Tharaka Abeywickrama's Blog

Mental Health Hotline

2009-10-21T21:57:00.005+05:30

Heard this today morning on the radio. Hilarious!!

Mental Health Hotline - The most amazing videos are a click away

GDB 7.0 Released

2009-10-20T22:32:00.001+05:30

Now with support for stepping backwards! And many more features.

Sneaky Microsoft plug-in puts Firefox users at risk

2009-10-18T02:14:00.003+05:30

An add-on that Microsoft silently slipped into Firefox [in an update delivered via Windows Update last February] leaves the browser open to attack:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139459/Sneaky_Microsoft_plug_in_puts_Firefox_users_at_risk

Actually its two Microsoft add-ons. Firefox has since blocked them:
"Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant and Windows Presentation Foundation, all versions, for all applications. Reason: remote code execution vulnerability (see bug 522777)"
https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/blocklist/

I never knew these add-ons were installed until I got a popup saying Firefox has blocked two add-ons! i first thought they were trojans by a 3rd party - because it's so unlikely for a so-called reputed company to install stealth plug-ins.

LSE Buys MillenniumIT

2009-10-07T20:29:00.004+05:30

The Business:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090916-709424.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de196d06-a2a3-11de-ae7e-00144feabdc0.html

The Technology:
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2568
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/1742203/London-Stock-Exchange-Rejects-NET-For-Open-Source

Finally!

2009-07-09T11:34:00.000+05:30

Firefox 3.5

2009-06-30T23:03:00.004+05:30

It really does what it says it does.

But my favorite new feature is the new error messages:

Outlook Is Painful

2009-06-01T10:05:00.005+05:30

It's funny when such a supposedly sophisticated program cannot do a very simple task. Apparently, MS Outlook cannot keep attachments when you reply. If you want to keep attachments in reply, you have two options:

1) You have to Forward - losing the participants in the mail
2) Let Outlook attach the original mail as an attachment instead of including it.

Both options kind of suck. At the moment I'm stuck with having to Forward and manually add back all the participants. And this is one of the many problems I have with Outlook: it's agonizingly slow, The whole machine grinds to a halt when it's downloading a message, and when it gets a message it does not like, it obliges by crashing over and over again. Thunderbird in comparison is super fast and never crashed on me. I only use Outlook (2003) at work, and that too only because the company has standardized on Outlook as the default mail client. They didn't go with Thunderbird because it did not have a (good enough) meeting facility. That I guess is a good example of how bad software triumphs over good software simply thanks to Bloat.

PHP on Google App Engine

2009-05-29T09:58:00.005+05:30

Earlier I blogged about GAE and the PHP implementation in Java called Quercus. There is still no official support for PHP on GAE. I was wondering about the possibility of combining these two to run PHP apps on GAE, and it seems like it's already been done. See here and here. A google search will return tons of results on it.

Hopefully this will make GAE apps a little more portable between the truck loads of web hosts that support PHP.

Update: there is a whole blog about running PHP on GAE here.

Redundant Advertising?

2009-05-27T09:45:00.005+05:30

tpl: Simple, Lightweight Serialization for C

2009-05-25T20:17:00.008+05:30

"There are no library dependencies. You can compile its source code (one file) right into your program."

Should come in handy when you want to do some quick serialization/deserialization but doesn't have the time or is overkill to bring in a heavy duty player (or if you are working in pure C). The API looks simple and elegant. License is BSD.

Site: http://tpl.sourceforge.net/

Cool Transforming Flash Drive

2009-05-23T01:40:00.006+05:30

Waaah! I want one!

United At Last!!

2009-05-19T22:35:00.008+05:30

How historic is today? I don't think I can do justice in describing. I will only say that, it is as a greater day as the day World War II ended to a Briton, or the day the American Civil War ended to an American. Certainly it is the greatest day in the last 30 years of Sri Lanka's history, and that is longer than my lifetime.

Sphinx: SQL Full-Text Search Engine (GPL)

2009-05-11T22:42:00.002+05:30

More info:
http://cplus.about.com/b/2009/05/11/sphinx-search-fast-text-searching-in-c.htm
http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

Quercus: PHP implemented in Java (GPL)

2009-05-10T22:21:00.000+05:30

For Java buffs.

http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.0/quercus/

Why anyone would want this described here.

Star Trek

2009-05-09T22:48:00.002+05:30

I'm no Trekkie, but the trailer looks awesome. (would have embedded it, but the video has embedding disabled.)

More trailers.

YQL: Yahoo! Query Language

2009-05-08T12:56:00.001+05:30

Query the internet like SQL.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

7-zip: Better Than WinRAR?

2009-05-01T16:42:00.007+05:30

I knew 7-zip was an excellent open-source compression program (and library), but the last time I checked (which was years ago), WinRAR was slightly ahead in text compression ratio. However, I downloaded the latest one and tried today, and it seems to have overtaken WinRAR.

