iThink

How Sri Lankan Tweeps are connected in Facebook

keheliya — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:06:27 +0000

I couldn’t resist the urge to create a visualization while playing with gephi for my GSoC project over the weekend. The Netvizz Facebook application was used to get the data extracted from the Tweeps group, a hangout spot for Sri Lankan Twitter users. Imported the gdf file to gephi and did the coloring based on the clusters. Did slight modifications to the Radial Axis layout for legibility of labels. Gimp was used to add the final touches. Node sizes are proportional to the degree of each node (the number of people each person is connected to, within the network). Colors represent the sub networks identified within the social network by the Modularity clustering tool. Click on the image for a larger version.

Download Sizes: Medium [1845x841] Large [3690x1682]

Tagged: facebook, gephi, gimp, Graph Theory, GSoC, infographics, Social Network Analysis, Twitter

Why I bought a Nook. A look back.

keheliya — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:37:29 +0000

I used to read a lot when I was small. But didn’t get the chance to read much after I started my higher education. Had no time to hangout in libraries and it was exhausting to stare at PDFs in a monitor after working with computers whole day, and mostly I couldn’t take my laptop on to bed like a physical book.

I had the dilemma of going for a smartphone/tablet or e-Reader. (That debate still continues online, whether it’s worth to spend that much money on a single-purpose device) After a little reading on the goodness of e-Ink technology (no back-light so no strain on eyes, readability on direct sunlight, battery life) made up my mind to go for one. Then there was the final decision to be made, Kindle, Nook or Kobo.

Kindle was the famous one and Kobo was cheap. But Nook had the capacitive touch-screen panel at the bottom, so browsing the web and navigating among bookshelves was easy. Furthermore it supported the standard ePub format among many others. But the biggest reason for me to go for a Nook was, it ran on Android, and could be rooted to install various applications like Twitter, Facebook clients, custom launchers and file managers etc. So if anybody is not planning to hack and void the warranty, its better for them to settle for a Kindle because the latter has a faster refresh rate and a better battery life. (Touchscreen of the Nook eats up the battery a bit, although the touchscreen is not lit up when reading)

Price was $149 for the wi-fi only version and it cost me around LKR18000 including shipping and taxes. Unlike the Kindle, Barnes and Noble are not shipping to SL. So I had to get it down via a friend who was visiting SL.

A year has passed away since then and I’m enjoying reading on the Nook a lot. I can say its the best value-for-money device I have used after my laptop. I read anything, that I can get hold of, in ePub or PDF formats, mostly Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Popular Science and Technology genres. For converting and transferring books I use the Free and open source software, ‘Calibre‘. Sometimes large PDF books or research papers with complex lay-outing and graphics are not properly displayed in the 7-inch screen, so I convert them to ePub or tweak them a bit via a custom shell script (which cuts and rotates pages to fit the screen).

Sometimes I miss the tactile feel and whole experience of flipping through the pages of a real book. And I think an e-Reader works well with the books having a linear flow, so it might not be the best device for referencing when you are doing homework. It’s hard to keep track of several pages and go back to them quickly, as and when you want, like in a physical book. But nothing beats the ability to carry around, all of the bulky books in your reading list and some more, in a cool device with size of one book. Simply I just love my Nook.

Based on my answers for the interview with The Sunday Times. You can find that article, written by Smriti Daniel, here

Tagged: Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, E Ink, EPUB, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Portable Document Format, Touchscreen

Filmed in Sri Lanka

keheliya — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 04:58:46 +0000

The demise of the cinema legend Elizabeth Taylor took me back in history in search of few cool facts about movies and Sri Lanka. If you are a history buff and a movie geek combined, here’s some interesting trivia, with some links to more related stuff.

Elizabeth Taylor, when she was 22, came to Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time) to perform in the 1954 film, Elephant Walk, with Dana Andrews and Peter Finch. It is said that because of her preganancy Elizabeth had to reject the offer for Elephant Walk, a role which had been created just for her, at first. Instead, Vivien Leigh, who was 20-years older than Elizabeth, won the role. But, while filming in Sri Lanka, Vivien had suffered a nervous breakdown and Elizabeth had won the role back after giving birth to her first child, Michael Wilding, Jr.

