Archive for the ‘Sri Lanka’ Category
Stream Live Videos With Your Mobile Phone and Ustream!
Imagine you are having an event / gathering which you would like to stream over the web! Ustream might be service that you are looking for. It is a free service that let you stream and record an audio/video feed online. It basically download a small flash app in to your client computer and let you stream from any video feed (most commonly a webcam) connected to that computer. Quality is not the best but its watchable and mostly depend on the quality of video feed and your upload speed.
Service is very easy to use. I have never done any form of online broadcasts before, but it took me less than 15 mins to create an account and do a small test broadcast. You can either do public broadcasts or password protected private broadcasts. Recording is only one press of a button away.
A Case For Going Hybrid!
These days there is a bit of a hype about hybrid cars, mainly fueled by slashed tax. Of course they come with an interesting promise. But can we really utilize its full capacity?
Main benefits of hybrids are ability to run more on less fuel, or reduced cost per km and reduced carbon footprint. This is achieved in two ways.
By having an alternative energy source in the car, hybrid can work around some deficiencies of internal combustion engine. In a regular car you need to have larger bulky engines which suck up more fuel and deliver more energy to support acceleration. But when you are cruising you don’t need that much energy. A hybrid can have a smaller, efficient engine and/or run it at the efficient RPM level, while electric powertrain is compensating for the rest of it. Also when decelerating, a regular car will slow down by evaporating its energy as heat through friction. It means that energy is lost. A hybrid use regenerative brakes, which is just a fancy name for the mortar doubling up as a generator to absorb that energy back to its batteries. As a result hybrid accelerates, runs and decelerates more efficiently. Because of it hybrid can get good mileage in slow city limit driving too. Also breaks will generate less heat, and engine will do less work resulting reduced maintenance.
Unlimited Terms for Presidency Good Thing?
I am not a political writer and politics is not my thing either. But recent news on unlimited terms for executive presidency made me think. This is not a well thought through post either. I am just putting out some thoughts that came to my mind.
Main argument that I have heard so far is, if a president is good enough to retain majority support among people (lets assume he is not influencing the election result in any way other than doing his duty as the president to meet or exceed the expectation of people) it is unfortunate that such a president will not be able to serve his people longer than two terms. Well that sounds logical.
Also we are in a post war situation where there is a lot to be done in terms of development and reconciliation. It requires to have a continued strong policy and a strong man on the job for longer than two terms. But that is a temporary situation.
YouTube: Wavin’ Flag – Bradby Mix – At Royal Parade 2010, Street Party
Royal College Orchestra put up a brilliant show at Royal Parade Street Party 2010. This was my favorite part of Street Party. Just felt like sharing!
Viraga Perera & Sanchita Wickremesooriya backed by the Royal College Orchestra performs their version of the Wavin’ Flag (originally by K’Naan) to celebrate Royal College 175th Anniversary at the Street Party following the Royal Parade on July 3rd 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q4r-U7fnsY&feature=player_embedded
Royal Parade 2010 & Street Party – Photos & Afterthoughts
Royal Parade 2010 and Street Party was held on 3rd July 2010 as a part of 175th anniversary celebrations of Royal College. It was a grand event by any definition. Probably the festive atmosphere was even bigger than IIFA. And I am glad that I did not miss it.
It was very interesting to see other schools participating in the walk. If I remember right there was Kingswood and Trinity from Kandy too. It was nice of them to come all the way from there. There was College band, junior band, eastern band, and number of bands from nearby schools, and a quit a number of papara bands. I was bit surprised to see Mahanama College after seeing what some of their guys are doing on facebook. But it’s great that they came. I guess in every school there is a small bunch of guys who gives a wrong impression.
There were people from all the walks of life. Young Royalists with their parents, Royalists, Old Royalists, Really Old Royalists, teachers, past teachers, elephants, old fashion double decker buses, fancy cars, clowns, Ninja Turtles, Asterix, Obelix, and what the name of his crush?, she was there too. And I think I saw about 50 out of 300 Spartans minus King Leonidas. May be that’s what was left after the war with Persians 
. There were lots more fun stuff but this is all I can remember. Best part was meeting up with old pals after years and having a chat with them. I met many friends and classmates that I haven’t seen since I left school in 2002.
