Look ma, it's a leopard!

I always hated visiting the zoo. It is quite depressing to see caged animals, who otherwise would be freely wondering in their favourite habitats. Once Chamindra also mentioned that he doesn't visit the zoo for the same reason, so I am not alone nor sick... ;-) And there are better alternatives to see `real' animals, if watching National Geographic or Discovery channels is not what one wants.

Last month I realized that I had greatly underestimated those jungle trips that are commonly known as `safaris' when I was a part of four safaris during a trip to Yala organized by Virtusa's Global Enterprise Business Unit.

More than fifty Virtusans and their family members joined the trip. Punctuality was remarkable, and we could start early on the 24th as planned. Except for a few who joined later at Yala, everyone traveled together in a huge Fuso bus whose phenomenal pulling power came at the expense of one liter of Diesel every couple of kilometers.

We had the lunch at Tissamaharama Rest House. The weather was quite good for photography, and the camera in my Nokia 6020 phone proved to be quite handy.

Yala Villege Hotel. Managed by John Keells Holdings, Yala Villege Hotel is very nicely maintained as an eco friendly dwelling. It was not physically seperated from the National Park, and we were advised not to wonder alone as wild animals sometimes used to come closer. The top floor of the three story restaurant had a great view of the area, the great jungle on all sides and the sea far away.

The tusker. Although it feels great to talk about it later, being in the front seat of a window-less jeep when a huge tusker is coming towards you during your first safari is not a very comfortable feeling... ;-) Obviously, the driver, who was sitting by a window-less door himself, knew what he was doing. Going towards a wild animal instead of running away, something against conventional wisdom, was something I took some time to get used to.

The hunt. Crocodiles were plenty throughout the Park. Either quietly floating on the water, or motionlessly waiting with open mouth for someone to come closer. Once we saw a floating crocodile slowly moving towards some feeding deer. However, its hunt didn't work out, as there was no good place to come out of the water.

The single elephant. Saturday's morning safari ended with another interesting encounter. This time we saw this huge single elephant on the road. Our driver did the right `safari' thing, to stop and turn off the engine. The elephant slowly moved towards us, closer, closer and closer, until it was standing right in front of our Defender. However, after some serious though, it decided to move into the jungle rather than continue to walk by us.

The leopard. Seeing a leopard was considered by most to be the ultimate `thing' of a safari at Yala. This turned out to be statistically rare, as we saw leopards only during my third safari.

While slowly traveling on one by road, one of our group suddenly bursted: `it's there, it's there'. And there it was, a big and beautiful leopard, less than five meters away. Unfortunately, it stayed there only for few seconds although we turned off the engine and kept quiet.

After wondering few more kilometers watchfully, we saw a big group of jeeps moving slowly with people looking towards something. This time it was another leopard, which slowly moved to an open area and didn't want to leave any time soon. Although it was too far for my not-so-good camera to take a good picture, we did have a good view of the beautiful creature moving here and there and finally settling down comfortably on the top of a short hill.

The desert rally. Being an off-roading fan, notably the Dakar Rally, I greatly enjoyed the last part of Saturday evening safari. We got late after watching the leopard, and not leaving the Park by 6:45 risked a penalty of our Driver's safari license being temporally suspended. During the next 45 minutes, our Land Rover roared through the bumpy and dusty main road through the Yala National Park. There were so many other jeeps doing the same, and it eventually became a `desert rally'. Finally we managed to leave the Park just a little later than the timeout without a penalty.

Elephant family, friendly deer and dancing peacock. The last safari on Sunday morning was quite eventful, too. Although we didn't see a leopard or a bear, there was a big elephant family that crossed the road few meters away, a group of deer who didn't run away when we passed them by very closely, and a peacock dancing with fully expanded feathers.

The beach. The beach in the Park is massive and very scenic. This area had been severely damaged by the Indian Ocean Tsunami. The forest had recovered very fast. Except for few fallen trees here and there, it was difficult to find traces of destruction. In fact, it is well known that none of wild animals at Yala had been killed by this massive natural disaster. A sixth sense seem to exist, although it is lost to humans once they started `leaving' mother nature.

