Here we go…

IndexedProperty Helper Class

As a I said earlier the indexed property simply return an object of a class which has an indexer. And the implementation of the indexer should delegate the getter and setter calls back to the original object which own the property. Here is a sample implementation for the indexer object. I have used generics to make the implementation independent from data type of the property and the data type of index key.

    //This is the class for indexed property
    //this class simply has an indexer
    //and the indexer will delegate the setter and getter calls
    //back to parent object using two delegates
    //Generics are used to avoid having to hard code the indexer key and value types
    class IndexedProperty<IK,IV>
    {
        //These two delegates are used to delegate the get and set calls
        public delegate IV GetterDelegate<IKD, IVD>(IKD key);
        public delegate void SetterDelegate<IKD, IVD>(IKD key, IVD value);

        //Following variables will stor the actual delegate references
        GetterDelegate<IK, IV> getter;
        SetterDelegate<IK, IV> setter;

        //Constructor
        //When creating the object you need to provide the referances to getter and setter methods
        //which will be called ultimately when the indexer is used
        public IndexedProperty(GetterDelegate<IK, IV> getMethod, SetterDelegate<IK, IV> setMethod)
        {
            this.getter = getMethod;
            this.setter = setMethod;
        }

        //The indexer
        //Nothing much here
        //Just pass the call to the relevant gelegate
        public IV this[IK index]
        {
            get
            {
                return getter(index);
            }
            set
            {
                setter(index,value);
            }
        }
    }

In the above code as you can see there is no much magic. The main part of the code is in the indexer implemented in line 28. It just call the relevant delegate. Two delegates are initialized at the constructor using the parameters passed by the creator. Therefore its the creator who is responsible for actually setting and getting the value of whatever the indexed content.

Using IndexedProperty Helper Class

Following code demonstrates how the above class is used. The given example is a very theoretical one and it could have been done using collection classes in .Net framework. But it is implemented using IndexedProperty class just to demonstrate how it is used. Following implementation is just a map which stores key/value pairs of string data. But in a real scenario you will use this in cases where data is not directly stored in an indexed collection (in that case you can directly make use of the indexer of that collection) but the data is accessed in an indexed manner.

In the following code the indexed property (named Item) is simply a property of type IndexedProperty. They IndexedProperty  instance that we return is initialized with the delegates to get_value and set_value methods which does the actual work.

    //This is just an example of how to use the IndexedProperty Class
    //In this case I have implemented an structure similer to a Perl Hash
    class ClassWithIndexedProperty
    {
        //This is the variable in which we keep the data
        //een numbered elements will contail the keys while
        //odd numbered elements contaim values
        string[] indexedData = new string[100];

        //The object for indexer property
        //in this example both key and value are of type string
        IndexedProperty<string, string> CharIndexer;

        public ClassWithIndexedProperty()
        {

        }

        //This is the method for setter
        private void set_value(string index, string value)
        {
            int nullIndex = -1;
            for (int i = 0; i < indexedData.Length; i += 2)
            {
                if (indexedData[i] == null && nullIndex < 0)
                    nullIndex = i;
                if (indexedData[i] == index)
                {
                    indexedData[i + 1] = value;
                    return;
                }
            }
            if (nullIndex >= 0)
            {
                indexedData[nullIndex] = index;
                indexedData[nullIndex + 1] = value;
            }
            else {
                //Throw an Exception
            }
        }

        //This is the method for getter
        private string get_value(string index)
        {
            for (int i = 0; i < indexedData.Length; i += 2)
            {
                if (indexedData[i] == index)
                {
                    return indexedData[i + 1] ;
                }
            }
            return null;
        }

        //Here comes the indexed property
        //Return type is IndexedProperty which implements indexer
        public IndexedProperty<string, string> Item
        {
            get
            {
                //When we access the property for the first time we create the object
                //And in subsequent calls we just need to return it.
                if (CharIndexer == null)
                    CharIndexer = new IndexedProperty<string, string>(get_value, set_value);
                return CharIndexer;
            }
        }
    }

Even though its 70 lines long, in above example the only part you need to focus here is the actual implementation of the property named “Item” in lines 58 to 67. There we simply return an object of IndexedPrperty which is properly initialized with delegates to methods which does actual work.

Testing

Following is just a simple test program that I wrote to test above code.

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ClassWithIndexedProperty test = new ClassWithIndexedProperty();
            test.Item["A"] = "Apple";
            test.Item["B"] = "Banana";

            Console.WriteLine(test.Item["A"]);
        }
    }

To Do…

Read Only and Write Only Indexed Properties

As you can see in the actual indexer in IndexedProperty class it simply pass the call to a delegate. The creator may choose to pass null as one of the delegates to make it read only or write only. Therefore its good to handle the null value inside the indexer and throw a proper exception.

Multi-Dimensional Keys

Given IndexedProperty class handle any data type as long as the key is one dimensional. You will need to change some code to support multi-dimensional keys.

Any Suggestions?

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Anyway, this is not about loosing fat. This is just an idea which keep missing with my head. Over the years I have realized when there is something you just cant get out of your head (Ex:- Stuff you got to do at office on Monday but it’s still Friday night) it helps to write it down on something. Once you write it down, for some reason your mind stop worrying about it. At-least it works for me.

Ok. here it goes…

Most gym equipment make us do something against resistance. Sometimes the resistance is the Gravitational effect on our own body. Sometimes it is moving something against gravity. Sometimes it is just pulling on a spring or working against friction. Either way we are trying to move something that do  not want to move. And the energy we produce by burning our fat is just wasted. Why can’t we use some form of regenerative brakes as the resistance. Any equipment which use circular motion can easily be used to turn a dynamo. Also any linear motion can be converted to circular motion…. Also if the resistance given by a dynamo is not enough we can use other forms of transformation of energy. And finally we will be able to do something useful with those extra inches.

Anyway it turned out that some one has already tried it. here it is. Apparently a human being cant produce much energy through exercise to make this economically viable. But it is quite cool.

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Until recently my wife was using a Nokia E75. Which is a fine phone when it comes to the specs and the looks but if you drop it, its going to be a few thousand rupees worth of repair. A small drop can break some part of the housing, screen, and ribbon cable. Just to give you the picture of the costs the housing repairs will cost you 3k or above and the screen will cost about 11k if you insist on original parts. E75 is just not a solid build.

After breaking the screen for the second time we decided to get a new phone. But there were few problems. My wife was still quite attached to her E75. So we needed something which gives a similar feel but beats E75 to win her heart.

