Monday, September 21, 2020

Ars-E MITE to Kadia, Kura and Dimia "Dammo Bavathu Dammiko"

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }

Ars-E MITE to Kadia, Kura and Dimia

"Dammo Bavathu Dammiko"

ART- MITE pronounced as Ars-E by the salesman in Ceylon.
The product is probably Chinese and it is not printed on the can of spray.


I was annoyed by a guy in TV with full European attire, suit with a tie, talking about graphite and granite or titanium.
I am afraid, he was a guy brought up by affluent parents and never touched soil or played with sand at the beach or Korn Pittu in the backyard.

These guys becoming professors is alien to me and in my full retirement and with no restriction by any institution of might, I should bring them down to earth.

I have done this to Carlo (not to ridicule him but to protect his image he carefully built over the ages, the freedom to think creatively and forcefully, who was surreptitiously used by guys wearing saffron cloths to utter nonsense).

Below is a brief description of ants which my (I do not blame her) wife tries to exterminate and me exploiting them, putting them to good use to clean up the rooftop garden.

We built our house on an anthill (there was no land left in the surroundings) where a giant cobra snake lived and its descendants come probably two miles away from a temple nearby to sunbathe and drink water annually.

I touched its trunk at the tail end inadvertently trying to reach the mail that come, not too often now.

He or she just slipped away meaning no harm to me.

The Dimias have vanished with felling of all the jack trees by followers of Ma Ra Regime.

I thought Kadias have gone leaving only Kuras.

Having sprayed ARS-e mite at places where mites were coming out with the rainy season giving them some soft soil and foothold.

Mind you, they have destroyed a few of my books (really my father in law’s) mainly Buddhist scriptures, I have never read.

My discovery of ARS-e Mite followed that and I donated all my Dhamma books to a friend who taught me ABC of Buddhism in right perspective.

So me loving ants is not related Buddhism but to the contribution they make to our ecological system and their Queen not the King lives over hundred years not like our Ra Jas who are living on artificial aids with distorted Pirith Cassettes played by misguided monks saying “Raja Bavathu Dammiko”.

I believe Buddha never uttered them.

It should be read as “Dhammo Bavathu Dammiko” (my rendering of Pali which was Buddha’s dialect in his time) which the Buddha predicted would wane over the next 5000 years.

We are actually in the midst of vanishing Dhamma and advancing political rhetoric of self acclaimed Ra Jas.

Reproduction with English edited

Ants are social insects that can be found in all terrestrial ecosystems. They are also very common in all human settlements, as well as in the forest floor.
Well over 6000 species of ants are found on investigation and are described in literature.
With new species to be discovered in future research.

Sri Lanka is home to 229 species of ants that are classified to 66 genera and 12 subfamilies.

There are 102 endemic species in Ceylon, with 49 degree of endemism. One endemic genus Aneuretus is also included to this list of classification.

The following a list according to the Ants of Sri Lanka by Prof. R.K. Sriyani Diaz's  (2014) ? Book or Literature not stated ? comprehensive edition by Biodiversity Secretariat of the Ministry of Environmental and Renewable Energy of Ceylon (little coordination with ants and energy unless ants produce biofuel on their death cycle).

 


Saturday, September 19, 2020

Using Your Cellphone as an Efficient Productive Package

Using Your Cellphone as an Efficient Productive Package 

Yes, your cellphone is a little computer that can be used as your workhorse, if you care to organize it, effectively.

 If you use it as a Gossip Engine you are missing my point. 

 One need not have to pay money for daily gossip. 

Let that be done by the politicians and mass media conglomerates with vested interests.

 Keeping touch with your family is one thing but fiddling with this radioactive machine nearer than 55cms is not good for your daily health and also for people who have electronic gadgets implanted in them.

So be considerate to your fellow beings in public transport and public places.

The cellphone is a private piece, essentially, an extension of your self or precisely your mouth and your ear.

 So treat it as such.

Now coming to using it as a productive computer one has to get rid of the voice piece, in the first instance.

The best way one can do that is to have two cellphones.

 One for critical messaging and contact and the other for productivity, even in your retirement.

In my case, the third one for testing Android applications.

 Having an email address is number one and many of my friends at my age do not know how to use an email effectively in Ceylon.

 That speaks of the standard of computer literacy in Ceylon.

 They have more than one cellphone, too.

 What a waste.

 The second is service provider/s and both leading providers, MobiTel and Dialog provide painfully shoddy service at a high cost.

