Ten waterfalls in three days

Ten waterfalls in three days
 
In my time all this in six months while working busy as a doctor, using mainly the public transport or a jeep of one of my engineer friends, who drove it during the Mahaweli Program (before the accelerated program).
 
None of us had cars and our salary was less than Rs.500/= and a Pupil Teacher was paid Rs.100/=.

Out of those escapades, staying at Laxapana Electricity Board Bungalow was the best 14 days I had enjoyed without the hassle and bustle of the polluted city.

Now people do this in less than three days and make sure all these places are polluted with polythene.

They carry water bottles and we cannot drink water from a stream beginning in Adam’s Peak.
 

This we call the  development (SICK).
 
We did not have polythene then.
 
Time is right for us to ban polythene totally.
 
I also want all traffic except public banned on roads (including Police and Politicians in their public vehicles - I do not think voter will miss anything)  at least for a day, ideally on the Poya Day of the month.
 
Let the devotees try the public transport.
 
I vouch they cannot but we could do it in 1960s and early seventies.
 
We lost everything during the “Pan Polling Days of 1973“ and Middle East War.
 
These are few idea for the Coalition government running short of ideas.
 
One can plan  a trek, starting from Gampola, Ulapane
 
But you will get run over by a politician with his entourage.
 
Please do not try if you want to live.
 
1. Ramboda Falls
Thawalatenna
Kalpitiya
Pundaluoya
Watagoda
 
2. St Clare’s Falls
Thalawakelle

3. Nanuoya Falls
Nuwera Eliya
Sita-Ela
Haputale

4. Bomburuwella Waterfall
Welimada
Hali Ela
Badulla

5. Dunhinda Falls
Passara
Pelwatta
Walawaya

6. Diyaluma Falls
Koslanda
Beragala
Haputale
Boralanda
Ohiya

7. Baker’s Fall
8. Bambarakanda Waterfall
Belihuloya
Ratnapura

8. Bopath Ella
Ehaliyagoda
Karawanella
Ginigathhena
Nawalapitiya
 
9. Kadiyallena Falls 

10. Devons Falls
Nuwaraeliya
Kotagala
Hatton
Dickoya
Norwood
Maskeliya
Nalladandiya

11. Adam’s Peak

Beauty and the Beast (of our Rivers)

Epilogue
When I planned this book I wanted to be comprehensive, scientific and exploratory but events and the time it took made me to change my initiative, just like river takes its course through difficult parts as falls and meander through the plains and winding up with or without a delta to the ocean bed.
I think I have accomplished only the toddler milestones and never grew up beyond that point.
Such is the vastness of the rivers that span out from the hill country.
It is an amazingly beautiful country where no two places look alike, even though, we have divided it to natural zones called wet zone, dry zone and arid zones.
The mountain range has an extra beauty and none of the mountains is beyond man’s exploration.
The waterfalls are my fascination.
One can gaze at them for hours on end, in a meditative trance.
Each one is different from the other.
Yet we tend to be imprisoned in big cities with skyscrapers.
Why I do not know?
Why pipe borne water if we can drink it from a pristine source.
I have been obsessed and appalled by the shear neglect of our natural resources.
We dump all our refuse to the streams around us and then at a lower point have a water purification plant.
We have denuded our forest that is necessary for regeneration of the rivers at its source.
We have deprived our poor elephants a place to live and driving them almost to extinction.
Our ground water is polluted with pesticides and heavy metals and we go to world health organization for help for kidney diseases.
It is the WHO which polluted this country with DDT in the first instance.
Then the plunder of the virgin forest (to grow hashish) and introduction of bizarre array of poisonous chemicals was taken over by the Ministers of Agriculture without proper scientific knowledge.
Our engineers brought some semblance of sanity but the Mega project are poorly maintained.
We need to protect our rivers, if not one by one they will dry out and disappear.
A New Dubai is possible and is currently been shaped up and designed by corrupt individuals with no heart or brain both inside and outside of politics.
In my belief within next the 50 years with global warming taking its toll most of the rivers will run dry.

Glimpse of Rivers and Waterfalls of Sri-Lanka

Prologue
Writing about Sri-Lankan rivers is a colossal task.
It takes years of devotion and scientific inquiry.
I am not sure why I delved into this, since I knew it is not a task a single person can do alone, especially one being not a specialist in the subject, to begin with.
Probably, our ancient irrigation history has a bearing, especially the last stage of the Kandyan Kingdom, for me to dig in a bit of forgotten history of ours.
The Dumbara Valley is one of the most beautiful places one can visit. I was fortunate to have visited this valley when things were neglected and the people were poor and in remote places with bear minimum to survive.This fact, is still the same in some of these places and they are very infrequently visited by our public servants (teachers in particular) and politicians come only during pre-election campaign.
In my early bachelor days, I had the company of my engineer friends doing hard work to prove, what was considered to be an impossible (30 year program) program and bring into its successful completion from surveying to planning to construction.
Its name is Accelerated Mahaweli Program.
Sure they did it and were the pride of this country.
They were a dedicated lot.
None of them are now here in this country. They were poorly paid and had the talent far exceeding what was paid to them when they were young.
Surly they were bought up by the rich countries.
If any of them read this, first of all “hats off to them”.
If any of them visit here on holidays, I request them to visit those sites they were part of it. They are currently very poorly maintained under politicians who do not have even 8th grade pass.
The farmers are poorly looked after and the water management is a subject of sale to multinationals. It has been hushed up and then put under the carpet, till the heat dies down.
I want them to revisit the past and make contributions for the future sustenance of these Mega Projects.
They also should visit the spectacular waterfalls and ancient tanks and relax with the mind that they had kept the genetic link alive with our ancient civilization.
In the meantime Suriyawewa is a cricket ground and people in the north have no water for drinking leave alone for cultivation. The project was biased towards a segment of the people and another segment was neglected.
In this book brief survey of the project was made. That was not the intention anyway. While the development were focused on few major rivers others were totally neglected and people do sand mining and gemming and do lot of harm not seen centuries ago.
So I take the reader in a narrative glimpse to make him feel part of the civilization based on water gods and water cutting ceremonies.
A foreign reader might not only see the plight of our neglected majestic elephants but also the urge to become a visitor not once but several times and witness the shear natural beauty.

