How to entice Children to Gardening by Mini Garden Concept

I must start with saying, that I never practice what I preach here in day to day clinical practice.

I mean mini garden concept.

I was too busy.

They were too sick, it is often, a life and death scenario and every minute, every  hour counts.

We were the generation that developed continuous monitoring systems and CPAP technology, and talked about the value of surface tension reducing molecules which keep the alveoli open for ventilation.

We did not talk about nano molecules and nanotechnology then but we knew only 15 to 20 nano molecules can reach the tertiary bronchioles.

That is the the size of the Coronavirus and they can reach there with only a light sneeze and a facemask never protects such tiny viruses entering the terminal.bronchioses which collapse leading to atelectasis (due to lack of surface tension reducing tiny mucous secretary molecules).

These molecular production pathways are inhibited by cigarettes and that is why I stopped my chain smoking at the age of 34 (an hour before boarding a plane to London.via Switzerland).

The age of onset of old age was believed to be 35 but now it has come down to 30, in current cell cycle terminology.

We were the generation that introduced vapour and nebulizers to suit the alveolar physiology of the lung which is an incredible organ of evolution.

The above is to shut the mouth of pompous medical men of today who totally depend on technology and without common sense.

By the way, the physiologists and clinicians who gave expert evidence in police officers conviction are classic examples, not practising what they teach.

Oxygen is a poison above 23 to 28% and initiate free radical and interleukin production that damage the lung.

Sorry for the medical diversion and this is my last piece here for a long long time.

I thought the mini garden concept would fit or foot the bill to end the grand confabulations.

Thanks Google for your support.

I embraced mini garden concept to minimize the clutter in the rooftop garden.

The trays used for making crepe rubber from rubber latex is my tiny dimension.

The Buddha Sasana (used for offering milk rice Dhana to Buddha) pots are too small and fragile.

When kids were small, I made an elaborate mini garden with a bowl of water (Israel technology in a mini version) at a higher elevation, connected with a saline tube- hidden under the soil-feeding the mini tray with assortment of plants. 

Getting the right chemistry and microflora was difficult (the concept of fish urine technology of my current lilies plant cultivation was not developed then) but after a trial and error period,, it worked.

With children growing up and me getting in Linux and Computer Technology, I gave it up at that level.

Now, that I discarded my computers and retired I have gone back to that concept again.

Most of the steps in out back access is relatively a mini garden,now.

They rainy weather has its own contribution.

The tiny plants I tried to grow with much struggle are on most of the footsteps.

The crepe rubber tray without much a do and me doing nothing at all, have gathered its own community of plants.

My only contribution is chlorine free water from the spare water tank reserved for fish tanks.

My obsession was ferns growing on the tray which was unsuccessful.

There are a number of exotic ferns growing on their own without any support.

Nature has its own ways to entice you.

Now I have graduated to raise orchid's (the most difficult) under the shade of two tiny cocoa plants.

Few moons ago returning from Colombo our way back at Mawanella I found a tiny rotten cocoa pod.

Out of about 30 seeds only two plants have grown successfully,  keeping the natures principle (only 1% germinate).

I do not think it will ever bear fruits.

The trunk is very thin but it supports my tiny collection of orchids, growing in the wild (no chemical support), as it were.

Only seed I.have not tried is rubber seed but we have an India rubber tree right in front of our house growing in a wild corner.

My final attempt is to induce the Vanilla (a giant orchid) and the Wesak orchid to bloom one day (without artificial.chemicals I hate).

Nature willing of course.

Kandyan Dancers are about to bloom.

Another orchid had a tiny bunch of flowers (I bought from a street vendor who sells the plants with big flowers, chemically treated of course).

Indian Jesmine Plant and its Flower

First of all it is not a plant but a vine.

It is the most difficult to propagate.

Over 15  years I have managed to get one sapling and it has only two leaves and no flowers.

I have managed to get two sprouts but they failed after replanting.

Mind you, I have 38 years of experience and I leaned the tricks from my mother.

Going back to the beginning when we were building our house (I have no understanding  of house construction but good at making cement fish tanks), I decided to grow some flowering plants.

Our great great granny in her eighties needed flowers for her daily offerings to Buddha and she used to scatter the flowers seeds all over.and making a bit of a mess in the little garden (in fact it was a rocky garden which had a jute plant. It flowered after 100 years of existence and died naturally and I did not replant the hundred of offshoots for posterity. I had no idea and the thorns I hated -with growing children around).

I hate Dahas Peththia (flower with 1000 sepals or petals but which did not have even 100 and it leaves an unpleasant smell in your fingers when teased to spread the long narrow seeds).

So I did some looking around and found a similar colour flower with about  8 sepals and I gave her some and she did not mind.

Any flower would do and she told me we need 10 varieties of flowers in the garden when children.are around.

I took heart to her very broad sense of understanding of nature and she probably grew around a beautiful garden with flowers and that is why she lived up to her 80s with good health.

Another point about her to remember was we had 22 odd fish tanks around (tried a pond but failed) and the fish tank for display was in the living room (with an air compressor pumping stream of air bubbles from behind: brought from UK and not available then in Ceylon and I hate the cheap Chinese substitutes that do not last even 6 months) and I was obsessed with its upkeep.

One evening when I returned from work, I found two slices of bread in it.

I was bit annoyed but when I realized Great Granny had done it, I calmed down and after having my evening tea,. I asked her why she did it.

The fish are hungry and you come late.

I quietly explained to her while removing the slices carefully with pair of prongs, told her, that in fact, fish do not like bread but I feed the fish with fish food with tiny pellets.

I was expecting a wise saying from her and she never did it again, having got a sense of my subdued anger.

Mind you we did not have tap water and I had to go and fetch water from a nearby well.

That well and the guppy fish have gone.

I noticed today they have dug up a big pit (which fills up rapidly with water from the underground spring) and a drain to get a new water connection to a new house in our neighbourhood and a New Cesspit with it, that encourages mosquito breeding.

Coming back to 10 flowers in our garden.

We have failed her.

Only two flowering plants for hummingbirds.

A new and a bigger pair with a lovely velvet neck (male bird) has come (more about the pair later).

I got a sapling of the top variety of jasmine from my mother and planted in the place where children used play (hanging to an Araliya Branch-for flower offerings to Buddha).

It was well cared for and one day when I was admiring its first few flowers and I accidentally touched the belly of a Ahatulla (a relatively less,poisonous snake wrapped around the jasmine).

I immediately uprooted the jasmine plant and gave up caring for jasmine for over 30 years.

I have four varieties now and the Gata Piiccha is almost a weedy vine.

Normal jasmine variety,, of course the Indian variety and top jasmine variety.

I have mastered the propagation of saman or the top variety and when I have  extras I give away.

It needs lots and lots of water and dry up in dry weather unless you water it daily.

I have at least two sprouting currently but not the Indian variety.

I am experimenting with it and may succeed this season.

The way I do is to tilt the vine to a bucket with water plants and tease it by dipping it deep under water.

The pressure I apply makes the branch to lengthen (that come yearly when the old one is drying up to become firewood like) and remove the bark underneath with my nails and leave for the roots to come.

Once in a way I lift it up and see if the rooting is progressing well.

This way I do not need to water them daily.

I use the Pizza Hut clips to anchor the spot I have teased.

That works.

More reliable method is to dip the branch (having teased the bark underneath)of sufficient length to a pot with rapidly growing little flower plants (which become manure for the jasmine sapling later) so that the microflora that nourishes the jasmine have time to recuperate.

It takes about one year for the vine to become independent and flowering.

Tea, Coffee or Coriander

I go for coriander or Kootha Malli.

More about it later.

For the record I do not watch.cricket at all.

I slept through the semifinals of football and won't watch.the final to see penalty kicks at the end which is boring.

Watching Brazil and Argentina playing soccer is a real treat.

I was reading an.article by a British journalist who probably is an alcoholic (all journalists are and a good local example is our own Victor Ivan) and is writing about coffee addiction and trying to hide his true addiction, which is alcohol.

More about it later in a book form, which is probably going to be my last book.