Nokia is almost out of the mobile phone market. And they did not ship anything impressive recently. Therefore it’s not going to be a Nokia. Selecting a phone has shifted from selecting a brand to selecting a platform. Therefore it’s going to be either Apple or Android. We both are not big fans of Apple. Therefore it’s not going to be Apple or any other company that try to copy Apple iPhone looks. Seriously how hard is it to come up with a creative original look. Even apple has not made much progress when it comes to looks after its first release. By the way. It has to be RED in color. What can I say. She likes red.

After some scouting, finally we settled for a Red Sony Xperia Neo. It’s a about LKR 3k more expensive than the Neo V but that’s a price worth paying for a better camera. It has really good specs and excellent external design for its range. And the perfect shade of red. It is also one of the few phone models that comes in red color. But I have few complaints to make.

1. Shape of the back of the phone makes it vulnerable to scratches. But you can avoid it if you buy a back cover. And there are covers in the market which does not take away the beauty of the design.

2. Ports that connect the charger/data cable and HDMI cables are covered with a cover which look really fragile. Sony should have done more thinking on it.

3. Camera has the same problem that many Sony camera users complain about. It just can’t capture color red right.

4. It came with a 8 GB memory card. But for some reason this phone is the slowest phone I have used when it comes to transferring files between PC and phone.

But even with above issues it’s a great phone. Unfortunately I am still stock with my old E71. For some reason I like full QWERTY key pad. Sony Xperia Mini Pro is too small and the Xperia Pro is little expensive. And unlike the E75, E71 is as solid as a rock. I have dropped it countless times and in one case in to a bucket wet of cement. But after washing its works just fine. So it doesn’t feel right to replace it.  It reminds me of my old 3310. And it has many battle-scars on its housing to prove it.

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Piracy is a problem for any industry I am not  trying to defend it. But this is not how you fight it. And in my opinion this is not even the fight they should be fighting in the first place.

Fight Piracy With Availability

IMO piracy is the answer that internet age has found for inaccessibility. Lower the availability you will find piracy spiking. Just think about it. World is not just US,Canada and UK any more. Most of the population is outside those regions and they too have TVs and Internet. If you live outside US/UK/Canada region how long do you have to wait till you can watch the latest Episode of your favorite TV show or a movie legally. Most likely your local cable channels don’t has it or few seasons behind or you will have to wait till a DVD release. Most people are not that much patient.

What media industry need is a better delivery system. They have to realize that the market is no longer just United States and Canada. It’s time that they explore fast distribution strategies across the world. May be they should have more cable channels to broadcast their programs in other countries. Or they just have to bypass cable operators and just do it on the internet.

This worked with software and it should work for other media as well. One example is Antivirus software in SL and South Asian region. Few years back only way to get a legal version is to pay the outrages price (in south Asian economies) which is set for US/Canada/UK market. As a result everyone used cracked version. Now there is a separate license for this region at a reduced price. Most of us buy it. Company did not lose money by slashing prices. They just made more. Because those who did not pay to use their product are paying now.

All you need is to innovate in order to meet global market and 21st century technology.

Understanding Internet Age

Some of the things in these acts which require sites to filter content posted by users, simply show the lack of knowledge about the social dynamics and scale of internet. It is no different from an Indian judge saying that social media must scan for user comments which insult their political & religious figures. Only difference is what you are looking for, and the powers that are given by the act which is worse in US version.

Old Model Just Don’t Work

Just look around you. World has changed. Business models that made billions 20 years ago don’t work today. Ideas that simply did not make any sence 20 years ago are thriving. Just imagine, If someone tell you 20 years ago, that you can create a damn good encyclopedia bu just letting everyone and anyone write it without paying them a dime, what would you say?

Remember music CDs? Unless you are a collector you are not interested in buying the entire album just to listen to only one or two songs in it. Also if you just want to listen, you don’t want to pay for all the physical material, packaging and distribution costs. It does not make sense any more. If you remember that’s what apple tapped in to.

If you are a Star Gate fan like me you must have watch the financial horrors of MGM finally killed the TV show and its movies we all loved. They blamed bad DVD sales and ratings for it. Who buys DVDs any more. May be only the collectors. Even the pirated DVD shops are not selling as they used to.

Same goes for those who depend on ratings and advertising money. Seriously does current rating systems really cover how well a show is doing popularity wise. Does the companies even try to turn the popularity outside US/Canada/EU in to money.

My point is, many of the models that are running today are based on pre internet age. World has a come a long way, so should the media industry. Their failure to innovate and reach global markets has not only made them loose opportunities to make money, but has also created a void which create room for piracy. SOPA/PIPA is nothing but attempts to holding on to old ways of doing business disguised in IP protection laws by those who cannot innovate.

oh I forgot, Happy New Year!

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We decided to find our way from work place to apartment on foot on our own after work. When we get out of the office it was completely dark and temperature was near zero. We did not have a map with us, but being a long time Google maps user on a GPS enabled phone we were quite confident and did not even bother to ask for directions from anyone.

It was almost impossible to press buttons on mobile with the glows on. To make matters even more complicated, Google decided to make it more interesting. When we searched for walking directions to our destination, Google maps gave directions through major roads on which we are not supposed to walk through or cross. It completely ignored biking and walking paths. We ended up having to look for walking/biking paths parallel to directions given by Google.

Fun part began once we are half way through. It turned out that batteries run out lot faster when exposed to low temperatures. And we found ourself in the middle of no-ware with a dead GPS device at hand. Luckily we figured the general direction we need to walk and finally ended up in a correct neighbourhood.

Never trust google maps when you don’t have an unlimited power supply

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Everything Starts with Taking a Backup

A move is as simple as a backup and restore. You back up your old host and restore it at your new host. That is all you got to do if your domain name/blog URL is not going to change. Backing up has two steps. You need to back up your database and you also need to back up your files. You don’t need t back up entire home directory or public_html folder. If you have wp-content folder backed up that’s good enough. Because that’s where all your Thames, plugins and uploaded files are stored. If you have access to cpannel this is a very simple task. Otherwise you may need to use one of those plugins which allow you to back up the database  and files.

Restoring at New Host

When I was moving, I did not want to have entire public_html copied from my old host to new host. Instead I wanted to have a relatively clean setup. Therefore I decided to install a fresh copy of WordPress at the new host. And then copied wp-content of old host in to new host. This worked for me because at my old host, I had an up-to-date WordPress installation. There were no major version mismatches. If you are restoring from an old backup, may be you will need the entire public_html to be restored.