Lightweight Browser

Lightweight Browser
 
With Cloud Computing taking bull or the bulk work and Mobiles taking over tablets. a lightweight browser is all one one needs.
I am slow to adopt and adapt myself to hanging needs.
I saw a little clip on the lightening browser Linux Magazine, in an article talking about alternative to Andoid ((See F-Droid elsewhere in this blog site).
Since I have not tested them myself, I have decided to reproduce few notes.
I expected Silk to be available open source, apparently it is not.
Many moons ago I wrote something about SILK but I cannot remember the details.
Second part is my own writing when I searched for a lightweight browser.
It is nice all the developers give a breakdown of the Download size and the Install size, whether cookie free or using cloud source augment the speed of web searching.
Pardon me for my bias on Linux browsers.
There ought to be many other browsers for Apple and Windows.

ReproductionAmazon Silk
Amazon Silk is a web browser developed by Amazon for Kindle Fire line of tablets and Fire Phone.
It uses a split architecture whereby some of the processing is performed on Amazon's servers to improve webpage loading performance.
It is based on the open source Chromium project.

Today in New York, Amazon introduced Silk, an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire. 
You might be asking, “A browser? 
Do we really need another one?” 

Silk isn’t just another browser. 
We sought from the start to tap into the power and capabilities of the AWS infrastructure to overcome the limitations of typical mobile browsers.  Instead of a device-siloed software application, Amazon Silk deploys a split-architecture. 
All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. 
Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. 

In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud.Puffin
Puffin claims superlative speed, achieved through “proprietary” cloud computing and JavaScript rendering technology. It also purports to have the fastest JavaScript benchmark scores out of all browsers. Puffin pre-processes the websites that you visit on its own servers, before sending it back to you in an easier to load form. Theoretically, this method should increase browsing speeds.

Lightning
Lightning was developed by an XDA developer to compensate for the lack of lightweight, tablet-optimized browsers available. It functions similarly to Naked Browser in that it strips away all the browser bloat. It renders using the WebKit engine inside of the Android operating system, which saves on its total installed size.

UC Browser HD
UC claims to be the fastest running browser on the Internet. It offers a number of novel features, such as the ability to load a light version of a webpage. It can also preload the next page on a multipage site, improving load times.
I have used this on a mobile phone but it has so many links that make it slow on a mobile with low RAM.

Maxthon HD
Maxthon browser uses a “cloud engine”, meaning it offloads a great deal of activity to its own servers. Additionally, it syncs users’ data across devices. To read more about Maxthon, check out Jessica’s great review of it.
Gecko  of FIREFOX

Gecko and his territory
I wanted to write about the Gecko, the Firefoxe's background engine thinking it is a little browser.
It is not.
It is a layout engine for multiple browsers that originated in the fold of Linux background.
It takes the content and formatting information and displays on the browsers bland screen.
Gecko has been known previously by the code names "Raptor"
I have decided to support the lightest browser in the line of Abiword as the lightest but a very powerful word processor.
I faintly remembered about its Linux origin.

Currently I favour Midori, IceApe, Dillo and SeaMonkey and not Firefox.

FireFox is light on its own but easily get bloated over 100 MiB with cookies.IceApe
Download size: 10,27 MB
Installed size: 29,44 MB
Package filename: iceape-browser_2.0.11-5_i386.deb
Source package: iceape SeaMonkey
Download size: 19,65 MB
Installed size: 48,37 MB
Package filename: seamonkey-2.4-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
Source package: seamonkey-2.4-1.el6.src.rpm 

Dillo
Download size: 441,81 KB
Installed size: 1,04 MB
Package filename: dillo-2.1.1-1.ssl.i386.rpm
Source package: dillo-2.1.1-1.ssl.src.rpm 

wget
Download size: 480,73 KB
Installed size: 1,79 MB
Package filename: wget-1.12-1.4.el6.i686.rpm
Source package: wget-1.12-1.4.el6.src.rpm Lynx
Download size: 1,38 MB
Installed size: 5,15 MB
Package filename: lynx-2.8.7-7.fc16.x86_64.rpm
Source package: lynx-2.8.7-7.fc16.src.rpm Links
Download size: 1,81 MB
Installed size: 2,87 MB
Package filename: links-2.2-13.fc15.i686.rpm
Source package: links-2.2-13.fc15.src.rpm Midori
Download size: 53,20 KB
Installed size: 599,80 KB
Package filename: midori-devel-0.3.6-1.fc15.x86_64.rpm
Source package: midori-0.3.6-1.fc15.src.rpm

I could not find a single article in the web stating their download size (compressed) and installed size.

F-Droid and Mobiles

F-Droid and Mobiles

I seem to look like I have missed the bus as regard to the world.