 I have gone to HUTCH which provides an excellent service.

 So chose the provider who gives you the best service.

 The third is one should have a minimum of two SIMs, one for voice and the other for data.

Mind you they give 5 for one ID Card.

This ID card business is for the secret service to track you down your social life and liabilities that include your bank manager.

 The fourth is saving money on my computer and laptop which consume a lot of electricity to send an email.

 SMS from your cellphone is faster with video conference capability.

 One need not jack in a USB camera to your computer.

 The cellphone has made the computer obsolete.

The fifth point is managing the utilities you have and add a few for your needs.

In my case, the number of typefaces and Grammerly is my favourite.

The list can go up to 10.

I downloaded over 200 packages and deleted almost half just now having tested them briefly, including writer packages.

For my short blog pieces, the cellphone is adequate and this piece is to thank Google's blog site for having me there for over two decades.

 I am winding down my public profile and going strictly private and I do not want the military to be on my back, even though, I worked in consort with them in the past, at critical times of this country.

I love my privacy and military taking over civilian work in times of peace is an ominous sign and the harbinger of putative danger non-existent.

 In this country, a perfectly legitimate thing can be used for bad things.

 Unfortunately, we in this country are electronic vultures.

Look at the social media sites one-sided stories, often with political messaging and absolutely vulgar language.

 

Meant to be originally for the contact of office guys and girls and lately loved ones (after Coronavirus epidemic) BUT it can be taken over by a stupid guy in uniform.

Look at Belarus. 

Our women won't come out but they will support their excess, except a few.


Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Thank You HUTCH

This is my first blog post by  Nokia cellphone.
Nokia is a solid product with a big screen to play with my one finger technology briefs.
Thank you Nokia for the thoutful product.
I have got fed with both MobiTel and Dialog.
I went and bought this cellphone from local Nokia retailer.
The salesman was good and he said a new Nokia product is due but went for what he had in stock.
Went to HUTCH in a small store which I located by my other Nokia phone.
They were brisk and I bought two SIMs one for data and other for calls.
Here I am downloading my applications from Play Store.
Updating and downloading were brisk.
Thank to HUTCH high speed with very low cost.
I am going to use this for my travel abroad once the Coronavirus scare is over.

State of flux

 State of flux
State of flux is the order of all energy forms including my mind which makes me to piece together my ideas not to convince or convert any but to share the chaos in real time.
Only a friend will know of this fact and pardon me for any excesses but the rest are confused to what it means to me or them.

My Days with Linux

Suse or Trisequel or Mandriva

I looked at my blog posts and discovered that I have no entry for Suse.
This is to rectify that omission.
Unfortunately I am bit explicit here.
Suse or Trisequel or Mandriva
Suse Linux had a special place in my choices before it went commercial. I left Fedora and embraced Suse Linux and had been using it from Suse 8. Till Suse 10.1 there was no problem and when it was taken by Novel I had lot of expectations. Novel concentrated on server but I believe like Redhat neglected the desktop version. 
By Suse 11.1, I was changing my allegiance
Mainly due to it’s failure in commercial support of the desktop version.
It was less than ideal.
Then it’s alliance with Microsoft was not a favorable enterprise.
I will talk about the plus points first.
It had one of the best installation script even though unlike Redhat sometimes tends to miss some of my other Linux distributions already installed in the box. It also had a very good partition utility when compared to other Linux distributions except Mandrake, Debian and Redhat
It’s YAST was a very good configuration utility. 
Its KDE was bulky but very attractive. 
Then it introduced the Suse Studio where one can Mix and Match utilities and make one’s own Live distribution. In fact, I made one distribution myself. ChromeOS is one of those distributions a that took root from Suse Studio. From then onward I shifted my allegiance totally and it’s Milestone releases are “pain in the neck” and worse than the Fedora experience for me.
I stopped downloading and testing them after the last version 11.2. 
When I saw many innovations in other Live CD/DVDs it was easy for me to ditch it in favor of PClinux.
Now few of my reason for ditching it.
It is bulky and consumes lot of RAM.
It is slow in boot up.
Its downloading of Linux images was bad.
It tends to pile up all the junk temporary files and what really annoyed me was it did not have a way of cleaning up and deleting large files. With time file corruption ensued. At that stage to save time I had to dump it and never used it again.
It stopped reading partitions above 15 and with me having 5 to 6 distributions in one box it was restricting my freedom. With disks of 500 GB coming to the market restricting to 15 partition was a stupid idea. Only Microsoft would have done it that way. New Windows 8 not allowing alternative operations to boot is a case in point.
It also take the belief and shoot that belief out of window that commercial ventures do add value and complementary and better than community work.
Suse desktop was a commercial failure for the happy faces of Microsoft and Apple CEOs.
I wanted to write about Trisequel here instead of Suse but took the decision if I do not write little bit of Suse and its history, justice is not done to those developers who created Suse.
 