A good journalist should not write about his experiences even, if he is short of ideas to write.

He becomes a laughing stock when he makes a big journalistic blunder (like the British PM) by his own comrades.

He could have assumed a fictitious character and add more spices into his story.

He is citing a neurologist (neuroscience is a pseudo-science which is in vogue currently) as an accreditation in a vague sense and tried to put a scientific notion.

Currently our understanding of working of the brain is limited to the cortical part of the brain and what is beneath is ill understood especially the neural networks, the  memory and the effect of tea, coffee, nicotine (smoking) and alcohol on the limbic system and eccrine, apocrine, paracrine and endocrine pathways.

I was a relative addict in my life but my greatest was gambling which can ruin a family.

My last gambling episode was when I left New Zealand for good.

I had very little saving and kept a few dollars for the taxi fee to the airport.

I decided to do some gambling since I arrived at the airport very early and the connection flight was hours away.

Now all airports in this world want to swindle your last dollars and pounds before you leave the particular country you visited and there are lot of gambling decks to entice.

I did a little survey and found one I could make a few bucks.

Had a tentative bid which I lost and with in a few strokes I made three times for the taxi and stopped.

The trick here is that the machines are programmed in the first few strokes for you to win and if you go beyond 10 strokes  you are a loser.

I used my mathematical brain to stop with the last big win.

Coming to caffeine adduction, the Chinese are the world's drug addicts and gambling addicts (of the world) until MaO SeTung decimated 3 to 5 millions (he was partially successful but he used his knowledge to spread, casinos, massage parlours.drugs and prostitution as export commodities, Ceylon is its latest victim).

Real double standards by Chinese.

I did a bit of search of Chinese addictive drugs a few moons ago and that piece is here on this bog site.

There only good contribution is Gotu Kola (Ginkola biloba).

The rest are all addictive concoctions.

By the way, Coriander is not their discovery and originated in.the Arabian peninsula, many centuries ago.

Currently I promote coriander as the only safe drink that is not addictive but a drink that helps to prevent Interleukin Effect by default by insidious infections including Coronavirus.

It has the property of arresting allergic reactions.

That is the reason the coriander has gone up in.price in Ceylon and in short supply like saffron.

Now five things that save my life benzathine penicillin injections, immunization including BCG and three ingradients from my mother her milk (including cow's milk), coriander and saffron in her curries.

The coffee and tea were not part of her beverages for us as kids.

Ginger beer was the only other drink allowed occasionally.

Now I add ginger beer to.coriander to make it sparkle.

Coming.back to alcohol after 10 years of careful planning I am out of alcohol and rice totally.

For the Russians and French fighting on sparkling wine, I won't suggest coriander but our local Kassippu is stronger than Vodka.

Come.here on a holiday enjoy Arrack and follow it up with Coronavirus antidote, the  Coriander with ginger beer.

Mind you.ginger has lot of medical properties.

To my medical friends I am not only a naturalist but a herbalist in action.

My.attempt at growing coriander and saffron is total failure.

I love the aroma of coriander leaves and persevere with the next batch of seeds to grow it in earnest, on the rooftop garden.

By the way, home gardening is one of the most satisfying.

Looking at lillie flowers every morning is gratifying to say the least.

Now my love of birds originated from budgerigars we had as kids.

I used to get chesty as a kid and they thought,  it was asthma but it was all due to budgies and various citacosis strains they carry and infected me.

When we got rid of the bird cages I recovered fully.

One of my great diagnosis as a GP was a woman who.rared beautiful birds in Negambo.

She had bird fanciers disease and her presentation was hepatosplenomegaly and labelled as a case of  leukemia.

I saved her from chemotherapy and I did not do a bone marrow biopsy on her.

Citacossis is the technical name.

I had the rare previledge of doing a marrow biopsy on Sir John Kotalawala.

He did not grumble in his late 80s.

When JRJ was in death bed, I signed his death  report (not his death certificate) at Navaloka Hospital.

Navaloka Gihilla Paraloke Giya was the standard vocabulary in Ceylon.

It is a status symbol, the relatives bring their patients in their dying bed or moments and doctors there drag the life for a day at most (some stone dead attached to an antiquated facemask).

The special care unit non existent and with three other guys we formulated a required protocol and training.

We saved ONLY one young boy under 15 with Guilline Barre Syndrome during my.time.

I.provided the laboratory support and visited him twice daily in the first 10 days and one a week thereafter.

One of his uncles became a neighbour quite by accident a few years later.

All these big guys think they never kick the bucket.

Venerable Narada was the one who bent my mind to Dhamma and I hope to end my herbal Dhamma here now.

Grass Hopper

This RaJa clan friend who comes for corn.
I have no corn.plants but released it to the rooftop garden.

I have not seen.one for ages.

Copper Craftman

I am not referring to the human kind.

This is a fly that comes at four year intervals.

It must be coming from far away and may have had three stations of stay where copper crafting or copper ornaments are evident.

It lands on a hanging Indian ornament and builds a nest for less than 10 members.

They come indoors during rainy.season and  leave with sunny weather.

I thought they gone extinct.

Once they have finished there will be a photograph with new offspring.

I have a photograph of them as a front.cover of one of my.books.

Go to Amazon and browse.

You.have to.search for my name but I.remain.anonymous and no.AilBaba type advertisements here.

Next bunch of Paddy Grass

Name of this variety unknown.

Paddy Pod

Madathuwal Variety

Twitter Nest

Close up view of nest made of two leaves.

Paddy Harvest

This is my paddy waiting to be harvested.

My Failures and Successes on the Tiny Roof Top Garden

My failures are many but only a few success.

1. My attempt at raring Cherry Tomatoes is a total failure.

The nature works on standard principles.

Only one (1%) per cent of seeds germinate.

To make it 10% one needs enormous inputs and perseverance.

I will come to that later.

This tomato has a lovely smell.

I have succeeded in getting one plant but it is growing very slowly.

No flowers.

The one which managed to germinate in the train outside our house is big and has a few flowers.

It had no support and I did some work for it and trapped it with two AkkaPana plants for its support.

Mind you I put lot of seeds on this drain and only one plant come out successful.

2. The coriander is a big failure only two one small lasted few weeks and the other wilted away in three months.

3. The chillies after many attempts and lot of seeds but only one plant in the same pot came mid way after the coriander seed had germinated.

No flowers yet but with flowers it will wilt away if not supplemented by chemical inputs.

4. Bread Fruit or avocados no result.

This time a failure but I have few more seeds left.

It is a seasonal germinater I believe.

5. A big wild seed brought on by birds germinated on the ground.
Transferred it to a pot total failure.
I found three seeds on top of the fish tank in the open.

May have been brought on by birds who quench their thirst from the fish tank.

The magpie devour my fish daily.

6. Jam Pera only one plant after a few hundreds of seeds had fallen on the ground.

I think one pass through a bird's alimentary system is mandatory.

7. Potatoes a total failure.

8. Japanese Tomatoes a total failure.

9. Mangoes on pots a total failure.
No fruits.

10. Partial success of paddy seeds one cared for the other left to wilderness.

The one left to wilderness had three seeds in one plant and nothing on the other three.

The well cared bucket had seven plants with seeds out of many seeds.

The manure is from fish urine.

I feed the guppy with high protein diet.

They produce year round urea in ample stock.

The other variety I got by post from a veteran paddy cultivator who is 80% blind (I think the chemicals he used in his farming career has done it).

By the way his kidneys are good.

I put them to germinate few months after the first batch and four of them are coming good.

I got a batch of seed pods from a farmer who comes from Amparai to sell his ornamental wall hanging made of paddy pods saying it is a blessing to hang them on the wall.

I bought two for 500.

I tried all his seeds nothing germinated.

I expected one to grow on ground with lot of water.

There was one variety in out garden as a kid, called GodaWee.

I am looking for one for two decades now with no success.

The first batch is from a guy who is a fish vendor but a good farmer all the same.

He is a long time friend of mine due to my pet fish keeping habit not fish mongering the politicians do in this country.

