remove it manually.

I hope this post will help you since this virus is very common in USB pens.
Please adhere to professional advices and save your time!

Tagging Challenge

2009-06-02T02:52:00.000-07:00

Hmm.. this is a different kind of a post.. this is a game among the bloggers as I am said..
The rules are as simple as this;

You write five words to describe how you feel about recent events in Sri Lanka.
You tag five bloggers.
You sit back and relax.

My words ;

Hope
challenge
Mahinda
National flag
Luck

My Tags

Kaminda – brave thoughts
Sanjaya – moderate passion in the circle
Charith – beautiful mind with emotional touch
Yanik – extreme photography
Kooi – Limitless flow of artistic fashion

Regards,

Hegemonic agenda of media giants

2009-05-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

These are two polls conducted by CNN to get viewers idea on two issues. I wonder, what could be the criteria they used to identify a cause or issue to do such a poll. For me, terrorist problem could decide my life or death, as a Sri Lankan. It seems, CNN is having same scale of interest in car selling statistics…

In post capitalist society, just like what we have today, media does the part which had been done by the warships and fighter planes did in past world wars. I think this is the most dangerous situation ever. Terrorism and Media seems to be two parallel instruments that the first world used to challenge the independence in other states.

Media not only attack people but mentally disables people. CNN like media could control the minds of the world to ignore the Rwandan Genocide, but to cry for the WTC attack in US.

I got below e-mail that explains the duty of media today; It is quite true and funny;

A man sees a woman getting chased by a dog.
When the dog is about to bite the woman, the man intervenes and kicks the dog.
A reporter was seeing all this.
He said "That was great. I'll definitely publish this in newspaper. Tomorrow the headline will be 'LOCAL HERO SAVES LADY FROM A DOG'."
The man replied "Thank you, but I'm not from here. I am from US".
Reporter " OK.
Then the headline will be US CITIZEN SAVES WOMAN FROM A DOG".
Man: Actually, I live in US but I'm not a US citizen. I'm a Pakistani national".
Next day, the headline in the paper read ....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
....
TERRORIST ATTACKS A LOCAL DOG....

A couple of recent paintings

2009-05-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

This is what I did in the recent time. These were done with acrylic paints on canvases. Rather than going to complex compositions with lines, I have tried bit of rich textures here.

Commitment & its tragedy

2009-04-28T20:47:00.000-07:00

At the end of a dull week, in late 2002, I was thinking of spending the weekend in wild. I spoke to few chaps around me and could collect only two to join me (Prasanna and Devana). That Friday night, we drew to Yala and entered the park in the dawn. Any way, we found that rain had hit Yala so badly.

We were discovering for some interesting wildlife and forest was so different with the heavy rain occurred after a considerable period of dry season. The characteristic of rain is far different in dry zone than wet zone. In Yala, rain had made most of the motorable roads, muddy marshes; some of the roads had vanished with the heavy soil erosion. Under this condition transportation became really hard, but we could sight some rewording wildlife including one bear mum with two cubs playing in the rain.

Even though, we had planned to drive back in the night, I found myself really sick and experienced difficulty in breathing. I realized that I had been hit by a wheeze (a minor asthma) like condition. Driving back seemed really impossible and we didn’t have any other alternative either. Then we spoke to one of the wildlife officers in the entrance and explained our situation. That officer was so kind and was helpful enough to give us his quarters to stay the night! Not only that, he quickly made arrangements with a local family to get our meals prepared. Following morning we left Yala after thanking this nice gentleman for his outstanding helping hand extended to us…

After couple of weeks, we heard that the range officer who helped us, Mr. Kumarasinghe had been killed in action, while he was on an operation to reveal Ganja Chena cultivation within the park. He had been shot.

Kumarasinghe had joined the department of wildlife after obtaining his BSc. degree from University of Peradeniya and had performed his duties in an exemplary manner. He was so smart and rigid. As I heard later, some higher officers too didn’t like to see him work that smarter…!! He had initiated to detect the tusks of famous “Dalaputtuwa” killed by ivory hunters.

While investigations were done only, it had been found that Kumarasinghe had been shot by one of his fellow team mates in the operation!

Now everything is in past… Each time, I visit Yala, through my thoughts; I commemorate this nice gentleman who sacrificed his life for the conservation of wildlife in Sri Lanka…

I don’t know the conclusions of the police investigations on this murder, but I feel it is his honesty and commitment towards the job made him pay by his life..

This is just one true story of an honest government officer who wanted to give a meaningful service to the nation.

Bird Ringing at Kanneliya Forest Reserve

2009-04-15T23:42:00.000-07:00

Bird ringing is an interesting activity done by birders and ornithologists. Bird ringing is a way of studying wild birds by attaching a metal or plastic ring to bird’s leg, so that various aspects of bird’s life can be studied.

For example, suppose a birder in Himalaya area capture and rings a bird. Ring itself contains only a number and he has all the details (Location, size, weight & etc.) about the bird he records in that instance against the number. If we manage to re-trap the same bird at Sinharaja Forest in Sri lanka, from the number on the ring direct us to the previously recorded information about the bird. So we can reveal some information about the bird by comparing the old details with the current condition. Specifically, it proves that the bird has migrated from Himalaya to Sinharaja!

For me, most interesting study is identifying of bird migration through bird ringing. Migration is one of the most wonderful scenarios in the nature. It is simply the move, made by birds, when environmental conditions are not that favorable for them. In much comprehensible words; most significant bird migration in the world is the birds of northern hemisphere, when it is winter, fly to feeding grounds near tropical countries. Once winter is over, they used to fly back to their countries. Distance they cover on the way is sometime more than 10,000km!

We better discuss about bird migration in detail, in some other post. Anyway, this is the reason that you (Sri Lankans) see some strange kinds of birds in your garden in September-October season and vanish again in April. At least you should know, definitely they are the guests who visited you from most faraway places.

Below photos were taken in Kanneliya forest reserve of Galle district, while we were doing some bird ringing with a team of ornithology students from University of Colombo, led by their ecologist Dr. Nihal Dayawansa. (Photography by Roshan Kumara)

Preparing the traps

Bird is trapped in the mist net.

Bird is being carefully removed from the net for ringing.

Black Headed Bulbul

Yellow fronted Barbet (an endemic Bird)

Brown Capped Babbler (an endemic bird)

Team who participated the program.

Tech: e-mails with asp.net

2009-04-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

Most of the web applications need sending mails in some point. We will see how we can cater for such requirement with asp.net. In order to do this we need to have a SMTP server configured. Since Windows Vista doesn’t provide any SMTP I used a free SMTP downloaded from http://www.softstack.com/freesmtp.html, which had been recommended by lot more people.

This is a very user-friendly software. Once it is installed, there is no configuration changes needed. As default settings shown in the image, DNS Server option is Auto Detect and SMTP port is set to 25. Clicking the option button will show this. Just opening the application means, SMTP server is ready. (Important: Once window is closed, server gets disconnected.)

Code is very simple. First you need to add System.Web.Mail namespace. Now check the code, which is really simple and comprehensible.

If you need to send any attachment with the mail, you can simply add them to the MailMessage object we are using here, as below;

Also it is possible to go in a loop to add more attachments, when necessary.

First time at KOOii's Gallery

2009-03-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

I visited the art exhibition of Prageeth Manohansa and Channa Ekanayake at KOOii’s gallery. That was good. Channa’s work is not new to me, but Prageeth’s. His art works (actually sculpture) are quite different. He uses hard metal waste as the row material.

KOOii’s gallery is located in a very nice place in front of the Thalangama Tank.

Dr. Waldemar’s Gallery

2009-03-24T04:33:00.000-07:00

Waldemar Krzywania is a polish doctor, who dives to capture the beauty under the sea. I met him while he was in Sri Lanka on his long journey of searching coral reefs; we had a dive to the Conch wreck near Akurala which added more beautiful photos to his collection.

Please visit his gallery.

Tech: ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

2009-03-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

Even though, we don’t take it seriously, ASP.NET page goes through a series of events during its creation and disposal. Each event has some uniqueness in hierarchy of happening and characteristic. Understanding and considering these actions while coding a page could give you better fruit. Below is the sequence;

1. Object initialization
Page itself and other controls are being initialized here in raw form.
Controls only can be referenced using its ids.
This event can be overridden using the OnInit method.

2. Load viewstate data
Here receives the viewstate data that were persisted back to the server since the last submission. Page viewstate is managed by asp.net.
This event can be overridden using the LoadViewState method.

3. Load postback Data
During this phase, form data which were posted (forms filled by visitor), is processed against each control that requires it. Page then fires the loadPostData event and updates the each control state with correct postback data.