Trisequel
I will be brief in here writing about Trisequel. Suse and Mandrake took Open Software theme to the extreme and in their early releases excluded all packages which had slightest taint of commercial tags and did not include things like Flash and the like limiting the functionality for those who migrating from Microsoft background. They then bundled them in their commercial counterpart to lure them to buy their distributions. 
This was not a healthy ploy, and the clever customer like me can see the commercial intent. I have personal experience with Suse the details which I decline to state here.
XandosOS is another good commercial product which apply this principle.
I should close this entry with why I have not included Mandrake. Many reasons as stated above an it’s split recently into two. Mandrake has been acquired by a Russian company and it is applying rigid and regimental style, somewhat akin to military. The breakaway Mageia is not yet mature. I wish both of these en devours success but hesitate to recommend them just for now.
Coming back to Trisequel if one wants a pure Linux derivative and beautiful and clean distribution too, I have no hesitation of recommending Trisequel that come from Spain and has English version too.
It has everything except cloud utilities.
That shoots two birds with one go.
1. No commercial involvement or enticements.
2. True to it’s Linux base.
So if any Linux distribution goes commercial like Redhat focus that commercial aspect and give customer due care which Suse failed in desktop range. I am not stating that Redhat customer service good. It is far from it but it knows it’s obligation and working towards that goal at least in the server section.
Redhat is well known for failing the desktop clients.

 

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Launch or Perish in Flight

 

Launch or Perish in Flight

A lot of guys in my age do not know how to use a new cellphone, especially if that is given by a kid who had bought a new one and dished out the old one to daddy or mummy.

To teach them the difference between a launcher and a browser is not possible.

They expect by the touch of a button, that they can accomplish anything (with a touch-sensitive phone).

A cellphone is a cute gadget with powerful and fanciful actions.

It is a mini-computer much powerful than the computer on board the Apollo 1.

I have just written a powerful and resentful piece about the Firefox browser and the Microsoft launcher.

They are both bulky and unmanageable in a cellphone and slow to respond unlike a computer with 8 GB-RAM.

I used to suggest that Amazon with its Kindle should have a silky and lightweight browser. I ultimately bought a Lenovo (Android 8) instead of the Kindle in Singapore.

Let me dish out the browser which is a heavy utility to access the Internet with many file formats including png and video files. A lot of add-ons are necessary as with improvement in hardware capabilities.

Whereas the cellphone launcher is not a browser (it might it do in the future with ultra smart phones) but an access point to many and basic applications in a phone which may vary from model to model but broadly do the same functions.

Of course, SIM also has a greater share responsibility of transferring digital information which also varies depending on their infrastructure.

I want the launcher to be light but if possible able to detect vulnerabilities of viral attacks.

A browser may be a vehicle for transmitting attacks due to its bulky add ons.

I have tested a few and come to realise that the phone’s dedicated launcher is the best which knows the product’s hardware capability better and integrate better.

In fact, I got into a muddle with a third party launcher and could not launch all nearly 200 applications that I have installed.

I use only 5 applications, regularly apart from my 6 emails.

The rest are my tech craze including learning French.

So the bottom line is, do not have more applications than necessary in your phone.

Check the utilities before buying and get the salesman to install any additional stuff before buying.

Of course, I got a better part of three launchers integrated in less than 24 hours.

Let me give my rating

  1. Number one is the phone’s dedicated launcher.
  2. The second is the smart browser
  3. The third is the XO launcher
  4. The fourth is the simple application launcher
  5. The fifth is the Microsoft launcher which is bulky and pretty bad.
  6. Sixth is the Ragdu.

Why Old People run away from the Internet?

There are many reasons.
I will list only what I have gone through.
The list can go up to 30 but I will restrict it to 20.
 