The bottom line is that paddy cultivation needs not only lot of water but lot of inputs (liquid manure and sold manure) and is not economically viable in this country until we invest on high quality low yield varieties for export.

We had over 2000 varieties and only 50 is left at the moment.

Thank God by luck I became a medical man and not an agricultural man.

If I did agriculture by fate, I would have been under aristocratic  Panakokke or Ellawala clans who were involved in commercial enterprises.

These aristocratic clans were involved in Elephant trade, too and Molamure and Pana Murre Eth Raja comes to my mind instantly.

The commercial enterprises kill our agriculture.

That is why we are in Manioc Economics now.

My successes are on lilly plants and a few varieties of wild water plants (foreign from seeds) which grow like a carpet on top.

The Soursop plant was a success with a tiny fruit.

The water mellon was a success with a tiny fruit.

Pineapple was a success and only two beautiful flowers in15 years.

One is one growing well and am sure it will bloom.

It lives hundred years given to nature and there is no hurry at all.

Havari Nuga a total success with two broods of twitters in 15 years.

I do not try any new ornamental plants now.
The.most expensive one never lasted two seasons.

Do not buy them in sales.

They are highly cared before sale exhibition to lure ladies with passion but they do not last even a season.

I do not use artificial manure at all but only leaves that fall and the tea leaves I keep (no milk-will lead to plant rot) for the palm trees.

Regular hand washing with siso.and water and never with detergents.

They kill plants, insects, butterflies and fish.

If you do that butterflies will come in search of you if not dragon flies.

It is nice to see few butterflies but will eat some leaves that stimulate plant chemicals for growth.

The birds will control the excess caterpillars.

No sugar and drinking Mesnar Tea without sugar is invigorating.

Sandfly, Silverfish, Weevils and Termites

My interest in insects started with book worms or termites.

They destroyed a batch of books thankfully most of them were Buddhist books old and already ready for destruction by me anyway.

I have a large collection of them and if somebody throws a Bodu Bala Sena logic, I offer him or her (rarely a woman, they love fantasy books, not reality books),  a copy of Venerable Narada or Late Piyadhasdi Thera to shut them off in a few seconds.

Madihe Panjhasiha is out on first count.

If he she an intellectual I give the name of Bikku Bodhi who left this island having wrote a piece "Buddhism at Cross Roads" with the emergence of BBS.

He stated medical reasons but I guess he was ashamed to done a robe in Ceylon.

Would have been better in Thailand but never in Butma.

Renukane Chandawimal and his Sinhala books confuse me more.

Do not read his books on Abhidhamma, one would start hating Buddhism.

For the credit of Bikku Bodhi, he revived the BPS and unfortunately it is NOW run by a monk from Denmark (my guess) who is interested in making profits from book sales.

"Sabbha Dhanam Dhamma Dhanam Jinathi" is off the couch or window and the capitalism at work in full pace.

I will not burn Bikku Bodhi's books but I won't site the BPS again not even next birth.

The bookworms or booklice have got me to write a book "Living with Nature" which I delayed for one year and now two years gone by.

That time was not wasted I used my conservations to full use.

The sandfly is a misnomer.

But I prefer it since it gives natural sense but not a botanical genius working over time.

This classification guys like Buddhist monks destroy any inclination to study a new topic in simple (not in depth for god's
sake) way.

Now this sandfly has no relationship to dragonfly or damselfly at all.

It is our Walli Govvas mothers and fathers.

I loved the Walli Govvas as a kid.

Pick them up on your palm it dances backwards without probing it to do so.

Then place them back on sand and watch its engineering back at full pace until it bury itself waiting patiently for a prey like American bullish market guy (not bull market).

Now American sprayed the entire North America and their children never see a dragon fly or sandfly or even lady birds or ladybugs.

It is a little engineer that builts a pit that is deadly for ants.

I wish I can dig a pit like that for British (Conservatives) and Ceylonese (SLPP) politicians who are absolutely corrupt.

I wish good lick to Keith Starmer the Star of Wonder for British politics.

We do not have any like him emerging in Ceylon for another century.

We are stuck with a family hegemony for good.

Now there is a another strange thing about this newt or pupa of Walli Govva which I discover from Wikipedia (now the lack of anus is deleted by editors) two years ago.

It has no anus.

It devour for four years until the outer coat or the skin is close to burst and it goes into metamorphosis and the sand fly like creature is born.

I wish our future politicians are born without ani for them to naturally burst with corruption at the end of five years.

Now we did not have Walli Govvas when we built our house in a pit where termites and black ants live for centuries.

I got our cement bass to bring them and they were thriving where the overflow sand had collected and after 4 years or so they disappeared.

But I never thought they will come looking for us at a time where chemical killers are banned due to their price hike and my masterly inactivity principle interrupted by pouring water over ant holes which never worked.

Thanks sandflies but I pity for your offsprings without ani.

When we live with ants we have to wake up with ants.

When you do not have an anus it will burst one day.

Not with red ants with nasty sting.

I noticed these sand flies who come after four years near the big fish tank but never though they lay eggs on the sand holes turned out by nasty tiny red ants.

They have disappeared and lot of Walli Govvas with trap pits living there now.

I will have to watch them for four solid years till they disappear.

The nature has it's own ways to entice you and this piece will be a tiny chapter with more scientific details mixed with political satire (names deleted for safety of my children).

Humour and Mind

The word Human probably drives from those two words and the man has lost both mind and humour after they created coin, paper money and now crypto-currency.

Incredibly apt word crypto and how freak or counterfeit dollars are converted to power is really cryptic.

This crypto-mania most likely started from London and Washington to lure the Chinese who hoard money from global business activities.

Both London and Washington do not have adequate sovereign to print paper money but there is digital manipulation.

The  word crypto-currency was born.

This is to mitigate countries emerging economies like India where gambling is natural inclination.

Using computer farms set up in bunkers to analyse money transactions at nanosecond intervals globally and using techniques similar to betting to manipulate crypto currency dealings by absolutely rich people, bypassing the normal fiscal systems that are set in place to discourage manipulations surreptitiously.

Countries like ours, printing money without sovereign or corporate bonds to stand alone has no match to these manipulations.

I think Chinese are also in this game now.

Prices of food are going up.
There is a mismatch of supply and demand mainly due to Coronavirus Slowdown.

It cannot be mitigated by printing money.

The ground work has to be in place.

One cannot analyse, the cryptic ways, the bullish forces work in the money market.

The prices going on service commodities cannot be arrested by fiscal and artificial intelligence gut feelings.

The gadgets (cellphones, laptops and hard disks) that come out in tons due to lockdown will not find a market place except for formulating volatile algorithms.

To stabilise supply and demand imbalance global coordination is necessary.

Until that is done an average man is riddled with hand to mouth existence.

The role outs will vanish in no time to cover the debts leaving no money left for longterm investment plans, to get the system back to stability.

So my prediction that economy would  collapse (in spite of bullish predictions of the crypto men in London and New York) will stand true, with the year 2021 coming to an end.

Baby Elephant Trade in Ceylon

This piece is to correction to a piece here about baby elephants' plight in Ceylon.
I said that it is done by local mafia aided by politicians.

I am.wrong.

It is not the mafia but it now shows high ranking ARMY  officials who are doing it.

I am sure by the trend in Ceylon these officers will get more stars and a due promotion too.

When paedophiles are released from prison I think these officers get Dutch Courage and are encouraged to do bad things in broad day light soon like in Myanmar.

This is why I am dead against Kandy Esala festival or Perahara.

Read my book on Baby Elephant Walk on Amazon.

I have said that in poems and verses.

Baby should be with the mother and the mother is killed and foster mothers are chased.

This is a cruel country by the way.

This happened on the death anniversary of Diana the Princes.

TPM, UEFI, and Microsof Monopoly

Microsoft's strategy is to interfere with your freedom of choice.

Having failed with UEFI, Microsoft is bringing in another ploy to hoodwink gullible customers.

Do not get caught.

Within weeks I found a way to scuttle UEFI.

Simple.

Go to BIOS and activate It.