Next step is restoring the database. If you using cpannel, this is as simple as uploading the backup in correct cpannel page. Otherwise you will need to extract the database backup, which will give you a sql file, and run it on your new database host.

After restoring the database at the new host, You need to edit wp-config.php file to point to restored database. There is one more thing you need to do in order make your WordPress work after this change. That is you need to grant your my sql user (one you have in wp-config.php file) the access to newly restored database. This can easily be done on cpannel MySQL databases page.

As long as your blog URL remain same this is all you need to do. We’ll come to URL change later.

Pointing the Domain to New Host

This is the tricky part. You need to change the NS records of your domain to point to the name servers of your new host. But this change take some time to take effect. Because name servers all over the world have cached your DNS info. In next 48 hours, some will still connect to your old host using old cached DNS information. Some might still connect to your old name server at the old host to find your IP. To minimise the confusion, make sure to update the DNS records at your old host to point to your new host IP address. You can do this by using DNS Zone Editor on cPannel, the advance one.

But regardless of what you do in next 48 hours, when you visit your site to do any cleanups, you can’t be sure which version of the site you are looking at. To sort this out, it’s best to add a new post or make a visible change on your blog at the old host. You have to do this after taking backups, otherwise same change will come to new host through the backup.

Make sure you have both sites up at both locations for next few days until all the caches start pointing to new place.

Prevent Your old Site Going Zombie

You may also want to disable any plugins at your old host. Specially the once that are responsible for dealing with search engines and others services such as Twitter/Facebook. Otherwise it will keep feeding details of a dead (undead to be exact) site to google and other places. This will have to be done before you change the DNS settings.

Dealing With URL Change

Well, if your URL going to change as a result of the move, your site at new host will not work after the move. To fix this you need to change two WordPress options in the database.  One way to do this is to log in to PhpMyAdmin, query ‘_options’ table, and look for options ‘siteurl’ and ‘home’. Both of them need should change to your new URL in order for your blog to work.

Or you can edit wp-login.php file and add following two PHP code to make the change. But make sure to change them back once it did its job.

update_option('siteurl', 'http://your_new_site_url' );
update_option('home', 'http://your_new_site_url' );

In my case I didn’t have to do this permanently as it was the same URL. But if you have an alternative URL for your new site, which you can use until your domain change take effect, you can have this changed temporary. But make sure to have your search engine related plugins disabled. Because you don’t want your unborn site pushing its temporary address to search engines, social networks and what not.

Never Forget to Plan

Even though this information is available all over the place, don’t ever make the mistake of failing to plan. Check to see if you have any changes done manually in your old host. Read the moving instructions on wordpress codex. Check what are the things you need to move to cover all the changes. Test the restore process in your local host in case you haven’t ’restore-tested’ your backups already.

Finally the disclaimer , I may have not included all aspects of moving, as this post is simply about my moving experience. If you want a smooth transfer don’t consider this post as a short cut. One more thing, if you are an expert in the moving industry, and find that I have done something wrong while moving this site, please let me know so I can fix it before it’s too late .

Happy Moving!

/Rakhitha

Related Posts:

1. Moving from WordPress.com to Own Hosting – Getting It Up and Running

This happened way too often with my hosting provider. To be specific the X hosting provider. Not that this blog is some mission critical application, but when ever there is a problem with servers or downtime, a simple proactive mail from the host can save lot of time for customers.  Instead they just make us panic and wonder what is going on. And in most of such incidents it takes ages to get a response from them.

I would not blame it entirely on them because this is typical Sri Lankan attitude. Whenever there is a problem we often keep our heads under the sand hoping that no one will notice. We do not take proactive measures on time and wait till the situation degrade to the point where clients start walking out. Seriously this need to change. Otherwise how are we going to complete with rest of the world.

Just to share with you my experience… My tiny blog is nothing compared to many sites that are getting the same treatment. I am not going lose anything if my site go offline for even weeks. Only reason I am on own hosting is simply because I love to play around with the code and WordPress.org hosting don’t let me do this. Also I am not satisfied with the backup facility they give. (Blog export/import is not a backup feature. It does not even work if you blog have more than a few posts). Even with such minor requirements a host that is not reliable enough or not communicating enough about their problems can annoy you to the point where you want to move out. Even when the alternative is as twice as expensive and half the world away.

Also in a time where companies can pop-up and disappear in a blink, its critical to have some fool-proof method to select a host. At least this time, I did some research, read some reviews and tested the response of support before selecting a new host. This actually helped me to avoid number of potential bad apples. But only time can tel if I have landed on a safe ground. On the mean time I’ll keep taking backups.

By the way next post will be on moving a wordpress blog from host to host. Here is a hint, apart from some trouble with domain transfer everything went easier than I expected. Thank god I took backups.

/Rakhitha

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How to fix E61:00 on youtube.

Remember that old TV your parents used to have, which simply refuse to work until you give it few good bangs. Well I thought you don’t have to do that any more with new 21st century electronics. Well! I was wrong.

My Cyber-shot started to give me this error called E61:00. Basically when you turn it on it fail to focus, and show a blur image on the LCD with the error code. And the error code means exactly that. It’s like the focus motor is jammed or something.

In case you have used Sony products, you know it costs a fortune to get them repaired by Sony people. Therefore I went about looking for a solution on the web. All I was looking for was some one saying that this is not a critical failure and fixable without replacing any major part. So that I can happily take it to a service center. But all I could find was, people saying only way to fix it is giving a good bang (here, here and pretty much anywhere else). This is the best hi-tech solution out there, but it didn’t work.

I was first bit afraid. I have seen many cameras with jammed/broken lens blocks as a result of dropping. Only way to fix that is to replace lens block, which costs more than a half of the price of the camera. So at first I gave it a good shake and few slaps with my fingers. No luck! Since getting this fixed going to cost a fortune at the support center any way, I gave few good bangs followed by a drop. Guess what, Now the camera works as good as new!

Here is a comment from one user in one of the above links. It pretty much cover what went through my mind.

Another user had this advice to give…

“IT ACTUALLY WORKED!!!!! it took me about ten times worth of banging- i banged it on a book…now it works perfectly!! DONT GIVE UP if it doesnt work the first few times…just keep in mind all the money you are saving and keep banging!” - katie Shrader

By the way, if you break your camera trying to do this. Don’t blame me. That’s the risk with low tech solutions.

