Lonely Coder

The world’s outstanding Open Source browser Firefox will unveil it’s third version on Tuesday, 17th of June(Tomorrow). Whilst promises of Firefox 3 are a lot, the Firefox Team has planned to set a Guinness World record to coinside the launch of it’s latest version. i.e during the first day of it’s launch for most number of software downloads within 24 hours (of release).

And this post is written explicitly to show the support towards the launch of Firefox 3 as a proud exponent of the software. The sticker displayed here is courtesy Spread Firefox. So if you’re another proud user who just loves Firefox go ahead and show your support via clicking on the sticker displayed above. On the other hand if you haven’t tried Firefox yet, I strongly suggest you to try out this wonderful piece of software next time when you browse and get to feel the difference for yourself.. And make your browsing sessions interesting than ever before with new Firefox 3. Best of Luck Firefox 3..!

Few days back I was playing around with Sinhala Tamil Unicode kit by ICTA (Information Communication Technology Agency) of Sri Lanka on my windows box. It was really cool with dual language support.

There was a time when most of the operating systems came bundled with ASCII(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) which only had mere 127 characters and they were all occupied by english letters and numbers and symbols. Then of course anybody didn’t have the luxury of using either softwares or viewing web pages in their own native language(s) as they would have liked it.

That’s where Unicode came into being. And ever since the advent of Unicode all these things have thrown out of the window because Unicode was a breakthrough technology and it can support over 65000 characters. With Unicode all the languages are given a range of characters to accommodate their own character codes. That’s where both Sinhala and Tamil get their allotted space.

Now although the range is set for both the languages in Unicode someone had to take up the challenge of developing the codes for both the languages. Developing and setting keyboard layout specially for language like Tamil which has more than 250 characters on a keyboard which is originally designed to accommodate mere 26 characters(English) again going to be a don’ting task.

That’s where in Sri Lanka ICTA should be praised for taking this project successfully in collaboration with the UCSC (University of Colombo School of Computing). This was a project which took months and months to complete.

And now both Sinhala and Tamil Unicode is available to download on,
http://www.locallanguages.lk/sinhala_how_to_install_in_english.html

The Sinhala Unicode is named as Wijesekara and Tamil is named as Ranganathan (for some strange reason that I really have no clue). You can download the package that best fits your box and enjoy working and viewing stuffs on your own native language.

Now since Sinhala and Tamil Unicode is made possible we should be able to see many a revolutions in the world of software when it comes to Language Localization in Sri Lanka, Taking it to a new unseen dimension.

Already you can see an increase in the number of web sites (Solely)compiled in Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka in the recent past. No doubt that this will pave way for many a local writers to enter web. And have their say in their own comfortable way..!

Well, Lonely Coder makes his presence on wordpress after a long drought of posts. If you were wondering why lonely Coder went silent for such a long time you will find the ultimate reason for it as you go through this post.

Yesterday happened to be the long awaited project submission date for our Software Group Project. Which is a Core module for us at University Of Westminster. The important aspect of this module is that it doesn’t have any Final Exam. As I wrote in one the previous posts of mine when I entered Second Year, The very first day we were greeted with a pleasant surprise and that is this project of us.

To begin with I was invited by Supun Devaraja (A Geek in JAVA by the merits of it) who was once privileged to become the all island top-scorer on SCJP (Sun Certified Java Professional) exams carried out by Sun micro systems. Still, beside the scenes i also got another surprising invitation from one of ma former team mate in developing MubarakMoulavi.Org, Gnanahulath (Agen a Geek in C++) and that was to initiate a group of our own. I never wanted to have another burden on my shoulders specially afta completing a commercial project of our own. So initially I was happy to join Supun’s team and just concentrate on coding and nothing else than that.

But this time I wanted develop a Standalone Application just for a change and also to make my presence in standalone applications development (Which I knew is always going to be a challenging task). Since many of ma friends regard my A game is Web-Apps development. Which I wouldn’t accept it at the first place though I have been developing Web-Apps for Cutting Edge and also at Archmage Software( Where I was first involved in the development of industry standard Applications and Web-Sites during ma summer vacation 2007/2008). Contrastingly, I always believe that my fate has taken me to that destiny.