There is a reason for it.

Coming from Linux base, I even did not like Android since it was proprietary.

Like Microsoft it flooded the market leaving behind alternative Linux Os far behind.

Ubuntu failed in its crowd finding of the Mobile Phone but it has put out Ubuntu Touch which the next best alternative OS, currently.

I was hopeful on Firefox Os and its phone but it is going through the teething phase.

There is Replicant of Gnome base that is making giant strides.

What is interesting in Replicant it is able crack a proprietary phone and install it instead.

It took a long time for the CyanogenMod come to roost.

Replicant is CyanogenMod minus proprietary components. There is Sailfish but none of them could match the Android currently.

Using a Rootkit to crack a proprietary phone may be costly and one loses the warranty.

Until then we have F-Droid, F stand for freedom dishing out over 1500 open source packages that work on Androids.

As at present, the mobile is a mini computer.

One should have the freedom to use the way one uses a computer.

I consider the mobile phone as a cloud client, almost all the Androids can be hacked and vulnerable.

So vulnerability can be eliminated by using the cloud.

Mind you cloud also can be attacked.

To use the mobile as a cloud client we need a light weight browser.

I am glad to say there is one open source browser called Lightening which is faster than any currently available browsers.

I am bit rusty on all these issues but Linux Magazine is doing a great job by having very illuminating articles.

I hope they would do a magazine dedicated to Mobiles by December.

That is the time everybody thinks of a new mobile or or a spare one or a Tablet.

If you do so please make sure or demand them to provide you security packages / virus guards.

I am writing a book (not related to mobiles and Linux) and I won't be doing any in depth study, till I finish it.

Our Rivers

 Our Rivers

Some years ago I remember walking around the campus and finding all the bridges were badly maintained including the Railway Bridge in Peradinya and Panideniya.
I decided to write up something on river basin management.
If I remember correct I send a draft to a English National Daily but they never bother to publish it or publish a similar article highlighting how Kandy as a district was neglected by politicians for the last 35 years or so.
The politicians past and present once they assume duties come to Kandy as a routine pilgrimage in a motorcade (now in helicopters) over these dilapidated bridges and do sweet nothing afterward. This cycle goes on ritualistically since they never get out of their cars or from their air conditioned rooms except for choreographed editions of their meeting of the electorate.
So I decided to publish them in the open, that means in the web.
Three years after that a shoddy job was done at Peradeniya Motor Bridge (nothing probably for Railway Bridge) and still the Peradeniya town is under threat due to earth slips. Most of these damages were initialed by heavy construction undertaken to construct telecommunication towers and some name boards in the hill above the Peradeniya town.
If one walks along the river side of botanical gardens cracks were visible on the road for decades but nobody took notice of all these symptoms and signs and the negligence by successive governments went on unabated. They provide lip service come elections and after that they move to Colombo and never come to Kandy even on December holidays.
Kandy had been a neglected city after the British left for good.
I have stated these observations based on my limited sphere of activity and everybody who is somebody should observe what is neglected in his or her sphere of activity and record and report them for the local government to act upon them.
But I cannot remember anybody acceding to my requests and comments.
However, I did not go into details of landslide since my understanding about is limited but my experience of it from childhood is enough to say the least.
I have seen part of the massive Ampitiya Uduwela landslide more than 50 years ago when many people left that village for elsewhere in fear.
Now in Kandy no place is safe.
In addition, during the Mahaveli Development the land reserves were divided among some of the kith and kin in public service and politics for a pittance and that also had encroached upon the river basin.
The management of the river basin was left to mother nature.
In addition heavy equipment used and detonation used over the past 30 years have even compromised heavy tension wire installations. They even remove the wires and reinforcement used to anchor the pillars. Enough damage is done one day high tension wires might even fall on our head nobody would give a damn.
Roughly a year ago Kandy train could not go past beyond Panideniya for three days due to stretch of the track above collapsing on to the drain. This part is still not fully serviced and the trains do go pass that point to Kandy daily.
I have decided to stop going by this train since one is not sure whether one would return safely home the same evening.
It is time we forget about Mega Projects and divert our attention at least to refurbished the existing infrastructure before they fall apart completely. This is how the public service is managed and it is getting worse by the season. There are so many ministries and there is no coordination to say the least.
The events that are unfolding in Kandy and around are due to lack of foresight and negligence by the authorities holding high posts.
This cycle will repeat ad lib!

Debian 8.2

Mind You Debian 9.8.0 is out NOW but I am still happy with 8.2.

Debian 8.2

The Hard Drive of my old computer is about to pack up.

I just managed to finish my latest book and nothing else to do and happy that I finished my work before the impending catastrophe, decided to copy some of the work and Linux distributions to an old USB hard drive.

I booted it but could not remember the ROOT password.

I could remember the user password but it won't let me copy.

Then, I booted another USB hard drive which run a Live Session and transferred all the images.

I was not happy to transfer my work and went for a Debian Solution.

I booted up the Debian 8.2 Install DVD (I of 3 DVDs) and Installed the latest Debian.

It took one hour, simply because I installed all Desktops from Gnome, KDE, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon and LXDE.

That is the high point.

I have six desktops Now, not one.

Secondly, I installed the GRUB in the USB hard drive.

So if my hard drive packs up, I can still try running other distributions I have in my old computer.

So if the GRUB in my SATA fails, NOW I can run with the GRUB from the USB.