I am a tech geek for the past 20 years and not a amateur guy fiddling with a cellphone or a tablets and can identify a technical problem within 24 hours. 
My Internet schedule was 24/7 until recently and due to Coronavirus epidemic, I went into a laid back attitude. Our Internet was down for a month and I did not even bother to give a call to Mobitel which is painfully slow to react to customer needs.
I have fully switched to Dialog which is doing a credible support job and is even cheaper to my pocket and use Dialog TV but switched it off during the election campaign. 
So fiddling with my assortment of cheap cellphones and tablets which run on Kitkat, Android 6, 8 and 10.
Now bouquets  to Android developers for having an array of typefaces for my one finger typing skills. 
Thanks to SPIKE, SPARK, various little notes in various colours, black and white, for note keeping and the light weight Facebook Messenger utility.
I am gradually switching off from the computers (dismantled three for good) to cellphones to save energy.
The preamble above is to show that I am not a grumbling old guy with handicaps. 
I am showings signs of old age but my attitude to life is simple and friendly.
 
All these are constructive remarks for struggling tech companies to keep their head above water and survive the economic downturn.

1. None of the applications is user friendly.
 
2. None of the applications is user friendly for people with visual handicap.
 
3. The sign in procedures with emails are very painful due to email password being very difficult to handle and remember even for a teenager.
 
4.The two stage authentication is very painful procedure. if the battery of your cellphone is dead and you do not have a spare telephone with a different carrier SIM.
 
5. All tech companies are paranoid.They are more worried about subscrition drive and not quality in service.
 
6. I use a Linux Box and its version is Deabian 9 and has and an old Firefox version without updates for a very long time but running smoothly. It is OK for my work but some video utilities cannot run on it.
 
7. I cannot use the cellphone to run bulky videos, I get from my old friends especially one with Microsoft exe files.
8. i have enormous number of films downloaded and accidentally erased them in a mater of minutes (all my external Hard Drives and Flash Drives are belly full).
I have one free SD card and one 4 GB spare flash drive. I do not want to buy new spare parts.
 
9. Cloud should save my data and signing them to Google Drive is painful with a new cellphone.
 
10. I used Microsoft's One Drive and stopped it in a month due to its snooping on my accounts.
 
11. I erased its launcher and its utilities except for few wallpapers.
 
12. So Firefox is a pain. Chrome is a pain and even Brave browser is a pain.
 
13. Microsoft's launcher is a pain.
 
14. All email providers are pain except one.
 
15. i have activated two of my old emails coming from America to take the pain out of my mind, in spite of integrating them with SPIKE and SPARK.
 
16. I am going to transfer myself to one email out of six.
 
17. I am warning my friends by December they will not be able to forward emails to me by gut reaction. They have to use my dedicated email.
 
18. Then I am going to restrict my email contacts to 20 and that's it.
 
19. I will use only Duckduckgo, a Linux utility. 
Mind you Moxilla of Firefox was a Linux utility.
 
20. These tech companies who have made money from Linux utilities are trying to make money during  an economic crisis asking for subscription for cheap products for upgrades.
That is not good and the young tech guys also want to make a flashy and clumsy products.
In business sustainability is the name of the game and making a fast buck is going to kill them in the long run, especially if they are based on top of a free subscription product.
I am long gone by then, when they the next stock market crash occurs.
 
It is round the corner I believe.
 
We all people have done our part in our time and you are not going to here any more critical and time based analysis from me.
 
I  will enjoy my retirement and no interest  in  politics like the old guys in our parliament.
 
I am going to buy a new cellphone as a spare in case I drop the present one and break it, and no more laptops but a good tablet is out of my purse.

Friday, September 11, 2020

J.V.P's Contribution to our Economy

Out of the 130 C.E.B transformers, 2 were in my locality.
I managed to replace three of the transformers (many more elsewhere) with the help of a lady engineer friend (she said this is the last one I have) and saved the third one until the chaos subsided with risks to my own life.
I think as a mark of remembrance JVP MPs should not be given a laptop free but charge at five time the costs of a laptopn from their salaries. 
 
J.V.P's Contribution to our Economy
Referring to the contribution made by the JVP to the national economy, the state minister read out a list of damages and destruction attributed to the Marxist party during its second insurrection in the period of terror from 1989-90. “They destroyed 684 post offices, 13 telecommunications centers, 550 buses, 75 tea factories, 40 estate bungalows, 130 CEB transformers, 12 trains and six railway stations. The total loss by those actions has been estimated at Rs. 55 billion rupees.”