A selected set of photos I captured during the trip can be found here.

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Is Sinhala Unicode Incomplete?

"The SLSI 1134 is incorrect & incomplete and it should be corrected immediately.", claims Mr Donald Gaminitillake, who is trying to ignite a campaign against Sinhala Unicode standard through www.akuru.org (history of the site), and frequent newspaper articles.

We of the Sinhala GNU/Linux project think otherwise. And we are not alone. Language Technology Research Center of the University of Colombo School of Computing, research groups from the University of Moratuwa and Arthur C Clarke Center for Modern Technology, Microsoft, Microimage, Science Land also think that the standard is correct. A full list would be quite long.

GNU/Linux was the first platform to implement Sinhala Unicode rendering. We dind't find any issues about encoding or displaying those characters Mr Donald claims are impossible - yansaya, rakaaransaya, reepaya, joint letters and all that. Then Microsoft also released a "Sinhala Enabling Kit for Windows". Most vendors today support Sinhala Unicode. None of them, who actually got their hands dirty by writing actual code to implement the standard, see any missing "letters" in the standard.

Implemenation is proof for most poeple. But for some not-so-obvious "reason" Mr Donald continues to say that certain characters are missing!

Our first encounter with Mr Donald hapenned when I wrote an open letter to him which became a lengthy debate (more, more and a seperate archive) on our project mailing list. Harshula, our standards expert, tried to explain to Mr Donald how the basic Unicode code-page and cartesian products of various "sets" create the complete Sinhala character set. However Mr Donald never tried to cooperate with us in "understanding" it, and the discussion led to nowhere.

However, Mr Donald selectively quoted some parts of the discussion on his site... ;-)

Recently, Niranjan Meegammana, creator of kaputa.com, started a Google Group to communicate in Sinhala - using Unicode. This group has now grown to a very interesting community of a unique, intellectual and polite culture. Although the group members use diverse technologies to write and read Sinhala Unicode, we find the standard quite functional and interoperable. And we use yansaya, rakaaransaya and other "special characters" every day.

Most of us on this group have a great passion for language and literature, and therefore the discussions are very interesting and intellectually rich.

This Google group was meant to communicate in Sinhala Unicode to popularize it, and to act as a test bed for implementations. Mr Donald recently joined the group, not to communicate in Sinhala Unicode, but to start another debate. He continues to repeat the same old story and conveniently ignores some of our questions.

Here is a couple of Mr Donald's claims and what I think of them.

Donald G: SLS1134 doesn't contain all the Sinhala characters

Wrong. Here is why:

Most of Western languages contain simple alphabets. Even with the upper and lower case variants, and some "odd" characters with bubbles and hats, the number of character don't exceed 50-100.

However, Asian languages are different. Most characters have different "forms", either phonetically (e.g.: Sinhala, Tamil and Hindi), or by the location of the word (e.g.: Arabic). Therefore, it's impractical to allocate characters for each variant.

Think of atoms and molecules. There is a limited number of atoms, and molecule names can be formed by putting together the names of atoms. I have never heard of a "Chemists' Revolution" demanding a symbol for each molecule....;-)

Unicode is very similar to chemistry in that sense. Each language is assigned a "code page", typically containing 128 "code points". They form the basis to build more complex character variants, i.e., actual characters seen by the eye, sometimes referred to as "glyphs".

In Western languages, "characters" and "glyphs" and "code points" are the same thing: because they don't need variants. For example, english character, or glyph, "A" maps to code point 65 - one to one.

For complex languages, only basic characters are represented by code points. Variants are produced by sequences of code points. For example, character "da" (as in "dambana") is directly mapped to code point 0DAF, whereas "du" (as in "dumriya"), which is a variant of "da", is produced by the sequence of two code points 0DAF ("da") and 0DDF ("papilla"). More complex characters (glyphs) are formed by longer sequences.

Most modern operating systems have rendering engines that can display proper glyphs from these sequences of code points (e.g.: Pango, QT, ICU on GNU/Linux, Uniscribe on Windows). Therefore, each glyph not having an individual code point is not a problem.

