ramith's blog

Random acts of kindness during the coronavirus outbreak in Sri Lanka

2020-05-08T06:37:00.003-07:00

We know that times are tough, but there are still reasons to smile.

A huge thanks to Dr. Ayumi Nomura (Department of Nursing, Tokyo Metropolitan University) for supporting families in need under the COVID19 outbreak in Sri Lanka. She has been serving Sri Lanka for many years.

Even though this is not the first time you support us, I thought to post this, to appreciate your effort to build our community. She has made her contribution to help people in Beruwala (her ongoing research area) through, Ven. Hadigalle Wimalasara thero, Abinawaramaya, Beruwala. We hope that this donation would be able to help at least 200-300 families in Beruwala area. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude and appreciate for the Ven. Hadigalle Wimalasara thero for his guidance throughout the donation process.

Handing over the donation on behalf of Dr.Nomura (By Mr.Killakulam) to to Ven. Hadigalle Wimalasara thero

Distributing essentials among residence in Beruwala

Mrs.Motoko Takahashi and the family have been able to organize this excellent event on Vesak Poya day

Also, we would like to thank Mrs.Motoko Takahashi and Mr. Buddika Killakulam for arranging all the logistics to make Dr. Nomura’s fund-raising event a success and for organizing another excellent fund-raising event together with a Vesak Poyaday event virtually. It was incredible to see that so many people from Japan were able to join the sermon virtually that was conducted by a Buddhist thero. That was a nice opportunity for all the doners to get blessings for their good deeds. More than 150 donors from Japan have given their contribution to this charity. Some of them might never have been to Sri Lanka. Still, they are helping our people because of your great effort.

You all are such amazing souls who love Sri Lanka as much as we love our motherland. In times like this, we’re reminded of how interconnected we all are. Thank you for being a part of our community. Most of all thank you for your kindness, care, and love and for being the inspiration the world needs.

Once again, thank you Dr. Ayumi Nomura and Mrs. Motoko Takahashi for the amazing support you have given to our community by donating essentials. To all those who took the time to commit, your support and effort are truly appreciated.

Dr.Nomura's previous charity works in 2015

PC Build for MRI image processing

2020-03-29T14:57:00.006-07:00

PC for preprocessing/tractography

It has been after long time I had the opportunity to build a PC. Actually it was not for me but for my wife who is doing a Phd. She is using following MRI image processing tools,

Freesurfer (https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/)
MRtrix (https://www.mrtrix.org/)
FSL (https://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki)
Advanced Normalization Tools (https://github.com/ANTsX/ANTs)

These tools uses memory and process heavily and she was struggling to do the process in her laptop(Intel core i7 with 16 GB memory).

So I started doing research what best components I can used to build a powerful PC that can handle neuroimaging processing tools.

Process wise I had 2 choices Intel or AMD, These days AMD is beating Intel in the process market with giving high processing power for less money. After doing some research around I selected AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (8 core) processor with Wraith Prism cooler.

MSI B450M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard

As the motherboard I selected "MSI B450M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4", which support maximum memory of 64 GB and is within my budget. Also got two 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000 Memory modules after reading some reviews. Hoping to upgrade to 64 GB in future.

As the main hard disk, I got Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB SSD drive. As the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X does not have inbuilt GPU, I went with MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB graphic card.

As for the casing I selected "fractal design focus g mini microatx mini tower case", which has a good build quality for the price. Also it comes with 2 front panel fans which improve the air flow inside the casing.

I used pcpartpicker.com site to build my spec, which is a useful site for anyone who wish to build their own PC. pcpartpicker.com site will highlight if there any incompatible components in your build, which is very useful and free of charge as well.

Use the below link to see my full PC specification,

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/LXVBZf

My wife was happy with the PC build as she manage to run neuroimaging tools without any problem.

But if you have big budget I recommend going for a AMD processor with more cores (such as AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12 core or AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16 core) with memory of 64 GB or more. This will make you run several MRI processing tools parallel.

Enjoy!

Is your email address has been compromised - haveibeenpwned.com

2020-03-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

In this fast moving world everyone has an email address that used to communicate and register to the different online services. This give cyber criminal an ideal opportunity to target innocent victims and use the victims email address to access the victims other online services.