4. Object Load (Load)
This is the phase that the objects take their true forms. Now it is possible to reference the client-side properties set in HTML, such as width and height. This is a suitable phase to implement logic. Can overridden through onLoad method.

5. Raise PostBack change event (RaisePostDataChangedEvent)
This event is raised if data has been changed in previous and current postBacks..

6. Process client-side PostBack Event. (RaisePostBackEvent)
Event handles the user actions caused the postback. If a visitor clicks a button1 then button1_click function is called.

7. Prerender the Objects
This is the final state that your do any change to the object and save to viewstate. It’s ideal to do final modifications here. This can be over ridden with OnPreRender method.

8. ViewSate Saved
Viewstate is saved after all the changes and object state data is prepared to render to HTML. This can be over written by SaveViewState method

9. Render to HTML
Render event builds the page with all the HTML content for output to browser. Developer still can write custom HTML to nullify the HTML content build so far.

10. Page Unload
Data can be now released to free the server resource.

A night at mara-vidiya (Deadly path)

2009-02-20T21:48:00.000-08:00

Sigiriya is a well-known fortress that is very famous not only in Sri Lanka, but in whole world. Most people don't realize Sri Lanka has yet a similar kind of fortress type historical places still beneath the shades of jungles. Nuwara Gala (Close to Pollebedda off Maha Oya) and Dimbulagala (16 km off Polonnaruwa) are two such places.

Dimbulagala had been neglected and was hidden within the jungles till Kithalagama Sri Seelalankara Thero explored, started to reconstruct and invited the Buddhist devotees to start pilgrimage. Seelalankara Thero has played a remarkable role in identifying the historical importance of the place and is doing his community service for the poor people in the area. His influence had made some Vadda people to become Buddhist monks. He also gave the moral support for the villagers who were living in the border villages, where LTTE threat was so high. Anyway, Seelalankara Thero was shot dead by LTTE terrorists in May 1995.

The Stamp released by postal department of Sri Lanka to commemorate the Seelalankara Thero and Location of Dimbulagala historical site.

My story starts from some other place! One Mr. S.D. De Lanerolle had written a nice book (i.e. Wana Nadiya) on his expedition from Mahiyanganaya to Trincomalee through the Mahawali River on small boats in 1951. Famous wildlife enthusiast Eric Swan, who was later killed by a wild elephant attack while trying to photograph them, was among his team members. They had stepped in to Dimbulagala & explored some of the historical places even before Seelalankara Thero visited there. This beautiful literature, Wana Nadiya provides very nice article on their experience in Dibulagala and mostly, about the historical value of the site. So this made us go and see the site by ourselves.

You should not consider Dimbulagala as an isolated temple, but a complex of historical places such as Namal Pokuna complex, frescos at Pulligoda, Aushada Pokuna and a lot more.

We were amazed by Namal Pokuna site that contained a lot of ruins of historical constructions and also visited Pulligoda which consist of wonderful frescos. We happened to visit Aushada Pokuna in a late evening which made us feel Wow! It was located in a high mountain which is surrounded by thick forest. It is a complex of caves which consist of two crystal clear water ponds in it. Certain areas of the complex had been constructed by men. Archeologically important entities were everywhere including the remains of two Buddha statues. They were like remaining live proves for the rich and wealthy culture we had in the ancient times.

We decided to spend the night in the cave in order to add some more adventurous taste or else to cater our need of spending some significant time away from so called civilized world!

Once we decided to stay there, Channa told; "Now we don't care who the Obama is..!"

We agreed. When you spend a night in an isolated cave in a jungle, definitely, your priorities get changed at least for a small moment. We knew this kind of a decision has been taken by a group of people in the same place more than half a century ago.

See what they had told.. hmm.. this is Mr. Lanerolle's words…

Actually we sat on the cave & read this chapter & could analyze the difference. They have had 9 well-equipped people, while we have only 3 people. We don't have any weapon rather than a jungle knife carried by Devana. A liter, water bottle, three torches, a packet of cream crackers, a pack of dried date fruit were the only remaining stuff we had!
Path to this granite cave is called Mara-Vidiya (i.e. Deadly path) since ancient times. This name is very much appropriate since a very narrow ridge to the cave is very much dangerous; if you slip the feet, you will be fallen down to about 500 meters! If a wild animal encountered, since we don’t have any weapon, you have to run through this narrow passage!
Whatever happened, we didn't have an option to revert the decision since night had already come to the door step. Night was so nice & pleasing. We lit a bonfire as the main security measure. We forgot nonsense in rate-racing life in Colombo and started talking about life, arts & nature. We just heard the roaring of few wild beasts from a distance. Cold breeze of the dawn was so unbearable since we didn't have bed sheets or sleeping bags! All those stuff were in the car boot down the hill, miles away!
As Mr. Lanerolle says, sun rise was extra ordinary.. So beautiful and refreshing! Entire range we could see from the cave consisting tanks, rivers, paddy fields and bushes became glittering with the morning sunshine. Whole jungle was awaken with a new life while sun was releasing his very first golden rays of the day… that made us feel, spending the night in the cave was worth indeed!
Now, all are like a dream! We drew back to Colombo. Cars are going too fast to over take another one.. Drivers push horns without any reason. We were passing a lot of boutiques, villages and finally cities. Now we are back with the civilization led by money and power. We were having our inspiration of the unforgettable night we spent in the cave.
"Now we care who the Obama is..!"

Some of the photos captured;

Comparing our information with Villagers..

Narrow Path to the Cave complex called Mara-Vidiya or Deadly path.

Entrance to one of the Caves..

Frescos at Pulligoda..

Creator of a legendary song.

2009-02-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

This is Vincent Ford. He died recently. He is the writer of the world famous song “No women, no cry”, which was sung by Bob Marley in 1974.* He was running a Soup Kitchen in Trenchtown (Jamaica) called "the Casbah", where Bob Marley used to visit and spend time with Vincent. This was situated within a complex of communal buildings build around a courtyard. This site is now been turned into the Trenchtown Culture Yard after sometime.
This is one of my favorite songs too. (Click here to see my previous post related to this song)
Here is the lyrics.
No, woman, no cry;No, woman, no cry;No, woman, no cry;No, woman, no cry.
Said - said - said: I remember when we used to sitIn the government yard in trenchtown,Oba - obaserving the ypocritesAs they would mingle with the good people we meet.Good friends we have, oh, good friends weve lostAlong the way.In this great future, you cant forget your past;So dry your tears, I seh.
No, woman, no cry;No, woman, no cry.ere, little darlin, dont shed no tears:No, woman, no cry.
Said - said - said: I remember when-a we used to sitIn the government yard in trenchtown.And then georgie would make the fire lights,As it was logwood burnin through the nights.Then we would cook cornmeal porridge,Of which Ill share with you;My feet is my only carriage,So Ive got to push on through.But while Im gone, I mean:Everythings gonna be all right!Everythings gonna be all right!Everythings gonna be all right!Everythings gonna be all right!I said, everythings gonna be all right-a!Everythings gonna be all right!Everythings gonna be all right, now!Everythings gonna be all right!
So, woman, no cry;No - no, woman - woman, no cry.Woman, little sister, dont shed no tears;No, woman, no cry.
I remember when we used to sitIn the government yard in trenchtown.And then georgie would make the fire lights,As it was logwood burnin through the nights.Then we would cook cornmeal porridge,Of which Ill share with you;My feet is my only carriage,So Ive got to push on through.But while Im gone:
No, woman, no cry;No, woman, no cry.Woman, little darlin, say dont shed no tears;No, woman, no cry.
Eh! (little darlin, dont shed no tears!No, woman, no cry.Little sister, dont shed no tears!No, woman, no cry.)

*Any way, some people claim that the song was written by Bob Marley himself, but songwriter credits were given to Vincent.

Tech: Ajax – a new world!

2009-02-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

Ajax (i.e. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is not a new language or anything, but way of using JavaScript to access Data using a web server in a very efficient manner. In other words Ajax gives the ability to receive data to a web page, without re-loading the page. If it is a label you want to populate, you can do it without refreshing/harming any of the content in the page, in a way, giving the web page the similar characteristic of a windows application. End of the day, this is the easiness and user-friendliness in a web application. It’s not a surprise, that Ajax became this famous within a little time.

So what is the negative point of this? Hmm.. browser should support to work Ajax. Anyway, this is not going to be a major issue, since due to popularity of this technology, any browser comes to the market is coming with the Ajax support.

