isurublue

I bought a Zune!!!

isurublue — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:40:00 GMT

I bought the newest innovation from Microsoft, "Zune", an mp3 player with video playing capability. I believe I am the first to get in Sri Lanka since it takes so much time for something like that to come to Sri Lanka. Since I have not used an ipod I can't give a comparison but I should say it is pretty impressive.

The Good

The screen is big. Enough to watch a movie and it is very clear.
Capacity is pretty high. 30GB is like a portable hard drive.
The sync is very good. As you connect to the PC it starts to sync, download updates, update song data, and charge its battery.
I felt it would be bit big but not really. It looks very professional.
Scratch free. The covering is pretty rough

The Bad

It cannot be used as a portable hard drive yet. I hope Microsoft would do an firmware update soon. It makes the life so easier
It still support only few formats. AVI is not supported as yet. I have to find a convertor to convert AVIs to WMVs.
The radio can have only odd frequencies. I don't know what the point of that. You can have 89.5MHz but not 89.2MHz. Weird.

Overall it is a good product for $250 and the market statistics shows that is it doing well. It has a long way to go to catch up with ipod. We will only see a comparison when Apple releases its newest ipod video

Order matching!!!

isurublue — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:54:00 GMT

I did my first matching engine with trading orders. Yeah yeah, I'm a business consultant but still my background is technical so there is no harm in doing such things just for fun. It is bit boring when you have only documents to read and this type of work I believe would be helpful in understanding the developers mind. My order were stacked in a <LIST> using generics but still to boost the performance I should have used "Linked Lists" but writing in pointers is a pain in C# and it is pain to have a nice user control in C++. Since I just need simulation just chose C#. Now for some real fun.

Last Day as a Microsoft Student Ambassador

isurublue — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 03:20:00 GMT

Today became my last day as a Microsoft Student Ambassador in Sri Lanka. It has being 2 years since I have being working with Microsoft in Sri Lanka and the South Asian region. I cannot believe it is finshed but yet I'm happy that now the student champ community is structured and going well without much effort. I glad that the new generation of Student Ambassadors are also as committed or more towards uplifting the quality of IT graduates. I was given few minutes to give me thanking speech and hopefully it motivates the students to reach further. I got a pen and a "Thank you" card and I was really touch with the thank you speeches. Special thanks should go to Jinashri who believed me for such a long time and backed my decisions. People from Microsoft Sriyan, Anton, Chadika, Indika, Allan etc for their continuous support for the program. Ed for his continuous support he gave to me from the region. The MVPs, Merill, Wela, Prasanna and others for their help. The new Student Ambassadors - Primal, Tharindu, Wajira and Buddhika, thank you and all the best. For all other student champs good luck and hope you would help this community to grow.

Last few days at my home away from home

isurublue — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 03:20:00 GMT

Last week I left a place that was very close to my heart, house where I was boarded nearly for an year. Four of our guys, Roshan Peris, Roshan Thatri, Salinda and me shared one rooms for sleeping and one for studies. It was one of the greatest days days in my campus life. I miss it alot. I guess the others do too.

What was more tough was how the land lady treated us. We called her "Aunty" and she was the sweetest. Her childern and her grand children became very close to us.

Well you have to leave many things behind in life. That is what life is. What really matters is not how much achievements you got but how many hearts you touched on the way.

My Room

Cheran with the guitar - sings alot of songs and very well

Aunty with Yenuli

Few Days at MIT (Millennium Information Technologies)

isurublue — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:22:00 GMT

It is only the third day at my job and making some progress into what I need to do. Trading systems seems to be really complicated but yet I like how structured they are. Learning slowly through training and reading specs. Much credit should go to Lalin in teaching us what we need to expect. Will keep in touch....

PC World - First Windows Vista Release Candidate Available

isurublue — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 23:33:00 GMT

Microsoft is releasing the first release candidate for its new operation system windows vista. I'm still not sure whether to install it in one my machines at work. I could install it in my laptop but still the performance I expect would not be very much. So I would like to wait for a while till I use the new operating system.

They new release candidate supports HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc which most of us are not using at the moment. Still some people in Sri Lanka uses CDs and getting used to the idea of DVDs.

The new RC (release candidate) is supposed to be using less memory so no more booting the machine every now and then.

It is also nice that the Microsoft is releasing its code to the volume customers which will be good in the long run. At least they are getting used to the sharing code. This is a great time to see another "Elephant trying to dance" as IBM did in the early 1990s.

Link to PC World - First Windows Vista Release Candidate Available

Analysis: Businesses Don't Need Microsoft Software - Software News by InformationWeek

isurublue — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 05:02:00 GMT

This article is about open source software solutions that would replicate the Office stack of Microsoft. This argument has being going on during the last few weeks with the new "Writely" from Google (a web based word processing program). The Google spread sheets too became a big hit but yet still it is not as good as MS Excel but good enough. Writely did not impress me much as it could not open a simple word doc due to unknown reasons.