The second invitation was quite interesting as I looked at it and since I have always opted to exploit and involve in ever so adventures stuffs by mother nature. Again I took up the challenge, afta confirming i t with ma friend Gnanam. And for everyone’s surprise we selected a Standalone application in midst of number of web-apps. We knew from the time that we took up this project, we both are heading towards the black hole. Our mission was to develop a Portable Project Management System in JAVA. That should be inter-operable, that should be portable. Our team comprised of six members since it was understood to be an exiting project.

Our team comprised four guys and two girls. Namely Gnanahulath, Sayanthan, Anushyanthan, Sharanya, Thiyalini and myself. When we met for the first time we had no idea of even what is a Project Management System and everyone was looking at each others faces. So we came to a conclusion and was to find out established Project Management Softwares and do some background studies on what is a project management system and what it is supposed to do.

We found Microsoft Project which nower days comes bundled with MS Office. and some other Open Source siblings of MS Project. We all had our own pieces of those softwares and exploited it to the utmost. Now we that we have an Idea of what is a Project Management System, our next step was to find relevant libraries and technologies to be used with it. Initially we wanted a database should be completely portable and we also needed some Libraries to plot Graphs dynamically.

While most of the well-known traditional databases(RDBMS’s) would never gonna help us in our course we opted a revolutionary new concept in Database Management System and that was to use would you call Object Database Management System(ODBMS) which is lately found to be really quick and used in most of the portable devices as their back end. A good example would be phones. Nower days most of the smart phones use Symbian Version 3 and they all use this particular technology.

And the first such system that impressed us was DB4O (DB for Objects) which is an open source solution and it’s development and maintenance is supported by IBM. We downloaded this fine piece of software bu had no idea as to how to use and even ho does it operate at it at the first place. Though we were so keen to learn all these new technologies and we met during weekends to discuss our issues and to share what we have discovered individually, nothing seem to be working for us. We knew we were no where near developing this masterpiece.

As the days went own we were just doing what we asked to produce at the end of every week. First up we named our group to be Team Pandora and our product to be Phoenix Portable Project Management System which eventually evolved to take it’s current shorten from P3MS for the easy of use. We also did a wonderful job with our initial Requirements Analysis(RA) and also with Modelling our System thanks to sharanya, Thiyalinin and Ganahulath. Sayanthan and Anushyanthan were active during first few weeks and then I donno what happened to them but they were hardly seen in action during next few weeks.

The Sad Story of Sports Meet2008

In the process Sports meet came up and I had a nasty injury on ma forehead during a practice session for Tap Rugger at Rudhra Park which I had to have five stitches just over ma left eye. And sad sad story was that it wasn’t stitched properly at the first time so I had to Re-Stitch it for the second time and this time thank GOD it was done properly by an expert. As we went on Since I was supposed to captain our house for the soccer match. And I was also interested in playing soccer afta a long break(From where I left it during ma A/L’s). All our concentration went towards the sports meet since this time it was done by our student union and we scheduled most of our matches in classy venues.

Since I was asked to rest for a week I handid over the captaincy to ma fiend Gnanahulath and he ony took it on from there. But for everyone’s surprise the day before the match I would decide to platy the mach at Cooray Park. Even most of my team mates didn’t know that I’m gonna join them for the match. The first match we were given a shock treatment where we lost our match 3-0. Our players were not properly organized and the passes were really poor, they never seem to be hitting the target. Since it was a knock out tournament and we ony had four teams, we could ony play for the third place match. This time our we were much better and we completely dominated the game during first half. And I was lucky enough to kick my first goal for the day minutes before the completion of first half. Suddenly, everybody was happy and could see a lot more composed and a confident team during the break. Now since we have a Goal to our name we had two options either to go for the kill or to defend it. But most of us wanted to go for the kill and we decided that’s the way to go about it. But the entire look of the match changed when once our defense went wrong for us. And best defender was in attacking the ball with us playing up and down. This time he wasn’t down there to defend it when ma friend Zaan (ZaanRider) made his way to the goal to put the equilizer. The match match endid in a draw during Golden Goal both the teams failed to score a goal so the match had to be decided with penalty kicks. Ony me and one one of the guy in our team succeeded in the process while all the other kicks strayed.