I compressed the JDK 6 documentation from Sun, and the sizes were:
Uncompressed - ~265MB (12499 files, 851 folders)
Zip (original download format) - ~56MB
RAR (v3.71) - ~25MB
7-zip (v4.65) - ~20MB

Mind you, this were all text files. I didn't try with binary files but as I recall, last time I try with binary files and 7-zip did compress binary files better than WinRAR. Also the WinRAR version I have is not the latest, while the 7-zip version is the latest (cheat!). You might also notice that both RAR and 7-zip beats the pants off standard zip.

Anyway, that's enough convincing for me: fully open source, with a permissive license, good GUI, and now possibly the best compression ratios of all: I'm switching over to 7-zip. So its Goodbye to shareware WinRAR and Hello to open-source 7-zip!

Panel Discussion Sri Lanka War - Press TV

2009-04-23T13:29:00.005+05:30

Full discussion:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

'Nuff said.

AsmJit - Binary Code Generation at Runtime?

2009-04-20T10:47:00.010+05:30

Wanna generate high performance binary code on the fly at runtime, all through a simple C++ API? AsmJit might be the answer:

http://code.google.com/p/asmjit/

We already have such nifty libraries for the JVM such as ASM and BCEL. This is the first time I've seen it for native x86.

another introduction: http://cplus.about.com/b/2009/04/19/something-a-bit-different-asmjit.htm

[Update] More JIT Libraries:
GNU lightning (LGPL)
libJIT (LGPL)

Spam Has a Carbon Footprint

2009-04-16T08:46:00.003+05:30

http://www.rlslog.net/spam-kills-climate-03-grams-of-co2-per-message/

Mercurial Windows Installer: A Good Example of Lightweight Installers

2009-04-15T11:27:00.011+05:30

Python windows installer is something like ~10MB. Mercurial (which is written in python) has a stand alone windows installer (i.e, you don't need to have python installed on your system to run it) of about ~3.5MB - probably because it only contains the subset of python needed by Mercurial. The installation is a breeze and hg works flawlessly out of the box. This installer is made using py2exe, which I think showcases the maturity of py2exe: to have a reasonably complex and widely used program using it. py2exe website lists other high profile examples such as BitTorrent.

Although I don't use Python anymore, this is a good example of lightweight (in other words: easy) installers, a question to which Java still does not have an equivalent answer. Lightweight installers help make your program more popular: average joe users wouldn't want to download separate runtimes to run your little program. They are likely to go with something easier to setup. JavaKernel comes close, but it's still a separate installation, and you cannot control the packages included/excluded in it.

Happy New Year!

2009-04-14T09:49:00.003+05:30

Wish everyone a very happy Sinhala and Tamil New Year!

A Song Who’s Remakes Are Much Better Than The Original

2009-04-12T15:11:00.005+05:30

After watching a song on American Idol that got a standing ovation from the judge Simon Cowell, and also hearing the song that sounded kind of familiar, got me checking it out on the web. I couldn’t view any of the original videos in youtube because they are blocked for my country (bad youtube! What has Sri Lanka ever done to you?).

Anyway, I managed to fish them out through other sites or fan uploads in youtube: The song is called "Mad World" turns out the song was featured on an award winning ad for Gears of War and on the sound track of cult movie Danny Darko.

The version on Gears of War is also a remake (by Gary Jules), and to me sounded a little better than the version on Idol - which got me curious about the “real” original. After some fishing around, I managed to dig up the original, and was a bit disappointed. To me it sounded like it was sung to the tune of tapping trash cans with beer bottles :D.

Google App Engine adds Java Support

2009-04-11T18:04:00.001+05:30

Link: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/overview.html

Java or Python, GAE looks like an amazingly easy platform for scalable web application development:

I wonder if this will make app engine the better free platform for facebook application development. Currently the best free hosting option for general facebook apps is Joyent, which only has the first year free. As for using GAE for facebook hosting, Python facebook libraries still seem to be in early development stages, which could be the reason we haven’t seen any significant facebook apps on GAE. The Java library is also unofficial. But it used to be official and is now maintained as an open source project, so I think it should be reasonably complete. So would the Facebook + Java + GAE combination yield some good facebook apps (assuming there is such a thing as a good facebook app)?

Having said all that, GAE Java is still in the “early access” stage and may still have some glitches. Google is giving away java access to the first 10000 who request it, probably as a soft launch. I managed to sneak one for myself - Don’t know whether I’ll do anything with it though ;-).

Twilight is a Chick Flick!

2009-04-10T01:30:00.000+05:30

What a disappointment. I was expecting an action movie - judging from all the hype surrounding it. What I didn’t know was that it was all due to the fanboyism (or fangirlism?) of the book it was based on. And the special effects were as good as those of a high school play.

The reason for the confusion was that I made it a point not to read reviews or check out Wikipedia before watching this movie for a change. Guess that’s the end of that practice!

On a more positive note, I watched Pineapple Express and it was quite good: it was the stoner movie I expected it to be.