Better still use Gpt and use only Linux partitions and install Linux a d say Good Bye to Windows.

The latest ploy that will misfire is TPM.

Trusted Program Module.

The P stands for PAY to PLAY.

If you have money pay by all means but if you're a pensioner stick with Windows till 2025 and kick the bucket thereafter.

Microsoft want only your money and not your wellbeing.

People are just recovering from the pandemic and money you saved should not be spent on a gadget to upgrade your computer with a hardware module and service charge to go with It, to get latest Windows 11.

It is not a brand new operating system but a glossy front end advertisement campaign.

If you have money go and buy Apple computer but if short of cash go for Lenova with Linux 15 kernel.

Even Google's Chromebook is expensive but it does not need TOM upgrade.

If you are lucky and your PC or Laptop supports it, go to BIOS and change to, TPM mode if you really want Windows.

Microsoft Windows is like an Uppish Aristocratic Woman dressed in a glamorous Sari

I forgot a few points that makes Linux stand out in space on zero gravity or one gravity on earth, is its scalability and it's different tool kits to suit the desktop environment.

The desktop can be heavy like in KDE plasma and is always limited by the RAM and hardware of the cellphone concerned.

The bloated desktop in Windows consume precious memory and little is left for functionality. That is why it's development is staggered till a new kit or new kid comes to town with new skates.

Mind you, old keyboard cellphones ran on Java.

Now that new hardware and chips are coming out thick and fast, Linux also can show its prowess and that is what Emmabsntus has done with xfs and lxtq (a brilliant upgrade to front end).

Linux has enough backend stuff unlike Windows (lot put to front end nothing left for backend and that also one has to buy the bloat ware).

Having said that Goggle series 11 is more than adequate for daily use and going for a new cellphone with version 12 and above is a waste.

My favourite of course is Nokia and my old flame GreenTel I have not tested for many years.

Now this 5G connectivity is not going to have any effect in Ceylon due to poor infrastructure development by All Services local and foreign.

We are cash struck for another 50 years and ban-omics is the order of the day and do not throw away your old gadgets.

I cannot think of a better description than the above comparison to a Sari.

Sari may look beautiful but the lady behind is still old without innovations.

Instead of writing about Windows, this piece is about Linux Kernel 15 and a bit of politics at the end.

The distribution used in explaining new stuff is Emmabantus.

After a long period of hibernation Emmanantus team from France had done a credible job.

Linux is 30 years old and I have been using it over 20 years and exclusively over the past 5 years or more.

I am more critical of Linux than Microsoft.

That is how Linux improves leaps and bounds.

A swipe at Windows is due to my satire dying a natural death which is coming to surface unhindered and nothing more.

I have no intention of converting a guy entangled in Windows, except saying God Bless them for using a weak element.

Humans are not infallible and let them be.

But I get annoyed by guys who have used Linux over a year during the pandemic and writing a glossy scathing overviews.

These guys come from Window's background and unable to master 10 Linux commands or had not read the Linux Bible or the very big "Linux in a Nutshell" book.

Yes Linux in a nutshell.is a very big reference book for developers.

Linux did not come into existence by chance.

It is a simple guy's challenge to his professor which the professor took it offensively and the young guy split his hairs (I mean professor's hairs) and went his own way without crowd funding to begin with but a bunch of community guys with similar interests, added market value to it's products globally.

I am not saying crowd funding is the best way.

It can fail and Ubuntu currently is an example.

But Linus Torvalds kept his kernel business as his priority and the distribution development is left to focus groups and Debian keeping the repositories updated and also depreciating some dysfunctional applications.

I use AbiWord for my work for a very long time and it is not in Debian Store but Ubuntu has it in it's symantic store.

In that scenario if Ubuntu is not there I have to go back to an old Puppy Linux to work on AbiWord.

With difficulty I got it installed in Ubuntu 20-4.

What I mean here, is one cannot satisfy everybody but that is the name of the game.

Coming to Emmabantus, it has AbiWord.

Besides it has LibreOffice 7 version.

As I said earlier its kernel is 15 and kernel 15 supports version 7 of LibreOffice and no AbiWord.

LibreOffice has a kid's version and Emmabantus has it.

Emmabantus has three boot up options.

1. One for kids.

2. Two for new comers to Linux.

3. The third, the classic for guys like me who wants all the packages including old ones.

The Gimp new version which I did not test is there for your photo editing.

VML is there for my videos.

It has MultiSystem Utilitu to make bootable USB with multiple portable Linux distributions with xfs (not with Debian with enormous packages to boot in one go) capability.

Having said that I now use Plasma KDE of Debian for my regular work.

Debian has 7 or 8 other desktops for my light work.

Emmabantus use only xfce and lxtq to prevent memory over surge.

No hard feelings, though.

Then Ubuntu is in a new mode to take Google face up with it's Web Development Kit.

I support it whole heartedly since Google is trying the "Microsoft Strategy" of putting glossy stuff to lure gullible customers, since Fdroid (? Is it Linear OS) guys or JinglyOS guys from China (is crowd funding for a new OS and gadgets).

The Coronavirus has made explosion of technology and airlines going bankrupt has made people having money in their hands for spending (not efficiency in governments like UK and EU but people realizing all governments are useless unless they spend money not for high rising compact buildings or 5S capability but  good solid infrastructure for hospitals and social welfare for the vulnerable).

My only problem is I have stopped traveling not due to Coronavirus but due to cash shortage but I had been economizing long before Coronavirus (Telecom bills, electricity bills but not on water bills to keep plants from wilting in dry weather), knowing very well the Ceylonese Government is in global debts will introduce ban-omics and ban even Western Digital new external hard disk to try kernel 15 stuff in my spare time.

I am now short of USBs and I will discard all my 32 bit Linux distributions on DVDs by burning them in spite of the environmental pollution it entails.

No option, I am short of space, too.

Books I will keep without burning since buying old books from JUNK book sales, I believe will contribute to spread of Coronavirus.

I do not go to book shops now and that also saves money.

There is a guy in Ceylon who runs a TV station built by transporting hospital refuse from Europe and dumping them in unsuspecting countries and I believe he is responsible for spreading Coronavirus in Ceylon.

Hospital mattresses from Europe wrapped in a new lining was one of his promotions not innovation.

A crafty guy whose brother was in prison for murder and dealing with illegal drugs.

There is another  guy who is a minister now murdered two university undergraduates, in my time as a young assistant lecturer (he became rich by similar drug dealings).

The Grama Niladhari tells me drugs are smuggled into the University through a small access road leading o the Engineering Faculty.

I am happy it is closed (not the road but the university) for a very long time and many of those future graduates would not find a job anyway due to economic downturn (our neighbourhood is free of drug peddlers but there are lot of exotic birds visiting).

Unfortunately stray dogs are finding it hard and some domesticated ones, too are chased out from homes due to food shortages and today I woke up with the noise of  a big Dog Fight in our neighbourhood.

That is how life is progressing.

Slugs, Snails and Squirrels

I want to write about slugs and snails but little squirrel took my interest and attention for a solid one hour.

Let me finish that first.

I knew there was a batch of new squirrels on the roof under the ceiling and the mother feeding them.

I could hear suckling young ones.

I encourage squirrels since they invariably chase the mice.

One of the young ones today sensed the ripe palm seeds and with some trial and error found it and started feeding.

He came to a point where he could see me while feeding.

Having noticed that there was no danger from me it continued feeding but made sure that he is behind the tree trunk and only the head peeping at intervals to see my actions and movements.

I just stay absolutely still.

After about 15 minutes he got enough courage to feed with the head down and only the legs holding on to the branch.

I thought of taking a photo but decided not to BUT to count how many seeds it eats.

Well it was more than 10 and stop.counting and I let it enjoy the feast.

I was thinking (I am not a yogi), If I try eating upside down like a squirrel, what my physiological reactions would be to prevent my morning tea coming down my nose.

I think that was the first physiological (eating in upside down posture with a full tommy) balance we lost having become an erect man.

So he finished the feast and could not find his way back especially because the rain has washed away his urine marks on the tree.