The key player in Ajax is the XMLHttpRequest object. This object communicates directly with the server, in fact, this much faster than a form submission we used to do in traditional web programming. Different browsers use different methods to create this object. While IE uses ActivexObject, most other browsers use the built in object XMLHttpRequest. Now we will see a simple program.

We will just have a button & a label in our webpage. Our intension is to populate the label with a text through Ajax. See my simple html content.

Now see the content I am going to populate to the label. For this I am going to have a separate simple page (myFirst.aspx) with a simple text consist of time & a sample text. I don’t do anything, but two response.write statements in page load event.

Now we will come to the Ajax part of linking these two asynchronously. As we discussed in the third paragraph, the key player is XMLHttpRequest and now we are going to have a separate function to initialize it in a generalized way, so that it caters any browser.

Then come the stateChanged() function. Here “state” is important since it checks the state of the server response & do the needful if the state is completed (i.e. 4).

Now we will see the main JavaScript method which is called from the event.

If you see carefully, you can see, this is the method we have called in the click event of the button. See the sequences of the code. First call the GetXmlHttpObject() to initialize the XMLHttpRequest object. Then call the other function to assign what we need to assign when response status is done. After words, we have to execute two more necessary methods.

open() method takes three arguments. One is to define the method to use when sending the request. (GET or POST) Second argument specifies the URL of the server-side script (in our case we have our page in the same level, so file name is enough) Third Boolean argument specifies whether it’s to be handled in asynchronously. Then we simply use send() method to send the request.

As you see below in the web page, you can just click the “populate button” to populate the label text, which is shown in red.

Here, we have done our page with the texts to be populated in a normal asp.net page. Real fruit of Ajax is, as you can obviously think, initial webpage don’t mind what the technologies we have used in the server-script. PHP or even classic ASP can produce HTML content pages, so that is the only thing we need.

Also, it is really cool that we can send our parameters to the server-script page with “querystrings” in the URL, to get the resulting data accordingly. Below code will give you the idea;

Even though, we have illustrated a simply coded page (myFirst.aspx), we can do/use whatever the technologies to read date from data bases and present. That’s not Ajax, that’s what we already know as web development!

I find this really interesting…. how about u?

Towards a headless society

2009-01-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

Running a TV or Radio channel is different than running a grocery. Unfortunately, most of the upcoming Sri Lankan media people don’t realize it. Problem is not with them, but with the background they were brought up.

In 1980’s, late Mr. J.R Jayawardena told in public, “Literature is useless!” His henchmen beat Late Prof. Sarathchandra. J.R removed literature and history from school subject curriculums. He tried his best to have a headless society so that his “blue blooded” community could dominate them easily…could sell anything for dollars.. If J.R was live, he should be the happiest man in the country ….because these TV / Radio channels work for such a deform society!

These media institutes themselves don’t have a vision rather than generating profits. Most of the presenters in such channels don’t even know the language or sometimes common sense. TV/Radio presenter is the only job in Sri Lanka that doesn’t need any pre-qualification.

History shows that, a nation with a strong culture and honor for people can’t be defeated.

Most of the people work for cheap TV/Radio channels doesn’t realize what sort of harm they do to their mother nation.

Devil’s Staircase.

2009-01-20T00:22:00.000-08:00

Driving up to Horton Plains through Devil’s Staircase is fun and adventurous. Of course you need to be extra careful with the condition of your 4WD, yet it is worth making a try.

Actually, Devil’s staircase is the very narrow and hilly path from Bambarakanda, the highest water fall in Sri Lanka to Horton Plains. This path covers very beautiful pathway through misty mountains of Sri Lanka.

As we did, it is so cool to divide the journey to two days (parts). First day, you can reach the Bambarakanda and enjoy the water fall and surrounding.

The nicest part is, you can spend the night in a small homely resort called “Bambarakanda Garden Resort” which is managed by Mrs. Sera Mayakaduwa, (Tel: 0575670457). Even though, you can’t expect a long list of dishes as in a traditional hotel, you can simply ask for a very nice lunch/Dinner as you wish. Mrs.Mayakaduwa’s family is so kind and, will share you their knowledge about the area too.

Second day is the hardest and gives you more fun. Explore the area, enjoy the environment and have fun, but drive carefully. All the best!

Below link gives more accurate advices for the expedition.
http://www.lakdasun.com/trails/trail_03.htm

Below are some of the memorable photos from our journey, captured by Roshan Kumara.

BARAKA – the tragic of civilization ?

2009-01-05T00:57:00.000-08:00

BARAKA is an experimental film directed by Ron Fricke and released in 1992. There are no actors; it contains the real scenes captured from 152 (24 countries) locations. There is no traditional story, instead it tells the story of man-kind, its rhythm and tragic through the integration of the scenes in an artistic array.

Music is very strongly used to stress the image given through the motion of the picture. First, it lines up some scenes from nature, tribal habits different cultures in different parts of the world showing us the equalities and beauty. While proceeding through the film it shows how our civilization became cruel and how our lives become machineries. This line-up is excellent. It makes us re-think about our common fate in this modern society.

This is a different experience.

I heard, the next film in the same kind is yet to be released this year, which is called Samsara.

Tech: String Class and StringBuilder Class

2009-01-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

In most of the cases, above two classes seems to be working in the same manner. For example: Concatenation of strings. So what’s the difference?

See how we simply use a string class (i.e System.String) to do some concatenation;

This code works fine.

Now we will see how we simply do the same with StringBudiler class (System.StringBuilder).

Difference

Even though, both classes seem to be delivering same result, underlying theories are very different. String class is immutable. When concatenating with string class, initial string is not changes at all, instead, it creates new instances for each concatenation. In other hand, it needs more memory each time you do the operation.

StringBuilder class is mutable. You can simply change the string value of the class when concatenating. Then you use memory without any waste. So it is better to use StringBuilder whenever you need to perform such operation. Especially, if you need to change the string value so many times.

Of course, this is a very simple topic, but I thought of posting this since this is becoming a very popular interview question. (As same as the comparison of abstract classes and interfaces)

Tech: Direct Data Access in asp.net 3.5

2008-12-31T21:18:00.000-08:00

Direct Data access is the easiest way of accessing data from a web page. Simply it accesses the data base using ado.net objects only when connection is established, there won’t be any task afterwards. This method is the best recommended method, when your web page doesn’t need data to be taken to the page and work with it.

As usual, we have to instantiate the connection object as required and then we have the SqlCommand object where we will have to declare our SQL query; SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE. If it is for selection data, we need another kind of object called SQLDataReader essentially. Please keep in mind that System.Data.SqlClient namespace provide us all these objects. This object reads the returned records and enables us to write them in the web page as we wish. Will refer the most common way of selecting data;

I am actually keeping my connection string in web.config file;

If we read carefully, we can see how we have used ExecuteReader method to return the selected rows and how we have get use of the SQLDataReader object to hold them and iterate through them. SQLDataReader is said to be a very fast and forward only access method. So we will try to use this when we just need to retrieve a plenty of data.

All other operations except SELECT, we don’t need the SQLDataReader object. In all other cases also (Insert, Update and Delete) we use ExecuteReader method, but it returns only the number of affected rows by the operation. So in any other case we just read it to an integer variable. Also, we will obviously have to change the SQL scrip according to the operation. Programmer has to be clever enough to get the SQL query generated dynamically, when necessary in complex scenarios.

Below code shows how we do it in an updating task. There is no SQLDataReader object, instead we use a integer variable.

Also there is another method called ExecuteScalar, which returns only the value in first column of the first of rows. Other values are ignored. Typical example for usage of this would be, using it to return a number of records in a table. Please check below;

My father's demise

2008-12-02T01:18:00.001-08:00

My father died!
Someone who survived from three heart attacks & a stroke, then stayed for number of years very happily with the family should be a lucky person, still our selfishness, bond or love don't let us accept even a simple truths of the life.. I simply couldn't accept this… I was waiting him to come up again with his so refreshing smile!

Ending of his life too was very smooth as well as his actions in the day to day life… He was so simple & very realistic with the expectations, but very rigid with the policies. He stayed according to a Buddhist life rules, but never rush to Temples or believed much about hell or heaven. I think, he believed in what he sees & feels; what is good & bad for his senses.

I think, the poem below written by my bappa (Mr. Sunil Perera, UK) reveals some of his characteristics very well.. this was posted by him on my father's one of the last birthdays..