/Rakhitha

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It’s a wonderful plugin, but it has some issues. Biggest of which is, when trying to update local cache from Flickr, it often times out if your stream has more than 50 images, which is common for many Flickr users.

If you have already used this plugin, you know what I am talking about. “Flickr Curl Function failed to execute. Oops, there seems to be a problem accessing the Flickr information.” is not a very helpful error message . However in its community pages there is a partially working solution. With bit of time getting my hands dirty with PHP code. I managed to do a pretty much complete solution for the problem. And here it comes. By the way if you guys don’t want to mess with PHP or the plugin code of your sites, this is where to stop.

flickrInclude.php

In this file, I have included two new functions. Nothing complicated. They are just there to format out HTML log messages that are written in to plugin admin page when updating local cache.

Then I also changed getResponseObject function to increase cURL connection timeout to 30 secs, and cURL time out to 6000 secs. This took care of most of the timeout issues.

flickrScript.php

In this file, I have changed all error messages to use HTML formatting functions I added above. In addition I have added some information messages to make updating process more transparent. With those you will be able to see all the images that are being loaded.

Following the partial solution given on community page,  I modified the code to load photo stream batch at a time instead of all at once. Batch size is hard coded to 25. This should pretty much get rid of  timeout issue. It will also get rid of 500 photos limit. But I have placed an artificial  500 photo limit in the code. Because it may be best to have only the recent 500 photos shown, if you have thousands of photos in your stream.

In case you guys are using this plugin and having problems with above issues, this might be useful. If you want to apply these changes to your blog, some technical knowledge will be required to edit the plugin file to replace them with code I have posted. Also other changes / plugins you may have in your sites might also conflict with these changes. Just Saying .

Here is the code. You can find my specific changes if you search for ‘RAKA’ in the code.

flickr-thumbnails-photostream-mod (30)

/Rakhitha

UPDATE:

With further use and increasing number of photos in my stream, I discovered number of more problems.

1. This plugin store all it’s cache in one WordPress option. At one point it simply stopped caching my newly added photos. I checked option table and found that it uses a LONGTEXT column to store option values. Theoretically it can handle up-to 4Gb of data. But the real limit depends on the packet size being used in database connection as well as available memory. So it’s not that much, and gave me trouble once I have 130 images on this host.

I basically wrote a new update option function for arrays to handle arrays in a slightly different way. If array is longer than a specific number of elements, it will split it in to chunks and each chunk will be stored in a separate option. This will prevent pushing the luck against mysql packet size. This is still bad design. Ideally there should be a separate table for this cache.

2. When there is a large number of photos in the stream, it will result in a large number of calls to Flickr API. You might end-up being temporary blocked from accessing it either by firewalls at the host or  Flickr (Flickr says they don’t block so it must be firewalls).

To work around this. I wrote a separate script to download the photo cache in to a file in your local machine. And implemented a photo cache upload facility to ‘Flickr Control’ page.

Here is the modified plugin. Search for RAKA to find changes…

flickr-thumbnails-photostream-mod2 (31)

Here is the script to download the data from Flickr to hard disk for uploading to the plugin. You will need to edit the script and provide your Flickr API Key and User ID.

download_photo_details Script (36)

/Rakhitha

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Should the farmers problems be governments problem?. Well as far as the politics and votes are concern, yes it should be. They represent a large percentage of voter base outside Colombo. But should it involve itself at the level it does today? I don’t think so.

Farmers has many problems. Their crops are not market driven. Their decisions are driven more by tradition than science and economics. There is a disconnect between them and the market.  They have very high production costs and low returns. They import fertilizer and machinery, but the product is locally consumed. And when it comes to selling their harvest the middle man is pretty much a monopoly, which farmers can’t control.

I agree with MAHO in many of its points. Specially about the gap between science and farmers on the ground, Diversification, Proper Planning and Organization. But I do not agree when it comes to government should do this, that and what not.

In my opinion there is a better way. And here are few things we can do. Many go hand in hand with MAHO suggestions in principle, but differ when it comes to who is responsible of doing it. I have not put them in any specific order. Some points might make more sense if ordered differently.

1. Make Farming an Industry

In my opinion, biggest problem with agriculture industry is that, we do not do it as an industry. Or at least our farmers are not a part of our ‘Agriculture Industry’. They are simply not industrialized. For them, it is a way of life or self employment. This has to change inside out. Starting from farmers. Government can only preach it and build awareness.

2. Set a Clear Vision and a Mission

Our agricultural industry need a vision and a mission. Our traditional mission of making Sri Lanka self-sufficient with rice is not good enough. Mainly because it do not cover concerns of all stake holders. We want farmers to make a good living, by earning good money. At the same time every one in the country need food at a lower cost. Those two interests simply can’t work together. Just think about it. We pay a quite a high price for food in the market. At the same time, we pay farmers to by subsidized fertilizer, seeds, and to create an artificial certified price for them. It’s you and me who pay that money. End of the day farmers are still poor.

3. Open up more markets.

Our mission of making Sri Lanka self-sufficient with rice also implies that our production is consumed locally. This don’t need to be the case. We can have businesses who by from local market and sell internationally after packaging and branding. This work well for Tea. Why not for other products. Indi recently posted about one similar non-profit movement. In my opinion, it don’t have to be non-profit. It is perfectly ok to make profit out of it. In fact profits will make more investors to take the opportunity and create the competition. Last thing we want is another monopoly.

Of course government can do this, but any one with some international trading capabilities can do this too. So there is no need to wait till the government do this.

4. Invest and Innovate in Supporting Industries.

When an Industry is wide-spread, more other industries pop up to support that industry. This improve the quality and efficiency of parent industry and reduce cost. For example, entire software industry is there to support other industries. But has this happen in Sri Lanka when it comes to agriculture. Only things that are local about local agriculture is our lands, water, seeds and labor. We import everything else.

Why can’t local businesses produce fertilizer and farming machinery instead of importing most of it, which is the largest cost component of farming. Public money that is spent to subsidize  fertilizer can be spent only on locally produced fertilizer and machinery. Even without subsidies locally produced stuff will be relatively cheaper.

This is not technically impossible, these machines are not that complicated. We have enough creative people. We only need the vision. I know at least one person who is an engineer turned part-time farmer. He design his own farming machines and get them built at local welding shop.