Here‘s an interesting review about the movie, which later hillariously turns into a debate about caste system in Sri Lanka and drama on its own. This is a note about filming the movie in Sri Lanka with some pretty vintage posters.

This is an article by Sanji Gunasekara about famous films made in Sri Lanka, including ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai‘, ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom‘ and ‘Water‘.

View this document on Scribd

In all the three international television series, from 1980 to 1994: Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers and Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious Universe, his segments to camera were all filmed in Sri Lanka. In his own words.. “The island of Ceylon is a small universe; it contains as many variations of culture, scenery, and climate as some countries a dozen times its size.”

Here‘s a list created by lasantha-sd about top 30 movies shot in Sri Lanka. And here’s some music for the 80′s fan. I like both of them except the fake monk scenes in the end.

Tagged: Arthur C Clarke, Ceylon, Elizabeth Taylor, Hollywood, Sri Lanka

WebGL in Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 10

keheliya — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:41:37 +0000

If you are experimenting with WebGL, with a non-nVidia based graphics chip like Intel or AMD/ATI, you may have noticed it no longer works after an update to Google Chrome 10. Even in Firefox 4 with its much awaited WebGL support, things are not working well.
WebGL makes use of OpenGL to render 3D graphics in the web browser. Seems OpenGL and drivers are “disastrously buggy” that both Chrome and Firefox have decided to blacklist certain graphic cards. If you are feeling brave and want to bypass these restrictions, here’s how to go ahead..

DISCLAIMER:
DO this at your own risk. Engineers at Google and Mozilla must have very important reasons to block these and cripple 3D support in the browser like this for many users, considering the awesomeness of WebGL

In Google Chrome

You just have to run it with ‘–ignore-gpu-blacklist’ startup switch.
At the terminal use the command

google chrome --ignore-gpu-blacklist

In Mozilla Firefox

If you are using an Intel graphics card, you might have to install OSMesa first, which is a software implementation for OpenGL which enables off-screen rendering. You’ll find the package as ‘libosmesa6-dev’ in Synaptic Package Manager or try the old school method

sudo apt-get install libosmesa6-dev

Then run the following command to run Firefox, bypassing the blacklist.

MOZ_GLX_IGNORE_BLACKLIST=1 firefox

Goto about:config and search for following parameters and make sure they are set as below.

webgl.disabled:false
webgl.force-enabled:false
webgl.force_osmesa:false
webgl.osmesalib:/usr/lib/libOSMesa.so
webgl.prefer-native-gl:false
webgl.shader_validator:true
webgl.verbose:false

To check whether its working properly Goto a page like Google Body Browser or examples like this at Learning WebGL. To know more about your graphic card in Ubuntu try the following commands.

inxi -G
lshw -C video
glxinfo | grep render

Here are some more related resources:
Learning WebGL http://learningwebgl.com/blog/
Planet WebGL http://www.planet-webgl.org/
WebGL on Intel cards http://www.guciek.net/en/js/webgl_intel
Awesomeness of WebGL http://www.slideshare.net/evilhackerdude/webgl-awesomeness
WebGL @ Mozilla Developer Documentation https://developer.mozilla.org/en/WebGL
News Story at OSNews http://www.osnews.com/story/24264/No_Hardware_Acceleration_Firefox_for_Linu

Tagged: 3D, ATi, chrome, firefox, google, intel, mozilla, nividia, OpenGL, WebGL

Arduino The Documentary

keheliya — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:36:26 +0000

It is really fascinating to read occasionally about all these cool projects on Hack N Mod and Hack a day. The new kid on the block, Arduino does awesome things. I wish we had it, when we were learning about micro controllers, at school, you know, the 16F84A days. It takes away the steep learning curve of electronics theory, when you want to implement a cool idea quickly. This is a heart-melting documentary for any electronics geek.

My electronics/electrical engineer friends, any projects you know of that make use of this amazing piece of technology to teach/learn electronics in Sri Lanka?