The misery continued for our house in the next games as well and we could ony become the runners up in the most awaited cricket match at Colombo University Grounds on the final day. And my ony other event for the sports meet was medley relay. Where I started of with the first 800 meters and ended up third. then I changed the batten to manindra for the next400 meters and then was CJ (Channimale Jayamanne) to run the next 200 meters and finally was our sports women to run us the last100 meters. We ended up third there. All in All the sports meet was a success for our union and sadly for me our house ony managed to become fourth at the IIT Sports Meet 2008.

Back to P3MS

While we finish sports meet, We suddenly realize that we have come come to the last week of our lecture serious for this semester which also means that we conclude our second year. There are many a things to ponder for us now. First thing is to finish off our Group Project, then it’s the exams (Got 6 of them). And then it’s internship.

Exam schedule has already been sent via mail. Now the first thing will be to finish our group project. So we started from where we left prior sports meet. And we knew that we have to step up our tempo if we are to do a good job with the project. We thought rigorously on it and decided to stay at IIT for next couple of weeks. Some other teams would also join us at this to stay overnight at IIT. Thanks to HOD(Head Of Department Computing) We were given the final year lab, conditions are excellent. As we feel the heat, now we have a clear picture of what we gonna implement and where we can optimize our piece of software since it has to be a portable software.

We needed to handle multiple projects, generate dynamic reports, produce charts to show how the projects and its tasks are populated. To all these stuff we needed libraries to produce PDFs and to generate graphs. That’s where we found DynamicPDF for PDF generation and JFree Chart to plot Charts. Still the problem with charts is that they use a different technology called SWT(Standard Widget Toolkit) by eclipse. and SWT wat work with JAVA Swings nor vise-versa. So once agen we come to a deadlock when it comes graphs and Gantt Chart since thay all use SWT for smoother graphics than using swings. So we don’t wanna give up SWT as well still the problem with SWT is that it’s slower than swings. So we wouldn’t like to lack in performance and at the mean while we wanted graphics to be at it’s best as well. So we decided to have our main window as swing and then to use SWT for graphs and Gantt Chart as menu items. So that they will be running on their own. SWT is slower because it’s actually embedded into a browser window. And I will be getting to the technical aspects of all these technologies later on when I get time.

Yesterday happen to be that fine day where had to submit it. We came up with our system from Gnanam’s place at around 12.30 PM. As we came in we could see other teams all dressed up professionally to do demos were present and doin their demos. Me and Gnanam were never having the looks and cloths of some one doin a demo. To be honest we didn’t even brush in the morning. And myself, I was wearing a shirt which was torn on all corners of it. There is no way that we can help our looks as I turned to Gnanahulath, he would ask me to get on with it. All the other Pandorians were there and I requested thiyalini to give a final look at our Documentation and the User manual. She and Charu went on with printing it while Gnanam and myself tested our system one last time before we present it and then went on to write the CD which had the first official release of Phoenix Portable Project Management System(P3MS) to our Module co-ordinator.

The happy news is that we have plans of making it an open source software under GPL(General Public License) license via uploading it to source forge for public use and further development. So you all can go ahead and use it if you have JAVA runtime installed on your machine. Feel free to use it and give your feedbacks on it. And Report us if you happened to find any bugs on it. I will also keep the executable version of it here for your convenience. Hope you all will have fun with P3MS.

Download P3MS Compendium

DotNet Forum is an innovative initiative by Microsoft Sri Lanka. DotNet Forum gathers most of the Microsoft Developpers and learners of SriLanka to single spot where they share their knowledge on latest technologies, developments and solutions by the everso dominating software giant Microsoft.