I was lucky Debian could not configure my Network at installation since that would have taken another two hours with a SLOW Sri-Lankan Internet connection.

Now I am posting this from Debian and at run time Debian configured my network automatically.

Ten Days in America

Ten Days in America

This is a little passage from my new book, soon be out on Amazon “Ten Days in America”, every American visitor should read.

It is not meant for long stay visitors.
 
Perhaps I may have to make a bigger edition.
 
Please do NOT mind my English

Objective
The objective is simple.
To have an open air station for tutorial in English to foreign students.
You may ask why in open air?
The answer is also very simple.
There is no place available for me in Sri-Lanka.
All taken up by Sri-Lankan prospective teachers (and British and American proxy teachers) who teach crash courses in ten minutes to all gullible Sri-Lankan poor students.
 
Besides, American and British agencies charge huge sums.
 
The idea is for it to be not detected by education or Sri-Lankan authorities. 
 
If Americans detect it, there is no problem locally or internationally, it is not under their jurisdiction.

If a Britisher (especially the holiday makers) detects it he or she may improve his or her English while looking for WiFi hot spot in Sri-Lanka.

My Wifi is both HOT on air and spices.
 
If Banki Moon detects it, there is no Human Rights violation. 

It actually empowers Human Rights of the migrants who want to become naturalized Americans.
 
All this is to reach my West Indian American in New York who needs some guiding to pass the English Test.

Besides, I need to send some videos of Sri-Lanka and he needs to reciprocate with his own video editions from America.

Besides we need to be in touch until we meet again.

Cloud Client and Cloud Computing

This another blog piece from my mobile,
I am physically (owning a mobile phone) late to mobile world.
But I was very much into mobile technology in spite of my Linux lineage.
When Google's Android came in I had been very critical of its commercial incline and intent since Google was essentially Linux base but a commercial enterprise.
I had been very explicit of my opinion in my book Cloud Computing.
In fact, I had said why Google will fail with Android and Chrome if it go solo.

Coming from Open Source Community going solo and making money and disregarding greater interest of the community especially in the third world where UNO has failed to protect and foresee the emerging trends in IT technology was my concern.

But Google had realized its implications and put the code open and in mobile world Androids rule.
A decade or so ago when O.L.P.C (one Lap Top per Child) was proposed it was killed in its inception by the corporate.
Unfortunate credit crunch also came at about the same time and it never took off the ground.
Then when tablets hit the market and Apple dished out iPads to schools in America in preparation for its exploits.
Kindle came in but only India in this region was interesetd.
Sri-Lanka under Single one sided Mahinda Chinthanaya failed to take note of application of tablets in Schools and the NaNa Sala was used for political propaganda rather than IT Technology and I gave up especially military type of training was introduced to university entrants.
Under Mahinda Chinthanaya we loss an enormous amount of Technology that could have been used in primary, secondary and higher education.
Instead of gunny load of books given FREE (30 years outdated) could have used a Pendrive to load all the e-books in English (Sinhala and Tamil if due recognition for e-bboks were instituted a decade ago under Chinthanaya) could have been dished out as in Singapore.
I think Singapore dishes out millions of books for their kids free in English and in Chinese.
We missed the bus under political megalomania.
The tablets could have been installed in schools and the kids have to carry a Pendrive only (cost is less than Rs.1000/= now).
We need to phase out free books as and when the digital content is increased to appropriate levels which is much much cheaper than printed books (heavy too).
I do not believe the UNPers will do anything since I know for sometime when copyright law was introduced by Ramil and the combo without debate (in 8 hours and even the JVP voted in support) in the parliament and few of the top UNP guys bought the franchise for Microsoft,  Design Studios and what not before passing the bill.
They are ministers in the current coalition government and they have not given up their vested interests.
I fought a lone battle to promote Linux in University (their are spoilers in the higher education too) and schools and miserably failed.
So I went out for the outside world and this blog site is a monument to that effort.
Even here only a few from Sri-Lanka visits (this site promoting Linux)  and the majority come from Russia, Ukraine and USA.
They have given the education ministry to a very young guy and I do not think he has a local or global vision.
Now I have almost stopped talking about Linux (it is too late to start) but very much interested in the smart-phone Androids and WiFi world.

In a nutshell what we have to invest is for few servers and an educational cloud with free WiFi access.

Can the UNP in power do it?
I do not think they will.

Butterflies and Wild Flowers

There were no butterflies but few birds in the locality few years ago.
Few years of sustained efforts and a neighbourhood friend's corporation are bearing fruits.
I was more interested in birds.
Growing few berry trees had done the trick.
But all the trees that were resting place for birds or perching sites are gone.

Under the previous regime felling a tree including jack trees and bread fruit trees was a norm rather than an exception.
 

My plan for videotaping for a week was never accomplished due to felling of these trees in front of our house (not belonging to us).
 

Now they spend few minutes and fly away moment a berry or two had been consumed.
Lately I had been interested in encouraging the butterflies.
There are plenty of them in my water garden.
But it was my friend who alerted me on the need for encouraging wild plants.
Each wild plant has several butterfly visitors.

Now even hummingbirds visit these flowers.
The hummingbirds are my favourite.

Watching them feeding honey on the flight is something nice to begin the day.

Wireless Router

It is early days of wireless IT communication in Sri Lanka.
Years ago I bought wireless router.
I had to go Singapore to get one.
Fortunately my visit there was on holiday.
I had enough time to study the trends.
I could not find a single guy using Linux there.

This was early days of Google's attempt at Android based on Linux.