Tagged: Arduino, Electronics, Sri Lanka

Failbooking by Etisalat

keheliya — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:53:47 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

You may call me paranoid or over-cautious after reading this. I wanted to write about this long ago, as soon as I heard this advertisement and thought its totally insane. But I was busy. Thanks to the most gruelling bloodshed of recent times in one of the prestigious higher educational institutes of the country, I get the chance to pick one of the drafts left in my blog. Here it goes..

Recently, Etisalat, a mobile service provider advertised a scheme for users to chat in facebook via SMS and the two ways they are suggesting the users to register has fundamental flaws. As the method 1 they want users to enter their facebook username and password at their own site www.etisalat.lk. In the next method they suggest users to SMS their username and password to a number.

As it is being discussed over and over again by people like Jeff Atwood and Dare Obasanjo, as a third party, its wrong to ask the user to “Please Give Us Your Email Password“. You may be trying to help. But some may consider it offensive. You are asking for the keys of their online identity.

Next thing, is it ok to allow users get comfortable with entering their credentials in all sorts of random places, and make them more susceptible to phishing attacks?

Then, asking them to SMS the credentials as plain text! huh? In this era of WikiLeaks? How can the user be confident that these usernames are not going to rest in a databse as plain text, where an employee with malicious intents, can copy them with a mouse click and sell for a fortune?? You’re Probably Storing Passwords Incorrectly!!!

I don’t think engineers at Etisalat didn’t know about OAuth or Facebook Connect or simple way of coming to an agreement with Facebook to send a confirmation code to user’s phone without making them SMS passwords. Did they misused the illiteracy of majority of Sri Lankan internet users, teaching them bad habits and let their online identities be compromised? or simply is somebody being lazy?

For example, OAuth is a technology that has been built for enabling applications to access Twitter/Facebook on users’ behalf with their approval without asking them directly for the password. So the users will be more willing to use your service.

And one more thing. In your method all will work fine, until they change their Twitter/Facebook password. This is one of the major things OAuth solves – The users’ access is not tied to their current username/password combination, so they’re free to change it without having to update a couple dozen external apps.

So why choose the hard, insecure, inconvenient way? There may not be a perfect security solution. But it is always good not to hide these critical information and keep them informed. As professionals, let us not only teach people to use technology, but also to do it in the safer, efficient and right way.

Tagged: etisalat, facebook, Internet, SMS, social media, WikiLeaks

Thank You Internet For Wishing Me

keheliya — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:51:33 +0000

According to the records, I was born on a day like this, twenty three years ago. Thanks everybody, for sending me wishes and reminding that to me. Yes I had a blast… almost.

Tagged: birthday, facebook, galpotha, Internet, keheliya

The Loser’s Script – How to wish facebook friends on their birthdays automagically in linux

keheliya — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 09:53:13 +0000

Yes, It does what it tells it does. It may be one of the geekiest ways of wishing your friends on their birthdays. You won’t have to check every morning for people having birthdays, and go on writing on their walls. The script does it for you. And believe me, when you wish someone using a script for the first time, it feels terrible. You will start to see the fickleness, frailness of human relationships, freaks and fakes around us in a Web 2.0 world. But, if you dare to go forward and test it for yourself, scroll down to see the step-by-step instructions.

Step 1: Install cURL and Gnome-schedule

cURL is a command line tool for transferring data using various protocols. Gnome-schedule is a GUI for managing cron-jobs. Install them by running the famous command

sudo apt-get install curl gnome-schedule

Step 2: Setup a new application
Goto http://www.facebook.com/developers/ and setup a new application. Fill in all the required fields. Don’t forget to set ‘Application Type’ to ‘Desktop’. Remember the ‘Application ID’ and ‘Application secret’ given in the end of the process.

Step 3: Request an OAuth access token with the proper permissions
Facebook Graph API authorization documentation Has a detailed explanation about this. But if you are in a hurry,

Enter the following URL in your browser, replacing YOUR_APPLICATION_ID with the application ID you got in the earlier step.