In Unicode, some characters are directly mapped to code points, while others are produced by sequences of two or more code points.

Deciding which characters should be basic code points, and which characters should be produced by combining code points is a different question, and is obviously dependant on the language, and likely to be subjective. Input from several Sinhala scholars and experts have been taken into account to decide that repaya, rakaaransaya and yansaya should not be basic code points, but should be produced by using sequences of code points, as they are linguistically alternatives forms. In other words, they are there as sequences of code points, not as single code points. Nevertheless, they are there, so the claim is wrong.

If Mr Donald's claim is "yansaya, rakaaransaya and reepaya should be individual code points", that would be more valid. However, somebody has to eventually decide what's basic and what's not, and it has already been done. Technically, this is not an issue at all.

Donald G: Unicode can't produce a matrix of 1600+ characters needed by OCR etc

Wrong. Here is why:

I am not an expert on OCR, but if Mr Donald claims that OCR requires a matrix of 1600+ characters, that's exactly what Sinhala Unicode is. Only it doesn't list all the 1600+ characters, but defines the basic code points (not characters) and the way to generate all the other characters by using sequences of them.

Even a primary school kid can understand something like this: "ka and paapilla produces ku, and this rule applies to all the consonents." It would rediculous if the document describing the standard includes a 1600+ table listing each variant (ka + papilla = ku, kha + papilla = khu...la+paapilla=lu and so on)... ;-)

Showing the basic code points and claiming "not all the characters are here" for the first time is fine. Second time is still fine, IMHO. But 100+th time is definitely a joke... ;-)

Donald G: SLS 1134 doesn't consider Tamil

There is no need.

Character representation in SLS 1134 almost identical (if not identical) to Sinhala subset in Unicode. As the only country that has a major Sinhala speaking population, it's SLSI's responsibility to contribute to Sinhala in Unicode, and SLSI does this through SLS 1134. Developers eventually use Unicode. To my knowledge, none of the FOSS packages found in a typical GNU/Linux system refer to SLS 1134. In other words, SLS 1134 more of an intermitent standard.

India has a much bigger Tamil speaking population, and the Unicode code page for Tamil has already been worked out. Therefore, there is absolutely no need to create a seperate standard for Sri Lanka. Sinhala Unicode is not a Sri Lankan standard either.

Donald G: Sinhala Unicode doesn't have yansaya on the keyboard

Wrong. here is why:

Unicode is about representing characters. How they are typed using the keyboard is completely upto the keyboard driver. There are different keyboard drivers, some are classic Wijesekara, some modified Wijesekara, and some are transliterated (somewhat "singlish"). Some driver authors include yansaya etc on the keyboard itself whereas others provide ZWJ as an alternative to type them.

Whatever the keyboard is, yansaya, rakaaransaya and repaya can be typed, and eventually represented and displayed in the same code point sequences.

Other claims

There are so many other claims on akuru.org. For example, Mr Donald from time to time challenges that certain words can't be "written" in Sinhala Unicode (latest being the name of the President). When we send him screenshots to show that it's possible (with and without joint characters), he claims that they are fake!!!

Hidden agenda?

There is a saying that it's easy to wake up a sleeping person, but it's very difficult to wake up someone who pretends to sleep.

Mr Donald has applied for a patent for his "system". Although he doesn't seem to have implemented it, he has promissed to deliver results if given an "opportunity" (as far as I know, nobody is holding him). And as Sinhala Unicode is becoming mainstream, his "pending" patent is going to be worthless, unless... oh, well!

Update: 2006-03-21 08:00

There are "valid" articles on akuru.org. Some are about the history of characters, and some are good articles by others authors. For example, articles written by Mr Aelien Silva, one of my favourite writers and linguists who has created so many good Sinhala technical words (e.g.: "manu", "thekala"), brings out very good points about technology localization. In fact, I have often quoted Mr Aelien Silva on the Sinhala Unicode list and elsewhere (need to enable Sinhala Unicode to read it, instructions are here for GNU/Linux and here for Windows, not sure how to do it on Mac... :-( ). However, I belive that hosting such articles is just an attempt to make akuru.org more authentic, which would otherwise be totally useless.