In recent years there have been various big company data breaches such as yahoo, Linkedin, Myspace, Adobe, Equifax etc.. with these data breaches hackers and cyber criminals manage to get huge data sets of email addresses and passwords.

A security researcher Troy Hunt have collected all theses data in to a one site so any one can check if their email address or passwords have been leaked due to these major data breaches. The site haveibeenpwned.com is free to use and you can enter email addresses and see which ones have been compromised and what data breach that have caused it as well.

Also haveibeenpwned.com have the functionality check if the passwords you used also is not matching with any leaked passwords from the data breaches.

I hope every one don't use same username & passwords combination, and after checking the haveibeenpwned.com site please change the passwords if compromised.

Enjoy!

Best way to test the Spammyness of your Emails for free - www.mail-tester.com

2015-08-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Now a days emails are very important part of the day today life. Loads of on-line systems are using emails as the username and use the emails to communicate with their users.

Sometime system generated emails get spammed or rejected by the mail servers due to configuration issues in the server that generated the email.

As a web developer/system administrator/ Application developer it's your duty to check the Spammyness of your Emails and keep the users happy.

www.mail-tester.com site give you the way to test your email easily and give you suggestions how to improve your ranking.

Only thing you need to do is go to the mail-tester.com site and it will generate a random email address account that you need to send your test email to. Once you send a test email to that account and click on the "Check your score" it will validate your email and let you know what issues you have in your system generated email.

Following are the 5 different images given depending on the ranking.

So next time when users complain that they are not receiving any system generated emails, mail-tester.com is the best way to solve the mystery.

Visit :- https://www.mail-tester.com/

Enjoy!.

whatbrowser.org - Another Free Service From Google

2014-06-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

Whatbrowser.org is a simple site that Google have created to help to answer the question, “which web browser you’re using and why to keep your browser up-to-date” .

This is a useful site for non-geek people who haven't got a clue about a web browser and who think Google or Yahoo is their web browser. This site clears out lot of misunderstanding regarding web browsers for non technical people.

Also whatbrowser.org site helps people who are working as IT support & web developers who sometime struggle to find out, the customers web browser & it's version in order to identify an web site issue.(Specially when it comes to IE web browser & it's version.). So rather than asking lot of questions from customer to find out which browser version they use, asking them to visit the whatbrowser.org site will give the answer quickly without any hassle.

Visit : whatbrowser.org

Enjoy!

Sri Lanka 2014

2014-05-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka — 2014 from Ekaterina Vasilieva on Vimeo.

Sri Lankan High Commissioner to the UK, Dr Chris Nonis makes CNN's Fred Pleitgen speechless

2013-11-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

Let's explore the world Game : geoguessr.com

2013-11-01T15:41:00.001-07:00

Found a nice,addictive & educational game to play when you feel boring, it's called "GeoGuessr".

This is a web based game that, places the player on a series of five randomly-determined locations somewhere in the world and requires players to guess their location in the world using only the clues visible in Street View.

Once you are ready to guess the location, select the location on the zoom-able Google Map.After the marker is placed, GeoGuessr reveals the true geographic location and assigns the player between 0 and 6500 points, depending on how far away the player's guess was. You will give 5 chances to guess 5 places and at the end it will give you the total score.

So just give it a try for this amazing, addictive & educational game.

Visit : http://geoguessr.com/

Enjoy!

Free Super Mario Game in Browser (www.fullscreenmario.com)

2013-10-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

Super Mario Brothers, once upon a time a very popular & addictive game developed by Nintendo is now available as "Full Screen Mario" as a on line game.

Anyone with fully HTML 5 web browser can play the original levels, play through some of literally millions of possible random maps, or create your own using the level editor for free.

According to the site this whole project is open source and free. No registration or no installation, only need a web browser with HTML 5 support.

Visit :- http://www.fullscreenmario.com/

Enjoy!

Google Web Designer Beta - Next Step For Future of Web Design

2013-10-01T13:46:00.002-07:00

Google has launched a new professional-quality design tool that makes HTML5 creative accessible to everyone.