Not stopping there DotNet Forum has been actively supporting the growth of Microsoft Technologies through out SriLanka. hence, breaking the technology barier by constantly organizing user group meetings which are normally held at Microsft SriLanka located at Nawam Mawatha (Microsoft SriLanka training room), doing guest lectures in part of the country and at any university upon invitation which are totally free of charge (And currently one such programme is held at IIT. Which I feel so privillged to be part of it and it continues for the next week as well. So I’m looking forward to it with great anticipation.) and one of the utmost succsessful event for this year happens to be the DotNet Forum held at Mt.Lavinia Hotel.Trust me it was a trumendeous success for Microsoft SriLanka. Where People were flocked in numbers (Students, Profesionals and Geeks all in one room guess what..?) and they were treated with the best from both technical and the non tachnical aspect of life.. I felt so lucky, so privillaged to be part of it and learned a lot on one of the breaktrough technologies by Microsoft called Silverlight which concentrates on the development of RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications). But I’m afraid will it overtake it’s counterpart Flash by Adobe inc since I’ve sticked with it for years now(When it comes to the develpment of animated funky sites and intros).

And this post is written specially to join hands with the LinkPartners Programme by Dotnet Forum which helps both our blogs (or personal sites) and dotnetforum.lk build back links. And also to share the wealth of technology among the dotnet forum members and our readers so in other words it can also be called as Connecting Techi People.Ultimately it also helps us improve some traffic on both on our site and Dotnet forum.lk. So I encourage all ma readers to just drop there on your leisure and check it out because it really worths a visit.

Finally I would like to express ma heart felt thanks to Mr. Wellington for coming all the way upto IIT and spending his precious time with us to share his knowledge on some interesting technologies by Microsoft. Namely, ASP.net, AJAX frame work by Microsoft, Silverlight and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Actually it was an entreeting session that we had with him on last wednes day. Which also left a big thinking ahead of me when it comes to the development of web apps (Where I play alot..!) because all the while to be honest I have not been an ardent supporter of Microsoft products simply because of the proprietry barrier and virus threats, still I gotto accept the fact that I learned my basics on a Windows 98. And I’m used to hang around alot with Apache, MySQL and PHP (known as the AMP whether it is LAMP on Linux or WAMP on a Windows Box).

Then again what about IIS, MySQL , and ASP.net (v3.5)..? Still I’m thiking at that but I know one thing for sure database driven apps are made amazingly easy with Visual Studio and ASP.net 3.5 duo. But I still I need some time to play with ASP and come to terms with it..

Sri Lanka’s longest tunnel will be opened tomorrow at Ramboda. The tunnel longs 225 meters and constructed at a cost of 2 billion rupees.

Picture Courtesy: Dailymirror.lk

The stage Craft presented by students of IIT takes another episode this year at Bishops College auditorium later this month (february 2008).

After the great success that we had last time at Elphinston this time the event promises even more. I was asked to design the Ticket for this years event. Trust me I haven’t done such stuff ever before and this is going to be the frist time that one of my designs gonna get it’s printed version. What next I’m looking forward to it eagerly.

Anyway I welcome you all to the event to witness how techi guys go crazy on stage. Looking forward to you all.

Wish you all a very happy valentine’s day. may your love prosper this year and many more years to come. Have a nice time with your love.. Tallking about love which I’m not a geek at all, I would say is simply the best feeling that a man can ever come across in his life. I think every one have their own way of expressing and experiencing it. Some say it’s blind while some others believe it can turn around tables for them. I felt it’s blind when I heard one of friend said “Sudu” to his lover (which means fair in sinhalese) who was not fair at all anyway maybe that’s how he feels of her. So that’s all I would say because I know for certain that he is not fooling his eyes. Well it’s a funny world!.

Anyway this happens to be the first post for this semester I have been really busy with some of ma academic work plus organising few events back at ma uni.