House Sparrows and Local Birds

House Sparrows and Local Birds

It is more than 3 years of my casual observation of extinction of house sparrows in Ceylon and visit to Singapore bird’s Park to investigate it.
It is our local farmers and importers of poison in the name of fertilizers that poison the birds and majestic elephants. 
The poisons get deposited in the ovaries and cause permanent damage.
 
That is not the point, I am driving at. 
 
With the recent convincing, majority win, the culture vultures are back in the game displacing our parrots from Gampola Umboluwawa to Thumpane forest reserve. 
In Gampola it is a former PM’s son (who mortally injured opposing supporters in the backdrop of Siripada forest reserve on the Balangoda side, when I was working in Ratnapura) who is supervising the forest destruction.
The damage these guys done in Ratnapura in the name of gem pits is enormous. 
 
At Thumpane side I do not know who it is, but I certainly will do not think, the descendants of Chandrasiri but those who did damage to Muslim properties recently, who are active again.
It was a pleasant surprise to see a pair of house sparrows trying to make use of a nest made by bull bul under the roof of our veranda. 
My observation is that helping them to domesticate warrants more danger to their next of kins.
The cats are domestic pests but more successful are the snakes who will spare no bones or eggs.
It is more surprising a pair of Kingfisher is building a nest in the neighborhood on the wall of a slipped earth (mini) mountain.
So my insidious attempts to encourage the bird friendly environment is working at slow pace but not to the level when woodpeckers bored nests on jack trees in the 80s, when I was working in UK.
Under the Ma Ha Ra Ja Regime 8 jack trees were felled in 10 days of my observation and protest in 2005.
Only one, a daughter tree survives.
It is strange coincidence that Ma Ha Ra Ja’s Gola Balayas have to plant jack seeds and wait for them to bear fruits.
I have a few Bonzai Jack plants and one is the sweet Waraka type in our roof top garden with mini fruits pending not in my life time. 
 
Unfortunately, their grandchildren won’t enjoy them since their dream inside the womb is to go to Korea.

 

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

My Android Dream

My Android Dream

My first phone was a Java Bean.

Then I had GreenTel phone with Android 6 which has very good Camera.

Latter edition of GreenTel is not upto the mark.

But my Nokia with Android 8 under Rs.15,000/= is a solid built and I can SPLIT the screen.

Floating notes and coloured notes are nicely displayed.

SamSung phone under Rs.15,000/= slightly inferior in quality with Android 8 and no hardware support for SPLIT screen.

 

My first entry to Android 4.4, was the Chinese KitKat tablet, which is still functioning but due to poor RAM downloading even 10 MB is a pain.

I have that patience having used MobiTel in Ceylon, which is the slowest in my experience (I have gone to Dialog).

My tablet of Android 8 is manageable for me to bid and play Bridge, when I am bored.

I want to buy a new cellphone in case I drop the Nokia on the floor and break it.

 

All cellphones available in MobiTel are Android 8s and all of them cost over Rs. 65,000/= and over 50% this price tag is the government TAX. 

 

So if you have a friend going to Singapore ask him to buy a good phone and come back with Coronavirus SCARE (nobody will bother to see you on your return, what a luxury!).

 

So my advice is, if you have a good working phone look after it and do not buy a new one because your friend's girl friend has a new one.

Hardware is the same but software one can upgrade once a year.

So thank you guys and girls developing Android Software and FREE or Fdroid will (free software initiative) will never hit the shop floor.

Even a geriatric can now use a cellphone and it is not the foray of ONLY young ones.

Think of the old guys with vision impairment and help them with voice instructions.

I am allergic to voice instructions and deactivate it by default.

 

Yes you can do that.

Go to hardware SETUP and go to silence mode.


The strap of the Chinese built, Smart Watch (with piece of circuit inside) is broken and I cannot wear it. I do not know its operating system and I believe if not Java it is Linux and it won't get the applications it displays installed wirelessly.

Beware and do not order smart watch by mail even it is cheap.

 

Nothing is cheap nowadays with superimposed TAXES.

 

I use it as a bluetooth device now.

 

Android version 4.4: KitKat (Please note that this is a reproduction with Grammerly edited)

 

Late-2013's KitKat release marked the end of Android's dark era, as the blacks of Gingerbread and the blues of Honeycomb finally made their way out of the operating system. 

Lighter backgrounds and more neutral highlights took their places, with a transparent status bar and white icons giving the OS a more contemporary appearance.