About one & half years back, he was so sick with a stroke & a heart failure at the same time. He was so sick & was just lay on the bed for couple of weeks without any sign of a life. We were so helpless and waiting for miracles. Even when he was brought back to home, he was just a lifeless person who didn't talk or show any emotion. After all the attempts to make him talked, we tried to do something different. Myself, my brother & Mum sat by his bed & started to sing one of his favourite songs. His lips showed a very slight move & he started to whisper!! I think that was the most emotional moment I faced in my entire life! Then we knew Lionel Obeysekera is still in this motionless body!

This is what we sang;

Anyway, a miracle happened! With my Mum's incomparable care, unmatched rehabilitation program worked out by my Bappa & Punchi, doctors fruitful advices, love & blessings of others and mostly Thaththa's willingness to fight back made him improved so much; walk, talk (even with some problems) and live with us.. He was back with us happily!

On 7th November 2008, morning was not with much differences, sun was shining.. birds were singing.. I just wanted to say bye to my dad before leaving to office, then I noticed he was in a deep sleep, with a very peaceful smile on his face. He had already said Bye to all of us! I knew, this time, his favourite songs would not wake him up…!

My father is like a book. We were so busy to read some of the chapters. At least now we have got time to read it from the scratch. Already we understand the meanings in far different ways.

I am so sure; we might reference this book so many times again & again, in this voyage of life and find more and more meanings.

I guess, this is the real story of every father…

2009/09/29 - A couple of weeks back, my Mum showed me a couple of paper articles on my father.. one is recent and one is very old.. thought of adding them to this post as an archive.

2010/10/17 -Last week I visited the office of the Union where my father worked as an activist. Below photos taken there shows his historical involvement in those activities.

Legend of Mike Wilson

2008-11-24T20:04:00.000-08:00

When I first dived into Conch in 2004 (a 3555 ton big English oil tanker ship sunken near the coast of Akurala on the night of June 3, 1903) I simply understood why ship wrecks are so special within the divers. If you compare it with a normal coral reef, a ship wreck has a long story which attached to maritime history. It needs special attention when you dive in to a wreck than normal recreational diving procedures, in return you are well-rewarded. Sometimes you might be able to find some hidden treasure too! Identifying a shipwreck in the ocean & exploring the treasure is not as simple as I say here or you would see in a movie. Only handful of people in the world had ended up with success stories, yet some people have even sacrificed their lives for such causes. Even when you are just reading this, there are a countless number of ships lie on the beds of oceans with plenty of unrevealed secrets. Most of all, billions worth treasure still lies within those artifacts. Shipwrecks are simply legends!

Even though, people are not that aware, coasts of Sri Lanka is full of shipwrecks! As far as I know, Arthur C. Clarke and Mike Wilson are pioneering adventurers who dug this subject & actually made a success story at the end of the day. Both of them had passed away by now, after gaining very different aspects in the later parts of their lives. Anyway, my enthusiasm on this subject became increased while started reading about their adventures. While "Reefs of Taprobene" explains about their initial diving around the country to identify the wrecks and "The treasure of the great reef" reveals how they identified the Moghul time ship wreck near Great Basses & how they discovered the treasure. Everybody knows about Arthur C. Clarke. Apart from all adventurous work done by them, I started wondering about the extra-ordinary capacity and energy of Mike Wilson through these books. He is simply a wonderful character! For me hero is not Arthur C. Clarke, but Mike Wilson! Anyway, his later life took a very different path way!!

Mike Wilson & Arthur C. Clarke

Mike Wilson's early life

Mike was born in London, England. He sailed to east with Merchant ships in his early life and then joined army. Then he was transferred to Parachute regiment & then again attached to special Frogmen unit of Royal Navy, where he became a very successful carder. After he discharged from the duties, he moved to Australia & became a licensed pearl diver. He was so crazy in scuba diving and under water explorations. He dived in Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Anyway, what is important from our point of view is, he moved to Sri Lanka with Arthur C. Clarke in 1956 & decided to stay in Sri Lanka, discovering her crystal clear waters & marine life.

They started exploring the Indian Ocean around Sri Lanka for coral reefs & wrecks as soon as they come to Sri Lanka. They were accompanied by the marine biologist: Mr. Rodney Jonklass. He has done a remarkable role in identifying the tropical fishes in Sri Lanka and Jonklaas's loach (or Lepidocephalichthys jonklaasi) is a rare endemic fresh water fish in Sri Lanka, which was named to commemorate his scientific service to the industry. They spent an enjoyable life in Sri Lanka while diving, diving with Sharks, catching fishes with spear guns, reading historical data & traveling everywhere. First under water filming in Sri Lankan waters were done in this era, for the first time in the history.

See what Arthur C. Clarke has to say about the motive force that made him fascinated of Indian Ocean around Sri Lanka;

“When I left England to join Mike Wilson on The Great Barrier Reef in 1954, I had np plans for any further under-water expeditions. However, during the afternoon that the P&O Himalaya stopped in Colombo, I met Ceylon’s pioneer skin diver, Rodney Jonklass, and he infected me with his enthusiasm for Indian Ocean.”

First underwater filming in Sri Lankan waters..

Treasure in the Great Basses

On March 12th 1961, Mike left to Kirinda with two other American boys to dive in Great Basses. They did some diving & filming as usual & had a good time. One morning, the sea was not that clear enough for filming, which made them decide to have a swim (as Arthur C. Clarke said later, it was the luckiest thing ever happened to them). They swam a long to find some more new regions of the reef. When they were about to return back, Mike observed something interesting on the sea bed. That was a small old canon, glittering with the sunshine. This simple incident was the starting point of a great discovery, a new ship wreck with treasure, which hadn't been identified by anyone else!

Ran Muthu Duwa

In order to start the detail survey about the wreck in the next season, they needed some money to utilize. They needed a boat of their own & other equipments. When they were thinking of solving this financial problem, Mike came up with another bright idea of producing a Sinhala movie with under water scenes, which they can manage easily. This idea presented the first Sinhala Colour film Ranmuthu Duwa to Sinhala film history. Mike Wilson was the director while famous Gamini Fonseka, Joe Abeywickrema and Jeevarani Kurukulasooriya did the main roles. Nanda Malini, Amaradewa & Narada Dissasekara joined as vocalists while some lyrics were written by Mahagama Sekera.

Ranmuthu duwa was released in 1962 & it became very successful. From the money they earned, they did the exploration & managed to identify the wreck as a ship belongs to Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1707, son of the great Shah Jehan who built the Taj Mahal in Agra, India) which was sent off for trade in the far east but was sunk in a storm off the Great Basses. Also they discovered some silver treasure in it. Boat they built to do the expedition was named Ran Muthu.

Some of the Artifacts and treasure found from Great Basses;

One of my diving pals, Kusum managed to search the site in 2008 and captured this photo of the area. He was amazed with the beauty of the diving site.

How Mike's life changed

Mike visited Trincomalee in 1956 for the first time. He dived near Koneswarar Temple and also got some knowledge from Rodney, about what he could expect to see. He managed to find the old temple scattered beneath the sea as he was being explained. He understood it was a quite extra ordinary site with some hidden archeological and also a spiritual value. Also Mike had been told about the "Swayambhu Linga" which all the devotees of god Kataragama, were very much interested about.

"Swayambhu Linga" is somewhat, tomb like object which said to have a spiritual power, which originally found in Tibetan mountains, later brought to Sri Lanka by King Ravana, according to the legends. There said to have 69 such tombs originally. It has been kept in a sacred temple in the Koneswarar, but had been destroyed and splashed in to the sea by Portuguese invaders in the seventeenth century. Till then, this "Swayambhu Linga" was being searched by holy people worldwide who devote the legends of god Skunda, but couldn't find any trace.

When it was the time, Ranmuthu Duwa was filming near Trincomalee; Mike Wilson discovered this holy object and delivered it to Koneswarar Temple, where people started worshipping ever since. Mike came straight to the Colombo Museum archive & started reading about the history of the finding. He understood that, what he found was one of the original Lingums from 69 originals, where only few remains in the world today.

With all these findings, Mike started to believe that finding of the Lingum is not just a random happening, started to feel the power of it and finally decided to commit his entire life devoting the holy gift and do the needful rituals.

He believed that being seated alone in the presence of the Swayambhuwa Linga is, itself a part of the ritual. So he did so. He explained his experience; "One is aware of its enormous antiquity. And one's mind is able to soar back to the distant past and see all those who have sat there before."

He became a Swami (Swami Siva Kalki) and spent his remaining life in Kataragama as a devotee & doing rituals accordingly, till he passed away.

Mike Wilson as Swami Siva Kalki.

"It changed me completely," he declared in an interview in The Sunday Times of 18 November, 1990. "It was diksha (initiation) and darshan (divine vision) all in one. I understood something, how I had spent many lives here in Sri Lanka already, how this was not my first. I was prompted to go to Kataragama. One needs a place to sit and ponder; that place for me was Kataragama.