After several attempts he jumped to the mulberry tree that had only few fruits.

Even the jam-pera tree has no fruits.

Usually in July the tree is full of fruits and the fruits came two months early and the rain interrupted, causing the yield to be poor.

Bright sun shine is necessary for the full field and to impart sweetness to the fruits.

My analysis the global warming is creating havoc to plants and thereby food supply to the birds and other animals who are not carnivorous like man.

Now coming to slugs and snails I encourage them on our roof top garden so birds will come and feed them.

It is the supplementary food them.

The spiders they eat do not have much food value.

80 to 90% of the exotic plants I have up there had been brought thete by birds and one of those Havari Nuga trees was the tallest and that is where twitter made a nest.

Over last 15 years the rooftop garden has a natural ecosystem (except the water plants I carefully collected including beautiful lilies).

Coming to snails I saw a garden piece in the web, how to destroy them.

Apart from birds there are many simple things one can do to prevent population explosion but those common sense tips I would not elaborate here.

Now my experience with snails is they never eat young leaves or normal leaves.

They only eat rotten leaves and I do not have to bother removing rotten leaves of water plants and lilies.

It is a myth that snails and slugs do damage to plants.

I do not think so.

They do not have teeth.

Additionally they do not have advanced enzyme systems to digest them.

All healthy leaves except some vegetables which are commercially raised or selected for commercial raising, have chemical stuff poisonous to animals.

It is the bacteria that breakdown the cellulose to sugar that slugs and emails consume with other basic elements including amino acids.

They are very useful.scsvenger and do not hate these slimy guys.

They are part of our ecosystem.

Only thing I know is they are slimy and never pick them by hand and that slime will not leave your fingers even with a strong detergent.

That is their protective sheath.

It makes it easy for the birds, especially the greater coucal to swallow them in one go.

They hate water and squirt some water they move away quickly.
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For ages I have not seen the big shelled snails.

They have vanished and it is the delicacy of the greater coucal.

Now while I was doing this at least 6 varieties of birds came to feed on the palm seeds since I know them by their calls even without watching at them.

Birds hate eye contact and one should hear them rather than watch them.

Bird watching is a wrong connotation, in the scientific world.

Bird listening or hearing them should be the right way if you love them.

Do not interrupt their feeding.

They fly away.

Just plant a few fruit plants and do not look for them.

They simply form "the flying ecosystem" by themselves given about five years.

I think we live in their migration pathway.

Believe me or not Korawakka had built a nest on the Kithul Tree in front of our house and I can hear the mum feeding the young ones, now.

They are like kiwis, ground birds that lay eggs on paddy fields during dry season.

The paddy fields are filled up by developers and road masters and they have no place to lay eggs.

In another 10 years I will see their extinction from out neighbourhood like what happened to kiwis in New Zealand.

My Global Vision for Computers and Gagematics

 27-01-2021

My Global Vision for Computers and Gagematics

Now that I have expressed my global views, in general, if I do not write few lines on computer world, it is unfair by my standards.

This whole world is taken over by few companies and President Putin cannot overview the impact, only the Linux World can keep it's head up.

We cannot trust China and it has it's own Kline OP system I will never try.

A waste of my precise time.

Having said that Ubuntu has abrogated it's responsibility and that VOID is filled by Emmabantus in style.

I have just made two bootable USBs one on Emmabantus and the other on Ubuntu.

I have multiple copies of MultSystem with multiple Linux distributions run on 64GB USB sticks, the standard not USB-3s.

Now Emmabantus took twice the time of Ubuntu and it shows the paucity of software in Ubuntu.

Now Emmabantus DID NOT USE a single copyrighted application.

That is my bone of contention in Ceylon where Pseudo- Buddhists who use pirated copies.

Unfortunately the USB made by Ubuntu software did not boot. That is why I did copying it with Emmabantus and it boots quickly unlike the DVD on the ROM.

Emmabantus has everything I need including USB writer and USB image writer which works perfectly well in Emmabantus including MultiSystem software (one need not waste a DVD).

Mind you I hate the noise of DVD ROMs.

If Laptop makers are sensible they should discontinue the inbuilt DVD and dish out a detached DVD ROM with each Laptop if the customer needs.

That saves space for my Vision that will come later in this piece.

Not only noise it consume lot of energy.

That job can be done easily with a USB Stick and 4MB RAM.

If any of your gadgets has less than 4GB RAM either dish it out or upgrade to 4GB RAM.

If you are not a game player 4GB RAM is more than enough.

In Linux one need lot of RAM only in installing but they always reserve 1 GB for system and hardware and in, installation Linux use 3 GB by default.

There is no crash like in Windows.

Windows take all the RAM and that is why it crashes often ad hoc.

TPM or total Play or Pay module or is it something else that expects minimum of 4GB RAM.

That is the only SWIPE I will make at the expense of stupid Window Users.

Now coming to my Vision.

I hate a big computer either desktop or a standalone mode.

It takes space.

What I need is a solid input device (modified keyboard) and a big monitor.

Only one company has taken this to heart and working on it and I wish them success but I won't buy one since I have my computers working only on Linux.

This keyboard probably will only support Windows and I hope they make Linux one to save on the cost to begin with.

This keyboard should put the motherboard under it's keys.

One reference to Linux Developers and they use keyboard shortcuts day in and day out.

The function keys  F-1 to F-12 can be accommodated for their use in principle.

I use Ctr, Alt, Del and F2 only and other function keys are literally a waste.

My proposed  Keyboard Computer can use them for good use.

As I said earlier DVD should be dispensed with and all booting should be done with bootable USBs and quality of USBs should go up but the price should come down.

USB port should be in front not in side like in Laptops and I hate fiddling to find a port in my old age.
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Some words about gender.

All these gadgets are made by male guys who want money and a yacht to sail at sea.

They do not care a damn except for cellphones that are made for women only and a man with a big finger cannot use a tiny phone in hand.

Whereas Keyboard with Motherboard enclosed can be used by a man with big hands and big fingers.

Hang, the virtual keyboards which interfere with typing perpetually.

I forgot to mention the key should have a bay in the middle to mount the cellphone or tablet  in a mobile mode.

That's all one need a cellphone and a flexible rubber keyboard that one can wrap round the head with a side cap as a portable helmet on a rainy day.

I hope you got the image or the vision and keyboard should come out of age and incorporate more ports for microphone head sets, cameras, various USB sticks and WiFi DVD ROMs.

Combining digital software and analogue gadgets might cause little problems but make one bigger in size for the man to stay on the table top typing and a small one for me and ladies to carry to the pantry.

Ladies are the ones good at thrashing light weight ones and who knows if one spills coffee on it one can use it as a doormat.

Even though, I use some scepticism and satire a lot here, what I say, I mean in my heart of hearts.

Again no plastics for environmental reason and rubber is a plant product and it will support our rubber industry directly.

All what I need is a flexible rubber keyboard in my hand and a big monitor at the foot end of my bed which I can see at age of 80 without a problem.

If I get annoyed I can thrash it on the floor to see how it works (good or bad) and if not working use it as a doormat.

My Global Predictions

Even though, I have decommissioned myself over 20 years form medical profession on my own volution and if I kick the bucket during this pandemic and labelled (to avoid that labelling) as an imbecile posthumously, it is bad for my friends and my descendants.

Hold on!

If you have a weak heart politically do not read beyond this point.

The greatest casualty of this pandemic is medical profession and I have some advice for them, to get their house in order later.

The next biggest casually will be the Army, Navy and Air Force unless they get their dormitory in order in double quick time, 50% of their trainees will succumb to Coronavirus in the future.

1. My '"First Prediction" in 2020 September was that this pandemic will last for a decade (now revised to 2 decades with data coming out thick and fast and new variants emerging) and the first cabinet casualty is British Health Minister for lying to his cabinet and the general public.

2. The "Second Prediction"is that the economic impact will last for 50 years, if not more.

There are no casualties here due to prolong effect on economy unless you are a Finance Minister who got a brand new printing machine and printing money (to put his/her name on paper as a political advertisement) at a hectic pace.