So the life goes day by day, weeks turn months, when you look back it amazing what you have done what you have gained in the last few months. I think I got even more to do in the coming weeks bags of course works loads of exams, phase tests and a group project.

 I got lot to write when i look at ma past few weeks first I was assingned to design a ticket for Stage Craft(A cultural event organised by students of IIT) I have written a seperate post on it.

After months I took a chance to visit ma home back in mawanella on a demanding request by ma mum. Because ma school where I did ma primary schooling celebrated its centenary celebration.

 So I cudn’t turn down on it I had to travel all the way upto mawanella which is around 2 n a half hours journey from Colombo when I reached there the celebrations have already started, staright away after a short rest at ma home having lunch(I was so tired..) I went to the school, the school has changed a lot since our funny old days at the school.

I went there hoping i could meet few of ma friends during schooling time but unfortunately it didn’t turn out be so. All the faces were quite new to me suddently I gotto see a friend of mine (Safras) who even has come inorder to represent his bank (Amana Thakaful) since they put a stall in the exhibition. So when i talked him i gotto know that hardly any of our funny old gang there at the scene. Even the teachers were quite new but some of them have fortunately been able to survive so I went upto them and talked to them I realised some of them got tears into there eyes they were so happy to see what we are now. It was really embarrassing to talk to them. Among them was the teacher who taught me ahen I was in year 3 (Well then I was a real play boy by the very meaning of it so adventures, so experimantive that there were weeks where i got beaten either my mum or dad every day for my misbehavings and malpractices).

Anyway I’m happy i was privillaged to develop the school’s website which was one of the special tasks that they had for celebrating the centenary celebrations when i looked into the agenda that they had put forward. I actually completed the site months ago so they always keep on trying to contact me for the updates since it is a static site developped in one night (trust me).

Then when I came to colombo and came back for the first day of the new semester there was a anoter piece of cake (eagerly) waiting for me, OMG during the very first day we were given a set of projects (consisting 12 of them if my memory is correct) some of them were softwares and the rest were Web Applications.

What next we were sopposed to form our own groups and select a project and goahead with it there’s no other option left than that. So what an entreating welcome to the semester ( It sounded me like Oh yeh son you are are most welcome to the semester). Anyway I was reluctant to form a group of my own I’ll be happy to work with any group who will accomadate me and I wouldn’t go for a Web-App as well because all the while I have stick with the web. I got two invitations and chose the second one which is gonna develop a Portable Project Mangement System using java.

So it’s never going to be an easy ask from me since i haven’t got that much of an exposur in developping GUI applications in java though I have done few using the CLI for course works. And the other challange that is ahead of me is that I have to serve as the Project Manager.

Hence I think I gotto do alot of research before I get into actual coding. Since I have had experiences in the past to change  in requirements whilst coding and choice of inadiquate technologies I don’t wanna repeat it here again.

This time it’s a personal site of an Islamic Preach (Official web site of Shaikh Mubarak Moulavi). I actually got the invitation to undertake this site back in September 2006 but I wouldn’t do, as I was running into a very busy schedule those days with ma academic work. Because then it happens to be the all important first semester of first year of ma Undergraduate studies. hence I requested ma client to gimme some time until I get ma vacation. Thank God he will agree with me and promised wait for me till I become free. He wanted it to be some how get done from me.

After keeping the client for a long while, this short vacation that i get just before for X’mas I thought was the ideal time to start working on it. During ma first visit to collect requirements I would think it’s just a static site with not more than five or six pages with some dynamic content in it. But trust me as I went it for the second time to finalize the set of requirements I realized that the site got bigger and bigger. At this point I could understand it’s more in the likely hood to behave as a community site though it’s meant to be personal site as at the beginning.

Anyway this time around I have chosen a team of three (including maself) to work on this pro the team itself is supposed to work together for the first time. One of them has already worked with me when I did Online Police Entry System (OPES) for our annual Cutting Edge Exhibition. But here the scenario is completely different and the domain is even more vast.