Google Web Designer, a new professional-quality design tool that was developed to allow advertisers to easily create HTML5 ads for mobile and desktop.

The best thing is that you can get this design tool for free not like Microsoft & Adobe stuffs.

Visit for free download :- http://www.google.com/webdesigner/
Visit for Support & Manual :- https://support.google.com/webdesigner/#topic=3249465

Enjoy!

Review on Nikon D5100

2013-09-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

Like many people, when I decided to buy a new DSLR camera I researched various DSLR models, on line to the point of going crazy.

Lot of web sites argue that some brand is better than other brand (As an example Nikon vs Canon war)

At last after going through various web sites DSLR reviews & youtube videos, finally purchase the Nikon d5100 with 18-55mm kit lense.

First of all I am really happy with the purchase and also I got a cash back deal from Nikon UK, so that I can spare some of my budget on SD card, camera bag & a tripod.

Secondly I am happy because I managed to take decision and leave the tiresome research & start taking photographs.

My first impresion of the Nikon d5100 is that it seems really light for a DSLR camera. I am not a professional photographer although I like taking photography as a hobby. In my opinion I can summarised pros & cons as follows,

Pros

Flip-out screen
Good image quality (Specially in low light condition)
Value for money deal comparing to other competing DSLR models

cons

No weather sealing
Lack of panorama feature (not that important)
Battery life average.

Checkout out my photo blog (photospear.blogspot.co.uk) where I have post latest images that has taken from my Nikon D5100.

By the way below are some of the web links that I used in my research to buy my first DSLR.

http://snapsort.com/

http://www.dpreview.com

http://www.kenrockwell.com/

http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d5100/index.html (D5100 Manual)

http://www.cameratips.com/d5100

I hope above information will be very helpful for people who wish to purchase their first DSLR.

Enjoy.

Free repository of Instruction / Owners Manuals (www.manualslib.com)

2013-08-27T15:07:00.002-07:00

I came across this nice web site that provides people with various manuals & guide for free.

ManualsLib is a huge repository of manuals that can be saved in many different ways, you can search the database by brand name and model name for various items ranging from phones to vehicles.

Visit :- http://www.manualslib.com/

Enjoy!

Learn A Language for Free using Duolingo (www.duolingo.com)

2013-08-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

Learning languages in Duolingo is completely free with no ads or hidden fees.

Duolingo is designed so that, as users progress through the lessons, they simultaneously help to translate websites and other documents in return. So while you are learning for free, you actually giving the world something valuable in return.

You can use the http://www.duolingo.com/ web site to access the free resources or else its available on Android and iOS as an app.

Check out the below video that explain how this thing works.

Enjoy!

Get a FREE Disposable Email Addresses

2013-08-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

If you want to register in a site temporary but does not want to use your email address, then checkout the below sites.

http://www.guerrillamail.com
http://www.spam4.me/
http://www.sharklasers.com/
http://getairmail.com/
http://www.fakemailgenerator.com/
https://ssl.trashmail.net/

Basically you choose what name of the email you want, it creates an inbox for you for 60 minutes to use it. No signup, just enter the name of the email address. This is really useful if you like to avoid spam email but need to register to a site temporary .

Enjoy.

HTC - Help This Company

2013-08-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

Google Takes On Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive

2012-04-24T19:39:00.003-07:00

Google Drive is the latest product that Google has released to challenge cloud services such as Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive.
It offers 5GB (gigabytes) of storage for free and if you need more storage you can pay for it.
Check the following video,

For more details visit drive.google.com

Enjoy!!!

Get Worlds All The News Papers Under One Roof

2011-12-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

If you ever wonder about a website that has all the links of the online news papers around the world then onlinenewspapers.com is the website you should visit.

This web site has categorised all the online news papers according to their geographical location and country wise so any one can easily access this valuable resources easily and freely!!

Enjoy!!

Visit:- www.onlinenewspapers.com

Samsung Galaxy S II "Apple Fanboys" Ad : Nice One....

2011-12-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

Internet Explorer The Nightmare Of Web Developer

2011-12-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

After long time of silence I thought of writing a blog post about a web browser that have slowed cyber world. Internet Explorer is considered to be the nightmare of web developer due to its notorious way of rendering web pages. Recently I came across several bugs of IE and it really made my life a hell.

