Dreamsmademe Blog

The TIME Magazine says
       "Radio had its golden age in the 1930s. In the 1950s, it was television's turn. Historians may well date the golden age of the blog from 2004 when Merriam-Webster.com's most searched-for definition was blog. How long can it last? Who knows? Here's what we discovered about the new medium this year"

Here the article: Blogs Have Their Day
The report is here
What CNET says is here
They’ve got BolgAwards is here

It seems not bad to be a bogger nowadays.

Yesterday's tsunami was one of the worst and the first in history which swept Sri Lankan shores killing thousands.

The destruction is staggering, unbelievable.

The worst part is we have never been prepared, never heard of this kind of disaster unless in movies. Lost so many lives in a sudden flush of water. We were a thousand miles away from tsunamis until now. You have absolutely no defense against huge raging sea wave at land, somthing that you have never heard of in your life, no sign, no alerm, no rain, no warning, nothing unusual, it's the same serene sea you sit beside and enjoy for hours. Suddenly tossing and crushing its raging waves in a Day After Tomorrow like blockbuster movie which came out of nowhere. People didn't realised they were hitting a wall of death.

So I leave this note in memory of all those lives we lost today. May you all attain 'Nirvana' and rest in peace.

Deceased, missing and survived list can be found here

The government has declared a state of emergency to aid the displaced and the dead but this is by no means a thing a country like Sri Lanka can cope with alone.

So please, you the international community do help us, send us whatever the aid you could grant to the Sri Lankan Government.

We are urgently in need of medicines, ready to eat food , sanitary items, body bags ect.

Some support hotlines could be reached
+94-11-2745223
+94-118

Humanitarian Relief
       c/o MTV Channel (Pvt.) Ltd.
       No. 146, Dawson Street
       Colombo 2
       Sri Lanka.
   Sirasa Network 

   Rupavahini

Doners A/C Number :  
     0030323998CU
     Hatton National Bank
     Head Office Branch
     479, T.B. Jayah Mawatha
     Colombo 10
     Sri Lanka

Online Doners http://www.me.lk/doner.asp

Essential drugs needed can be found here

More links can be found here

Or your Sri Lankan embassies can be contacted.

But this is soon gonna be a nation into remaking. So please do help these relief work in progress by any means you could.

Tsunami: [Japanese] Tidal waves created after a sea quake

This is nice. Enjoy!

These is a long due necessity. It is a pleasure to see that the Sinhala Unicode has become a world standard and now there are emerging wave of Sinhala software we can easiliy use without hassle.

Earlier we have to install proprietary components, dongles and fonts if we wanted to make use of any of the few Sinhala software. There is even an Optical Character Recognition software for Sinhala though I can't remember the URL.

The latest things is Sinhala GNU/Linux 0.1 OS, a Linux Sinhala clone that can be downloaded at the given address. Though I am not much of a LINUX fan and ain't know nothing about this geek OS I am really impressed. These LKLUG guys have done a really good job turning Linux to run in our Sinhala language.

Here's a screenshot. If you like Linux go take the plunge and enjoy Windows free world.

I had been in love with and using my SJ33 as my primery writing pad ever since I brought it.

My experience with this nifty piece of electronic is more or less the same as this guy explains who has published a CLIE journal on his usage. He has even mentioned the incidend that I had dropped my CLIE on the ground at one time in his journal.

Sad SONY said Syonara to CLIE discontinuing their lineup lately.

Well, after a while there is a techno show in Colombo. At least I was expecting to get a chance to play with all new Treo 650 but unfortunately it wasn't there. 

So there were very few other items that took my interest like Toshiba e800 VGA Pocket PC. Too bad.

I was truly wowed having seen the all new Treo 650. I have been observing this since Treo 600 and now 650 is absolutely a no-brainer the best breed of converged device ever to hit the shelves.

It runs my favourite Palm OS, got the best industrial design on far with Apple's iPod, has world band GSM receiver, got nearly 16000 nifty software base to spare. Next only to the Windows platform. Even those you can get on your hand as it runs a Window's Remote Desktop Client. See bellow, Wow!

So virtually this is happened to be the best mobile office money can buy today.

I've been eying to buy one but to my dismay it has run down by a worst memory debacle in Palm's history. Read here.

Still I want one.

When was the last time you used the X feature burried underneath in the latest version of your favorite piece software, Say MS Word? The chances are very high you would say "hardly or never" So what's the point of having it all there at the very first place?

Today, all the major software firms release at least one incarnation of their flagship product each year. All the fancy features, bells and whistles but do people really use them? Opps! I guess 99 percent of average people don't even know that those features are there at the very first place.

All the new features, labyrinth of menus, thousands of lines of codes comes with a CD full installation that makes our humble machines scream for their breath.

And these companies make sure to include one or two killer features in this every version so users may feel compelled to upgrade or try. And sometimes get messed up their systems in the process.