I'm a big fan of open source but sometimes the community is bit too optimitic about the outcome. The consumers would always look at the features they need and most importantly the total cost of ownership. This price becomes comparatively cheaper with the use of Microsoft since each of their integrations work very well with a minimum amount of tweaking. At the meantime open source solution would consist of many vendors who would try to market their own but would not look how well they perform with other systems. This aspect becomes much more critical with the services and maintenance because no single entity is responsible for the whole solution. There are some company who are involved but a very few. Sri Lankan company - WSO2 is good example.

Microsoft is also not far from a web based office solutions. Their Office Live will create a big impact and would be very useful for distributed companies with team members all over the world. These are very exciting days.

Link to Analysis: Businesses Don't Need Microsoft Software - Software News by InformationWeek

Gifts from my girl friend

isurublue — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 00:48:00 GMT

Chathra and her family went on a trip to Malaysia for shopping. I heard it was cool and waiting for the pictures. I got some neat presents from her. Quite cool stuff.

Gundam Seed Model
Toshiba Flash Drive
Allan D'Lious pen

Well I hope you guys will not think I'm a kid still as I like Gundam. Well it was one of my best cartoons as a kid and I still remember making the small Gundam models with my father. Amma (my mother) still hates them remembering how I used to make them while having dinner. I made it. I'll post a picture of my collection soon.

Firefox team accepts Microsoft help

isurublue — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:58:00 GMT

Microsoft has lent their hand to Mozilla to help it to work well in the new Microsoft Operation system - Windows Vista. This move is bit surprising even though I did support their recent openess to open source software. Their new open source lab has being a big step in their work towards open source. All the mozilla fans out there would be very happy about this move by Microsoft.

Very excited!!!

Link to » Firefox team accepts Microsoft help | Ed Burnette's Dev Connection | ZDNet.com

Batch '02 Photographs

isurublue — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 23:51:00 GMT

The 2002 batch intake photograph was taken today. Boys with white shirts and black trousers, girls with white sarees. Pretty cool to see all the people from the batch at one place. This will be a memorable thing to have. The field photograph was taken right after the batch photo. There was an bit of a unpleasant incidents where some students did not like to take the batch photograph with the design students. It did not make big sense since anyway we were to take two photographs for the 2002 Faculty of Engineering intake and the 2002 BSc Engineering. Some people just like to make anything unpleasant.

NOT the official photo - I went looking for cloaks for the staff

NO TALKING WHILE THE PHOTO IS TAKEN

BEST BUDS (Project Team)

Ok... that's better!!!

My First Link List

isurublue — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:22:00 GMT

Today I managed to write the first "Link List" in one hour. Ok don't laugh it was the first time I did some serious programming in C++. It is fun than other programming languages and gives me room for more errors. Wonder if I've chosen the path to be a Business Analyst. Maybe I can do some coding on the side as well.

Moments from the CS & ES AGM and the CSE get together

isurublue — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:27:00 GMT

The Computer Science and Engineering Society Annual General Meeting and the Computer Science & Engineering get together was held last Saturday the 5th of August at HNB towers Colombo. The start of the session was a panel discussion on "Shaping the IT education for the needs of tomorrow" with leading personal from the corporate and the academic sector in Sri Lanka and abroad. We truly hope that this discussion would lead to a better collarboration between the industry and the academic entities.

Moments from the event...

Getting ready Dr. Chathura, Sanjaya ayya and Vidula

Chamila... ready to talk?

Registration and lovely girls

Nishantha with the final checkings

Coolest electronic stuff

Compierers

Welcome Speech

Ruwan with his talents

CS & ES president

More talents....

The card game

Me....

Chamila, Nishantha... are you drunk???

More meetings???

CSE Get together and Computer Science & Engineering Society Annual General Meeting

isurublue — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:07:00 GMT

The Annual General Meeting of the Computer Science and Engineering Society of University of Moratuwa and the CSE Get Together will be held on the 5th August 2006 at HNB towers (22nd floor) from 4.30pm onwards. This year they have brought in an idea of including a panel discussion with the topic, "Shaping the IT education for the needs of tomorrow", which would produce a concrete outcome for the betterment of the IT industry of the nation. Sri Lankan IT industry has being expanding very rapidly during the last few months. Though we produce IT graduates from various educational institutes still they do not completely fulfill the employers expectations. What are the initiatives that could be taken? What kind of changes should the educational system go through and what kind of involvement should the corporate sector have in the system? Should it be just philanthropical or a longer commitment from the corporate are expected? What kind of changes should the educational framework should go through?

We have currently planned a 2 hour panel discussion with 8 panelists.Following is the abstract and brief profiles of the panelists. Entrance for the panel discussion is free of charge, but requires prior registration.

Contact cses@cse.mrt.ac.lk for more information & registration.

WSO2 is partnering with us as the Gold partner to support this event, while Virtusa, Codegen and Mubashar are partnering with us as the Silver Sponsors.

Panel discussion will be moderated by:

Mr. Manju Haththotuwa
- Founder Managing Director / CEO, Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka
- One of the ICT Advisors to the Hon. Minister of Science and Technology.
- Former chairman of E-Channelling Limited, Kelsey Homes , Kelsey Developments and Kelsey Aluminium.