 
I could never figure out the extent to which its influence will dominate, the.

Mobiles were controlled by parent companies, Nokia for example with different operating systems and the market was dominated by Apple and late Steve Job.

Windows had not entered the mobile world.

 
When I returned I found a simple USB battery charger with wireless router.
It is very useful both for charging my mobile when main electric outlet is not available and also looking for a wireless hot spot.
The old router I bought is in its package box, since years later Telecoms offered its own wireless router and  the old router with finicky software was not compatible.
So when you buy hardware one has to think few years ahead of your time.

Is it Possible to prevent Cyber-Crimes?

Is it Possible to prevent Cyber-Crimes?

The simple answer is NO.

But can you do something to minimize it?

YES one can do a lot.

1. Use Linux at home.

2. Use Windows at office only.

Let the office guys who were not prudent enough to use Linux as a base pay the price.

3. Do not use Flash Drives.

There are many good uses of Flash Drives for example Knoppix on a Stick.

4. Do not share Flash Drives.

5. Have at least three emails from different sources.

One I call the junk email.

The second I call the friendly email with minimal sharing.

The third I call the security email, no sharing.

6. Have a good password, longer the better.

7. Have a method to remember the password. 

I forget them often.

8. Use cloud as a storage media.

They are good at thier own security.

9. Use your mobile with care, only a cloud client.

10. The most reliable method is not to use the computer to communicate.

It is far better to give a call and visit the person in need, in person.

Few good friends are better than millions at the facebook.

I do not use facebook or any social media.

The blog post is my only entry point of distinction.

I do not care how many visit it but take a good note of what other people are interested in.

Keeping Pet Fish may not be fun

 This is another piece from mobile edited subsequently.

Even if you are not a novice keeping pet fish can be pain in the neck.
I keep fish as an accompaniment to nursing water plants of many species.
Some are like weeds and take over the territory by default making exotic varieties stunted.
Fish, the guppy I keep as the controller of mosquitoes.
I just had a nasty episode of guppy disease which luckily did not effect other species.
But my major problem is algae.

It never culminated in toxic algal bloom due to my vigilance, but nevertheless is a problem hard to overcome.
They take all the oxygen and make water cloudy with ugly green tinge.
I have to change the water frequently since global warming has taken effect even in the normally moderate cooler climate of the hill country.
I try to keep up with my challenges with the spirit of a basic scientist.
Today's message is different,

I met a father of a kid who had gone abroad leaving a exotic silver dish under his care.
He was asking the assistant of a fish vendor many questions.
I knew him over 20 years and when he was learning the trade.
He was a fast learner and I told him never to sell sick fish.

In those days vendor squeeses the belly of the fish so that the fish will die in 3 days of renal / kidney failure.

The vendor blames the poor customer!
This was a time very little was known about fish disease and I managed to diagnose fish tuberculosis in an ornamental fish imported form India.
I gave up fish keeping with that episode.
I overheard the entire conversation but resisted any intervention due to my close association with the vendor.
He ultimately decided to buy only the particular fish food which was almost ten rupee per gram and there was only 30 grams left in stock.
My bill was 600 hundred rupees but comparatively expensive gram per gram.

I do not buy fish food that are sold in super markets.

They are no good and some are contaminated with fish diseases.

 
I purchased them after him and both of us came out together making that little corridor of opportunity to lash out my wisdom thoughts uninhibited.

I told him keeping fish in our age is pain in the neck rather pain on my back after every water change.

I gave him two options.
1. Return the fish to the vendor at cut rate.

2. Do not change the tank for a bigger one.
The fish will never over grow the tank.

3. If he want to make money by selling it when gorgeously big go for an insurance cover, first.

The fish would die due to poor equality of water.

Either due to neglect or overzealous water changes.
It is all hard work.

 
I reminded him to let his son knows his plans before they is executed.

Boot Problems

Boot Problems

It is common for your Windows machine to stop booting.

It reads the boot sector and if it does not it hangs up.

I know very little about windows since I do not use it, even though I have a Win 7 in one of the partitions.

I use Linux Grub to boot windows, since windows never supported booting a Linux distribution.

In addition one need to boot windows first and thereafter Linux.

I have an old IBM, the last one out of the ten (rest dismantled and retired to junk) distributions.

Its SATA hard disk's boot sector is gone for good and I cannot boot it but I use a devious method to boot all my my Linux distributions (may be five).

Linux lets you boot off from a different partition and is not choosy of the first boot sector.

Each distribution has a copy of the Grub file for booting.

Today I downloaded Devil Linux and booted it to find it says no no Grub and goes to rescue mode (which I have forgotten now).

So I thought my hard disk finally succumbed to my perennial insults which include sudden power drops and outage.

So bit worried when through my devious routine but still the same result.

Why do I post this?

To report I have no computer to access the web.

No.

I did not do my routine right.

I had a USB hard disk attached to the system.

I am using it to copy all my valid data, in case my hard disk goes out.

It does not have a bootable Linux in it.

Now I have gone to the minimal MicroSD boot, using a MultiUSB port.

Mind you this solid state hard disks are killing the turntable disks and sending them to the junk yard prematurely.

So one cardinal rule nowadays is to have minimum of 4 GIB RAM and USB bootable boot menu.

I still use 1 GIB RAM.

I like the slow pace anyway since my physiology is gradually slowing down.

Good RAM and USB booting are the minimum one needs.

So if your USB does not have a bootable sector it won't boot up.

Nothing wrong with the hardware.