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=YOUR_APLICATION_ID&redirect_uri=http://www.facebook.com/connect/login_success.html&type=user_agent&display=popup&scope=offline_access,publish_stream,friends_birthday

After a successful login and granting necessary permissions, you will be given a verification code. Save it for later use.
Enter the following URL in your browser, replacing YOUR_APPLICATION_ID with ‘Application ID’ and YOUR_API_SECRET with ‘Application secret’ you got earlier, and VERIFICATION_CODE with the code you got in the previous step.
```
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=YOUR_APLICATION_ID&redirect_uri=http://www.facebook.com/connect/login_success.html&client_secret=YOUR_API_SECRET&code=VERIFICATION_CODE
```
Now you will be given the precious ‘Access Token’. Save it somewhere

WARNING: Facebook does not recommend following this procedure and storing Access Tokens or Application secrets in desktop applications, because if somebody gets hold of that code, you are dead. I mean your facebook profile security is severely compromised and can be used in any malicious way they desire.

Step 4: Writing the script
No. Actually you just have to copy the following script I wrote and save it in a file like ‘/home/yourName/birthdayscript.sh’ after entering THE precious access token of yours in the proper place.

#!/bin/bash

NOW=$(date +"%m/%d")

#Enter your access token below within quotations
ACCESS_TOKEN="blah-blah-blah-your-precious-access-token"

#Get the names and UIDs of your unfortunate friends born on a day like today
curl "https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?access_token=$ACCESS_TOKEN&query=SELECT%20first_name,uid%20from%20user%20where%20uid%20in%20(SELECT%20uid2%20from%20friend%20where%20uid1=564121985)AND%20substr(birthday_date,0,5)%20==%20'$NOW'" > birthdaywishtemp.xml

names=`sed -n -e 's/.*\(.*\)<\/first_name>.*/\1/p' birthdaywishtemp.xml`
ids=`sed -n -e 's/.*\(.*\)<\/uid>.*/\1/p' birthdaywishtemp.xml`

F_ARRAY=( `echo ${names}` )
U_ARRAY=( `echo ${ids}` )

#Wish each of them with the same old boring message
for (( i = 0 ; i < ${#U_ARRAY[@]} ; i++ ))
do
curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/${U_ARRAY[$i]}'
curl -F 'access_token='$ACCESS_TOKEN'' \
    -F 'message=Hey, Happy Birthday...'${F_ARRAY[$i]} \
    https://graph.facebook.com/${U_ARRAY[$i]}/feed >> birthdaywishbackup.log

#Let you know the progress
echo "Wished ${F_ARRAY[$i]}" >> birthdaywishbackup.log
done

echo "Completed on $(date)" >> birthdaywishbackup.log

Now you can browse to the location where you saved the script via terminal and execute the script with the command

./birthdayscript.sh

And you can see the progress in the file birthdaywishbackup.log

Step 5: Automating the script
Yes, it is of no use if you have to run this manually each and everyday to wish somebody. So you can schedule it to run and write automagically on walls of birthday boys/gals everyday. If you are the geekiest type you can do it using a cron-job and you won’t need this tutorial anyway. But if you are interested, you can find how to do that here.
For the ordinary geek, there’s this dumb-simple GUI based tool called gnome-schedule. Run the command

gnome-schedule

in a terminal and you will be able to come up with a scheduled cron-job like the following in few easy steps.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you set a time of the day that you will keep your computer switched on, because a cron-job is not god, and doesn’t know how turn on the computer it is running, by itself

It’s done!!! Enjoy being a lazy, cold-hearted nerd, who has no sense of finer things in life.