Note 1 : Added on 02/09/2010
Last month I managed to visit Koneswarar at Trinco on my way to diving and photographed below object which I belived to be the legendary "Swayambhu Linga" which was discovered by Mike Wilson. People I met at the Kovil was not much aware about history, but they managed to tell this was discovered by Sudda (foreigner). Please correct me if I am wrong.

References;

The Reefs of Taprobane - Arthur C. Clarke

The Treasure of the Great Reef - Arthur C. Clarke & Mike Wilson

http://kataragama.org/sivakalki.htm

http://lakdiva.org/coins/clarke/greatbasses/treasure.html

http://www.divesrilanka.com/

If defending whales is a crime, arrest me !

2008-11-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

Greenpeace is directing all of their efforts toward work IN JAPAN, where they believe whaling will be ended forever, and where two of their activists face prison for exposing corruption and scandal in the whaling industry.

Turning the political prosecution of these two activists in Japan against the whaling factions in Tokyo will become the central focus of a mass mobilization campaign against the Japanese Government’s whale hunt in the Southern Ocean Whaling Sanctuary.

Want to be a part of that mobilization? Are you ready to go to jail in Japan for your role in saving whales?

Because if the Japanese Government believes that criticizing its "scientific whaling" programme is a crime, then all nature lovers are as complicit as the two activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, who are being put on trial after exposing a corruption scandal in the whaling industry.

As far as I'm concerned, if the Japanese Government is going to start rounding up political prisoners for the crime of wanting to save the whales, they can start with me. And I suspect they are going to have to arrest a whole heap of us.

Please sign the petition, if you agree with me..;

sign the petition through Greenpeace

Tech: Windows Services Basics

2008-10-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

We are web developers, so just need to take our attention to that area. So, why we need Windows Service? Ahaa..!! We need Windows services to fulfill some of the important tasks. Specially, after we deployed the website, if we need to do some data maintenance plan, windows service would be the best option.

In simple terms, if a bank need to send an e-mail to the customers to pay the credit card bill before the due date, you may decide to send the mail seven days in advance, each month. This can’t be done through a web application, but with a windows service.

Now we will see a how to write a very basic Windows Service with VS 2005. Actually, this service does nothing, but writing a message in an error log when it’s started or stopped.

1. Initializing

First you have to start a Windows Service project under Windows (under Visual C# tab). Give a proper meaningful name for the project. Content in the solution explorer would be as below; FirstService.cs is a name given by me, otherwise it is Service1.cs by default.

Here Program.cs is where service is created and run. In our case FirstService is the only service we need to run. Any way, if we need to run number of Services, it is also possible. For that you will need to add those to the program file. Check the program file code in our scenario.

If we need to add more services, it’s obvious that we can add them to ServiceBase array.

2. Tasks of the Service

Our aimed task is to update something in event view. Now we will open the design mode of the FirstService and add an eventlog component from the Components tab in the toolbax. I will rename it to eventLogFirst in the property window.

Now we need to initialize this component in the FirstService service code. (Code can be view by pressing F7, while inverse can be done with shift+F7)

3. Defining installation process

Now again switch to the design mode of the FirstService, write click in the work area and select “Add installer” from the menu. You will get jumped to the design view of the ProjectInstaller which was just added to the project, where you can see two components serviceProcessInstaller1 and serviceInstaller1. I will rename it to ease of indentifying. Now they are serviceProcessInstallerFirst and serviceInstallerFirst respectively.

There are two more properties to be changed in serviceInstallerFirst as below;

- ServiceName: FirstService (to identify the correct service)

- StartType: Automatic (to start the service automatically when PC starts)

One property in serviceProcessInstallerFirst to be set as below;

- Account : LocalService

Then right click the project & set the startup project to FirstWindowsService.program under application tab.

4. Build by pressing F6. It should show the message “Build Succeeded” in the bottom, if things are fine.

5. Installing through installutil (command prompt)

Installing using installutil is so easy. Just giving the path of the FirstWindowsService.exe does the needful.

Installutil can be found in below location;

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\

Then type installutil to install and installutil –u to unistall

(In my case path is C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\MYSITES\Collection-4\WindowsService\FirstWindowsService\FirstWindowsService\bin\Debug\FirstWindowsService.exe)

6. Testing the Service

Now you can see the Windows Service in the service list (Admin Tool>Services) (can remove from the list by uninstalling) and you can start it by just right clicking & selecting the start. Again you can stop in the same way.

Once you check in the event viewer (Admin Tool> EventViewer) you can see two events we tracked through our event viewer component of the Windows Service.

We can get our task done through the service without any problem. Optionally, we can add a deployment project to make the users life easier.

7. Adding the deployment project

Right click the solution explorer & add a new deployment project.

( Other project types > Setup and Deployment > Setup Project ) I gave a meaningful name as SetupFirstWindowsService.

7.1 Now right click the setup project & select Add to get “project Output” window.

Select “Primary Output” from the resulting window.

7.2 Again right click the setup project to add custom actions.

(View > Custom actions)

Then right click the “Custom Actions” node & you will get the below window;

Now double click the application folder within this window to get below window and click ok.

Now our primary output is added to all our custom actions and will be shown as below.

7.3 Now right click the build project & build it. If it is successful, you can see the setup.exe files & SetupFirstWindowsService.msi files in the debug folder. We can now install the program by SetupFirstWindowsService file in the same manner we install / uninstall (using add/remove programs) the programs.

In the real world

Well, we have just written something, which we could call a windows service, But in the real world, what we need to do partially in the most cases are to execute something periodically.

For that we might need to use a Timer. (Actually System.Timers.Timer)

In Timer, you can set the interval as required. Interval unit starts with 1/1000 seconds. So 1000 is one second. Please check the below code which would be practical important in real world win services you will write. We have set the time interval as one second. (If it’s a one minute number is 60,000) Method Timelog could be used to do the task whatever you want to occur with one second intervals. Make sure you enable the timer.

Listen to Amadahara

2008-10-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Visit http://www.amadahara.org/ and listen to Damma talks, either in Sinhala or English language.

This consists of very clear & nice Buddhist talks.

You have just killed Beethoven!

2008-10-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

I got an interesting mail from a friend. Please read it;

“ If you knew a woman who was pregnant, and she had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?

If you said yes, you just killed Beethoven. “

Anyway, after sometime I wanted to read about Beethoven and saw some incompatibility with the facts I read in the mail. So I managed to dig it & found that the mail wasn’t so correct. Also there had been worse types of the lies. Correction to the mail had been revealed by so many people in the web. Please read below.

"Though Ludwig Van Beethoven's parents did have 7 children. Beethoven was NOT the youngest. He was the 2nd born child to his parents on December 17th 1770. The first born was named Ludwig Maria. Though Ludwig Maria did die six days after his birth. There is no knowledge that he was born blind, deaf or mentally retarded.

Though Beethoven's father was a known alcoholic, he was not known to abuse his children. As far as the sniffles argument, the sniffles are simply when you have a stuffy nose from allergies or a cold. It's not a fatal disease. I don't think most people base decisions on weather or not the father to be, happens to have a cold or allergies, and history tends not record every little sneeze a person has during their life. Even if that person is Beethoven's father.

His mother did not have syphilis. She did contract tuberculosis, but not until Beethoven was nearly 20 years old. Beethoven's parents had 5 children after him. Casper Anton Carl, Nikolaus Johann, Anna-Maria Franziska, Franz Georg, and Maria Margareth Josepha. Anna-Maria and Franz Georg both died only days after their birth. None of the children were known to be blind, deaf or mentally retarded. None were ever in a mental institution.

There are many versions to this lie. Some claim that Beethoven was deaf at birth and became a great composer despite this disability. This is also false information. Beethoven suffered hearing loss which was caused by scarlet fever not genetics. He was already an accomplished composer by the time he started to lose his hearing. Beethoven's loss of hearing caused him to withdraw into a deep depression. He withdrew himself from the public and his friends.

Other versions of this abortion argument state that Ludwig Van Beethoven was blind. This was never true at all."

Hm..I am sorry! I too forwarded this in-ethical mail to few of my friends!

Sri Lankan Márquez !

