Tag: General

I’m living the dream

Hi folks, Its been awhile, huh almost 5 months since my last post. I was so darn busy with university finals, my thesis and some extra curricular activities ;). So yeah its about time to blog again. In few of my older posts i have written few things about SOA (little things i know), UDDI, Web Services and about the ESB concept. I did my bachelor’s thesis in the area of SOA, ( BACKBONE – A Service Oriented Architecture for Public Infrastructure and Service Governance) proposing a SOA reference architecture for maturing governments. For the past nine months of time I’ve been playing with technologies such as Axis 2, Apache CXF, WSIT/Metro, WSO2 ESB, JSF, Spring, Hibernate etc. etc. (All those J2EE stuff 🙂 )

While I was working on my prototype, composing the services, developing UIs to consume them, connecting the two ends with the WSO2 ESB, resources like IBM library, IEEE explore, ACM library and most importantly WSO2 Oxygen Tank helped me immensely. I was fascinated by the papers and materials offered by WSO2 OT and IBM library for no cost. So Thanks to them I got my thesis done with caliber.

As for any one in their final year of university I my self was looking for a great starting point for my career. I was looking for some deference, not the ordinary software development which exists in many software houses. I was looking for some challenge, where I can explore new things, do research and importantly be part of a great community. For me that starting point was WSO2 (The Open Source SOA Company), and frankly it was a dream come true 🙂

Yeah I am living the dream 🙂

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Valentines Day, Blogging, Movies & All Other Crap (Don’t waste time reading this..)

Thought of writing another post under NO category / general (I do this when I don’t have anything useful to blog about yet when i have alot things to blog about.). Last couple of days I was pretty busy with work. (Was playing with some Ajax frameworks for JSF.. and yeah I will write about that in my next post… it was pretty fun using Ajax in your Java EE app). So anyways as my topic says.. this Post does not contain anything important.. well maybe about movies if you are a great fan of All kinds of movies 🙂

Valentines day

Yesterday morning after i woke up and checked my mail…. (Well yeah i do that before having a morning tea…in-fact first thing after opening my eyes 🙂 not that am getting thousands of mails that I should reply, but it had been a habit, which i cannot get over with). My Girl Friend had sent me an email saying
“…..oh btw…i knw we dnt celebrate but happy vals day..muwaaaahhhh…my valantine <3”
I was like WHAT ?? OH Crap the Valentines day… that’s how I knew that yesterday is the so called lovers day.. For last couple of years 14th February was just there… as she said we never used to HAHOO about it.. one reason, we were having more important stuff to worry about, and we never saw a point in that idea (same as Mothers’, Day Fathers’ day, That Day and This Day but accept the Birthday LOL )… But any how This time I thought of sending something to her.. Not that I suddenly saw a meaning in that idea, But by the end of the day i felt like i want to send something… well i do believe in doing things without a meaning.. (am talking about the Day.. not sending something to her 🙂 ).. Anyhow yeah for the 1st time later that day night, I ordered a valentines Gift to be delivered to her… !!!

Blogging

Last week with the 1st release of the project i was working on, I got some time to surf around the net and do some reading..Specially about blogging, SEO, Micro Blogging, Pod-casting etc, etc, (Yeah my last post also a result of this reading). I was reading quite alot of blogs, Mostly Sri Lankan (Through SLBlogs and Kottu), and i found pretty interesting ones not to mention there were some Sri Lankan Blogs which discuses some serious topics in charming way (its a complement).

When I started Blogging back in 2007 i didn’t have a clear reason, the only reason I started was that I had a server to play with and a DOT COM domain was not so expensive. The reason that am doing it still is… well I dont know !! maybe i will stop it tomorrow…. !!! Anyhow still am enjoying this..its nice to see the graphs in Google analytics, and some times when some of your posts come in googles’ 1st page of search results under java or Linux hacks.

Another thing I came across last week was some thing called Micro Blogging.., well its not a new thing (Was new to me).. but well Its a pretty strange way of blogging.. because when you read one of those blogs, It doesn’t make any sense Why you do it.. !! Then again I celebrated the valentines day didn’t I !! 🙂

With my last article (The criticism about a criticism) I happened to do some reading on this So called HOT topic SEO. After reading some articles i actually wondered, Whats there to talk about this much. SEO for me is all about good content..!! infarct 99% of the Google page rank is directly depending on the valuable content, its The valuable content which makes back links (Organic links).. All other gambling which is done is just a matter of 1%. And that 1% can never make you site go more than 2 in PR. One of my friends last week said, doing SEO is like we are putting few bugs when we program. :). But i must also say before 1998 (before Google born) SEO was a big deal. Meta tags and keywords made a huge difference, But with the Goolge’s Algorithm the story took a different turn. So Don’t waste time in gambling for back links. write valuable content it will surely make a deference.