The funniest thing is that I need to write separate specific code for not only for IE browser but also to it's different versions as well.I don't know why Microsoft does not understand the meaning of the English word 'standards' or 'consistency'.

And other thing is that other web browsers will force their users to upgrade to newer version of a software as soon as there is a update but in IE, Microsoft is not bothered to force their clients to upgrade or at least inform the users there is a new version released.

Google has come up with a good solution for IE issues with introducing Google chrome frame plugin. This enable IE users to experience what they have missed in web. For more information visit chromium project.

I don't know why Microsoft is acting like a bunch of idiots while other people like Google have to fix issues of IE. So I think Microsoft must rethink their strategies and help the web to grow rather than slowing the web community.

Web Designers and Developers Treasure chest The Icon Finder Search Engine

2011-09-09T05:04:00.000-07:00

Iconfinder provides high quality icons for webdesigners and developers in an easy and efficient way. It Is a Free service which include the details of the license type that indicate how we can use the image legally.

So check out www.iconfinder.com and get the advantage of this amazing web site.
Enjoy!

Visit: Visit iconfinder!

Google launched another attack on Facebook

2011-06-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

Google has started a new project call Google plus which directly targeting Facebook users. This is not the first attempt of Google to gain the territory of Facebook, Previously Google Wave and Google Buzz were launched but they were not effective in capturing the grounds of Facebook.

Under the Google plus it has introduced new functions such as Circles, Hangouts, Huddle, Sparks. All though the names are new to the social networking domain the functions behind these names are much more similar to Facebook.

Still this project is in development stage and Google have given a sneak peak about it's development under https://plus.google.com link. So we will have to wait till Google plus is released to public and time will tell who will be the leader of social networking in cyber world.
Enjoy!

Visit - Google PLUS!!!!

Review on HP G62-b13sa Laptop

2010-12-02T04:06:00.000-08:00

Few weeks back I got HP G62-b13sa Laptop for special discount of 360£. I think this price was reasonable for 3GB RAM, 320GB hard drive,15.6" screen and Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium.
The following are the Pros and Cons that I have seen on HP G62-b13sa laptop,

Pros

1) Finished in Biscotti with a stylish Prism pattern which is very attractive.
2) Inbuilt webcam and Microphone work perfectly.
3) Sound quality is excellent.
4) Although the processor is not that much powerful, it seems to handle multitasking work without any issue.
5) Very lighter(2.20KG) than some laptops.

Cons

1) Keyboard key layout is very confusing.They have included 5 short cut keys to left of the keyboard and this some times becomes messy when you are in a hurry typing, you will press the short cut key instead of the standardised keys such as shift,ctrl etc that normally resides in left of the keyboard.

2) Touch pad does not have a clear boundary with the laptop body. So It is bit hard to scroll and move the mouse some times when you are in a hurry. Also right and left click buttons seems to be bit rigid.

So other than the track pad and keyboard layout issue, I think HP G62-b13sa Laptop is a value for money product.

Enjoy!

Visit:- Check Full Specification

copyscape.com - Search for copies of your page on the web

2010-11-13T03:51:00.000-08:00

copyscape.com is a web site that gives web site owners the ability to check whether their web site has been copied by some others in the internet. You only need to submit your web site URL to copyscape.com web site and they will search the internet and generate a list of web sites that have identical content of your web site.
Enjoy!!!

Visit:- Visit copyscape.com

captureFox Free Screen Capture Tool

2010-09-30T02:37:00.000-07:00

captureFox is a good plug in that is developed for the FireFox web browser in order to capture screen movements.

This plug in is supported for Windows VISTA, Windows XP and Windows 7 operating systems and you only need to have FireFox web browser install in order to use this tool.

So if you need to record a video tutorial or capture a screen, this free tool will be very useful for you.
Enjoy..

Visit :-
Visit FireFox Add-on

Visit www.capturefox.com

Gmail Priority Inbox

2010-09-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

Gmail is getting more innovative day by day when considering with other email service providers. Check out this video and make your life easier..
Enjoy!!