Project i by @cdathuraliya

'cause project x is too mainstream

[cdathuraliya]

New place is cdathuraliya.wordpress.com. Sorry Tumblr, I found doing certain things hard with you.

[cdathuraliya]

Good bye my little friend!

Few days back SHE sent me this picture with the caption "our kitty girl" saying she found her somewhere down the road, abandoned by the so called most intelligent beings of this planet earth. And today SHE sent me a message saying that this cutie just died. Even the doctor couldn't save her from that miserable death. Her heart was too weak to survive. I never saw you, but I just can't let you go. My personal belief is that the term "Karma" stands for the equilibrium of nature. There's no god or any other superstitious being looking over each and every one of us to punish or reward us for what we do. Karma should apply for everyone and everything in this universe or in all the universes. If karma applies for everyone fairly, the people who dump such innocent beings to be dead in roads deserve a special place in hell, if it exists somewhere. If this kitten had few more days with her mom she would have lived. I know what you think, hundreds and thousands of people die every day, in every passing minute. No, I don't need your reminder on that! No matter whether a living being is black or white, a Sinhalese or a Tamil, a cat or a dog, life is a life. If we can save a life from death or from suffering, we should do our best. Every living being is here for a reason and each one of them has a right to live. Good bye my little friend! I don't want you to become a strong human in next life. That doesn't guarantee you to have human qualities. Be a little kitten in a safer place where you can live your life until the mother nature calls you back.

[cdathuraliya]

A tribute to few Hambayas we met on poya day

We were actually not lucky enough to reach our destination yesterday. But we could because of few Hambayas who helped us out.

Until we passed Mawanella on our way to hill country, everything was according to plan. And then the car broke down. First we thought it was trivial, and it could be unless yesterday was Vesak poya day. Things were not that easy on a public holiday which is celebrated by most in this country in one way or another. After asking from few, we were directed to a home garage managed by Irshad & Sons (who supported their dad with random hugs and screams). He could easily say “no” to us on such day but he said “yes” in the first place. Moreover it was not just “yes”, it was “we'll find it and do it”.  We, or more precisely he, needed to find a belt to fix our ride. Again the fixing part was easy, finding that damned belt was the thing of the day! After a quick look and few calls, he hopped into his tuk-tuk with me for a ride which we hoped, would be the first and last of the belt rush. Sadly we were mistaken, a lot! It took a second time, third time, fourth time, fifth time and might be a sixth time, I can't even remember how many times to Mawanella town and all around, to Motor shops, their owners houses and some random cousins' houses looking for the belt! Each of these quick but long enough rides was followed by a time that Irshad was under my car checking whether the new one matches. All together it took good five hours and finally he was done! Meanwhile the only lady stayed at home was busy making everything home-like for my fiancée with what they got. Other ladies (Irshad's brothers' living nearby) were off to help dansala happening in the evening. According to Irshad's words with pride, this time they are trying something new, Pol Roti with Katta Sambol. Last time it was manioc with Sambol.

In early hours I was bit worried about how much this long fixing would cost. But later on I was ready to give any amount he would ask. Shockingly when I asked for it his reply was "ganak balala denna" (you decide some fair amount)! I had to urge several times to get some amount out of his mouth and more shockingly it barely covered the cost of all our tuk-tuk rides! After handing some amount which I felt fair enough, we were literally out of words to thank him and his family. When we somehow put our thoughts into words, Irshad apologized for taking time to fix our ride. Well that was embarrassing! I'm so glad that I at least took some chocolate bars (she also really needed this) for those kids when I'm returning from our first tuk-tuk ride to town. Sadly we had to refuse their request to stay for lunch since we were already too late for our destination. Those godlike human beings just made our pilgrimage to Sri Dalada Maligawa possible. I wish I had a selfie or something with them to attach this post.

That's one type of hambayas we meet in our everyday life. No matter whether you believe in Allah or Buddha, when you are only bounded by humanity, your beliefs won't keep you away from doing good.

PS: If your car breaks down near Hingula, Mawanella ask for Irshad's garage. He is at your service 24/7/365.

[cdathuraliya]

Democratic! Socialist? Republic.

True that this was supposed to be a [Tech] post, but not even a preschool kid seems to be escaped from the hype created by the presidential election or #PresPollSL as we all know.

Democracy and people's sovereignty; no matter how many times these terms/phrases are repeated everyday, as citizens we are nowhere near being conscious of these and acting accordingly. A fair portion of the society seems to be still waiting for Prince Diyasena to appear from nowhere and make the country prosperous. Only thing changes is the face of Diyasena (even names rhyme this time!) from time to time or more precisely from election to election which always ends with disappointment of all. We are voting for a king, not for another government worker. As long as we follow this vicious cycle there will be no true victory for us but only for them.