Anyway I went back to ma team and told about the whole scenario and asked them whether they are willing to go ahead with it. For my amazement they were quite prepared to live up to the challenge. So why would I worry buzzed the client and gavimm the confirmation. Two days later we started working on it.

Everything went fine then n there deadlocks came in but we were able able sort them all as a team. For my comfort I got a geek who works with me at ma company who is ever willing to help me out in any crisis. We completed the pro last week and took some time to do a bit of quality assurance. This weekend we are almost done along with some of the very late adjustments that came in from the client. And I thought of doing the documentation they before yesterday with ma expert when it comes to that part of it. And I also made an appointment with the client on Sunday morning

Again when I went in to IIT (Where I do ma Studies, Projects and many more crazy stuffs…!) on Saturday ma other colleague was there already present but not the person whom I rely heavily to get done the documentation. We both waited for for hours tried buzzing him on several occasions and texting him as many a times as would you like it but all in vain there wouldn’t be any response from him. So after having our lunch we thought of giving it up. And went back to our places.

When I came into ma room in the evening after having a wash there waits a surprise call for me. The long awaited colleague of mine is on the line. His voice hears so deteriorated OMG he has fallen in his wash room in the morning, knock his head for God sake one of his cousin has been there with him who will admit him at the hospital. He is been found unconscious for a while and then has recovered later. So he told me the whole scenario and asked me to convey the message to the other friends including the other member of team HAGHZ as well. And now he’s not there in Colombo any more coz he has been taken Kandy and admitted there for further treatment. Since he’s from matale and his parents would like to be with him.

So what can I do now??. I asked him whether do I need to be there along side him but he wouldn’t want it at the first place since his parents are there and more likely he’s gonna get discharged in the morning. So was I was requested go ahead with the job and if that doesn’t happen then again I will be asked to go to Kandy late in the evening the other day(i.e Sunday). So called ma client and and told him the situ that I’m up to and he will be flexible to have a meet up with me without the all important documentation. Anyway I have promised him to submit the DOC later on within the week., Which he would agree hence, I went on to meet him yesterday itself and handid over the site as it was scheduled earlier.

you can check out the site on,

www.mubarakmoulavi.org

I used the below given code to read a text file(data.txt) during one of my course works for JAVA as it was a requirement for that course work. And thought it will be usefull for many others in carrying out various other projects as well.

Getting into to the code first up you need to import two classes, BufferedReader and FileReader in my case i have used the main method itself to read the file if you wanna read it more than once the recommended way is to introduce a new function to read the file since, it would be the professional approach to get on with it

And you will also note that I have used the split() function to a good use here using an array of string called “tkn” which takes all the required fields from the text file where ever it comes across a (,) in  a particular line. Hence, you can manipulate all those elements seperately later in your programme.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader; public class ReadText
{
 public static void main(String args[])
 {

  try
 {

  FileReader fread=null;
  BufferedReader bread = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(”data.txt”));

  String line;
  while((line=bread.readLine())!=null)
  {
   String[] tkn =line.split(”,”);
   for(int i=0; i<tkn.length;i++)
   {
    System.out.println(tkn[i]);

   }
 }

}

catch(Exception e)
{
     System.out.println(”Exception: ” + e);
}

} //end of main()

} //end of class ReadText

openSUSE, another Linux Distribution which is a project carried out by the Free And Opensource Software community with the aid of Novell to ensure availability of a usable Linux Distribution for everyone residing on this planet.

The doors are wide opened for everyone to be part of this exiting program where users & developers come together to achieve a common goal at the end of the day, which is to make sure a most usable linux distro to the rest of world and generations to come.

The latest version being openSUSE 10.3 which you can download from,
software.opensuse.org

Download this piece of linux distro when you think it’s time for you to go for a change, install it on your local machine try it for yourself if you happen to come across any bugs file your own bug report & help improve openSUSE.

I would like to wrap up with an old saying of mine, “Say no to Pirated Software” And never be a victim of Software Confeiting. Be honest, Be opensource.