2008-09-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

Gabriel García Márquez is considered to be the most significant novelist who went his journey on a different path. On other hand, his novels were typical examples that challenge the traditional framework of writing through "Magic Realism"

Actually alternative pathways come in to the scene, when current frameworks are no more enough to express their ideas. History proves it well. After the world wars, development in communication & transportation made the western world changed a lot which resulted complexity & frustration. Money & Power dominated the societies. People struggled to express the realities they felt.. People, politics & society were no more explained with just realism. With those changes, we can see the evolution in art media, that became quite complex. Realism is no more enough.. New structures were being introduced like Surrealism. A novelist like Marcas is a typical result from a society (deformed?) that doesn't know where it heads! He was one of the most significant writers in the 20th century and Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 1982.

Is Martin Wickramasinghe's Gamperaliya enough to explain the realities we feel today?
As I could remember Madawala (Mohan Raj Madawala) had done a great effort to go beyond the traditional expressionism through his short story book.(i.e Bodilima) It was released in mid nineties. It contained a very different model that I haven't read in any Sinhala book. He was brave enough to do that research. Even though, I don't know, whether it was successful in Sinhala reading crowd, a lot of intellectuals were keeping hopes on this new model in Sinhala literature. He could have been the Marques in Sri Lankan context!

Please read below extract from the book.

I was among the people, who expected more books from Madawala. I became a self appointed campaigner for his book. Most of the people around me (Including my Mum) became very harsh Criticizers!

Please refer Another example;

I didn't hear anything more about this writer for another few years. I thought, may be he would have gone out of the country for his higher studies or something.. But then I heard his name in a third class radio channel as a presenter! I couldn't believe that he was doing this kind of thing to make his living. Who could believe this one was a radical writer that gave a lot of hopes to Sinhala readers.

This creative writer had been killed by this commoditized society!

For me.. Sri Lankan Márquez had died in his early ages!

Fantasy of curves

2008-09-02T19:15:00.000-07:00

I always paint curves,..not just curves.. but my paintings consist of curves but not sharp square type edges. I don’t know whether this has some connection with my indefinite ideas occur in my day to day life. Anyway, Expressing is a healing.

My Mum was always blaming me for painting this kind of complex compositions. Most of all she sees some naked women in my paintings.. hmm.. She is not wrong. Can we figure out what & who inspired our imaginations? Our childhood, experiences, sexuality.. can’t be certain about anything.

For me, beauty is a curve.. it’s artistic and rhythmic...Curves are Romantic.. Natures doesn’t have sharp edges..sky, trees & rivers.. so is the human body, rhythm of a body of women which makes me (being a male) fascinated. These curves are inter-related.. things are not isolated.. I have connection with other people and things.. I virtually communicate with plenty of people & things, sometimes in a passive manner.. Universe is a massive network of shapes..

World is a beautiful place for me, because it has curves..

Picaso said what you could imagine is real!

Some of the above paintings were not allowed to display in the lobby of my home. This is what I heard from my dad.. “this is really a nice painting, but why don’t you hang it in your room, without hanging it here”

Tech: Inheritance makes life easy

2008-08-29T01:24:00.000-07:00

As we all know Inheritance is one of the strongest features in object oriented designing. In fact, using the proper Inheritance makes life so easy. Actually, you have to be clever in identifying when to use a base class, what methods we put there with what conditions and when to use an interface & etc. Here, we will discuss what kind of options we have in doing it & how we initiate the thought of class designing. We will use c# coding for my example.

My scenario is to deal with information relevant to employees in a business. I first write my base class as employee. Then I introduce an Interface called Iemployee.

Now we will see how I inherit these features to two different classes; Manager & Clerk. Of course, both of them are employees, yet with some differences.

Constructors
Any employee should get a Salary, so I have put that property & handling methods in base class. In the way, I have written the constructors, we can either initiate it once we instantiate the class.
In Clerk class, we have a special property to keep the “Over Time rate”, which is not applicable for the manager. So, it’s obvious that I can’t declare it in the base class. Now see the third constructor of Clerk class that initiates both Salary & the OverTomeRate.

Interface
If you see the simple coding in Iemployee, it just shows the declaration of classes (in this case, only one). This is again tricky. Not like “over time rate”, both Manager & Clerk could get the bonus, but the bonus calculation could be so different for them. That’s why; we have used an interface for this. Interfaces just give the declaration, but implementation could be done in the class itself. If you have five implementations in the interface, it’s a must that you should do relevant implementations in the classes derived from it.

Name hiding
Name hiding is something different. If you see closely, you can see the GetFestivalAdvance method in the base class, yet we have put the same in the inherited class Clerk. When we execute this code, always method in the inherited class get fist precedence than base class method. For other classes (ex. manager), base class will do the work. If you see carefully, you can see a key word “new” in Clerk class implementation. If we don’t put it, still code works as same as I explained, but VS framework throws a warning message. I think this is a cool thing, because that it indicates programmer about the hiding of method. So we can add new key word when we do it intentionally. Compliments to VS!

Virtual methods & Overriding
Now we will see the method called GetNewYearHolidays (with virtual label). Again, we find the same method in the Clerk class with the label Override. This is a little similar feature to above one; where we implement a method in the base class & again we can re-implement it in the class when we need a different version. Even in this case, method in the inherited class gets the highest precedence. Difference here is, program decide what version to run in the run time (not in the compiler time).

Abstract Classes
Abstract classes are a kind of base class, yet it only consists of some declarations only. Classes that use “Abstract” should do the implementation in their classes as wish. In our example, we can use employee as an independent class (can instantiate) if we need, but if we decide to write an abstract class, we won’t get that chance. Actually, we get to do that only we initially decide that base class we need to write is done only for our convenience, but we don’t need to use objects out of it. Abstract classes are automatically virtual.

Abstract Classes vs. Interfaces
Identifying when to use an Interface and when to use Abstract classes are said to be one of the hardest tasks in C# programming. As a common norm it is said that, if you know “what it does” than “how it does”, you should use Interface. If you know little bit more about implementation, use Abstract Classes.

Even though, our example uses only two levels, we can still use base classes & Interfaces in a nested manner. Base classes could be inherited from another class & etc. When you consider an individual class, you can have only one base class and can have many interfaces. Also, VS ships some built-in interfaces with the package. If our requirement matches with them, using them would give your application the readability & standard too.

Designing you classes with these concepts according to the practical scenario would make your life easy!

Tech: A Resource for Classic ASP Developers

2008-08-26T02:12:00.000-07:00

While asp.net is dominating the web development market, classic ASP is getting obsolete slowly. Yet, it is a very interesting scripting language, which has made web developers life comfortable. Still, there exist a quite large number of classic ASP web sites. Below web site is a nice place to find out all the functions for classic ASP developers.

http://www.haneng.com/FunctionSearch.asp

Snapshots from diving adventures.

2008-08-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

(These photos were taken by Kusum, Devana & myself.)

Song of the River.

2008-08-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

This is a book I enjoyed since I was very small. Book consists of a collection of very nice poems. Still I am enjoying this poetry when I have free time.. These Sinhala poems should belong to the Colombo Era (“kolamba yugaya”), if we try to recognize them. Anyway, these poems illustrate very beautiful and strong images in my mind. Simple themes are so nice & background touches the typical Sinhala old villages & people. I am always with these kinds of classical fantasies!

Please read below poem which was selected from this book. See, whether you can agree with me.. This great poem is by the poet Kudaligama.

This book has been compiled by another poet: Meemana Premathilake. Sunil Madhawa Premathilaka’s father. We will discuss about Sunil Madhawa in some other blog post. He too is a remarkable symbol in contemporary Sri Lankan literature & journalism.

The Lovable Dictator

2008-08-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

Sugathapala de Silva is a very strange & remarkable symbol in Sinhala Stage Drama community. No one addresses him with a prefix "Mr.", nor with Dr. or Prof.. Also he wasn't with any honorary names like "Kala Bushana" & etc. He is just Sugathapala de Silva or else the Lovable Dictator!

I happened to recollect thoughts about him recently because his 80th birthday was commemorated recently at Punchi Theater,Borella. Darmasiri Bandaranayake delivered a lecture on Sugathapala de Silva & his vision in a very sensitive manner.

Among his books, I can remember that I enjoyed the Sinhala translation of "The Gadfly" (ATA MASSA) very much. When I was reading it, I was so young & with full of revolutionary ideas.. So this book gave me much more energy to very progressive thoughts that I was with..

I wasn't so fortunate to see most of his early stage dramas, but I was fortunate enough to enjoy one of his master pieces, MARASAD (translated & produced, original script is from Peter Wise) stage drama. If I am correct, it was his last stage play & last public show.. I was also fortunate enough to see this "Giant" personality of just about 5 feet tall! When I was returning home, my palms were paining because we clapped continuously after he appeared on the stage. It was a great play, yet I didn't know why we clapped that much.. Everybody in the crowd stood up from their chairs & clapped.. So I followed.. Anyway, after that I read & learned from other people and books about the great characteristics of this person & got to know the real value of this artist.