Mind you, China created the printing machine and they probably never envisioned this scenario, then.

3. Third is my attempt to predict how to overcome this pandemic with a distant vision and "Safe Distance Protocol.

That vision comes from an unlikely business section of the economy.

This cute little concept of Premadasa housing is taken to task.

The high rising house industry will collapse in no time.

With a cough or a sneeze the virus travels minimum of 30 feet and a mask will hold only 10% from an infected person (rest 90% is out in the fresh air) and the first casualty is Andrew Fauci of America holding the highest paid post in medicine or rather Public Health.

I am surprised he is still holding this post.

My gut feeling is President Biden knows he came to power due to this "Pandemic Effect" and sacrificing him is improper at this juncture, let it happen under next administration.

My gut feeling is he will contest again having felt the purse and the perks.

In a different perspective, in Ceylon the Big casualty is SLPP for not curtailing the death rate, if not the spread of the disease.

Every family who voted for SLPP will have lost one or two of its members by four years (most of them due to natural causes but lumped into Coronavirus) when the next election is due.

In any case the vote bank is reduced due to death rate and most of the elderly voted SLPP.

By the way, due to food price hike the current popularity of it is down by 20% to 49%.

The popularity falls at the rate of dollar depreciation rate.

Very easy analysis and Basil Raja is not needed now for population analysis.

Coming to my solution to curtail spread of infection within and inside a family, the average dimension of a room should be 30 by 30 feet with an attached bathroom for every member.

I suppose only rich Americans can afford it and in UK compact houses, housing mainly Asians have to be demolished straightaway to curtail the pandemic not by improving immunization protocol.

Now this has to be modified if you have a dog in house.

I will revise that cellphone is the biggest vehicle of transmission, since it is abiotic and the dog who is very biotic is the biggest contributor to spread of infection, since it loves licking.

The risk is same as kissing.

So no new dogs and let the puppies go astray but look after the current one for 15 years.

Ideally a room and a toilet for the dog.

The housing and construction laws should be amended to fit 30 by 30 Minimum Law and all the new hotels and restaurants should follow my new law on construction.

I kept the hotel industry and air industry to be discussed last since none of them can afford to follow 30 by 30 Law except some 5 Star hotels in Ceylon.

The tourist industry will never recover.

In Air industry even the big birds or Air Buses cannot run on 30 by 30 space seats by any imagination and air industry is the one which will recover the last.

Less seats and jacking the ticket price are not the solutions but everyone who is rich enough should have a private plane, like our politician in Ceylon.

Not a helicopter by the way.

Why travel when one can do video conferencing at ease with cellphones?

Now coming to hospitals especially private nursing homes, they should invest in new building construction protocols to curtail spread of infection to doctors, nurses and health care personnel.

All the private hospitals built in Ceylon we're to accommodate the maximum number of patients in the minimum space available.

Hospital industry never considered hospitality protocols of restaurants.

Now that the hospitals are almost empty they should start refurbishing in earnest, with the largest serviceable space for best care for suffering patients, if not spread of infection.

After all they are paying for service.

Public hospitals stop diverting to the next nearest big hospital but improve local hospitals to capacity building, as an immediate need of the community, that they are serving.

Unless one does that, recruitment especially nurses will nose dive and no mum or dad wants the daughter to be graduated as a nurse.

In my opinion hospitals are the worst buildings in the world.

They are built to accommodate vagrants and not poor patients.

WHO had abrogated all responsibilities of health care over a century and they let the market forces determine the outcome.

This is true of China where the pandemic started and they are building structures all over the world and in Africa and one should not let China determines house sizes, house planning and hotel buildings worldwide.

Having been a sportsman, if I do not pen my thoughts on how sports' should reorganize laws, stadiums and Olympics I have failed, the budding spokesmen and women.

Sorry to hear that the Olympics in Japan is the biggest casualty.

The stadiums because of their big size can accommodate less spectators at higher priced tickets but they won't be able to sustain big margin of profits.

Rugged contact sports like rugger should be banned by WHO.

Basket ball is out on second count.

For Cricket and Soccer I apply 5 feet rule not 30ft.

The slips should be at 5ft apart that Mr.Khole should have adequate room for his deft taps.

The Wicket Keeper should stand at the wicket 5ft behind.

Stumping should be abolished only run puts.

As for soccer, only defenders are allowed to tackle at close range and rest of the players should stand five feet apart and follow the deft "Brazilian First Pass Method" as the defacto mode of play.

Touching an opposing player is banned in toto.

Long range passes as played by David Beckum, the English captain of the past would elevate the game, to a new high level.

More goals and not "no goals" should be the motto and punters can bet on goals, goal difference and timing of the goal first half, second half instead of a win or a lose or a draw which is boring for me.

It should have three phases (30 minutes each) and odd number of three phases is good for punters in the long run.

Polypoly to Tripoly to Monopoly

It looks like we are moving from global multinational collaboration to monopoly in trade and transactions.

The Coronavirus should have made us to be liberal and expansive (not exploitive) in trade but it seems like we are becoming duopoly in all our deals.

We have come from poly+poly in the past to monopoly of China or duopoly with India.

China is very good at using duopoly to their advantage without much effort.

They have encroached the African continent with lot of natural resources that include minerals used in monitors and cellphones.

Ceylon has not able to use silica like in silica valley and our titanium is exploited both by China and India.

I think we will become experts in making poisonous lead paints.

When country lacks scientists and visionary  this is what happens.

We become a monopoly of only Theravada Buddhism.

Even Buddhism has become duopoly in practice not Unipolar or Uniting all streams of life forms.

Dual Booting BSD with Linux

I have not yet figured out how to do this.
BSD needs ZFS partitions.

Latest Debian should be able to recognises ZFS partition.

It all depends if the GRUB boot loader can configure it.

I will Mount BSD first leaving behind space for Linux to install later.

Problem with BSD is it takes over the whole of the hard disk and one cannot resize it.

ESP partition is where GRUB is recorded and somewhat large ESP partition may do the trick.

Ubuntu 21-04 has got All Wrong

As anticipated Ubuntu destroyed my GRUB boot menu, even though it was installed in a USB stick.

Luckily I did not try it on the Hard Disk.

Had I done that I have to redo all installation afresh.

I made an ESP partition but it did not mount.

In good old days if you boot a Live Linux Distribution, one can make a bootable USB.
I tried start up USB and it failed to recognized the formatted USB.

Ubuntu let you make a startup disk but that utility does not work..

My guy feeling was it will not boot with the UEFI interference?

With the introduction of UEFI by coercion of Microsoft the BIOS magic was lost.

I have found a way to bypass this ploy.

I make bootable  ESP partition.

I have never made a ESP on a 16 GB USB.

Let us see how it works.

It is not my nature to write about Ubuntu.

I use Debian as my workhorse.

Ubuntu is actually Debian based.

For fun I try Puppy Linux.

For critical testing I use Knoppix.

I just installed Knoppix on a USB stick using MultiSystem.

Knoppix also can do it on it's own but MultiSystem let you have several distribution in one USB stick.

I have collected large number of USB sticks and over the past two decades and they still work after erasing  data.

With 64 bits in vogue keeping them idling is not my intention.

Nothing else to do I just booted Ununtu 21-04 to install it but last half an hour it is trying to figure out what is in my Laptop and failed.

I tried live booting and that also failed.

To save my data I disconnect my Internet while installing.

I think and believe Ubuntu cannot mount a live session without Internet.

How can one see what is in it?

How can one we enjoy a live session?

This is why I recommend Emmabantus Debian 4.

It is actually Debian 11 derivative and has enormous amount of applications.

I will stop Ubuntu and install Emmabantus on my spare USB.

Well after nearly 45 minutes it booted live.

I will try to install it on a USB.

This time I will make a bootable ESP partition.

My PC on WiFi Mode

I had some problem connecting my PC to Internet once I pulled out the Ethernet Wire.

It is a Linux box and NO Windows.

I was running Debian 9 for the last 4 years and I did not want to lose my data by installing Debian 10.