It is prudent to have a bootable USB with some of its extra data storage is reserved for saving data.

Linux can do all this especially the Knoppix.

Latest Knoppix is out but there is a fault in the torrent right now.

Fish with Scoliosis

Fish physiology is very complicated.
Even though the life started in water.
Unlike terrestrial organism they are at tremendous odds.
They never sleep.
They have to be under constant vigilance.
Lately, I had been witching deformed fish.
The first lot was blind.
Out of 11 four are still living.
Most of them died due to poor water quality.
Once I improved the water quality they adapted well.
Strangely, they instantly sense my presence near the tank.
How they do that I do not know.
Even in that set up the partially blind fish attacks the completely blind.
The blind one cannot survive outside, in the wild.
 

Coming back to the fish with scoliosis it makes a tremendous effort to swim if not float.

It is an ugly sight to see it swim but when tired rests on top of the air pump.
I put some floating plants so that it can rest and have the benefit of oxygen at day time.
Funny part is other fish also take advantage of the plant nest.

It is a cool resting place for them.

Rain and Water

Rain and Water
Annual pageant in Kandy is related more to rain gods than religion.
The end of it is marked by Water Cutting ceremony at Gatambe.
Gata Ambe mean unripe mango.
I am not sure how the name came about.

There could have been a Mango tree instead of a pipel (Bo) tree thre.
Water is revered and no wonder why America wanted it to be a barter for debt relief.
Water is going to be more expensive than petrol in the near future with the population explosion making more and more demand for drinking water.
It was very notable it rained on the very day they had the KAP (Tree-Flag)ceremony.
 

Now we need to be more vigilant to protect it from commercial exploitation.

Guppy Disease

 Guppy Disease

Guppy fish used to be my favourite but now my interest is water plants especially water lilies.
But one cannot have a pond without fish.
The mosquitoes would take over in no time.
Guppy fish is the only solution.
But over time the fish lose their bright colours and become the wild type.

The wild type is resistant to disease.

 
Just to introduce some colours I bought a batch of bright coloured guppies.
Knowing very well they are incubating guppy disease I introduced them to the stock tank.
I added few of my wild guppy to interbreed.
In no time one by one all the guppies started dying
Not other fish types.
It was evident that the guppy disease was the cause.
I believe it is a virus disease and over time they become resistant.
But unfortunately my fish in the main outdoor tank started dying.
I made sure there was no contact or contamination.
I was puzzled and worried the fish food was the cause.
I need to work on this.
The vendors treat these disease fish before selling.
Within 24 hours they show the signs of disease and start dying.
If you buy a new stock do not introduce them to your main tank.
Observe them in a hospital tank for at least a week.
Treat them if necessary and introduce only the healthy ones.
Ideally the next generation of young fish.
If they are healthy they breed and breed fast.
You have a healthy batch then.

I now think even contaminated fish food carry disease if not guppy disease (viral) but bacterial disease.

Fish do not have a well developed immune system and succumb to diseases especially bacterial.

So keeping the tanks in good healthy condition is a priority.

Every time one introduces new fish this risk is increased or multiplied.

Elephant Thinking

This is what an elephant was thinking while being dressed up for the grand pageant in Kandy.
Why I  am chained?
Why these people gather in numbers to watch my incarceration?
Do these people have a brain as big as mine? 

Do they use their brain or are they very selfish to restrain my freedom?
My brain is big but my plea very is simple.
Give me my freedom.

The man does not need a brain as big as mine but they should use a bit of their cocky brain for fair play and equal opportunity.

Are these only fancy words with no meaning?

I hope few of these spectators, especially foreign visitors spare a little moment to grasp what my thinking brain does while parading in front of you and not admire the the majestic beast in me.

I am big but very gentle in my ways unlike the man the dirty beast.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking is a concept developed by Prof Bono.
In here it is to state that our PM is talking about alternative views.
This is very healthy trend evolving in our politics that was lacking in this country over a half century.
 

Whether we can translate that to politics including reconciliation is completely a new experience.

Water is our right

Water is our right.
Chandrika tried to sell water for debt.
I was very vocal (read my book water politics) then.
I was with IMMI they changed to IWMI and I strongly opposed and resigned.
The first white paper was drafted in 1989 or so.
This same paper surfaces back and again.
Good editorial.
Please maintain the pressure.
Ranil is cunning and might slip this through, if he wins, which is most likely.

Zebra Fish Breedimg

Fish breeding was childhood activity that I never had time to explore fully.
Our science teachers were mediocre and never taught us with pragmatism and interest.
It was a case of deriving a stereotype answer for particular scientific principle and nothing more when we were kids.

Thankfully we had scientific brains t even outsmart our teachers.
Fish breeding was something I learned by simple observation.
That is also live breeding never breeding egg layers like gurami or zebras.
With heavy workload both as a student and a professional there was no spare time, anyway.

It was a matter  of giving up hobbies including photography.
Well as a preparation for retirement and as a break I started keeping pet fish well in advance of my retirement.
That was a big mistake on my part leaving me no breathing space.
It restricted my well earned spare time, which could have been very well used for gin and tonic not extra work but by some rare coincidence, I discovered that if I leave the water removed from my fish tank (when changing water due to algae) in a bucket, in a few weeks I will have young Zebras.

Yes Zebras do not eat all thier eggs.

There is suffient number of eggs that hatch.

They are unfortunately not visible to the naked eye. 

Now I have the fourth batch of young zebra in bucket over the last two months.