SugathaPala was so straight forward with his ideas & didn't want to go after the governments to get awards or any titles; instead he wrote the truth & did his role as a dramatist to educate the Sri Lankan society. He was so poor in wealth, because he didn't go after money. One of my friends visited him (I wanted to join him, but I Couldn't) when he was critically ill.. My friend said, "I feel so sorry about him.. he is about to die, he lies pathetically in a very small room...his family doesn't have a home or any asset, it seems.." At that day we talked more & more about Sugathapala de Silva's fate & his role in this society. Anyhow, we came to the conclusion that Sugathapala is a happy and successful man. There is nothing to worry about him, because he wanted to do something & he did it. Money or other possessions are not with his priorities. He died on 28th October 2002.

Some of the giant personalities we see on the stage drama today are the students of Sugathapala. For example; Jackson Anthony & Darmasiri Bandaranayake

Stories are inter-connected..! If you can remember about the famous singer, late Gunadasa Kapuge, he was so hammered by media & critiques for releasing a cassette with more western type music done by famous group SUNFLOWERS. This cassette release was criticized so harshly & it was told that he has sold out his own children (his songs!) for the greed of money. Kapuge faced everything without telling any word. Only few people around him knew that Kapuge had done that cassette to get some money to help Sugathapala de Silva to spend on his medicine. People do such sacrifices! How beautiful is this world?

I always feel great, when I think about such beautiful lives, who loved mankind by means & scarified their personality for achieving much greater goals.. Definitely world has come this far because of such noble people!

I can still remember one quote told in MARASAD drama.. It’s very strange, quite funny, yet with a deep meaning..

Tech: IEnumerable and IEnumerator interfaces

2008-08-07T21:20:00.000-07:00

These are two common and important interfaces come with .NET framework. This is all about iterating through a collection.

Interfaces are very fascinating concept in developing. (I am going bit away from the topic!) When using interfaces appropriately, our own classes get the formal shape of a built in class in the framework itself. So, it becomes a standard readable code at the end of the day. If explain simply; IEnumerable interface adds a method called GetEnumerator which returns an IEnumerator. This method already exist in the framework in collection classes like arrays. Since everybody familier with this existing method, our own class too becomes a standard type of class in the framework. So it’s really important to use available interfaces instaed of our own method names in our classes.

Above is an extra advertisement for interfaces! Back to the topic.. As it was said in the above paragraph, IEnumerable offers only GetEnumerator method. See the simple implementation in the class.

By calling GetEnumerator, we can read the collection easy with iterating facility is there in the IEnumerable interface. Now MoveNext(), Current() & Reset() methods could be simply called. Check how I operate this;

There is a bit of a miss-leading part too; when the current position is in the zero level (will say as it) you don’t get any objects in that position. (Normally, situation is different in the collections) You got to Move to Next position to access the first object. In other words, if you try to access the current object soon after you call the reset method, you won’t get any valid object.

Now we will see how we could implement the IEnumerator interface & get the iterating facility within the class. Here I declare another integer variable to hold the current position of the array.

Now you can use the three methods written within the class, as required.

IEnumerable and IEnumerator interfaces are so cool & really easy to use.

Traditional photography…

2008-08-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

Now everybody works with digital photography & people who use 35mm reels are becoming so rare. Digital photography gives plenty of advantages, but I simply don't get the pleasure from Digital cameras as I do with traditional ones. When I do settings manually & get the photo with a nice "Click" sound, I feel that I am doing some art. Most of all, going to a studio & collecting the photos to see the result is an awesome experience.

I think, black & white photography is so special & I really like it. But unfortunately, "per-shot" cost is going so high, while there is less market for B&W reels.. hm..this is too bad for me.

Anyway, I tried some B&W shots & developed in the traditional way. See below the results. The following three photos represent three generations around me.

My wife..

Father..

And..my Grand Ma..

I still try to reason out why B&W photos are so special..

Tech: Concept of Generics in ASP.NET 2.0

2008-08-03T19:42:00.001-07:00

Generics are quite interesting feature in ASP.NET which was added in its version 2. When we heard the term “Generics” it implies its functionality halfway. It’s all about the classes which are to be used with Type Safe manner. We have used the most of the collections like Arraylists, Queues & etc. which available with System.Collections namespace. It’s as simple as below.

This code works fine. If you notice, we have added three strings along with an integer as queue items. Now consider the below two cases, that represents the queue in two different namespaces.

What’s the difference? We have already checked the queue in the first namespace which is familiar to us. In second case (i.e System.Collections.Generic namespace) represents the queue which has Generic support. Now we will see the difference. Below is the same coding done with this speical queue, but this won’t work.

We will try to understand the feature in generics through this example. Here, Queue is generic Queue, so it’s available to declare with any type when using. Here, we have declare it with string type. Now we have to operate this queue with strings only. Attempting to enqueue an integar gives compiling error.

Now we can understand the type-safelty as the fruit of generics. What we checked in above example is a built in class, which enables the generic support. As such, we can use List, SortedLists, Stacks, Dictonary, SortedDictionary etc. You may consider List as the successor of arrylist in Generic family. Any way, we can even think of writing our own classes with this feature.

Let’s try a simple example. See this syntax of a generic class which could be used as a container for a varible, which can be used with any type with help of its generic nature.

Here its being used with two different types.

Ok. Now we will consider a better practical example. Here I am writing a class to hold the field name & field value pairs while keeping a method to return a tablerow consist of those values, when required. In order to show why generic feature is important, I will consider a handling of a profile of a person through this. Here, this will consist of name, address like string fields and also age, salaray like integar fields. Also, datetime fields could come to scene with date of birth like attributes if needed. Now you can understand, why I select to use generic feature here to pass one variable type. It’s obvious that I don’t need to pass two types since fields name would be string at all times.

Here you can see how I call the class with string & intigar types as required.

Now see the result.

I hope this gives a better idea about generic classes & how we can utilise this feature in our own classes. It should be noted that you can even use more than one generic type for a class & there is nothing special about it; can use in the same way.

Hard part in this scenario is, you got to write your all methods within the class to face the different types that class could expect to use. This is a challage.

Let’s use generics !

Tech: Savior for Missing DLLs !

2008-07-31T01:59:00.000-07:00

Any one would suffer from missing of DLLs at any moment..

Here is the savior!

http://www.dll-files.com/

You can simply down load them from this site very easily.

Nandana Marasinghe : a fallen bird !

2008-07-24T04:26:00.000-07:00

I haven’t seen Nandana Marasinghe. But I have heard & read about him. He seems to be a real man with a lot of admirable qualities. He was with dreams of a nice and equal society in Sri Lanka. Difference between all other people who see dreams & Nandana was significant. He worked hard to make those dreams realities.

He is a founder member of JVP. In 1971, he fought to make a better change in Sri Lankan society. He is also the creator of famous “Vimukthi Gee” concert. He was more in to love humanity & mankind while fighting for a better world..Such straightforward and broad attitudes towards the revolution was quite strange for a party like JVP, I believe now. When it comes to the second (lost) revolution in 1989, Nandana was doing his social duties independently (he left JVP!), but very firmly. So JVP killed him. He was so pathetically shot while he was making his living by selling shoes at Anuradhapura pola, in front of his children, in October 1987. Old JVP members knew how many times Nandana had saved Wijeweera’s life in 71! “Vimukthi Gee” is still being sung by JVP without knowing that they killed the person who wrote!

Some people believe this killing lead to another killing of a giant figure in Sri Lankan politics & Sinhala cinema; that’s Wijaya Kumaranatunga. Since Wijaya was a close friend of Nandana, he had delivered a quite aggressive speech at Nandana’s funeral pointing fingers to JVP. In fact, JVP decided to get rid of Wijaya too, without any delay.

When I entered the University in 1996, there were JVP supporters with a lot of theories about two lost revolutions. I was very much keen on these political activities. Sadly, most of them didn’t know about people like Nandana. The poem (by famous Rathna Sri) attached below was written about Nanda Marasinghe on the wallpaper called “Prabathaya” in the “Open Canteen” which I happen to do the editing. You can still see this wallpaper hanging on the “Open Canteen” of Colombo University.

It is so surprising to talk about the general knowledge of the students. At that time there was a student leader whose surname too was Marasinghe & they have thought this poem is about him..! What other things could I say.. as far as I know Rathna Sri is not a joker but a very respectable poet!!