However, I decided to install Debian 10.10 without touching my home partition.

It's primary partition is 125 SSD and 100 reserved for the operating system.

I do not use it daily but run the Laptop for my heavy work.

Today I stuck the Dongle and Debian 10.10 detected it effortlessly.

I have depleted Data by downloading Linux images through the WiFi Broadband and I think when I upload some data and I stick the Ethernet wire, it probably will connect to the Internet.

I am.getting stingy on Data.

Routers and WiFi Connections

Now my first warning.

There is WiFi Mesh in the market.

Do not fall prey and you need minimum two or more gadgets which will not work in a hill country like ours.

Do not believe any Service.Provider in Ceylon.

They are all Suckers.

If you have a Ethernet Connection keep it as your sovereign belt of gold.

They (Ethernet) are the fastest and the most reliable.

Do not be deceived into subscribing to FiberOptics.

The Service Providers neither do have the technology not kits not trained personal.

They are paying their staff by skyrocketing your bills.

If the Service Provider does not have service capability or credibility in Budulla or NuweraEliya, if you have FiberOptics inside your house or restaurant there is no meaning of this wire.

I have learned my lesson by pulling of the Ethernet Wire.

I am paying (1000s) thousands in a few hours to download a Linux image for fun testing.

That is buy using WiFi broadband from Dialog (details in another blog piece).

But if you Google, there are plethora of new WiFi gadgets every company  is selling and competing with opposing companies.

None of them is cheap and will never be available in Ceylon for a foreseeable future with a Debt Trap.

With new gadgets coming to the market and surplus in the market abroad, old Cheap Chinese stuff not selling those countries will flood our market

This is so with Conservatives in UK and BT putting a lot of their cash (before the pandemic) in a very competitive market.

Do not buy BT stuff discarded in UK and they won't work anyway in Ceylon.

With Dollar going up even cellphones will go up in price.

Buying a Laptop now or Chromebook is a big liability.

There is surplus in the market and the Coranavirus loss of revenue is added to your bill invariably.

No country has found a solution and each country is trying it's own gimmick to fool the masses addicted by Video Conferencing.

Now is not the time or bargaining time.

My belief is that it will take minimum of 5 years for recovery in Ceylon, well past the next election.

Do not think of contesting the next local or general election.

Even if you win you won't be able to recover your money spent in campaigning.

If you lose swallow a bitter pill or think of taking some local poison.

MaKfee guy's suicide in prison is a case in point.

He made millions with able connivance with Microsoft and none of that would help him in prison with litigations pending.

Lot of people will try this method in Ceylon but unlike the rich in other countries DO NOT dump the hard saved money on Telecoms or failing ventures.

LibreOffice has Come of Age

LibreOffice has come of Age.

Mind you I have not used an office package for two solid years and had been addicted to Android cellphones typefaces and typically Grammerly.

I had been detecting for Linux distributions that supports AbiWord for simplicity and found Emmabuntus and Ubuntu 20.10 accommodate AbiWord and Debian does not.
Even Knoppix bit shy of Abi Word because of popularity of LibreOffice.

It is in version 7 and has remarkable good character.

I work with AbiWord and finer tuning is done in LibreOffice before publishing.

It is a viable for Window based operating system in addition to Linux.

It has chapter promotion or demotion and layout up and down schemes.

For Android users there is also WPS Office and Polaris Office equally good but they are falling behind due to rapid onward match of LibreOffice.

There is LibreOffice reader for Android cellphones.

Who needs Microsoft Office suite?

And why pay?

Is it due to glamour or stupidity?

Emmabantus Debian 4 Edition

I am currently installing Emmanantus Debian 11(named Deb4 due to Emma edition 4) kernel in a single partition in my Laptop.

It had shed bit of its Ubuntu installation pathway but installation Is smooth.

It is 64 bit version and detected the ESP partition automatically.

I have downloaded Knoppix 9.1 and it is in an external SSD.

But Ubuntu 21.4 was very painful in writing to a DVD and writing and reading it in live mode was very rough and noisy.

It is probably loaded with eye catching graphic but did not have 5% of the software Emmabantus has.

It is nothing but simple Gnome desktop.

Emmanuntus has 1GB of extra software compared to Ubuntu.

It is time we migrate from Ubuntu to Emma for productive work.

Emma has in addition Gcompris for Children and a school version of LibreOffice 7 which is very attractive.

Ubuntu has not come out of it's mystic ways.

After all it came from Africa for African children but Emma is serving the African continent which Ubuntu currently had abrogated.

Sorry for saying that but I have Ubuntu 20.10 in my Laptop with AbiWotd.

Emma has MultiSystem and AbiWord, two of my favourites.

I hope with 22 version Ubuntu will match up with Emmabuntus and remove it's bulky graphic intensive glare and gloat and bring out more productive suite.

I have never used Ubuntu and my using it's 20.10 is mainly  due to AbiWord.

I used all my tactics to.get AbiWord to Debian 10 BUT miserably failed.

LXDE, KDE and Plasma do not support AniWord.

Incidentally, LibreOffice can read AbiWord and in future it should convert it's word file to AniWord and pdf for quick transfer through the Internet.

If for some reason an amazingly new Linux Distribution come into vogue I do not have any space in my Laptop.

But I am happy a version of Debian 11 is already there.

I was looking for Debian 11 but could not find a torrent file.

Linus Torvalds would not release it to the torrent base unless he is 100% satisfied.

He is a master of Japanese 5S technology.

This is about Sri-Lanka Telecom, My Data and Knoppix 9.1

I pulled out the Ethernet (faulty by the way) wire and I was without fast Internet for three months.

Sri-Lankan Telecom is hopeless, to say the least, it disconnected my Knoppix download without informing me by Telephone twice at 3 GB point twice (direct).

I lost 6GB of paid data.

This is not Netflix or Porn data but solid Linux program data.

I lost all my data except data in one of my cellphones which had two small iso images of Puppy Linux which I cannot transfer to the Linux PC.

After the Coronavirus I decided not to go out for three months (not the 3 weeks of Government's arbitrary lock or block down).

Rather it was total shut down of my PC and Laptop (I only had one BSD CD which needed Internet connection for erasing Windows Hegemony).

Ultimately I found a TrueOS DVD I downloaded in 2018 and got the Laptop running Debian 10.

One I downloaded in March we'll before Coronavirus restrictions needed Internet connection.

I was fed up and one day I walked two Kilometers to the Bank where there is an Internet Till, but to my bad luck the server was not booted on that day.

Yesterday I went to Dialog and upgraded all my cards including the Dialog Broadband WiFi.

Today I downloaded Knoppox 9.1, Ubuntu 21.10 and currently Downloading Debian Emmabantus 4.

I have configured an external SSD disk  with three running Knoppix versions (with fabulous collection of utilities which even Debian cannot boast in one DVD).

And SSD is mobile or portable.

Windows will never be able to beat Knoppox for another century and I will be long gone by then.

Good Bye Windows and Good Morning to Knoppox and his team of developers in Germany.

Make sure you use torrent for download and click English version if you are not German

Now MultiSysyem DVD comes from France by pressing F2 you can get to English.

I use both English and French MultiSystem as a way of refreshing my poor French competence.

Linux is always multi language capable.

I think torrent download is finishing without Telecoms.

Thank YOU Dialog.

By the way I have given only two calls by the wired connection for the last 7 weeks.

That is a record and I do not pay TAXES by default.

10 GB (3 distributions) in 3 hours and I have never had such a throughput in all my life.

All of them are in a USB in about half an hour and who says Linux is not efficient in an external USB Disk.

Getting AbiWord to Work for Me, Using Ubuntu

 I was without Internet for 3 months and could not use Abiword with Debian Plasma.

Ultimately I managed to download AbiWord for Ubuntu 20.10, after a lot of trouble.

The Dialog WiFi broadband  won't let me sign up with broadband WiFi.

I got Debian Plasma to configure it automatically but with Ubuntu it won't sign.