Parade was great and the Party was even better. Great DJ, food and the live band. Even the FIFA fans were able to catch the action on big screen. For me, the best part at the party was live performance of Royal SaGa guys. Their talent was amassing and they pulled off a brilliant show.
FM Royal 2010 – 175th Anniversary Celebrations Broadcast is Now “On Air”
Royal College, Radio Club is broadcasting “FM Royal” radio channel parallel to Royal Parade 2010 and “Party On The Street” as a part of Royal College 175th Anniversary Celebrations.
It will be on air from 1st of July through 3rd July 2010 on 96.1 MHz FM. Apart from Colombo broadcast there are two relay broadcasts from Kandy and Galle. You can also listen in its webcast and podcast from FM Royal website.
Links:
A WALK FOR A PURPOSE – THE ROYAL PARADE 2010 – Only Two Days Away
Royal College which started in year 1835 is celebrating its 175th anniversary in year 2010. Need not to say that this is a massive milestone and time to celebrate service rendered by Royal College to its past and present students, and to this country.
Royal Parade 2010 and “Party on the Street” will be happening on 3rd July 2010 as a part of 175th Anniversary Celebrations. This is a once in a life time event all the Royalists and Old Royalists can take part with their friends and families. If you a Royalist or an Old Royalist this is not an event to miss.
Parade is expected to start at 3:oo pm from Royal College Junior Gate. Hopefully you have already received information about the event. If not, following are few information extracted from the e-mail sent out by organizers.
Worshiping Sun God at Galle Face Green
I captured this image with my mobile phone sometimes back (18-April-2010) when I was at Galle Face Green. I was just trying to capture the evening sky. I could not do a good job on it as the lighting was little low for my phone to handle and I was pointing the cam directly at Sun.
I realized what it looked like only after I viewed the image on my computer after coming home. By than it was obviously too late to go back and take few more (better) shots 
I wish I had a better camera with me than just a mobile phone at that time!
/Rakhitha
Should We Privatize Higher Education? – Is That Even the Real Question?
This is a response to post “???? ????????? ???????????? ?? ??????” in ‘Middle Path’ blog. I was originally going to post a comment to the same post but my comment turned out bit too long. Also I am no good at Sinhala written language (not proud of it by the way). Therefore I ended up writing this post.
Writer recognizes that higher education is a basic right but not a privilege, every one who pass A/L must be given higher education. And he/she also recognizes that government can no way provide free higher education for all. But at the end, he try to make his point in the form of 6 questions, and state that even though he recognize that all should be given higher education, there is lot more to be done before that.
I will try to share my view on these questions and generally this topic. I am not expert of education system. This is simply based on my experience of going through the education system for about 18 years. I believe that the writer has assumed that opening of private universities means the closing of government-run universities. Which I believe is not correct. Government will continue to have public universities. And there will be a tight competition to get in to them, even if the selection method is not perfect. But the question is where should the rest go? At least that’s the “Democratic – and – Socialist” way of doing it.
Moved from Dialog ‘Unlimited’ Student Package to Mobitel Zoom 1290
I was a happy customer of a Dialog Mobile Broadband Student Package for more than a year. In fact, after getting my student ID of the MSc program, first thing I did was signing up for a student package (So far its the only useful thing I got from this MSc). Signal reception was pretty damn low at my place. No bars at all. But E220 modem managed to connect and deliver around 40KB/s downlink speed on manual network selection.
Recently my girl friend purchased a Mobitel M3 connection. It turned out that Mobitel gives a 8Gb data bundle at LKR 1290/= + Tax. Which is damn better than Dialog student package (5Gb for LKR 1500/= Tax). Dialog connection is pretty damn useless after you cross 5Gb limit. Dialog offers a package with 10Gb data bundle but that is almost LKR 3k/= + Tax. I did a bit of math, and it turned out with a Mobitel Zoom 1290 package, I can use 10Gb per month for a cost of roughly LKR 2k/= including taxes. When you add the taxes for Dialog 5Gb student package, it is almost LKR 2k/=.
