Saliya's Blogs

Great! Now I can stop using mouse for the most part of browsing.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts

In Sri Lanka, I used to connect to Internet using dial-up connection before ADSL came in. Then I felt "wow! ADSL is fast". But today here in IU, I would say "WOW! what a speed". See the picture below to see why I say this.

I wanted to change the size of the icons in Windows7 desktop as they were bit larger than I like. The solution was a simple one, though I had to do some Googling to find it out.

I just wiped out my Dell Insipiron E1505 notebook and installed Windows7 Professional and Ubuntu 9.10. I had enough of the Windows XP Media Center Edition. I thought of moving to Ubuntu 9.10 as well, just feel the fun.

Unlike in the previous experience with Windows, the Windows 7 performs really well. Regarding Ubuntu, it's better than 9.04 (I was happy with 9.04 as well). The only funny thing is that I had to find drivers and manually install my ATI Raedon X1300 VGA for Windows7. Earlier I used to do this for Ubuntu installations :)

For the moment, these two OSs seems to be a great combination if you are planning to get the best of both worlds.

Pidgin was giving trouble when connecting to my Yahoo account since recently. Today I got to know that it's because of this (http://www.celticwolf.com/useful-information/faqs/26-pidgin-yahoo).

Then I wanted to install a latest version of pidgin on my Ubuntu 9.04. I tried the "how to" given in the official pidgin site (http://www.pidgin.im/download/ubuntu/), but it was unsuccessful. Then I came across these debs (http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownload/Pidgin-Download-6.html) which solved the issue.

Just a quick how-to:

1. Download the i386 (or amd 64) debs
2. Download the two DEB ALL debs
3. Use dpkg -i to install the debs. Start with libpurple-bin_2.6.3-1~getdeb1_all.deb.
Then libpurple0_2.6.3-1~getdeb1_i386.deb (or amd 64 one).
Now move ahead with pidgin-data_2.6.3-1~getdeb1_all.deb.
Next pidgin_2.6.3-1~getdeb1_i386.deb (or amd 64 one)

That's it! no more troubles with Yahoo ;)

See what has happened to the paint and you can understand the defect. Dell, you really need to think more on the paint material :)

After sweating my brain over functional programming in Prof. Daniel Friedman's class over the past several weeks, I got the chance to play with relational programming with miniKanren.

It took me some time to adjust my brain to accept the difference. Finally, I told myself

"Going to the grocer and paying for what you got is functional programming, but going to the grocer and handing over 10$ asking to give whatever that fits is logic programming"

Just a thought :)

Ever wondered what is the purpose of a weird shape hole in your laptop? I did and luckily I found this nice site (http://techplore.com/technology/know-your-connectors-ports-a-visual-guide/) with all the info I needed.

After installing Windows7 on my machine, I went on installing my usual set of software including Google Chrome. But, I wanted to test InternetExplorer 8, which is the default browser, as well. So why wait, I started using it. Wow! I have to admit that it's cooler than Chrome. Why I say this mostly because it has a nice set of customizable accelartors. Also so far it is reliable than Chrome in Windows7. Moreover, it's way better than IE 7, which I consider as a pretty bad version of IE.

My friend, Heshan, has done an interesting work to provide a framework extension to Axis2 which enables Jython based Web services and clients. Read more on his article (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-jython/)

Ever wanted to save what you type in your Scheme interpreter? I wanted :). So after a small Google search I found these nice two commands.

I've been watching Britain Got Talent (BGT) for some time now and I've never come across a performer so humble like Eugene.

Really touching video, yet happy for his courage to come forward.

I wanted to run Matlab by logging into the university account remotely from my machine. Everything went fine except for the graphics. Matlab started in no graphics mode.

After bit of a search I found the solution. You have to set the X11 forwarding in you ssh configuration file. Here's how to do it.

1. cd /etc/ssh
2. sudo vi ssh_config
3. uncomment the lines "ForwardAgent" and "ForwardX11". Set their values to "yes"
4. sudo vi sshd_config
5. uncomment "X11Forwarding" and set it value to "yes" as well.

that's it and you are good to go.

Type ssh -X username@domain

To test if everything works fine try running xclock once you log in. It should open up a graphical clock window.

public class Person
{
private String name;
public String Name
{
set
{
System.Console.WriteLine("assigning wow");
Name = value;
}
}
}


public class Hello
{
static void Main()
{
Person person = new Person();
person.Name = "wow";
}
}

I thought of searching for an IDE for Scheme, after being bit lazy to learn Emacs. Lucky enough I found a nice plugin for Eclipse named SchemeWay. It took me a bit of time, however, to configure and set up the plug-in to work as I like.

I have used Ubuntu since it's version 6.04 simply because I felt that it is easy to work with. Anyway, for me, the versions x.04 never gave a good impression. So I used to say "hey! if it's not a x.10 version then it's not what I like". Interestingly, I am finding it is hard to say with Ubuntu 9.04.

Here's a list of things I felt really cool with 9.04.

1. No configuration necessary for the ATI drivers. Yea I had a really fun time configuring stuff with 8.04, 7.10, and 6.10 (Um, I can't remember what I did with 6.04).

2. External display detection is really awesome. It can even arrange the displays in any order I like (e.g. external one on top of default one).

3. Intel wireless card works like a charm.

4. Easy configurations for printers; hmm, I should really admire this.

5. Reliable (so far). Didn't crash, didn't reboot with errors, and most interestingly hibernate seems to work better than in previous versions.

6. Improved graphics.

In summary, I am beginning to like x.04 s as well :)

I found this really useful command in Scheme which helps to trace the function calls, while playing around it.

Say you have define a function named func. Now if you want to trace how it works when you invoke it, just type this.

> (trace func)

The next time you invoke func you will see the trace of function calls.

"...University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka continues to dominate the field with 22 students accepted."

Wow! am I not happy to see this line in the Internet? I truly am. As a former student of University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, I am really happy to see the continuous achievement of its student in Google Summer of Code. To think of the fact that I too was a contributor to this success, makes me happy even more.

Keep up the good work "sharks"

Just hitting "scheme" in the console does no good if you are in Ubuntu 8.04. A workaround is explained here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4868292)

Here's the solution in brief:

sudo sysctl -w vm.mmap_min_addr=0

Now run scheme

It has been nearly 14 months since I joined WSO2. Gosh! I feel I joined just yesterday and I strongly believe that it is the wonderful community at WSO2 which made it so pleasant. Today, the time has come to say good bye, yet I am wondering how. It is hard to let go of a place you like.