Movies

After i started my Interns in Germany since last July, I guess my Bit-torrent client is running nonstop (well maybe few days of a rest on my notebook). Soon as i landed here my 1st wish was to experience, at-least more than 2Mbps DSL line (That’s the best we can have in Sri Lanka). Making my dreams come true for few euros i took a DSL connection of 4Mbps . and was being fond like a child with a candy bar. My room mate those days said… “Dude now you can download movies faster than you watch them.” apparently making that statement true. I had a to buy a bigger hard drive after not more than one month. So yeah I took a 500GB external hard Drive, in august, and yeah 90% of it is now filled.. !!

Okey so I guess the above lines says that I have downloaded almost all the rated movies in IMDB… so for the all types of movies fans… there are few good stuff i wanted to tell..check release log every day.. It contains almost all the releases up-t-odate…maybe you feel its too much information, and yeah true..yet its a valuable site.. I found it through Kasun.

And check out the torrentfive.com this a good site where they publish new movie torrents with good quality. One drawback is you have to register before downloading torrents.

Talking about some TV series, I got to write about Band Of brothers, this is an awesome war story. Not a new one yet then again I found it recently. Jericho 2nd season is out and casting on every Wednesday, but with the strike of the writers guild i am missing some pretty good stories these day, Office, Heroes are among them.

So yeah I will not waste time writing about my 430GB movie collection, just visit release log and download what ever you like.

All sort of other crap.

Well other than above… when i stared writing this post i wanted to write some Sri Lankan politics and some philosophical stuff, but after writing the above… i think i am done jabbering about crap for the day. So this will be my last post on general or “No Category” category. (At least for some time 🙂 )

So…am sorry for wasting your time !!

cheers !!

Blog Syndication, Open link-baiting and SLBlogs.org

Well Its been some time that I have written a post under the category of general, or rather non-technical. After reading my friend kasun’s blog, I happened discover an interesting post of a fellow Sri Lankan blogger, which made me write this. Few days back I wrote the news about SLBlogs, and yeah this post is also about SLBlogs, or rather about a criticism that SLBlogs received recently.
Before I start saying anything, i must say that this post brings no offense on the fellow blogger who made the criticism.
Sir William Arthur once said “Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I may not forget you.”
So yeah Criticisms are good, they may not make the critique your favorite, but you will remember an encouraging criticism.
I am not naive to say that SLBlogs is a perfect Blog syndicator, or that it is THE Sri Lankan Blog-o-spere. SlBlogs is 1 month old child. Which can and will improve with age… yet again, I find some unrealistic or let me put it this way, “I cannot 100% agree with mind blogger with his 5 points on SLBlog not being THE Sri Lankan Blog-o-spere”. So I will just point out how I see these five points. Then again it’s how i see 🙂

1. Blog syndication networks work no more without specific niches.

I do agree with Mindblogger up to a certain extent. Its true SLBlogs still has 16 Blogs syndicated, it lacks content. I do read Kottu to find some news and ideas. But well SLBlogs is one month old. still the bloggers of Sri Lanka doesn’t know about it, and surely if The MindBlogger have syndicated his own blog to SLblogs.org and wrote this criticism I will not see the hypocrisy behind this 1st point.
As we all know a Blog syndication site work its way, from the help of its contributors, and when that Syndicator says it’s for Sri Lankan bloggers. The Sri Lankan blogging community has to help it. The owner of the Site will do his part. Yet as the Bloggers in Sri Lanka, we also should do our part. So how I see about Mind Bloggers 1st point is That SLBlogs is not 100% responsible in its Contributor count.

2. Doesn’t know open link-baiting could ban a blog.

This is one interesting point!! The MindBlogger have directly Mentioned that SLBlogs.org doesn’t know anything about open link-baiting. Actually till I read the Mind bloggers comment under this point, I didn’t have a clear idea about this topic, not that am saying The MindBlogger have a clear definition of what is Open Link baiting is…. I knew that John Chow and the BMW -German website has been banned and ranked 0 from Google due to some illegal ways of search engine optimization.
Yet even in Google’s terms, Google doesn’t explain how it will be illegal to build links, or make your page ranks grow…. So yeah!! After some reading and surfing over the net what I finally found is that link building or baiting is not at all illegal. Am not saying that Google is wrong in banning John Chow or BMW. What am saying is there are healthier ways of link building. If you are really interested in reading about this topic. I found a nice article in the Smashing Magazine.
So if I come back to what I was telling… What SLBlogs have mentioned in its Competition page (Which the sentence is no longer there) is as I can remember “OF CAUSE you can also add a link to SLBlogs” There is no direct sentence saying that you will get a Domain if you link back to SLBlogs. What it clearly said is..if you really want you can put a link to SLBlogs. This is not at all similar with the John Chow situation.
John Chow directly asked from his readers to make a link to his blog when those readers use certain key words (“make money online”) when they write posts in their blogs. For the people who do this John Chow gave a link back. Yes this is an extreme of link building. Its like you reserve a keyword over the internet for your own blog.
So What I see in Mind Bloggers second point is that he doesn’t know what is link building is. (Well I didn’t know it before too 🙂 ) If SLBlogs attempt of building links is illegal it will be closer to illegalness if someone uses an Internet Marketing Link Exchange Directory. But what am saying is using that kind of a directory is also not illegal or its rather in the Gray Zone. (There are no direct definitions of the limits in this matter). So as I see SLBlogs should not remove the line which said about this. (Well Its all SLBlogs decision.)