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Sinhala Unicode on GNU/Linux

Update: in almost all GNU/Linux distributions released in the last two years, most if not all of the following settings are already done. You have only to install the font and an input method. Please check this page for more details.

Here are the steps to get Sinhala working on GNU/Linux. If you are running Debian or Ubuntu, there is an easier way. Most of the steps will have to be skipped on modern distributions, as Sinhala is mostly `enabled' in them.

Also, this guide assumes reasonable experience in using the GNU/Linux environment. If you think you are a newbie, please get a Guru involved... ;-)

Sinhala/Sri Lanka Locale for Glibc

This is a file `si_LK' in /usr/share/i18n/locales/. If it's not there, download it here.

If there is a /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED file in your system, make sure that there is an entry `si_LK UTF-8' in an alphabatically suitable place.

If you are using a recent version of glibc locales (e.g.: locales package on Debian Etch / Sid), si_LK is included and there is no need to download it. Hopefully, other distros will begin to ship it, too.

Aliases for Glibc Locale (Optional)

Add these lines to /etc/locale.alias so that you can refer to si_LK.UTF-8 locale as si, si_LK or sinhala. If this file is not there, skipping this step is harmless.

sinhala  si_LK.UTF-8
si       si_LK.UTF-8
si_LK    si_LK.UTF-8

Generating the Glibc Locale (Debian based systems)

Non-Debian users should skip this step.

Run `dpkg-reconfigure locales'. Select si_LK.UTF-8 locale and other UTF-8 locales (e.g.: en_US.UTF-8, en_GB.UTF-8). Make sure to select a UTF-8 locale (not necessarily si_LK) as the default locale.

Generating the Glibc Locale (non-Debian systems)

Debian users should skip this step.

Generate the si_LK.UTF-8 locale by running:

localedef -i si_LK -f UTF-8 -A /etc/locale.alias si_LK

X-window Locale

Most of the X window programs used on GNU/Linux (GNOME, GTK, QT and KDE apps) are using Glibc locale, and there is no need to add a full fledged locale to X. However, if X Window system doesn't know about si_LK, X programs will complain of it as an unknown locale. A common practice is just to alias such locales to en_US.UTF-8 to avoid this.

If you are running xorg 6.9.0 (or later) or a recent version of XFree86, this is already done, please jump to the next step.

Otherwise, locate the files locale.dir and compose.dir in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/ and add suitable lines. Notice that you need to add two lines in each file, one without a colon:

en_US.UTF-8/XLC_LOCALE       si_LK.UTF-8

and one with a colon.

en_US.UTF-8/XLC_LOCALE:      si_LK.UTF-8

Lines in compose.dir are similar, except `XLC_LOCALE' is replaced with `Compose'.

Sinhala Unicode Fonts

It's good to see more and more new Unicode Sinhala fonts are being released. Unfortunately, the FreeFont project includes sinhala characters that don't have correct rendering tables, and sometimes this font takes precedance over other correct unicode fonts, making wrong rendering of kombuwa and other specially handled glyphs. A quick workaround would be to remove freefont package (sometimes called ttf-freefont) if it's installed.

Downloading the LK-LUG Unicode font and copying it to .fonts/ directory in your home directory is sufficient for most cases. Copy it to /usr/local/share/fonts/ to make it available globally.

I have written a more detailed description about fonts in X Windows here.

Sinhala Rendering in KDE/QT

If you are using a version of QT later than 3.3.4, Sinhala should be working fine. There was one bug in old version of of QT, which is now fixed, both in QT 3 and 4 series.

Sinhala Rendering in GNOME/GTK

If your Pango version is later than 1.8.1, Sinhala should be working fine. 1.8.0 also supports Sinhala with a bug, and Harshula's fix went into 1.8.1.

Touching letters are also now supported.

Firefox

Firefox renderes Sinhala properly only if it's compiled with Pango. 1.0.x needs a patch, but Pango comes standard in 1.5.x series. If you are using Firefox in RedHat / Fedora, it comes with the Pango patch, and there is nothing extra to be done.