5. Fight Monopolies

Monopolies are bad. But to kill it, all you need is more people joining the same business. At every region, there should be a competitive environment when it comes to food processing, marketing, transport and selling. Having ten places to sell your crop in ten different places it not the solution. You need ten buyers competing in the same region. Government can’t do this. Because government is only one player. It’s a monopoly it self. Just think about it, what would happen there is only one company who is buying Tea from central auction and export them?

What we need is, small scale, regional entrepreneurs to step up at grass root levels. Government may get involved by facilitating loans for such regional businesses, if it is difficult for them to get loans from commercial banks. Government can organize trade events to allow such people to network until an industry body take over. But whatever government does it must make sure not to become another monopoly.

6. Own and Control Supply/Value/Distribution Chain

Farmers in a specific region can get together and setup food processing and distribution businesses. That way they can own and control their distribution channels. Farmers can become share holders of these businesses. That will bring them more revenue. More importantly, it will connect farmers with the market. This will give them vital market feedback which they can in turn use, when making decisions on how and what to farm.

7. Add Value to By Products

Take Cuba for example. One of their main industries is sugar cane. They make sugar, use leaves to make bio fuel and then use the throw away stuff to burn in power plants.

Of course we throws whats left of the paddy plant after harvesting back to field as carbonic fertilizer. And we burn rice shells in bakeries. IMO producing electricity from them might be more profitable at least until we come out of our current energy situation. Technically speaking we can burn the shells to produce carbon monoxide and use that gas in generators hooked up to national grid.

We can probably extract the red part of the rice which is rich which fibers and use them in other foods. Not just animal food.

8. Take it to the next level

Get in to the habit of R&D. Not by the governments, but by the businesses owned and controlled by the farmers and other innovators. For any industry to move forward it should innovate. And the drive should come from the industry itself, not from outside. Because when industry itself is driving the research, it will be driven more by the needs of the industry and the findings and innovations will be better adopted by the industry.

9. Governments Role

Question is, can our farmers make this change on their own. They can’t. That’s where the government should come in. They must build the awareness among farmers about what they can do, act as a facilitator, create incentives, and empower them to make the quantum leap from simply a way of life to an industry.

Under no situation government should put itself in a position where it becomes a part of the value chain. Because it is not a very sustainable model. We need multiple players at each step. Not just a government. And the government should play a facilitator role for all those players.

Government regulations should change to support local production of equipment and fertilizer. I remember once a guy from a company that import fertilizer said on TV, that it takes years/months to get government approval to import some fertilizer through following due process and safety checks. This is ok if you are importing. But if we make them locally you can’t wait years to market your stuff.

10. Our Role

From what I know investment returns in agriculture sector are exempted from taxes. Do I need to say more?

Any more ideas or feedback?

/Rakhitha

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Having said that, sometimes you come across bright sparks of hope in places you least expect. I was searching about nuclear fusion reaction recently after Japan incident and came across this. It’s a table top sustained fusion reactor by a high school kid. His reactor core is made using a cookie jar with some commonly available material. He calls it ‘Star in a Jar‘. Of course he has had some help.

Apparently it’s not that complicated to build one if you know the basics and have some t(h)inkering skills. Most of the knowledge is available at http://www.fusor.net/.

/Rakhitha

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At the time, I was living with my parents in a rented place. All utility bills had land lords name on them. All the mobile connections were prepaid so no bills there. Our rent contract had expired. We had signed the new contract only recently and it take some time before we get the new certified rent contract from super efficient government office. Any way, I did not want to use a land lords utility bill simply because there got to be a better way. Bank of course rejected my application due to lack of billing proof after dragging it for about a month. And the phone company did not even accept my application for a post paid connection.

I had to take a D tour to get the things sorted out. First I went to the bank at which I had a savings account for so many years. After some discussion with the branch manager, whom I met for the first time, he agreed to get a credit card without any billing proof. For this bank at the time, credit cards was not their main line of business. Therefore they did not give much credit limit or any value added services.  But one month after me getting the card, I finally get what I wanted. A piece of paper called bank statement with my name and address on it. Finally I am not a ghost. Then I used it to sign up in all other places that I wanted to sign up. My Scheme has worked

That was about 3 years ago. This entire episode came back to my mind because of this new trend of electronic statements, electronic bills, eThis and eThat. Banks (Actually the nice ladies at their call centers) keep calling me saying that they offer a wonderful new service called e-Statements, which is fast, all green and save trees. Suddenly after the financial crisis everyone want to save trees. And every time they call, I tell them that I am an old dinosaur who want a piece of printed paper posted to me every month. But they haven’t given up on me. I got a call even this week.

This is the bottom line. I’ll accept Electronic Statements once companies can accept a printout of that as the billing proof or sign-up customers after doing a simple e-mail verification. I like how Dialog handles this by giving limited credit for mobile connection if billing proof is not given. That can be a workable model. Companies can provide limited service until the address is verified.  If companies want to save trees they should first use recycled papers. And send all their used papers for recycling. I hope they are doing that already. That’s what I do with my bills, when I don’t need them to prove that I am not a ghost.

Any bright  ideas on how to verify address of people without using paper bills?

/Rakhitha

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We all have at some point used all the sorts of car parks in the city. Most outdoor parks has little or no sense of security, (I have lost few parts of the vehicle by parking in those places and it has cost me lot more than what I could have saved by parking there) and bake everything inside the car if you park during the day. Then there is those indoor parks attached to main shopping malls in the city. They have better security (at least you feel that way) and better protection from elements. And for that there  is a higher demand to park there and the prices are high. Also these are not public parks by definition. Those parks are setup by those companies for customers who are shopping in those malls. But we all take those for granted and happily use/misuse them. We all know where we prefer to park between those dusty hot outdoor parks and nice indoor parks.

Yes! outdoor parks should improve. Government or some other authority must enforce some sort of regulation on the facilities of the parks. But what worried me is, based on what is posed on Sunday Observer our people think that all parks must charge a nominal fee regardless of their facilities. And we think that those indoor parks are simply there to rip us off. Are we out of our minds? If there is anyone ripping us off, that is those outdoor parks that take our money to bake our cars. Also we have forgotten that those indoor parks are setup for specific set of customers and high prices are one of the ways of keeping people who misuse the park at bay. Imagine if the park at MC or Crescat charge only LKR 20 per hour. Everyone will park their vehicles all day long while they are at their work places. And original purpose of setting up those parks will be lost completely. Why can’t we as people recognize that those parks are there for a specific people. Are we that ignorant?.