I think Dialog broadband let you sign up only  once with KDE Plasma but won't configure with Ubuntu, in the same Laptop.

It won't sign up, in spite of typing the correct password.

Luckily I used my spare Dialog Dongle to sign up with Ubuntu and downloaded AbiWord.

It is only 1.6 MB package.and what a hastle,

What trouble to get a package I used for many years.

Thank Ubuntu for not removint it from the repository.

Even FATPup does not support AbiWord and it supports only LibreOffice.

I am currently downloading WPS suite for use in my Laptop.

Rough Sketch to Evolution

 Rough Sketch to Evolution

Thankfully I never had a good teacher all my life.

If not for the British Council Library I would have concentrated on Physics and Mathematics.

For some unknown reason biology aroused my curiosity.

I collected large number of books on this topic, thanks again to withdrawal sale every year when new batch of books arrived from UK.

This Library is no more thanks to wrong policies of SLFP. (basically Anti-British for no valid reason).

I tried to become a member of the Kandy Municipal Council Library and they even did not give me an application form stating that I am not a municipal tax payer.

I became a tax payer later and filed a case against the municipality and won it.

As a token of their defeat they reduced my tax by one (1) rupee.

I left the municipality limits for good and there is no good library except in the University, a British contribution of colossal scale.

All the books I have starts with a big massive all encompassing concept but without any valid proof.

So I gave up reading but did not lose track of my inquiry.

1. The transfer from abiotic to biotic was not dramatic but a series of small steps.

2. Symbiosis was a fact of biotic life.

3. Parasitism was a very late development.

4. Sexual development was an accident in nature.

5. Plant life was the beginning.

6. Animal life or actively moving life was much later development.

7. Virus contribution except for human devastation is an aberration!

Now I start at a point of Oxygen Generation.

Chlorophyll was the beginning.

It's derivative the haemoglobin was the engine for animal life.

Cytochrome system and  transfer of electrons in a series of steps was a miracle.

Their assembly into mitochondria was a significant step.

Mitochondria are probably prokaryotes who became symbiotic (that was my own theory collaborated by Marie Maguire).

How cell membrane formed is a mystery.

Formation of various sugars and sugar cell wall formation predated cell membrane formation.

Formation of fatty acids with even number chain is a significant step.

Universal Citric Acid Cycle is a mystery.

Ribosome formation was a very late development leave alone protein synthesis.

RNA to DNA was much contested arena.

Viruses are very late bystander vestiges but important in the current context of laboratory made biological.weapons.

Putting all these into a coherent system is extremely difficult.

I leave it at that point.

Glucose

Phosphorylation

Glucose-6-phosphate

Isomerization

Fructose-6-phosphate

Byhodphorylation

Fructose-1-6-phodphaye

Cleavage by Aldolas

DHAP 

Dihydroacetone phosphate

Isomerization to GAP

Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate

Two molecules of 3 carbon molecules from 6 carbon glucose 

Glyceraldyde-3-phosphate to

1-3-biphosphoglcerate to

3-phosphoglcerate

Isomerization of 3PGA to 2PGA

Dehydration to 

Phospho Enole Pyruvate-PEP

PEP

Pyruvate 

ACA

Acetyl Coenzyme A

2 Pyruvate molecules 

Dehydrogenase to  two carbon atom molecules bound to coenzyme ACA

2 CO2 exhaled.

I think out of 6 carbon glucose two CO2 molecules are exhaled.

In reality ACA enters the Citric Cycle and 2x2 cycle all 4CO2 are metabolized or exhaled.

This is why I say sugar is essential for living. But ordinary sucrose is two molecules of glucose and fructose bound together and one need sucrase to break it down in the gut.

Glucose is used as energy or stored as glycogen.

Fructose is used as energy and converted to fat in the liver.

If one uses only glucose only one does not become fat but glucose is not as tasty as ordinary sugar.

I do not add sugar for my tea and tea is my driving force not sugar.

It is better to eat fruits with lot of fructose if one is diabetic but one has to put up with weight gain.

Oxygen is not used in this process and is called anaerobic and provided energy for basic metabolism. 

 

Only two carbon atoms can be metabolized.

Cictric Acid Cycle 

1. Citric Acid 

Acetyl COA enters the cycle at this stage.

2. Ketoglutarate 

3. Salicyl COA

4. Salicylic Acid 

5. Fumerate

6. Malic Acid 

7. Oxeloacetic Acid 

Ascorbic Acid or Vitamin C is not part of the this cycle but is a very important antioxidant that prevent cell injury due to oxidation.

Any errors are all mine.

Since I am gradually entering dementia stage just memorized the lot through, AI help to revitalize my old memory.

Who says AI is bad for cognition?

All these transformations are done by enzymes and many metallic and non metallic cofactors.

Reason to illustrate the fact that alcohol inhibits some of the enzymes in the metabolic pathway in the liver causing build up of toxic acetone. Lung has to be involved in excreting the excess, so the acetone smell in breath breath of an alcoholic. 

Companies which makes wines mitigate this unpleasant problem of smell by introducing sweet smelling organic alcohols.

A clever strategy of French to douse workers after lunch with wines. 

Lunch is prolonged and workers do not rise up against the company they are working for.

I am not sure whether Karl Marx talked about alcohol.

Bottom line, Alcohol is the most powerful agent causing dementia and it inhibits Acetyl COA and causes metabolic damage in the liver.

Best antidote to dementia is Coconut Oil which can be used as a metabolite in the brain without the help of liver enzymes.

Failure of Android Ecosystem

I was a late follower of Android from Kit Kat 4.2.

It was not a happy start using a Chinese made tablet with low RAM.

Then I skipped 5 and entered 6 with a GreenTel cellphone which I used only on travel abroad and my adaptation of the Singaporean Sekin was a total disaster.

Next version of GreenTel I gave free to a guy who had never used a touch phone.

GreenTel tablet I sold at 20% to another guy who was using an arcane Java phone.

I wanted to give it free but he declined and I said 20% and he agreed.

He could not use it even a day a nephew of him grabbed it and made it dysfunctional.

I had few Java and gave them to domestic aids free.

So you could see how dissatisfied I was.

Coming from Linux background I needed and expected a solid operating system that runs 5 years uninterrupted.

None of it.

Then I knew the dollar will go up 2 years in advance and bought 3 Nokia phones at cut rate price before the next shipment was due.

All for testing and it's smallest one I added 200 applications and tested each one of those applications and I only love the Pencil Sketch.

I needed a Writer Application and none I tested did what I wanted it to do.

Blogger piece which I am blogging here is the only one I use regularly except opening the few emails I have.

Why I say Android is total failure is applied to the last three and that are in current use.

Even the Android with basic application is very slow to boot.

If you add a few more it becomes painfully slow.

All the applications consume lot of battery leave alone camera application and images.

It is all due to it's poor resource management.

1. It is not a fully fledged operating system.

2. It is rather a service system which sits on top of the service providers SIM and sucks pennies every second.

3. System calls are not organized or prioritized and like Windows boots up everything at boot time.
That is why it is slow.

4. It has no virus protection or malware protection protocol.

5. It has no hash or junk file deletion technique.
It keeps on piling up junk.

6. It cannot transfer a file from it to my Linux computer.
I do not have any Windows to test anyway.

7. All in all in three months it is chocker blocked.

8. It cannot retain a password file in the background while you enter it on the authorization page.
I have to use the other cellphone to memorize the 8 character password.

I have lived with all this and I am getting fed up.

9. Added to that battery has to be charged daily.

10. It cannot be shared and the moment you do that it starts carrying the Coronavirus free of charge.

It carries other nasty bugs, too.

I have a theory that if 67% of the population stop using cellphones the reduction of Coronavirus virus spread will be more than the effect of all the detergents used in the world.

All cellphones should be banned in hospitals not necessarily due to interference with electronic equipment but due to fast spread of all types of infections.

Only way to disinfect a cellphone is to put it in a incinerator.

The list can go on.

It is time to say good bye to all cellphones and tablets.

Toilet paper one can flush it or burn but cellphone becomes an extended interfering appendage.

BEWARE!