The easiest is to upgrade Firefox to 1.5 (hoping that it's compiled with Pango support) and set the environment variable MOZ_ENABLE_PANGO to 1.

Sinhala Input

Earlier, we used seperate input method modules for GTK and QT, but now they are obsoleted by SCIM and M17N input methods. Here are the steps to install them.

• Install SCIM
• Install SKIM if you use KDE
• Get SCIM transliterated input method for Sinhala and install it
• If you like to use Sinhala input method modules from M17N project, install SCIM-M17N bridge, and M17N input method modules.

Running skim in KDE or scim in GNOME should create an icon on system tray that can be used to select the language. After that, you can use ctrl+space to switch between normal ASCII (English) input and SCIM input.

SCIM 1.4.4 doesn't have a Sinhala catagory, so Sinhala input methods are listed under `Other'. It's fixed now and a seperate menu for Sinhala should be available in the next version.

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Running Debain on Desktop

Warning: I might change this article depending on feedback. This warning will be removed when I finish with such edits. After hearing some recent reports from users who tried to run Debian GNU/Linux on their desktops, I thought it will be useful to list some guidelines to avoid some common pitfalls. Debian is great to run on the desktop and with the recent udev/sysfs stuff, hardware detection works great, and apt has always been an excellent, if not the the best, package management tool... :-) Which version? Use Debian `testing' (`Etch' at the time of writing this post). Period. Debian `stable' (`Sarge') doesn't get new versions of software, but only bug and security fixes, which is a great for servers; not for desktops. Debian `unstable' (`Sid') get latest versions of software before `testing', but it breaks dependencies from time to time, which is also not desiarable for a general desktop. How many CDs? If you have a good Internet connection, getting the small `netinst' CD is good enough. Otherwise, first 2-4 CDs are all what you need. If you'll ever need more, then you won't be reading this guide... ;-) You can use jigdo to download the official weekly builds, or less preferably download the ISOs (CD/DVD) here. There were problems with some of the `unofficial' CD/DVD builds, so I recommend getting the official builds. Linux kernel 2.6 If you want all the bells and whistles of the latest Linux kernel, instead of just hitting ENTER when booting the installatoin CD, type `linux26'. Partitions For a desktop, it's sufficient to have three partitions. One swap partition (about 512 MB - 1 GB), one root (/) partition for the installation (2-10 GB, depends on the amount of software you plan to install), and one home partition (/home) for personal files (size of this partition depends on your needs, if you are going to have a lot of audio/video files, this will fill up soon). By having a seperate /home partition, it's possible to play around with the installation in the root (/) without loosing the personal files. If you are planning to have databases and other servers, they will consume space in /var, which is in the root (/) in the above settings. Consider increasing the size of the root partition, or creating a seperate /var partition if this is the case. Personally, I use a single root partition (not a seperate /home), because once you install Debian, there is absolutely no need to install again, as you can keep on upgrading... :-) This installation I am using right now has survived three laptop migrations!!! Filesystem Use a journalling filesystem. I personally prefer reiserfs, as it has good indexing capabilities, and excellent when there are lots of small files. If you have a much larger files instead, consider xfs or jfs. Ext3 is also not a bad choice. What to install? With Debian, it is best to finish the basic install as soon as possible. Therefore, don't select anything extra (x windows or gnome etc), and don't add any additional CDs. Just use the first CD and get over with the installation. Now what? Once installation is over, login as root, and add any additional CDROMs with apt-cdrom tool.

# apt-cdrom add

Repeat this for all the CDs available. Consult /etc/apt/sources.list if you want to verify. Now add X windows, and KDE and/or GNOME desktop(s). Again, if you prefer any other desktop (fvwm or windomaker), you won't be reading this guide... ;-)

# apt-get install x-window-system-core
# apt-get install kde
# apt-get install gnome-desktop-environment

You can play around with /etc/X11/xorg.conf to tweak your X window settings (or alternatively, try the `dexconf' tool). Use the `startx' command to start X windows. Once you are happy with the X window settings (resolution, depth and refresh frequency etc), install a graphical login manager (e.g.: kdm).