I am not in the parking business and I have no reason to defend those private indoor parks. Other than they provide a service for the money paid unlike most outdoor places. But saying that they should operate like public parks and charge only a nominal fee is a daylight robbery and an insult to common sense. And also public bulling on private businesses. Because they are simply not public parks. They are specifically setup for their customers and vehicles are expected to be parked there only for a short period of time. And high fees is the only thing which can enforce that.

You also have to look at who are the people complaining about these parking fees. Those are the people who want to park their vehicle all day long in a safe place while they are working at their workplaces. Putting pressure on private park operators is not the solution for that. Every work place should do their level best to provide parking for their employees (It should be one of the key factor to look in to, when you select a location for a business), As the indoor parks currently operate in the city are not built for that purpose. Also Colombo city authority must take a lesson or two from people at Kandy city authority. Their solution of building a large car park at the city center has paid of really well. How ever in Colombo, you will need several such parks strategically placed in several places in the city.

Colombo city can at least tie up with those large outdoor park owners and setup multi-story car parks on those lands. And the profits can be be shared between city authority and land owner. That way land owner will make more money than now (increased capacity will increase revenue) while City make money too. This will not happen  if you expect those private land owners to build those them-self. Because such a structure will cost a massive amount of money. When a private individual/company spend that money they need to get a pay back in a shorter time frame than a government institute. Therefore they will need to charge a higher fee to get a high margin and a short payback time. But when a city authority make that investment, it is an investment for the city itself, and tax money well spent.

What do you think?

/Rakhitha

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This can be done easily using only a hidden iframe and some java script code provided that few conditions are met.

Basically following is what you need to do. You need to have a hidden iframe, to which you will load specific information from the server. Then, you need to have created div tags surrounding the regions of the visible page that you need to update. Each div need a unique tag id. You need to create another web page (not visible to user) which will have the information that you need to show.  This web page also need to have div tags surrounding the different information that you need it to transfer from server to client.

For simplicity lets assume that your visible web page has one place which you need to dynamically update. We will mark that region using a div tag with id “placeHolder”.  Your non visible web page/content source which has the information needed to be shown in place holder will contain another div with id “content”. Now what we need to do is to load this page in to your hidden iframe. And once that is loaded, we need to look for its div tag with id “content”. We need to copy the internal content of that div into our place holder div in visible page. While this process is being done in the background, we can show an animated image on our place holder until things are loaded.

I’ll try to explain this with the code.

HTML Code

<iframe id="myIFrame" width=300 height=300 style="Display:none;" onload = "loadDone();">
<!--
We use this iframe to load the pages that we need to load.
Loading will be done by setting src property of the iframe.
Once the specified page is loaded iframe will call loadDone()
function which is set to onload event.
that function will simply copy the relevant content from
 loaded page in to the div shown bellow.-->
</iframe>

<!--Following is the place holder
 in which we will show the loaded data-->
<div id="placeHolder"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">
loadPage("url to load");
</script>

In above HTML code line 5-13 has the code for hidden iframe, to which we will load the invisible pages with content that need to be shown in updatable parts of the visible page. Note that onload event of iframe is set to a function named loadDone(). This function takes care of copying information from hidden page in to visible place holders. We can’t call this function directly because we have to wait until our data page is fully loaded. That’s why we use onload event. We will look in to the logic of the function later.

In line 17 we have our place holder. Technically you can have any number of place holders as long as each one has a unique id. Also for each place holder in your visible page, you will need a separate div with a unique id in your invisible page to carry the information from server to client.

In line 20 we call a function named loadPage(…). This is the function that trigger the process of loading a data page in to our hidden iframe and then indirectly trigger the process of updating place holders through onload event of iframe.

Java Script Code

/*
This function will be called everytime a page
is loaded in to our hidden iframe.
As this is set to its onload event.
*/
function loadDone()
{
	// Find the hidden iframe object
	var myiframe = document.getElementById("myIFrame");
	// We only need to go ahead if the iframe has some page.
	if(document.getElementById("myIFrame").src)
	{
		//Now we need to locate the document object
		//of the paged loaded inside iframe
		//Logic will slightly differ for different browsers.
		if (myiframe.contentDocument)
		{
			//firefox, opera
			myiframe = (myiframe.contentDocument);
		}
		else if (myiframe.contentWindow)
		{
			//IE
			myiframe = (myiframe.contentWindow);
		}

		if(myiframe.document)
		{
			myiframe = (myiframe.document);
		}
		//At this point myiframe variable should be
		//pointing to document object of the page in
		//hidden iframe.
		//we assume that the page has a div tag with id 'content'
		//and inside that we have the stuff that we need to show.
		set(myiframe.getElementById("content"));

	}

}
/*
Following function simply set the innerHTML value of the place holder
to the data we loaded through iframe
*/
function set(s)
{
	var placeHolder = document.getElementById("placeHolder");
	placeHolder.innerHTML= s.innerHTML;
}

/*
This is the function that we will be calling to trigger the update process.
it take one parameter which is the url of the page that we try to load.
*/
function loadPage(url)
{
	//Before loading the page that we need to load
	//we first set the text 'Loading...' in to our placeholder.
	var placeHolder = document.getElementById("placeHolder");
	placeHolder.innerHTML = "Loading...";

	//Then we load the page in to iframe
	//This will trigger loadDone function once the page is loaded
	document.getElementById("myIFrame").src = url;
}

From line 6 to 40 of about javascript code we have the function which does the real work. It simply extract the information that we need to update on visible page and call set function which does actual updating. Only thing that you need to note here is line 36. That is where we extract the code block (div) with id ‘content’ and pass in to set method. If you have multiple placeholders to update you will need to repeat this line for each place holder, and for each placeholder you need to read from a different tag id. Also you will need to make some changes in set function to support multiple place holders.

From line 55 to 64 we have the function that you will call to trigger an update. This function takes the URL of the page that serve as the content producer. It must contain the div tags that your javascript will be looking for to read the content. Also it must be noted that this page must be hosted on same domain as your visible page which has the place holder. This code will not work across multiple domains due to security reasons.

In my code I have called this function just inside a javascript block. That is only for demonstration purposes. In practical applications you will call this as a button action or as a link onclock event.

In loadPage function it is line 64 which trigger actual loading. Line 59 and 60 are there to show some progress indicator on our place holder until the required data is loaded and place holder is updated with data. I am just showing text “Loading…” there. I hope you can figure out how to replace that with an animated image like in Facebook as well as how to make this work for multiple placeholders.