The cardinal rule is not to mix them with guppies.

hey will leave no trace of zebra eggs.

English: Lanka’s only feasible link language

 Kumar one time contemporary in our university has done a good analysis.
It is a reproduction.

Singapore at 50: 
Language the vital key

English: Lanka’s only feasible link language

by Kumar David

"A champion of the Chinese language argued (in 1965) that Chinese was used by more than 80 percent of the population and should be the first among the four languages. I gave him a dressing down. Did he want Singapore to be like Sri Lanka, with unending social strife between the Sinhalese and the Tamils because the Sinhalese imposed their language upon the whole country? Did he want Malays and Indians to feel discriminated against? How would Singapore as a whole make a living – would China give us jobs? Who would trade with us apart from Taiwan? Why should multinational corporations invest in Singapore when they could go to Taiwan where it was cheaper? If they did not learn English they would pay a price. The price would be decided by the (world) market".

(My Lifelong Challenge; Singapore’s Bilingual Journey, Lee Kuan Yew, 2012, p.60)

An addendum to this quotation; by 2010, it was found to everyone’s surprise, that 60% of Primary One school admissions were from homes where English had become the home language. Chinese had slipped to second place with Malay and Tamil following. Singapore’s tortuous language journey from the end of the war to the present time is chronicled in Lee Kuan (spelling used in the book) Yew’s compelling recounting The story reveals something profoundly important; It was language policy that underwrote Singapore’s long-range development strategy; entrepreneurship, markets, economic incentives and so on were along-the-way pragmatic specifics. Lee’s authoritarianism and anti-communism too was motivated to a surprising extent by his determination to drive through his language policy. The ‘Singapore Success Story’ is underpinned by its ‘solution’ of its language problem; this was the real trick, the rest followed. Excellence of government service, cognisance of globalisation, the city’s business and investment ethos and its inter-racial harmony, all have as their sine qua non an education language-policy that despite blunders and course corrections has succeeded at a price.

Independent Singapore is 50 years old today; following divorce from Malaysia, independence was proclaimed on 9 August 1965 (separation from Britain and the shotgun wedding with Malaya was in 1959); so today is an excellent occasion to square accounts. Lanka has made a catastrophic mess of language in education, administration, international intercourse, and faces abysmal failure in national unification, so let’s see where Singapore got it right and sometimes wrong. A lesson that comes out of this story is that in Lanka only English can serve as link language link between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. The National Integration Ministry’s alternative approach, promoting Sinhala-Tamil bilingualism as the link, is doomed to fail.

Singapore’s experience has convinced me that Sinhalese students cannot and will not gain even modest fluency in Tamil – why should they, what’s in it for them? How can they when it is known that second language class teaching followed by reverting to mother tongue in sports field and canteen and exclusive mother tongue usage at home, yields no sustainable second language competence? Language skill dies if not used often, or unless there are other powerful motivations such as jobs, education, trade and the internet, to keep it fresh. Some Tamils may learn Sinhala (or if like yours faithfully they were immersed from a young age), but the great majority in the Tamil majority areas will not bat an eyelid in choosing English over Sinhala. The Eastern Province and the Muslim community appear to contradict this. But no, not at all, both the criterion of continuous social immersion and the material drive from trade and business actually strengthen my case.

English is what Sinhalese and Tamil young people want, the horizons it opens up are the opportunities they crave, and thankfully and in passing, it will serve as the link; not because you din the virtues of national integration into their heads, but because if young people in both communities want to learn English for other reasons, it makes sense to speak it reciprocally instead of staring at each other mutually dumb and deaf!

Lingua Sinhapura then and now

They say that 70 to 80 % of Singaporeans are Chinese but what they don’t tell you is that in the 1950s they couldn’t talk to each other! They spoke about 12 mutually unintelligible dialects – written Chinese is all the same so with a primary education (say 500 characters) one could read shop and road signs. They came from different parts of South China in the early 19th Century; Hokkien speakers (40%) from Fujian, Cantonese (23%), CheChow (18%) and Hakka (7%) from Guangdong, Hainanese (7%) from Hainan Island and other smaller groups. Mandarin was used only by a tiny Chinese elite, the literati;

I guess like French in the European courts of yesteryear, or Newton’s Principia written in Latin (maybe the greatest scientific treatise ever written, but the author felt no compunction to make it intelligible to the great unwashed). Dialect groups lived in clans in enclaves and daily life was governed by clan associations owing lineage to a village in China or an ancestral name. Rich clan members founded dialect schools for their community and that’s where most children went. The Malay and Tamil communities ran their own schools imparting instructions in the vernacular. The colonial government ran two school systems; a prestigious English medium and Chinese medium schools catering to a minority of the Chinese; education was far from widespread.

At independence Singapore inherited this mishmash of schools run by interest groups whose dialects were unintelligible to each other and a population living in polyglot enclaves and ghettoes. The first decision, for obvious reasons that I do not need to repeat, was to ram through English in the ‘bilingual period’ of about 20 years (1965 to late 1987). English was made a compulsory second language at a moderately high standard in all vernacular medium schools while Chinese, Malay or Tamil was a compulsory second language, at moderately high standards again, in English medium schools. This worked for a while but broke down because of a rising demand for English medium schools which the government favoured though vernacular schools were not denied resources. The last Malay, Tamil and Chinese medium schools closed by 1986 due to lack of demand. Then in 1987 a watershed was crossed; after a considerable period of preparation English became the medium of instruction throughout the Singaporean school system while emphasis was also kept on second language competence; that is bilingualism became the standard.