3. “7 things Why a slBlogger needs a RSS reader!” – now, that’s a bit cliche.

“ClichĂ©” if I am correct with this very word and about the SLBlogs article. I should actually ask why is it so… even the MindBlogger say do not ask. My view for this point is, This is another Blog Post. Yeah it is done by the owner of SLBlogs. I am not saying the topic of this article is very suitable or colorful. Yet the content of this article is not “Cliche”, at least not to me. Yes this post contains some nice phrases about me… and one might say am writing this to defend myself. Then again this is my Blog, and this is My thought. This reminds me of only one thing, several days ago, i downloaded some of the linux.conf.au 2008 talks. In the talk, “Fixing Web”, look at the first minute of his talk and you’ll see why..

So what am saying is Something being Cliché is so personal. Some great programmer can say my whole Blog is Cliché. I write what was new to me.. What I found..There can be people who know all what I write daily… But yet.. There can also be people who don’t.. So a blog Post will never be Cliché.

So in this case there can be plenty of readers who don’t know about a RSS reader. Being honest I started using Google reader after I started Blogging. Thanks to Sandaruwan. So yeah why do you need a RSS reader….? SLBlogs says WHY….

4. Open display of subscriber count?

Yes on this point I do agree with Mind Blogger. But yeah as usual its only because the display of the feedburner. I do agree that SLBlogs should remove this, from its Display.

But I would like to put out the main reason as I think why it is only 3. SLBlogs is not in my Google reader too. In fact I do have a question why is it 3. It should be 0. Why I say this is. SLBlogs is a Blog syndicator. Why do you want a blog syndicator in your RSS reader? I don’t want to read all the posts which are pasted on SLBlogs. I have only few and some important blogs in my RSS reader.

What am saying is the Subscriber count in a syndication Site Does not show its regular readers. So it will never be 50 to show. With a syndicator what you do is, you visit the site time to time, do a quick sniffing around the posts, then if you feel like it’s good, click on the link, go to the individual blog and read it.. Then subscribe to the blog if you want..

So anyhow. I also believe SLBlogs should remove the feedburner display. Because it says nothing about SLBlogs.

5. Take a look around.

As i see The Mind Blogger in his 5th point have said that the Sri Lankan Blogging community will be offended by SLBlogs motto.

slblogs.org “the” Sri Lankan blog syndication network

well this is partially true. Yet there is always another point of view. Someone can be so narrow minded and think that this phrase is an offence to all the great bloggers in Sri Lanka. Yet all Companies, societies, products..or ideas do have their own mottos. SLBlogs as it seems has a clear goal of being THE Sri Lankan blog syndication network. SO they are using this phrase as their own motto. Which is not closed to any great Sri Lankan blogger.. It openly invites all the Sri Lankan Bloggers to Join Its community.
A simple example is… while I was walking outside today… An Italian restaurant said

Have the Experience of Nectar in Heaven.”

I know it’s funny. But well there are very few English billboards in Germany. Anyway my whole point is. Each of these people including SLBlogs need to gain attention from the community. So they use their own mottoes. So if some blogger will get offended by this kind of a motto. What kind of a blogging community do we have?
So I guess I have written the lengthiest post in my blogging life… yet again. This is just my opinion. And SLBlogs have to be happy because criticisms always make you popular. And as Mind Blogger said his 200+ loyal subscribers will surely make some traffic on SLBlogs.

Finally I should say. SLBlogs is doing a good job. There are things to be learnt. Things to be changed, and things to be improved and criticized, I hope the admin of SLBlogs will do these changes in order to make it a more mature network.

And before wrapping up I must again mention this does not make any offense to anyone. This is my point of view. Open for debate… !!

Long time no see !!

Well yeah I am back… I know things have gone gray.. my technorati ranking has gone down.. my readers are disappointed.. Okey.. So here I plead for forgiveness….

Well for past 3 months I was so sunk in work.. the new project which i am working on right now.. made the days fly so soon… any how.. the things i learnt cannot be written in one blog post..and yeah its not yet finish… I thought of writing a post today.. for few reasons..