If you going to try this out you need to have both pages hosted in a web server before testing. You can use IIS or any other server hosted in locale machine. Testing with html files directly in hard disk will not work. Browser look for a proper http url and both pages must be hosted under same domain (http://localhost will do) for this to work.

Hope you find this helpful
/Rakhitha

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How since this is our first Wesak festival after getting married and the 2600 Sambuddha Jayanthi, we went to the temple close to our house. It was a good thing that we left the vehicle at home and walked all the way. Traffic was like hell. Vehicles were jammed bumper to bumper. There was even an ambulance with sirens running but going nowhere. Hope whoever inside that is still alive. I also could not help noticing that the dansala with the longest queue was the one done by the local BBQ shop.

Once we managed to reach the temple, something seemed totally wrong. They were playing music very loud through loudspeakers mounted near the Boo tree. What the hell! It was too loud and was literally painful to the ear.  Ofcourse they were songs related to Buddhism but not the ‘Buddhan Saranan Gachchami’ by Mohideen Beg kind of songs. They were more modern songs that you can’t really categorize as Buddhist bathi gee or budu guna gee.  And it was way too loud, and completely destroyed the peaceful atmosphere that you would expect in a temple. Of course this is 2600th Sambuddha Jayanthi and every temple must do something special for it. But who in his right mind play such loud songs in a temple. We found the congested roads more peaceful on the way back from the temple. Hope this wasn’t the case in other places.

/Rakhitha

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Therefore most often when a blog/website is hacked or lost due to some other reason it is mainly the fault of person administrating it. There are several ways an attacker can get in to a site. For example they can hack in to the server or network and make their way to the sites hosted there. It once happen to the hosting provider of this blog. And thank god I still have my content. As I said that is something that service provider has to deal with. Here is a number of attacks modes that the web site admin has to deal with, and way to reduce the risks.

Getting in Through Security Vulnerabilities in Web Applications

This will not apply if your setup is managed by the service provider. Like in wordpress.com hosted blogs.

A website is just another software. Like in any software it can have security vulnerabilities. If it is a custom-built site then it is the developers job to make sure that all doors are properly closed and locked and only opened by authorized personals. Developing secure applications is a very large subject on its own, therefore I am not going to cover it here. But it is a different matter when it comes to using off-the-self software such as WordPress

Even software like WordPress can have security issues. But the good news is developers of these software deliver patches when they realize that they have security problems. Therefore it is the responsibility of the administrator of the site to keep its site up-to-date with latest patches. A security hole is not a problem as long as no one knows it. But once some one finds it, they can exploit it to get in. And the thing is, once an organisation that develop software find a vulnerability of its product and release a patch, that vulnerability is no longer a secret. And if you do not install the patch you are running your system with a known security issue. Therefore I cannot stress enough how important it is to stay up-to-date.

There is another thing called a zero day attack. This happen because normally it take a company few days before it can release a patch once a vulnerability found. And someone can use this window to attack. There is nothing you can do to stop such attacks other than trying to close any doors between the attacker and the vulnerability. To do this you have to stay up-to-date with all the security related news of the products that you are using. and take proper measures.  For example if you get to know that a specific plugin has a security problem, then you can disable/uninstall that plugin until the plugin creator come up with a patch. Also when you install plugins and make configuration changes do some research to check if the plugin is safe and secure. and find out what is the most secure way to configure them.

Make sure your site does not let users know the version of software that it is running or any other technical details in its pages or error pages. Because knowing which software and which version you use is the first step of attacking you. With that knowledge the attacker can look for known problems of those versions.

Getting in Through Security Vulnerabilities in other Websites in Same Server or Vulnerabilities in Server

This will also not apply if your setup is managed by the service provider itself. Like in wordpress.com hosted blogs. This applies specially if you are hosting a site on a shared server.

Even though you keep your website vulnerability free, there can be other sites in same shared server that has vulnerabilities. They can ruin it for everyone on that server. Or server itself can be vulnerable. Ideally hosting provider has to take care of this problem. But there are few things you can do to protect yourself. If a server is broken in to through another account, attacker is most likely be accessing the server through a user account other than your account. If you keep your sensitive server files with proper security setting to make it non readable and no writable by others, then you are relatively safe. This includes all your configuration files, executable scripts, static pages and media. You may need some files to be be readable/writable by other users (some WP plugins require this). You have to make sure those files are not executable and does not contain sensitive data. Personally I would prefer not to use such plugins .

Cracking Your Password

This is a classic attack method. And the most common is using brute force. That is by trying out all possibilities of letters on your login form. There is a version of brute force called dictionary attack which is very common due to less time it take. It basically take words from a dictionary and feed them to login form as passwords. This is a very successful way of cutting down the time it tack to crack a password, provided that the password is a valid word. There are several ways to protect your site against this.

First and most important thing is to pick a strong password. It is a practice you must follow. You can include letters, both upper and lower case, symbols, numbers. you can also spell words incorrectly but should not be obvious misspelling of the words, use reversed words, use words from multiple languages, use phrases, but not something that you take from a book. Just be creative with your passwords and mix them up with numbers, symbols and upper , lower case characters. Also make sure not to use same password in all the places. And never include any personal information or information related to your site as password. That will make it easy to guess.

You can also block automated login by requiring users to enter a CAPTCHA when they login. That way only a human user will be able to use your login. You can also use a lock down mechanism. Which blocks an IP range from logging in, after a number of failed login attempts. However there is a risk of doing this. Imagine if your account locks out for one hour after 3 failed log in attempts. If some one wants to block you from logging in, all he got to do is to do three failed login attempts each hour.

Also to have any luck at cracking your password, attacker must know your user name. You can make the life hard for an attacker, if you hide your user name. Pick a user name that is not obvious. Don’t use your name, nickname, display name, website name, and definitely not ‘admin’. Also don’t use same user name / password in all the places related to your site. You will have number of places that you log in. Your e-mail, your hosting provider account, your website control panel, your SSH, FTP accounts, and your WordPress account …. Make sure they have different usernames and passwords.

Steeling Your Password

Your password may not be crackable, but it might get stolen. You might give it to a ‘trusted’ friend to help you out with something. You might be traced using a key logger. It can get detected by packet sniffing in the network. Or the attacker might just send you an e-mail and ask for it trust me, that works.

For starters never give your password to any one. If you have to write it down (you will have to, if you do everything in previous section), even though it is not a good practice, keep it somewhere safe, very safe. It is best not to enter your password in shared computers, specially not in the public ones. Try not to let the browser remember your password. Make sure to log of from the sites before you leave the computer or close the browser.  It will make sure that some one else is not accidentally logged in to your account.