Android 4.4 also saw the first version of "OK, Google" support — but in KitKat, the hands-free activation prompt worked only when your screen was already on and you were either at your home screen or inside the Google applications.

The release was Google's first foray into claiming a full panel of the home screen for its services, too — at least, for users of its Nexus phones and those who chose to download its first standalone launcher.


Sunday, September 6, 2020

Why I wish not to be born again in Ceylon?

Why I wish not to be born again in Ceylon?

I am writing this with over 70 years of experience in my files or folds.

First we have a parliament which has over 125 elected representative who are IRCs (I.R.C. means Island Registered Criminals not Internet Relay Chat) or either Sinhala (D.J.V.P and J.V.P) Tamil (L.T.T.E and many more) or Muslim (? now Thaw-shit Jamal) terrorists or their sympathizers.

I think we introduced all types of terrorists to this world in 1956 when Ceylon was changed to Sri-Lanka by ill gotten politicians of all faiths.

Then, closer to my heart all my foreign cheques or transactions were stolen in the Colombo Post Office by the criminal syndicates who are good at delivering illegal drugs within 24 hours to any corner of the country but the letters and money orders takes more than 24 hours for delivery or lost in the mail, for ever where no legal mechanism to catch or punish them.

Then comes the crunch point this country is pawned for over 100 years by our politicians over the past 15 years and we are selling our prime land to China and India and multinationals from all over the Globe. 

So how can I be proud of Ceylon or wish to be born again here? 

This piece is to highlight the contribution of the British and the  American Postal Officers to Global communication link long before the new I.R.C. or Internet Relay Chats were established.

Vital part of this development is rail roads and highways built by the British to make delivery is possible to any part in this country within 24 hours. 

Now we have given that civil responsibility which we were able to manage by Civil Servants of High Quality in the past, including our Grama Niladharis or Grama Sevakas to the three armed forces (to an individual family who has taken over the forces under their fold) who were good at killing host of civilians with the putative terrorists. 

Before coming to the digital closing remarks, I want to highlight that I am waiting to get my third ID card which I applied for, ages ago but not yet received and a guy at Dialog refused to issue a telephone number with 077 prefix to me. 

This is what happens to a simple retiree in his or her 70s.

Wish I am dead sooner than later but politicians over 70s are running this country or ruining this country and the youth are eloping and none will wish to return as NOT intended by their own parents as they leave. 

This tendency, I believe is ingrained in the womb by ultrasound noise they hear while incubating inside.

Now let me thank the British and the American civilian administrators who have made me a digital entity and their entries (even if my ID card is not delivered before my demise) will last for 70 years or more after my death (70 year is which my legal premise will end abruptly and posthumously).

When I reached UK, I only had a passport and 50 pounds and I lived on borrowed money for 4 months (living was cheap then and with five pounds a day on a tube-train in daytime and a derelict hostel at night with 50 pence coin for gas heating, was more than enough for survival).

I got an instant (not digital) photo in a tube train in London (which tube train I forget, may be King's Cross) and a weekly Travel Card with a photo ID for traveling up and down never coming out unless, I wanted to go to a bookshop at Charring Cross (Foyles Book Shop, the largest in England, then).

Reading on the go, I learned in UK, which I carry to this day!

No cellphones or laptops, personal computer came into existence in primitive form and I bought a 128 Compaq (coming from US and UK did not have computers except perhaps Sinclare) as my last purchase, before leaving UK.

Within a month of my first employment in the National Health Services (N.H.S.) I got my first digital identity by filling a form and posting it to the head quarters of National Insurance as a legal immigrant from Ceylon.

My degree certificate was M.B.B.S (Ceylon) and O and A level certificates with English translations were never requested (by now all printed in Sinhala only) for authentication since, The University of Ceylon was a recognized (unlike today) Entity in UK.

Then, I got my first digital license in 1980s in Ceylon and A.A.International driving license.

Now everything is digital including postal numbers which originated in America.

I hope the American Postal Service will survive the crisis including the postal voting.

I am against digital voting which European Union wants to establish.

Voting is a private affair and it should be recorded as such and only the Postal Service can do that effectively, no other organization or N.G.O of European origin can think of coming close to that of the experience of the Postal Service.

Even though, my cheques were stolen by workers with bad taste, I always support (poor man's option) the postal services and it had done service even during the Second World War with only civilian administration.

By the way, my first ID for O Level examination was from the postal service and the same photo was pasted in my record book of the University.