At Nandana’s funeral Wijaya has openly questioned “What kind of revolution one can do by killing such people…”

Not Nandana, Nor Wijaya is in our society today!

I think our society is greatly suffering from lack of ideal people.. We still have leaders and artists in our society, but still there is lot of room for real people with real human touch & better sensitivity!

Tech: Derived custom controls in ASP.NET 2.0

2008-07-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

As a concept, Derived custom controls in asp.net 2.0 is quite interesting, useful & very easy. It gives you the flexibility of customizing any existing control as you wish. This flexibility makes a better sense when compare with user controls which has a lot of constrains, comparatively.

Will do a simple example;

You all know the usage of an ordinary TextBox. Now we will consider a scenario that we got to use a TextBox to get a number of keywords separated by commas. If we have to do this in many instances, we could suggest enhancing the functionality of a TextBox as creating a derived custom control. Then we are ready to re-use it as a normal toolbox item. (I use c# in coding)

1) First Open a class library project in VS 2005. (It’s also possible create a control within the web application project itself, but here I am creating it in a different project, which I think is the best way.)

Need to add System.Web.dll to the references folder & add below reference namespace in the code since textbox belongs to this namespace.
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
If you notice in the below image, there is only one class file to do our coding for the new kind of our textbox.

2) Now you can do the customization code as you wish.

I will do a little bit of appearance changes in the constructor method. Properties I change here are the properties which are inherited from the ToolBox component (i.e TextBox) I have used to derive my control.
Apart from the appearance, I have added two more methods; one to get the number of keywords user has input & one to return an array containing all the keywords.

Now build the project.

3) Now you can add the new control to the toolbox.

Right click any tab in the toolbox & browse it to the DLL just created & click ok. Then the control is ready in your toolbox like any other tool item in the VS. (I have created a special tab called “My Derived Controls”, but one can add it to any existing tab as well).

4) Now you can use the new toolbox item, KeyWordTextBox in any web application.

Now you can simply drag & drop or code this item. If you click the properties window, you can see the properties you set in the creating phase of the control.

Also, you can see the methods you wrote while creating the control. Now you can use them so easily.

So this will make your life so easy.

This is just a simple example. Anyone can create their tailor-made controls according to their requirements. Any tool in the toolbox is expandable in this mean. Also it is important to see how we could maintain the states of derived custom controls & how to write eventhandler for them.

(Thank you, Charith for encouraging me to write something technical in the Blog rather than gossip type articles!)

Lithium-Ion batteries get exploded.

2008-07-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

As a fact, mobile phone batteries get exploded if they contact with fire. Each & every battery, itself contain a warning message… still, I dropped a such battery to a fire with all other rubbish in my dustbin; I saw & felt how it happened.. it simply exploded like a bomb resulting a cut/burning injury in my back side, right down the right shoulder blade..

It was strange to step in to the accident ward in a Mayday just wearing a red sarong only.
Sawanthi was so worried. Luckily, there were few friends too around me to help. After treating the wounds, they put 7 stitches.. had to sleep in a very strange position for another couple of weeks.. hm.. that was bad indeed!

Story is not end; while heeling the wound, some allergy came in to the action & started some irritation around it.. my family doctor suspected, it should be due to the chemicals in the battery, while my friend, Dr. Aruna denied. Anyway, this occurred couple of times & had to get more medicines.

Moral of the story: Don’t put mobile phone batteries to fire! They do hurt you; I know it now!

Behind this scenario, there is a very big story.. that is all about the pollutants we add to this world each day.. this battery is a waste, actually a toxic waste. How many batteries we all consume without knowing what would happen to it afterword. This serious argument was raised by Channa Ekanayake. He wanted me to read a little about the theories discussed in Barry Commoner’s closing circle. His four concepts of the ecology are enough to understand the scale & seriousness of the matter.

They are simple;
1) Everything Is Connected to Everything Else
2) Everything Must Go Somewhere
3) Nature Knows Best
4) There is No such Thing as A Free Lunch

Please read the full article. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology

bob marley.

2008-07-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

I like Bob Marley.. I decided to represent this legendry person in a canvas.. this was the result..

Bob Marley sings by heart.. I don’t know about music that much, what I only know is I like him & his songs. Once we talked long & tried to find out motive forces around him. That’s cool..
Still I am thinking whether there is any connection in between the “Rasta” culture and the Sinhala word “Rastiyadu ” Sounds so close, so is the idea..

I heard that some of my friends wanted to play “No women – No cry” in my Home Coming day…

Music played on my Home Coming was not with any taste that I would prefer.. I was so angry! If I am given an opportunity to kill someone without any sin or legal constrain, I wonder whether I would select this DJ !

Any way, I still like the song "No Women - No Cry . . .!"

My Necklaces

2008-06-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

This is actually, my collection of necklaces!

Hm.. I get criticized by different parties! But I do wear necklaces.. Interestingly, my Grand Mum (passed away last year on her nineties) didn’t tell anything about this but smiled & enjoyed! I thought she was so liberal & modern in the way she think, than most of others!

This collection consist of Necklaces with some sentimental value to me.. Certain things presented by Sawanthi, one given by Ishan when we were in Brussels ..one with a sea-shell that I found from Okanda Beach & more..

Goodbye my friend!

2008-06-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

Menaka was calling my phone in an odd time.. hm, I knew it cant be for any diving business, since sea should be really rough with the south western monsoon season. When I really heard the trembling voice, I felt something is wrong.. then I heard this pathetic story, Nalaka’s untimely death!

I had known Nalaka as a very friendly character who was loved by everyone, since I met him when I started my diving expeditions. He was a superb PADI (Professional association of diving instructors) dive master who was capable of facing any challenge at sea. I can recollect the nice dives we did together… oh no.. Nalaka is no more!

Nalaka’s tragic death had happened due to a Kite Surfing accident. Since it was windy season, he had tried Kite surfing in the beach, with a rope tied to his body supported by a belt which is not having a release. ( there is a special kind of belt which is used for kite surfing, but he had used something else) He hadn’t used a helmet either! A sudden wind had blown and made him hit the ground once, while he tried to settle down in the correct position, another strong gale had blown towards shore from the sea and struck him on a concrete pillar. This is the exact place that we used to sit and keep on talking about the sea, sharks, whales and of course about our personal lives! According to a witness, Nalaka hadn’t made any movement afterwards; probably his neck had been broken! He further added.. “I have never seen such a pool of blood”

When I reached the funeral house with Kusum, I saw the faded faces of our colleagues who used to be really cheerful people other days.. Even in the coffin, I saw his mild whispering smile from the corners of his lips, which is really unique of him. I doubt whether this one would suddenly say “Koi welaweda machan awe? (when did you come pal?)” When I face shocking moments sometimes, I needed time to believe its not a dream… its not a dream, Nalaka is dead!

Nalaka’s Russian girl friend was returning to Sri Lanka with the news of this tragic incident.” How would she feel about this?” I thought for a while. She had come to Sri Lanka last year for a vacation. That’s when she had met this wonderful guy and decided to spend her whole life with this handsome person. As I got to know, Nalaka had been planning to start a restaurant on his own, with the help of his girl friend, after visiting her country for a short stay. He had been spending the time with extra happiness and enthusiasm on his last few days, not knowing anything about what life had in store for him.

I can still remember the voice of Kalu, the leader of the Blue Deep diving group, ..”I can’t still believe this.. once all the funeral rituals are over, everybody would divert to their normal lives again.. then I will feel the void made by the absence of Nalaka.. What is this life?”

What is this life… We are running this horse race even without knowing where we head..

Will I meet Nalaka again in this chakra of Sansara.. ?

Goodbye my friend! May you rest in peace..

Stop Whaling !

2008-06-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

Whaling is an inhuman practice, which is still being done in unacceptable levels, especially in Japan. Authorities are so much convinced by various groups in the world, while some of the methods of showing the disagreement seem bit more aggressive, like attacking the whaling ships. Please try to join the world who are in this fight – act in the way you could.

This is just a simple attempt of sending a petition to the authorities with 1million plus signatures. Why don’t you join this ?

Please visit : http://www.whalesrevenge.com

My chronicles...

2007-12-20T20:21:00.000-08:00

There are things get hidden with the time, which could create some sense & give a nice feeling. Probably, there could be people around us who would enjoy them, laugh at them, comment on them or disagree on them. This blog come to seen with that idea. As I think, real fruit I can offer you are the diverse things I touch in my short stay in this homely place called “World”. I do think & act mostly in wildlife & environmental issues, social & philosophical matters and Arts,.. but all could be labeled as cheap chronicles by your mind!

Thanks for staying in touch!