I didn’t want anyone to think that I gave-up writing… One of the friendly bloggers threaten me to start writing again.. and yeah I wanted to deliver the news about “SLBOLGS“.

well what can i say about SLBlogs… In few words if i describe…Its a journal with many authors… I know the concept is not so new, but well i see this as a nice place where most of the Sri Lankan Bloggers meet..or rather share there ideas to the whole world.. So yeah its Open for you too.. subscribe with SLBlogs… I hope it will be fun..

Any how, No promises i can make when i will write my next post yet… A lot to scribble… So until then..

Cheers !!

Back once again !!!

well i guess am writing a post after June 13th (luckily the date is shown below..) ever since my last post loads of things or rather changers took place. My team lost in both imagine cup entries in the final round.. I don’t have to write about it allover again.. because you can get the full story in many blogs, appears in my blogroll.. I had my second year final exams.. and did it with out any preparation… and at last headed to Germany for my one year Internship… So here I am writing my 1st blog post after a while from Munich, Germany.
Things have changed ever since last June.. missing home alot.. My beloved friends & Family… anyhow am enjoying the work out here.. working in one of the software arms of BMW (F.A.S.T GmbH), developing location base applications for mobile phones using JAVA / J2ME.. work is pretty fun.. the main thing is the freedom i have in the company.. the work environment is truly amazing..

How fascinating the life is… few months ago i never had an idea in going abroad.. well i wanted a change.. wanted to go somewhere and work well..and experience a some new ness’.. but i ended up with a total new ness’ which i never dreamed before..

Just thought of writing something about me and the reason i couldn’t blog.. well this post is totally useless i know.. so am hoping to write something useful later today. So let me say welcome back…

The Last Samurai & the theme behind !!

Since I was writing all the technical and related posts all the way, Thought of writing something different. A great movie i happened to watch. Well the movie is pretty old and yeah this was my second time of watching it. It is The Last Samurai, I was pretty mad because The TV station did not put the subtitles for the Japanese dialogs , yet I figured out its great meaning. Last samurai is a movie which shows the ancient Japanese culture. But for me the movie was something different. It showed the great discipline people had those days and how discipline change people.

The movie Brings out topics such as discipline, respect and the way to earn great honer. It shows that a man’s death will be honed by the way he lived his life. In an indirect way the movie shows that people need some spiritual bond to mold their lives to a better and a meaning full one.

Its a tragic movie filled with a great meaning. So if you have still not watched it. Then i think you better, because I believe that Last samurai gives a new meaning to life.

AcSO version 1.0 Beta is released for Microsoft Imagine Cup

As my fellow team mate kasun had blogged… yeah after some long sleepless nights, we finally, able to produce a functional version of our great idea, “All in One” . AcSO is our web development entry for Microsoft Imagine Cup now competing on the second round. Why am saying its version 1.0 and Beta because, there are many more features yet to add in it., to achieve our All In One goal. How ever if it gets in to the final six, (as I think it will :)) you will see the next generation academic organizer, another great web 2.0 work.

you can vist AcSO on :

http://team4366.webdev07.imaginecup.com

Great work Team Enterprise !!!

Busy as Never Before

It has been passed sometime, that i wrote my last post. I was very much busy running here and there working on some new things, studying for exams and writing documents on IT laws. The end of April and the month May as i never thought before am very much stuck with work. For some reason fortunately or unfortunately we have been selected for second round in Microsoft Imagine cup not under one category but under two . this made my and my team’s work double. For me i had some work in the company too. Then with that I am still completing some of my assignments in the university. If its some programming or involved with coding it could have being interesting but unfortunately its all about writing documents. about group work. BCS code of ethics and conduct IT laws and all sort of boring stuff.

Last week we finished and released the P2Pminds beta version and hosted under sandaruwan’s domain for testing. this is a web based knowledge sharing system we did for our Software Engineering group project. developed in PHP as usual and used some ajax validation.

Other than P2P am working on our Imagine cup projects mainly with the AcSO. Having some hands on experience with ASP.net. and yeah Visual studio .NET is awesome I have to mention. It does lot of automation you just drag and drop.. most of the things are done for you. We are thinking of Adding Some Microsoft Silverlight effects to the site to give some new look and to show off with the newest technology of web animation and data binding. So I will post the link to AcSO as soon as we hosted it in imagine cup server. Probably 18th of this month.

And yeah the GeoLink It is still in primary stages where we are checking out the mobile emulators coming with visual studio. Seems a lot of fun ahead.

Other than these Last two days I was studding from morning till the exam time for the BCS examinations. well I guess doing few past papers is all what you need to get through BCS.

so thats it for now I am hoping to write a post with some more value sooner.. maybe about .Net compact framework or some things about ASP.net web parts.