I worked for a Faculty Academic Identity Card to avoid security officers with no credentials checking your entry, in all institutions today.

The Marshal Office was a recognized entity, then.

This country going for military control aided by stupid monks in saffron cloths, the only civilian link going to be the letter delivered or the tinkle one make with the old handset (trunk call we call it).

Now the cellphone can do wonders.

We paralyzed the administration of Sirima with Felix Dias as a dictator.

We can do it again, if the need arises BUT digitally.

Do not be reticent or withdrawing from responsibility, when the need arises.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

E.R.P another buzz word 
Why Don't you say Linux Software Management or L.S.M.
They take Free Software and do not acknowledge the most important developers.
Enterprise resource planning
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) refers to a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance and supply chain operations.

 

Customer Relation in ZoHO Management

I hate catch S.M.S types of terms in business management and life in general.

C.R.M IS one such S.M.S.

I find this company doing a good job.

It took some time to get my old email activated by my phone.

There was a similar lag phase of logging in (not automated like other emails) by computer with Firefox.

I am bit reluctant with big and bulky Chrome.

In my old age, I like the SLOW phase unlike the fast phase of new cellphones, where I can check my spellings and also my thought processes which are faster than an average computer but not in any sense in quantum range.

Reproduction of CRM

Why businesses choose CRM system

CRM is the largest software market in the world, and has increasingly proven to be the best technological asset that companies can invest in. With the prominence that the cloud CRM software market has been gaining over the years, and the ease with which CRMs can integrate with other applications that businesses generally use, CRM systems help implementors cover every aspect of their business cycle with an increase in sales & marketing returns, all while helping them cut down on their costs.

Eight essential building blocks of CRM

The Eight Essential Building Blocks of CRM - Zoho CRM

Saturday, September 5, 2020

The Rajavasala Box of Tricks for Disaster

 

Reproduction

The Rajavasala Box of Tricks for Disaster

Published

Thinking Out of the Box is the catchline of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. He gave this advice to the banking sector in May this year, and to the members of parliament in his opening address last month.

The need for new ways of thinking to overcome local and global challenges and revive the economy – out of the box thinking – is the declared stuff of his reasoning. The new ministerial structure was also with such thinking.

What is advocated with such emphasis for economic growth, has been wholly ignored for the progress and growth of democracy. It looks like economic growth has nothing to do with the advance of democracy. The rulers of the past, in many countries of the world, had their economic and wealth gains, with nothing to do with democracy or the sovereignty of the people. These were known as dictatorships, the power of colonialism, and Soveit and Communist power too.  

Are we rapidly making a retreat to the proper Rajavasala Buddhiya – the Thinking of the Ruler Reign, a rush back to the Box of Dictatorship?

The 20th Amendment to the Constitution now made public shows a complete retreat to a non-democratic situation, and thinking that is entirely within the Executive Presidential Box.

The 19th Amendment will be no more under this Rajapaksa Regime. It has the two-thirds power for that. Two items of the 19A will be kept – the reduced five-year term of the presidency and the two term limit for a President. Two items that don’t matter for Mahinda Rajapaksa anymore.  Everything else that matters, that came from out of the box thinking by Yahpalanaya in April 2015 will be no more.

The rush to the 20A is a mockery of the voters who, thanks to a divided and crooked UNP, enabled a two-thirds power to the Rajapaksas. It has nothing to do with the need to meet the economic and  social needs and demands of the people, in the post Covid 19 crisis. The 20A is the re-empowering of an Executive Presidency, even more than what JR Jayewardene forced on the people in 1978.

The ‘out of the box’ thinking of the Rajapaksas is very much ‘in the box’ of ensuring family power without even a semblance of democracy. The service of Independent Commissions in key areas such as the Judiciary, Elections. Human Rights, Police, Public Service, Bribery and Corruption, Finance, and many others are no more. The Constitutional Council is disbanded to empower a Parliamentary Council that  can only advise the president,  The Auditor General’s independence is forgotten. Appointments to key positions of the Judiciary are in the hands of the President (and politicians!) 

In a situation where the average age of MPs is reportedly in the late 60s, the 35 year age limit brought by 19A to a candidate for the presidency, has been reduced to 30 years. It is clear that the ageing Rajapaksas – from the late 60s to near 80 – have thought of their younger generation for the continuance of the Rajavasala domain.