Make sure that the computer you are using to log in to your site is clean and free of any viruses, trojans, adware. And it must have an up to date virus scanner installed. Antivirus should be able to detect all the previously said software. If you are using flash drives make sure they are virus free. And don’t use them in computers that you do not trust and not secure enough.

Use SSL as much as possible when you login. Never send your passwords in e-mails as e-mails transfer as plain text. Setup your site in a way that you don’t have to log in to your main admin account all the time. You can use a less privileged account for your day-to-day work. That way you can still have a very strong password for your admin account, and avoid the trouble of entering it all the time. Also that way you will lower the number of times that you transmit your admin password.

Don’t ever respond to a mail that ask for your account information. A responsible hosting provider will never do that. Every time you log in, check the address bar to make sure that you are logging in to the correct site.

If you have any reason to think that your password is at risk. For example if you had to use it in a public or untrusted computer or if you discover that your computer was infected with a trojan, then change your password(s).

Hacking in to Your E-mail Account

Hacking an e-mail account is will give access to all the passwords to all the accounts created using that e-mail. Therefore your e-mail address must have the strongest and safest password. It is also a good idea to not to use your primary e-mail account when you sign up to your hosting account/blog..! You can use a private email address which only you know. This way the attacker will have to figure out the e-mail address before he can attack. Do not use that e-mail address to communicate with others. That will give away the e-mail address.

Last but not least…. Take Backups

No matter what you do, you cannot be prepared for everything. If something beyond your control go wrong, you stand to lose everything you create. Therefore it is extremely important to take backups. And It is even more important to make sure that backups are in a restorable state. Ideally you have to take backups frequently and restore them in an offline site running in your own computer. Just to make sure that backups are in good shape and easily restorable. Restoring is often more complicated than backing up. Complexity depends on how the backup was taken and what was backed up. Often admins find this the hard way when a backup is need to be restored. How frequently should you backup will depend on how often you site change.

Also it is extremely important to make sure that backups are secure. For starters if you lose both backups and the live site, you are back at square one. Also backups will contain all the sensitive information of your site, such as configuration files with database password. You don’t any one to see those. do you? Therefore never leave your backups in the server.

This is all I can think of right now! Did I miss anything?

/Rakhitha

No related posts.

If you need more info on the big match please visit http://www.royalthomian.info/ for official website. And if you are looking for the papare streaming link here it is http://www.thepapare.com/index.php/sports/cricket/146-the-132nd-battle-of-the-blues-live-on-thepapare. Unlike the last year, this time it is free.

RoyalThomian.info website says that the match will be broadcasted live on Prime TV which is a part of ITN network. Prime TV is also watchable online on this link. But when I checked it out, there was nothing but old songs :S.

Enjoy!

/Rakhitha

Related Posts:

1. Royal Thomian – Big Match 2010, Online!
2. Royal Thomian – Big Match 2010 – Online Broadcast and Highlights
3. First Ever Royal Thomian – Twenty20 Cricket Encounter!

We have seen a trend of taking down blogs that post about hot (not necessarily important) topics with an open mind. Not by the government but by other bloggers who call them self patriotic hackers. (I would not call some one a hacker just because they use some tool to crack a password or use an unethical/unprofessional friend in a telco company to snoop a password). In a way it is another manifestation of typical Sri Lankan mindset of not being able to tolerate different opinions and views. It is a crime against core value of blogging, which is freedom of speech. Only an ideologically bankrupt person can do it.

Having said above I have to say this too. It is the natural order of things happen on the web. If you dig up things that some people don’t want to talk about, you going to make them very upset, while making some happy. But when it comes to taking action, those who are upset will be quicker and more violent. They do not lose anything by what you write, but they gain a bit of third class pleasure by destroying what you write. They will not give a rats ass how much effort you put to create your content. It’s your job to protect your investment. There is no point of blaming the bad guys when years of work is gone.

When you write controversial topics. When you create yourself enemies. You are in a frontier of your own.  In such a scenario it is critical to be a prepared for anything that might come your way. But the truth is, most of us are not. I don’t think that many of us even take backups of what we write. Of course in my case no one (except me) will not even notice if this site goes down due to some technical mishap or some hacker attack. But there are a lot of blogs that people will miss, if they go down. Have the writers of those blogs taken proper measure to minimize the risk of such things? Have they taken proper measures to ensure a smooth come back if that happen? If not they are simply writing at the mercy of their ideological opponents! Just think about it!

/Rakhitha

No related posts.

Any way at my place quality of this link on a Mobitel broadband connection is far better than Channel Eye reception. So this is how I am going to watch world cup.

Here is the link:

http://www.espnstar.com/cwclive/

Related Posts:

1. No Papare Bands At Cricket World Cup 2011 Matches?
2. Drama over ‘Enna’ (Banned Sri Lanka Cricket World Cup Song)
3. Royal Thomian – Big Match 2011 – Watch Online for Free on Papare

Honestly, his song ‘Enna’ is no way near the quality that is required from an official Cricket World Cup 2011 cheer song for Sri Lanka. But it is ok as just another Cricket World Cup cheer song, given the sorry state of all the World Cup cheer songs that we have for this Cricket World Cup. This post on islandcricket gives good coverage in that topic. Actually until this drama break out I thought there is no official song from SL this time. If some one authorized made this official song after listening to it, that is a decision which should have never been taken. If Lahiru wrote this song on a request for an official song for Cricket World Cup 2011, he should not have written that too. And even if he wrote that on a request from some authority, that client should have rejected it after looking at the out put. And obviously Lahiru is not the guy you should hire if you want an official song.

Having said above, Lahirus song is an ok cheer song which goes well with typical Sri Lankan cricket atmosphere, and it is nothing more than a typical Lahiru song. And that was the case until Presidential order to ban the song as official song. Which is the correct thing to do, because it should not have been made the official song at the first place. What is interesting is the reaction generated to that news by the public.  Suddenly the entertaining singer have become the root of all evil. You can see that in most of the comments posted in following links on dailymirror.lk. Link 1, Link 2. It is interesting to watch how Sri Lankan minds work.

/Rakhitha

Related Posts:

1. No Papare Bands At Cricket World Cup 2011 Matches?
2. Cricket World Cup 2011, Free Live Streaming Link
3. First Ever Royal Thomian – Twenty20 Cricket Encounter!