# apt-get install kdm
# /etc/init.d/kdm start

One last bit of advice: always login as a normal user, not as root. Open a terminal and run `su -' to become root if necessary. This will reduce possibilities of you harming the system, ensuring long life of the installation. I am hoping to write another howto on installing multimedia stuff and Java. Disclaimer: I am sorry if this makes you forget what `installing' is, because it's very unlikely that you will do another installation ever again... ;-) By the way, happy Debianning!

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FOSS-ed Conference - Day 1

The first day of the FOSS-ed conference went really well. The focus of the event is to bring awareness to Free and Open Source Software to the general public. In addition to a keynote from Manju Hathotuwa, there was a series of presentations on various aspects of FOSS usage. Unfortunately, I couldn't listen to Bud and Mifan on distros and desktops. Suchetha did a really good one on web development tools. In the late morning, I did a short presentation on "Dispelling FOSS Myths". The time was too short to talk about legal aspects in detail, so I covered a few "myths" lightly, including "FOSS is not user friendly", "I have to give all my code away", "FOSS should not cost" etc. In the evening, I moderated a panel on "Challenges to wider adoption of FOSS in Sri Lanka". Reshan represented the ICTA, and Dinesh Fernandopulle of DFCC, Sanjiva, Chamindra and Bud were the other panelists. Most of the questions were along the lines of support and the government's role in wider adoption of FOSS in Sri Lanka. One good thing that Reshan mentioned was that the ICTA and the government are going to mandate the use of open standards, while giving implementors the freedom to choose specific technologies. Although a little bias towards FOSS would have made things even better, I still consider this as a very progressive step for the country in gaining "independance" in terms of software.

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Dialog Self Service Sucks

The customer care call center of Dialog GSM has always been excellent. The staff is well trained, polite and efficient. However, it turned out that their self service, activated by dialing 687, sucks.

Recently, I wanted to change a number in my frequently dialed numbers list (the "family and friends" call list). Everything went well, but I felt very uncomfortable as the system did not give me a chance to verify the new number. I was "told" that it was changed immediately after I entered it.

I felt the need to verify that the new number is correct, so I went to the main menu again and tried to list the new set of numbers. It looked like the last digit of the new number was missing. Oops... I had done a mistake by starting the numeber with a "0777", instead of a "077".

Every other system I have come across either allowes the user to verify before changing an important piece of information (e.g.: password dialog boxes) OR allows reverting a mistake either through the system itself or some other means. Unfortunately, it wasn't the case here.

I called the customer care call center immediately, and explained that I made a mistake, and asked if anything can be done to correct it. I also mentioned that this happened few minutes ago and that I made no other calls, to show that this is not an attempt to exploit the "friends and family" feature. The executive was very polite as usual, but apparently this was a call beyond her authority. I asked her if I could speak to her lead - hoping to reach someone who is authoritative to make a decision - but while she was trying to transfer the call, the line got disconnected.

I called them again, and told the customer care executive (a different person) that I need to talk to her lead. She said that her lead may not be in a position to make the decision, but gave me the names of two people in another department. I managed to reach one of them, but he said nothing can be done, but also told me to try and contact the Billing Manager.

I made another call to try and contact the Billing Manager, but the phone was never pick up.

I gave up. Not only was I charged Rs 100 for the "change", but I couldn't "correct" it until the next billing cycle.

On a positive note, this is the ONLY bad experience I have ever had with Dialog GSM. Unfortunately, as all my attempts to give them constructive critisism failed, I was forced to blog the incident.

Update: Dialog GSM is investigating into the insident, and hopefully will improve the system in question. Very nice of them to take customer feedback seriously.