What the 19A did was to give more power to Parliament and the Prime Minister, as elected representatives of the people, against the Executive President that was the singularly dominant power in the country. 20A will ensure the end of such recognition of the sovereignty of the people. The Prime Minister, even being an elder brother of the President, is wholly under him, who will chair the Cabinet, can hold any number of Cabinet portfolios, and can appoint any member to the Cabinet, without the approval of the PM. Sections of the media report that the PM is in a political trap, but let’s not forget that such traps are a necessity for wider family dominance over the demands of democracy.

Then comes the dual citizenry; what is seen by many as the key need of the 20A. It was the 19A that banned dual citizens from contesting elections to parliament and holding the country’s presidency. JRJ’s dictatorship had not banned this. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, after being a US citizen for nearly three decades, gave it up, to contest for the presidency. But there is another Rajapaksa dual citizen who will not give it up. The 20A is the decorative path for Basil Rajapaksa to move to Parliament, Cabinet, even Prime Minister, and who knows even the President, come the proper time!

Let’s not bother to talk of the conflicting situation that prevails when a person who has pledged to serve the US as a citizen, fight for it, be armed against countries and forces that oppose it, or strongly disagree with it, can be a representative of the sovereignty of the Sri Lankan people, and or the independent policies of this country. We are moving to the dual Citizenship Box and not thinking out of it. It is the Box of the MCC deal which the Rajapaksas and Pohottuva were loudly against … but not so much today. This is a move to the Pathfinder Box that will see its leader as the High Commissioner to India, with a Cabinet ranking. Just think a little more of the other Pathfinders in key positions of government today. What a Box of American strategy to be caught in!

We are in the midst of a duality of thinking. The duality of those talk loud about protection of Sri Lankan citizenship, and also hugely support the benefits and advantages of the US Citizenship. Are we moving to a situation when a 21st Amendment will give dual – US and Sri Lanka citizenship – to all Sri Lankan, whether Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Aadivaasi too?

Thinking out of the box shows us the huge dangers of the 20A. In a country that thinks a lot about rebirth, this looks very much like a move towards the rebirth of JRJ. The rebirth of the dictatorial dominance that all parties in the opposition from the SLFP to the JVP – and the older LSSP and CP and breakaways – called for removal, by abolishing the 1978 JRJ Constitution.

Such thinking, once strongly supported in the Mahinda Chinthana in several elections, is now no more. We are taken back to the Jayewardene Box of political strategy, creeping into the new Rajapaksa Box of politics and governance. The rise of the Jayewardene – Rajapaksa Presidency. The Box of Disaster for Democracy, out of which no thinking is done by the Rajavasala Kattayas of today!

 

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Contentment

Contentment

If one looks at our hill mynah, it has inborn cheerfulness even on a rainy day.
 
What it means is we have feel good factors or hormones including dopamine and serotonin built into our nervous system which we have turned off habitually by
  1. Prejudice
  2. Presumption
  3. and by inborn errors made by parents in primitive years of childhood development by placing unrealistic expectations from their kith and kin.
This has morphed into the Coronsvirus paranoia currently, and people have gone into a deep core of discontentment.
 
Unfortunately, our Buddhist monks exacerbate this tendency by highlighting the fourth of the four Agati, the BAYA into the forefront.
 
This is just to get the vehicle the temple needs in addition to the sumptuous Dhana, which are antithesis to Buddha's teaching and expectation and not aspiration (which is the disease of politicians).
 
I now say our monks go to Nirvana in a Pajero very very slowly due to the Pajero's built in inertia.
 
One of my friends who enjoys a good daily drink made me to be aware of basically three types who need hi5s.
  1. Drug Addicts
     
  2. Alcoholic
     
  3. Meditator with Jhana craze
     
    All three of these types are habitually trying to upgrade dopamine and serotine status.
    The evolution has a safety valve called melatonin status which controls the diurnal rhythm and downgrade these highs, so the meditator has to meditate daily, drinker has his tot and the addict goes for a deep inhale ever so often.
    Now I know the bee the busybody has more hormones in its nectar and the bee honey is non addictive but soothing.
    The honey bird spends all his day sucking honey and the flower flows the honey in spurts.
     
    This enticement and engagement trick of nature keep the evolutionary wheels turning round.
     
    There is a honey bird for every flower.
    The beauty of nature.
    I think chocolates coming from a bean has more feel good factors than anything else and the gift or dowry of Aztecs. It is better than a tedious meditation course, now selling very badly in America with Coronavirus paranoia and election politics.