The panel would consist of:

Mr.Mahesh Amaleen,
- Chairman, MAS Holdings (Pvt) Ltd,
- Past Chairman Sri Lanka Apparel Exporters Association
Prof. Abhaya Induruwa
- Founder Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa.
- Principal Lecturer , University of Canterbury , UK .
Prof. Ananda Jayawaradana
- Dean, Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa.
- Chairman, Steering committee for formulating of the Faculty of IT, University of Moratuwa .
Mr.Keith Modder
- Managing Director - Asian Operations, Virtusa Pvt Ltd.
- ICT Steering Committee Member for the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
Mr.Raomal Perera
- Founder and CEO of Valista.
- Recipient of the Irish Software Association's Outstanding Software Achievement Award
Prof. K. S. Walgama
- Former Head, Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya.
- Chairman, Subject benchmarking committee in computing of the IRQUE project.
Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana
- Founder, Chairman & CEO, WSO2, Inc.
- Board Member, Open Source Initiative
- Visiting Lecturer, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Univ. of Moratuwa .

Abstract of the Panel Discussion

Finding the niche...

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) from the western hemisphere has resulted in a rapid growth of the service sector in the east. Firstly due to the lower cost and later for their rich resource pool and the high standard of quality in the products resulted in the birth of Silicon Valley of the east. As a result theGDPs in south east Asian countries especially India has enjoyed a rapid growth over the lasthalf a decade. These BPOs varies from IT to Finance, Accounting and sometimes Insurance. With the increasing demand for technology in the service sector, IT based solutions has become a major export. Last yearIndia reported a $40 billion worth of exports from their IT sector. During the last few years,Sri Lanka too has had the taste of their share of the pie.

But yet are we enjoying the share we are worth? Or do we have the capacity to grab a bigger slice? It is a fact that we would not be able to compete on cost with India. Their large resource pool is an evidence of their capability and their early start in the race has given them an edge. So would the strategy to focus on a niche be a better bet? Should the IT sector in Sri Lanka focus on a particular market segment as the tourism industry in Maldivesor the electronic industry in Taiwan? Should Sri Lankan companies focus towards marketing products or being effective in Business Process Integration (BPI)?

A helping hand...

The Sri Lankan IT industry as a whole has not succeededin agreeing a common direction over the years. The major players in the industry have come forth with their requirement as individual entities but not in cohesion. The lack of direction has made it difficult in laying policies and procedures and also very importantly to give focus to the education framework that supports the requirements of the industry.

The identifying the requirements of the undergraduates are very important to the educational institutes since they directly influence the employability of their products. Unlike other sectors such as healthcare, IT graduates are more dependent upon the corporate sector. The employability of the graduate depends on how well he can fulfill needs of the organization. Moreover, revision of the curriculum or the other parameters in the degree course is easily be modified in a short term.

Companies can no longer state they are serving the society by indicating the number of recruitments. With the concepts such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Social Accounting a single entity cannot act as a philanthropist. It should become an active stakeholder and focus on improving the community from which they pull resources. Taking an example of the IT sector itself, an organization should focus on improving the quality of the future graduates in an academic entity which will directly result in better quality IT graduates to the community thus indirectly better employees in the future. From the perspective of policies and frameworks, the organization should assist the government in formulating proper policies and procedures which will enable the IT sector as a whole to grow where the organization would be able to claim a part of the growth.

The governing body of the nation should believe that the growth of one sector expands many other sectors and opens up the scope formany more industries. IT being a infrastructure could bring value addition to other sectors such as telecommunication, health care, banking and finance etc. This creates more opportunities in the BPOs and creates a never ending cycle where it would enhance the living standard of the citizens.
In conclusion the IT sector as a whole should sound one voice that describes their direction in the coming years and truly believe in it. This belief should extend to acts their involvement in improving the education sector and helping the governing body to lay a proper framework on which every organization would thrive.

Checkout the 30th August Sunday Observer for more details.

Tomorrow's Graduate

isurublue — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:13:00 GMT

I was a part of a panel discussion last Thursday in relation to understanding the expectations of a graduate in the near future. Other panelists were;

Samantha Senarathna from CSE
Samanthie Gunesekara from MIT
Praveen from MIT

It was organised from AIESEC Sri Lanka of which I was a part of for a very long time during my university life. I should acknowledge the fact that AIESEC did change me alot for the better in understanding the broder picture of life. I was able to share some of my experiences and I hope they learnt something. These are the issues that the students should be aware of. It is not about the next new technology or the new company. It is about making you marketable and also useful for the community you are in.

Samathie (MIT) Talking about the behaviors, attitudes and values.

Praveen with the "Tomorrow's Graduate" logo behind.

The audience...

The panelists having a laugh... :)

It is over....

isurublue — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 19:53:00 GMT

The exams and technical exams are finally over. Gosh it feels good but still I don't feel that light either. Maybe cause of the stuff I have finish by next week. The final year project is to be finished and I don't think I can have a holiday. Straight to work. This life is sooo fun :(.

But lets party tonight. We will never get that.