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Kohomba Kankariya

After a long silence in the blogosphere, I am back again... :-) I happened to be in Kandy on the 23rd to attend the annual alms giving in rememberence of my grandma. My eye met, somewhat accidently, a notice about a `Kohomba Kankariya' is to be performed at the University that very evening. It was a long time since me seeing one for the last time, so I jumped at the opportunity. We arrived at the uni in time. It was great to see some of the well known faces in the group of performers. During the introduction it was clearly mentioned that this is not a performance to cure someone, which is a Kankariya is officially meant to be, but rather a cultural exhibition, so that the timings of some events were to be `edited'. The dances were longer, and unusually better. There were many `competitive' encounters where dancers used to recite drum-verses, simple to complicated, and drummers played them flawlessly, and dancers danced to them. It is very interesting to see this works so well, considering that there is no rehersal, and some of the performers, who come from different schools and backgrounds, have not even met each other before.

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University of Peradeniya

During the vacation, I visited the University of Peradeniya. Unlike other visits for `official' purposes, this was a purposeless visit, just to meep people and see around. I spend the morning at the Faculty of Engineering and met a lot of old friends and lectures. Also spent a short while at the `server room' where LK-LUG server lives, and fixed a small problem with the network card driver after a recent upgrade. In the afternoon, I visited the newly built IT Center. Chinthaka Kumarasiri of LK-LUG was there, and I met Thusitha, a very old schoolmate of mine, who also happened to be Chinthaka's roommate. I spent the afternoon `sight-seeing' and on photography. Some of the `selected' photographs can be found here.

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Taking a Break

After the FOSS week and 1001 other things, finally I decided to use some of my leave. However, I decided to deviate from the usual practice of using leave for non-work related activities and trips, and just spend some time doing one of the most relaxing things in the world: nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but to sit by the flowing waters and watch swimming fish, or listen to birds sing, looking for changing patterns of clouds, or a pleasent mixure of them all; no deadlines, no commitments, no responsibilities. I choose week days to travel so to avoid traffic. I went home (Kotmale) on Tuesday the 4th through Avissawella. The road was very scenic and it was a treat to drive by misty mountains and flowing rivers. I decided to go through Nawalapitiya (instead of Hatton), but the road between Ginigathhena and Nawalapitiya is being reconstructed and will have to be avoided for the next few months. The holiday was nice and calm, and I didn't make any major trips except to the University of Peradeniya on the 8th. Apart from sleeping late and just hanging around the garden, I also found a bit of time for some photography. My mother helped me with selecting scenic angles. She also happily `forced' me to go to a car wash to clean the otherwise ignored exterior of the Jimny... ;-) The number of cats had grown to three this time, with the new addition of two kittens. However my mother doesn't like petting them too much, although she is very keen to feed them and advocates their `freedom'. So me and my brother had to do a bit of `training' for them to stay in human hands and one such training sessions ended up with a bleeding finger. I returned on Monday the 10th and it was also a pleasent journey which took only a few hours.

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Mini Code Fest

Following the Asia OSSS Code Fest, we had a miniature version of it on Saturday, partly for everyone to get the hang of it, and partly to close out urgent pending items on Taprobane. UCSC kindly provided logistics, in addition to a lot of encouragement. There was a quite a number of known faces including Anuradha Weeraman, Bud (his blog entry on the event is here), Chamindra, Chamath, Deep, Kosala, Mahangu and Tharindu of UCSC. Many others joined from the UCSC (don't rememebr all the names, may be next time), including Gowri who maintains the network. We managed to get the infrastructure setup within a couple of hours, including an apt-proxy. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out a neat way to go out of the network and connect to IRC or SSH, and this forced us to use a local ircd instead. Anuradha Weeraman was working on the installer, Mahangu on the Taprobane documentation project, and Bud and myself worked on closing bug reports for a quick 0.4.2 and close out this branch. Lot of interesting work was going on all over including installing, testing, remastering and so on. There was a wired set of IBM machines with some strange CDROM drives, and booting Taprobane on them was impossible. However, Tarindu managed to install Taprobane on one of them over the network by manually copying files and running grub. Dr Ruwan, director of UCSC, visited us in the afternoon. Being a hacker himself, he has been a big supporter of FOSS activities in Sri Lanka. We are planning on the next codefest on the 15th. If anyone is interested, contact me or ask on the Taprobane list.

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