Tea and Cookies

It is time for me talk and Tea and Cookies, now that I am well above my target of 100 Linux derivatives with lot of cookies in them.
This is not about the cookies that are behind one's browser or cookies that Linux developers put out almost everyday but real cookies we love at tea time.

But unfortunately Sri-Lankan cookies are getting expensive by the day with American flour is up roosting on top of the roof and coconuts are hitting the ceiling in prices, I am bound by duty to talk about cookies the kids love.

If not my grandpa role is of no use.

If I talk about baby rusks it is beyond the reach of our average citizen mother and father.

The ordinary cookies are also expensive and their quality is getting poorer. If a packet is above rupees fifty (which is the price of bread now) we Sri-Lankan prefer bread and sambol to American cookies.
The reason for the cookies getting poor in quality is probably due to the companies cutting corners with all the ingredients making cookies going up in price to save expenses and maintaining the profit margins within their target range.

I am now down two or three varieties that maintain the quality but with the price well above what it used to be. If the price keeps going up perhaps I have to give up eating them.

As regard to tea, it actually sky rocketed well before the budget and with milk is up in price we have to cut down our habit of drinking tea.
In the office now it is black tea and I have stopped drinking it by default.

With this all gloom, there is a silver lining in the sky.
Reason for writing this is to highlight that fact.

One of our Sri-Lankan companies just celebrated its 20 years in existence.

It produces an excellent ice tea priced little above Coca Cola.
Coca Cola is the number one company in America and this Sri-Lankan company can beat it if they do a good market adventure and aggressively promote the tea here in Sri-Lanka and abroad in Middle east and then slowly hit the markets in America.

Coca Cola is junk.
Nescafe is bad for your heart.

Sri-Lankan Tea is healthy and protects our hearts should be the motto.

FeatherLinux-111

Strangely enough this is 111 in my Linux List.

Like Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux the Feather Linux is a Beauty.

I always believed the concept "Small is Beautiful".
This is and example in addition to DSL.

I was DSL fan to begin with.

When I was new to Linux and when I first bought the Linux Bible by Christopher Naegus (I have three different editions now, latest one I bought few months ago after a 6 year Gap), and in those boot from Floppy Disk days, there were only a few Live CDs (Knoppix was there but I did not know about Puppy then-Puppy is one of my favorites now with over 25 varieties in my possession) that I copied form one of the CD/DVDs that came with the book.

I booted up live and enjoyed Linux and its utilities.

Just little over 100 MiB can do wonders which 1000 MiBs or GBs cannot.
It is a Knoppix derivative by the way!

One thing they did best was if you are unable to get to the Internet they did it in double quick time (with a router easily but with with Sri-Lankan Telecom modems with some difficulty).

Today I used Dillo and I could not sign up with Google (that was basic test based browser without cookies) and bit fiddly with my keyboard too but I managed to post this in Firefox (that I did not see at first glance).

Abiword is there xPDF is there, Xmms is there and many more.

Pretty fast to boot too.

Today just for testing downloaded 700 MiB of STUX (which STUCK) after half an hour of struggling it could not configure my NV Graphic Card and configured non existent devs and I was scared it will bust my Graphic Card all because it was trying to mount all its compressed files into RAM.

It could not give me a console (or consolation prize) to exit or a killall command.

I had to switch off the computer by getting into a null state (I call it null state) a non existent command in Linux (just wait a while and switch off the computer with the hand on your chest with gospel words in my mouth-but beware the graphic card and RAM-which I burnt those days and also mid night oil learning Linux all by myself with no Guru to help).

Thanks a lot the Guys and Girls at Feather Linux.
Keep up the good work.

It is long time since I booted Feather Linux.
You will have lot of feathers in your caps.
Thanks again!

Biophysics-02 and Biodiversity

Biological live agents has the capacity to duplicate themselves either by sexual or asexual means. In mathematical sense this is easy to comprehend but what goes behind the scene is very complex.

Man is very good at converting and producing by products from animal material and it is emerging there are over 184 pig products in the market.

This is same for cow too but cell division and its organization into about 600 to 1000 cell derivatives has taken billions of years of duplications and organizations. That is where the biophysics operate and man can never duplicate that sequence however much he tries.

Biophysics unlike simple physics and chemistry works at a rigid thermal atmosphere since bio-molecules especially proteins cannot stand high temperature.

High temperature and curing that include tanning make these biological materials commercially useful. Gelatin and fibrin are two of them used for making texture of food attractive but have no food value at all.

This short article highlight some of the mathematical concepts involved in biophysics and not their modifications in the commercial world.

It is binary mathematics of duplication somewhat similar to binary computer mathematics. How 256 characters and 0 and 1 are used for modules in computing, in the biological world about 2500 to 25.000 large biological molecules (not-nanoparticles) give the diversity around biological structure.

It is said that genetic code doubles itself every 3 to 5 million year cycles and this event why it happens we do not know but heralds new species on this planet.

For example the change that occurred from chimpanzee to human occurred when this cycle of duplication occurred last time on this planet.

In about 65 million years ago we so dinosaurs disappeared but the cockroaches who remained would have told us the story in detail if they had computerized brains in their possession.

But we have to surmise what went on and what went wrong then.

This is written in the same conceptual framework what we know is little what we do not is enormous.

What will become of this planet we do not know in way the biodiversity is changing in every nick and corner of this planet from deep sea to mount Everest.

Coming back to my mathematics 2 is the base.

The other base is 10 the log base and log normal.

In biology there is a tendency for log normal behaviour in time scale.

Put these figures together I derive 20..

The figure 20 is my figure for looking at the available species and make some deductions.

For example take a plant (an animal) from a site (area should be defined) and see whether there are 20 similar pants not interbreeding (definition of species difference) at the same site.

If we see a site with that number it is a biological hotspot.

I wonder whether we have any to fit this description or anybody has done this calculation before. (we can argue about the veracity of the number 20 till the cows come home with a pipe and arm chair critics) in an observational manner but the point I am arriving at is that we look at a whole country and say (for example Sri-Lanka) we a re bio-rich is a total misconception.

I have arrive at a figure by simple observation of my neighbourhood for every three plants I see in my garden we have lost another 17 in the last 100 years or so.

It is said that the anaconda (Ana conda is a Sri-Lankan name) type of snake had been sited in Sri-lanka by foreign invaders about 200 years ago.

Where are they now?

The corollary to my argument is that if we can collect 20 similar species in an environment that environment is conducive for biodiversity.

I can give two examples of my childhood.

We could have identified at least 10 varieties of tortoises and 100 varieties of butterflies less than 50 years ago.

Bizarre use of insecticides in agriculture and DDT in particular (thanks to WHO - Sinhalen who) by ill conceived pundits in the health sector has done irrevocable damage to our biodiversity.

Final nail will come when the two Coal Power plants are operational.

Problem in my argument is that there are no true scientist left in this country to take my argument forward with observational data in spite of 40 years of free education in mother tongue.

We have not produced a single biological scientist that we can say were nominated for Nobel Prize in 40 years of free education,.leave alone winning it.

By producing private universities this cannot be remedied since they are profit oriented.

We lack Think Tanks in power and also in opposition..

Think tanks are there when they are in opposition!

We have thin tanks how to get to power and remain there for ever.

We need to produce outstanding thinkers.

We are sadly lacking in that endeavour.!