Every version get blotted with features, takes more space, more memory, more resources and more time to figure out that you can't be as efficient as you were with their early release. Enough reasons to look elsewhere if we do have proper alternatives. The problem is we don't

One good example is my well respected Macromedia Designer Suite Studio MX. I had been using it since Dreaweaver incarnation 2 and they were famous for their quality software. Suddenly I was shocked to see how sluggish their latest trail of Studio MX 2004 when they initially released it. It took days to install, hours load, ages to configure, too slow to switch back and forth and screen redraw issues made me sick of. No wonder complaints were flooding at Macromedia Forums.

They were a respectable firm and suddenly the fame was at stake. Everybody gets effected. This is mainly due to Macromedia had released this version unpolished just as a marketing gimmick. They learn their lessons and soon revert it back with patches.

Anyway I went back to the previous version without having any alternatives. Sigh! Not that I missed any features unless some came with Flash MX but still I have to update my PC if I were to use these memory hogs. Forget it.

ACDSee V6 is another good example that they got messed up like this. It used to be one heck of good program for image browsing. Suddenly they decided to add all the world of features borrowed from Photoshop to scanners to digital camers to printers and lost in the wilderness.

Remember when Windows XP came in. How many patches and service packs does Microsoft release after their babies to get it stabilize? Ultimately no wonder they halted all their developments and put the company behind SP2 until they get it out right.

Big companies can afford to do that because they have enough resources.

The problem is for the end users who rely on these software for their bread and butter. Sometimes there's no equal contenders to take this famous feature laden softwares' place. This drives me crazy.

One way to overcome this is these companies can maintain two versions of this their cash cow sort of software. So one can say this can easily be done.

Not quite so. ACDSee Systems has done this keeping one of the early versions freezed at version 2.46 or something as ACDSee Classic. I still use it though, is it enough to manage pictures we get nowadays when each and every mobile phone too has 1 megapixel cameras inbuilt?

No way, well, for ACDSee's case I might get the choice of switching to now famous Google's Picasa or something but not for everything else.

Sure, software industry has to update their babies on regular basis to keep their revenues up either as marketing gimmicks or as truely to accommodate new technologies.

So here I repeat. We do need those feathers but not at the expense of the existing stability and the quality of the basic functions of the software we rely on.

Anyone?

Wow! I've been waiting for this thing to come. It should reach my doorstep as US Parcel Mail parcel though, Sri Lankan postal service as usual had kept it at customs and asked me to come and collect it. I had to pay an additional Rs.170 for clearence.

Anyway no fuss. My beauty came safe and sound.

My initial impressions about this Kodak EasyShare DX7440 Digital Camera came positive.

If I talk about the cons at first. The camera's finish is not on far with say any of SONYs' or Nikons', Jog dial lock is cumbersome to operate, unlock. Connector lid was horrible to lift and connect the cables. I am sure it will be the first thing to break if any. The LCD was protruding out and it could easy hit with something and get cracked. Zoom buttons are beside the shutter you can't zoom and shoot. Should have been somewhere near the thumb wheel instead. Grip is not so good even though they've provided a rubber finish for the hold. Pictures were darker than what they appear on the LCD in low light conditions.

Pro are little but very notable. Whoa! The 2.2" LCD is owesome. Bright and crispy. Overall responsiveness is very good to compromise all the cons. Videos are good and can shoot in VGA resolution with sound. Focusing is very good even on night scenes. Flash reaches an extra mile. 4x optical zoom also a plus thing but will result blury pictures if not use with caution. (tripod)

Meanwhile, It is worth mentioning about the seller at eBay who sent this to me. Named Sonchai, Prompt response and excellent communication I really valued in this guy. He even sent me, a casing, LCD protector which wasn't even mentioned in the original auction for a nominal fee. He is also one of the very few guys who ships eBay items directly to Sri Lanka. It is a good buy for me. Thanks Sonchai.

Meanwhile I am crazy to play with my new cam, gotta go...

This is absurd. We've got 4 GSM operators in the country. They make all the hype in the world. We were playing with SMSs years before the US counterparts send their first SMS. Okay true enough but our networks are still sluggish. None covers island in one phase. Batteries won't last when you go out stations (okay that is the technology). No signal when you are about to die in some Bintenna place.

I switched to Mobitel GSM after having enough issues with Dialog GSM during the 1998 to 2003 period.

Now Mobitel calls are too keep dropping even when you are stationary in Colombo for no reason. It's hard to hang on for more than two three minutes sometimes. Sigh!

Dialog had this issue of network congestion due to over subscription and they got their switches updated lately. Anyway I switched and they lost me.

Now Mobitel, are they too trying to allocate more users in the network? But it does not seem to be a congestion issue. It is a problem of switching the cells we are in it seems. The phone keep changing its cell even when you are stationary and calls drop during the transfer, we noticed. OK you gave us the choice of knowing the cell we are in. I checked everybody around me experience the same. We even switched the phones to see with no success. So it's gotta be a network problem. Anyone ?

So you guys at Mobitel, I know you work hard to keep up your cutting EDGE, but would you please improve your network so we can make uninterrupted calls, the phone's basic function first.

I do still have another two operators if I really want to try. Anyway I was happy with you and I had slightly better customer experience with you guys. So I guess we'd better keep it that way, Aren't we?