UPDATE: With all the controversial comments about this post here and in Reddit, I found an article written by another one who has thought on the same lines which totally explains my idea behind this script and blog post. Read and post your comments

It Was Your Birthday? Social Media Didn’t Tell Me That! by Jason Douglas

Tagged: bash, cURL, facebook, gnome-schedule, linux, scripting, shell

Blogging about blogging

keheliya — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:19:29 +0000

Yes this is just to say I have’nt stopped blogging. Don’t take me off your feed readers just yet. Past few weeks have been quite adventurous. I think I’m having one of the steepest learning curves in my life, while living the dream I was yearning for, for years. I got selected to Google Summer of Code this year and currently working on implementing an LDAP diagnostic tool for Apache Directory Studio. You can find my project’s code hosted here at Google Code. It is mentored by Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot and Stefan Seelmann. With their help, I’m getting my feet wet, and learning cool stuff about LDAP and Eclipse plug-in development.

And the next best thing which happened to me is getting to be an intern at WSO2, a world’s leading open-source middleware company. There, these days I’m working in WSO2 Business Process Server’s BPEL tools which is based on Apache ODE. Learning SOA concepts, Web services and BPEL under the guidence of industry giants is quite fun.

Although I’ve hacked with many OSS projects for few years now, this is the first time I’m doing serious work and actively contributing to the open source community. I’m learning stuff, in a rate I never thought I could. These massive dives into the reservoirs of knowledge and experiences are turning me into a patient listener and a reader…and a sponge with a very high absorption rate Have lot of stuff to write about, as soon as I get a break. So await!!! Till then, to keep the feed readers and blog aggregators ticking, I’ll be posting here some of the old articles I wrote to ‘The Gamer’. Enjoy!

Tagged: Apache, BPS, Directory, Eclipse, GSoC, LDAP, ODE, WSO2

For ‘The Gamer’ In You…

keheliya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:00:59 +0000

Its the third largest sector in the global entertainment industry (Yes movies and music come on top)…and has a massive double digit growth beating other giants in the industry, recording a revenue of $41 billion for 2008. A multi-discipline realm of professionals including biologists, physicians, artists, musicians and programmers, 25000+ people all over the world, making other people’s imaginations a reality. Yes it is The Interactive Entertainment Industry or most popularly known as Video Gaming.

Sri Lanka has a youth gaming community sizing over 10000 specially in cities like Colombo, Kandy and Kurunegala as hardcore gamers and thousands more all over the island as fans and followers of PC, mobile and console gaming. Annually they get to meet each other and compete to the heart’s content at events like “Srilankan Cyber Games”. But until now Sri Lanka never had a gaming magazine. Print or electronic media never considered it as a serious form of entertainment. The popularity of gaming among kids, youth and young-at-heart urged for a voice…. until now.

Bunch of friends got together to create the Sri Lanka’s first ever gaming magazine, The Gamer. And its the second of its kind in South Asia. With strategy guides, reviews, gaming events,competitions and new releases it will cater to the gaming community of Sri Lanka and beyond. The first issue was out in September and it was available in all leading book stores such as Vijitha Yapa, MD Gunasena, Sarasavi, etc. and in popular gaming cafes and DVD stores as well. And if you are lucky enough, you will still be able to grab your self a copy left. This inaugural issue of ‘The Gamer’ features newly released NFS: Shift and many more hot titles including Majesty 2, Colin McRae Rally: Dirt 2, Resident Evil 5. A special strategy guide on FIFA 09, Reviews on The Sims 3, World of Goo etc is also included. Since The Gamer’s intention is to bring forth & expose the gaming community to the general public as well to increase the awareness of the Sri Lankan enthusiasts regarding the latest developments in the international gaming arena, this issue covers the news on World Cyber Games – Sri Lankan Preliminaries too.

Ahhh… and I almost forgot to mention I write about FOSS (and specially Linux) games for ‘The Gamer’.

These days we are getting ready to publish the second issue of ‘The Gamer’ – the follow-up to a great success seeing almost all 1500 copies sold. If you like to contribute to the magazine’s future issues with articles please drop a mail to edit.gamer@gmail.com
If you wish to contribute in any other way or to find out more about advertising opportunities in ‘The Gamer’ contact mkt.gamer@gmail.com

You can follow ‘The Gamer’ on twitter at http://twitter.com/TheGamer_SL or be a fan on facebook at http://bit.ly/48AvpW

Tagged: gaming, magazine, pc, Sri Lanka, The Gamer