Bilingualism itself was the next casualty, especially in the Chinese community for two reasons, one political the other pedagogic. Opposition to English was led by Chinese nationalists, leftists, scholars and graduates of Nanyang University (Nantah) – the first Chinese language university in South East Asia, set up in 1956. (Nantah was merged with National University of Singapore in 1980). Singapore’s leftists were in the forefront of the campaign to protect the Chinese language, to uphold traditional Chinese values and to halt surrender to alien powers. The 1960s and 1970s was the high water mark of Maoism and its influence on the Asian left; in Lanka recall Shan’s Peking-Line CP and the embryo stages of the JVP. The gloves came off for an almighty fight; Lee Kuan Yew, his Peoples Action Party and the state on one side, Chinese nationalists and leftists on the other. In these years Lee emerged as a ruthless authoritarian with little respect for the niceties of democracy. Nationalists and leftists were hounded. Lee is in no way apologetic: "it had to be done" he declares, no crocodile tears. Authoritarianism in Singapore started with conflicts on language policy.

The pedagogic reason to discard bilingualism was that the demand for high competence in two languages was too much; students failed in droves, parents complained bitterly about overload. Lee is frank and conceited enough by power, to call it "My big mistake". The government abandoned this style of bilingualism demanding high standards in the second (vernacular) language also and steered to a policy where second language competence at a lower level was accepted. Students who intended to specialise in language or literature in Chinese, Malay or Tamil were of course another matter, though specialist tutoring in the latter two was meagre.

The future

Now a new crisis is looming; Singapore’s Chinese are loosing their identity in a headlong rush to English. Complaints, especially from the older generation proliferated; Lee, a devotee of tradition, Chinese values, respect for elders and obedience, knew that culture cannot be imbibed except by emersion in an environment; he sent his three children to Chinese medium primary and secondary schools unlike Lanka’s fake 1956 politicos. Bilingual education faced another challenge when the authorities made a rude discovery; learning Mandarin in class and reverting to dialect in social life and emersion in dialect soaked families caused a sharp decline in Mandarin standards; dialect was choking out Mandarin. Something had to be done urgently; Mandarin had to be salvaged. As early as 1977 the Speak Mandarin Campaign cajoling and imploring parents to drop dialects and adopt Mandarin as the home language had started. Its success is still uncertain.

What has come to the rescue was the rise of China as an economic power. Singaporeans of bilingual competence in English and Mandarin were at a premium and pragmatic students responded to the niche market. High flyers like Janet Ang (CEO, Lenovo), (Kenneth Chan, CEO, McDonalds, China) and pop-stars Tanya Chua, Stefanie Sun and JJ Lin, all bilingual Singaporeans who have broken into the 1.3 billion Chinese market, captured the attention of young Singaporeans. Waves of Chinese officials, sometimes 400 strong, started visiting Singapore on study tours or enrolled on Masters Programmes after Deng’s celebrated 1992 trip. It is still too early to deliver a verdict on the safekeeping of Mandarin in Singaporean education; it depends on China’s economic expansion and its need for Singaporean bilinguals. If this need declines, Singapore will become an English speaking and educated society with Chinese, Malay and Tamil lurking in corners.

This account shows that the pre-1950s language backgrounds were different in Lanka and Singapore. It is also clear that policy over there was driven by pragmatism; here blind racism, starting with SWRD and his bigots, and continuing to the Rajapaksa government. Maybe we can rescue ethnic reconciliation if we make a start by defeating Rajapaksa on 17 August in the Sinhalese areas, but I am pessimistic about salvaging English for our youth. So much devastation has occurred; a vacuum of teachers, English dumbness in the middle ranks of government and even the private sector. In shops, supermarkets, bazaars – you name it; Colombo is a city where streetwise-English has withered. As for students, even university students, it is a wasteland. What I am driving at is that the minimal social environment needed for a second language to survive has been vacated. It will take a generation, if the government is serious, which it is not, to undo the devastation that narrow nationalism has inflicted.

“man-in-the-cloud" attack

“man-in-the-cloud" attack

This is a small blog piece related to an article on “man-in-the-cloud" attack.

The vulnerability discussed in this article is real.

In my case, being an open source man and Linux promoter, sharing what little I know is automatic and almost mandatory.

I may kick the budget of old age but I leave behind lot of digital footprint for to be exploited ad hoc.

So the mobile you use may be a big risk factor.

If you lose your mobile or somebody steals it, all your emails and contacts are at risk.

I cannot offer any solutions.

But it is better to use the non digital land phone for strictly private phone calls.

But even the government can eavesdrop (Sri-Lanka Under MR, I do not know how it is now and USA in particular).

Other option is to have an android of cheapest (Rs.5000/=) price with limited capacity and function for ordinary communications and emails and your value added iphone or any android or commercial for mission critical work and make it sure that it is kept under lock and key physically when not in use for long periods and not to carry it when one is on a shopping free or holidaying (hard thing to do).

We did not have all these gadgets an we carried out confidential work without fear or favour just 20 years ago.

Now we are getting paranoid and young people who are starting their careers should take a special not of the vulnerability of the mobile phone an in particular if you have private data in the Cloud.

This was one reason I was never too keen on for a mobile.

In my twilight years, it is getting bit lazy and less mobile physically that is when you become hooked to a gadget and the vulnerability of old age is also exposed.

It is the responsibility of the mobile carrier to safeguard your interests but if you leave your door open, very little they can do.