Probably it is native to the eastern part of the world that we tend to believe more in someone else other than in ourselves. We are not ready to believe that we can make the change we want and we should be the change we want to see. Most of us prefer just to live our lives just because we are here. This negative prospect seems to be running in our veins no matter how much experienced or educated we are. We just let history to repeat its dark ages again and again doing nothing for a change. Or simply we are too lazy to change the way it is. This nature is evident in every aspect of this society from innovation to politics.

On the grounds of above we can take a look into our habits towards politics of today. There is no need to waste much of words to explain how corrupted our political system is when it is very explicit in every detail of the society, especially with an election around the corner. Incumbent party which has lost its popularity in an alarming rate seems to be doing literally anything to defend their power. We as citizens keep watching all these drama without making the noise that should be raised. It is true that everyone talks about that everywhere, but it doesn't make the change we need. Or in another way, it is not what we have been offered by this term called democracy. No matter from which party these politicians are, all of them are just greedy human beings same as we are. Probably more greedy and corrupted since most of them lack even the minimum education level required to be a lowest ranked government worker. So our definition of democracy means voting for some of these maniacs and expecting each of them to be Diyasenas, an utter daydream in reality. How can we expect such from them? How dare? But that's what exactly we are doing right now and keep on doing. Besides, whatever the party we vote for at the end of the day same set of bandits will be there at notorious Diyawanna residency after few jumps.

So how can we make the change we want to see? No doubts that it should start from ourselves. It is we are that corrupted and greedy. Even the bus conductor is corrupted. Most of the government organizations are corrupted. We complain about the dad who imports Lamborghinis for his son. But no one talks about thousands of dads who bring office stationary home for their kids. There is only a quantitative difference. It is said that we get leaders for what we are. Both parties who are involved in misconduct and who are indifferent towards them are equally responsible for whatever the situation we are facing now. That's when our attitudes come into the play. True change should occur within ourselves than in anyone else. What matters is not the fact whether it is Maithri Palanaya (Maithri governance) or Mahinda Chintanaya (Mahinda vision), as far as we blindly follow our ancestral instincts, we will never be lucky enough to see the change we are dreaming of.

Above paragraphs contain a summery of few things I had to say about today's politics. Those things take time to materialize and we have no time! After seeing few recent incidents from a particular political campaign and for the sake of this very word democracy it is much needed to change the regime. Only because of appointing a new mastermind is somewhat better than letting the same to make things worse exponentially.

Image courtesy: Hindustan Times

[cdathuraliya]

Breaking the Habit

Yes, at the beginning being another tech blog was the last thing on my mind. I loved to share only conceptual stuff here rather than code lines. But things do change. Mainly due to two reasons, thought of filling this space with purely technical content as well. First reason is my final year project, something related to deep learning. There I have been working with pretty unique stuff which are not very popular and widely available on web yet. Hard times I had when looking for something on this very topic triggered me this need to share what I have been working on. Second reason is the place I do my internship. Here most of the things are free and open (source) in which I might need another lengthy post to explain. We are highly encouraged to share every bit of our work and it is always reminded that we are "standing on the shoulders of giants". So why not share? Just a brief note on change and await for more mono-spaced content. Courtesy for the post title should be given to this song.

[cdathuraliya]

The Theory of Everything: Not a Movie Review

Here comes a rare moment I feel 140 characters offered by Twitter is not enough to share everything I feel and know about something. That's when I use this space. Hopes are so high for this movie. Not only as a physicist, cosmologist but even as a human being Stephen Hawking has been a marvel to me as much as the space and time became a marvel to himself. I have wondered so many times that for how many years he would have been considered as dead if he was another ordinary person. Instead this man has been delivering lectures on topics from black holes to time travel in front of most distinguished audiences of science for years now. The way that SGD speaks out his thoughts in its synthetic voice as "My name is Stephen Hawking" simply gives me goose bumps. Not many people get biography feature films for them in their life time. If there is anyone who deserves one, this man should be the first. Not only because of his contribution to physics but also because of the way he survived through that very uncommon disease. His recent debut on Facebook was rejoiced by his fans of all over the world including myself. Now a movie is way too much for us. Hopefully the director has done a fair job to this living legend and to his fans.

#StephenHawking has just joined Facebook! Now it's all about space and time! https://t.co/pJula3pM3g

— CD Athuraliya (@cdathuraliya)

October 25, 2014

I can't think of a better place to share what I got of him. First it was a translation of his best selling book, A Brief History of Time when I was in grade 11. Then a newer edition of the same in 2011 from annual book fair. To be honest I hardly understood it in 2005, but mostly in 2011. Thought of getting a capture too! This post might get an update when I get some good copy of this movie after few months. Sadly we don't get such in local theaters no matter how badly we need them on big screen.

[cdathuraliya]

Next Big Thing in Reading

Observed fact, most of the smart phone and tablet users use their device for reading. It can be web content, social media, documents, still it's reading. Yet all the device manufacturers seem to be struggling to make something lasts comfortably for two days. That's the reason they have ended up with two separate products, e ink readers and LED display tablets. The same reason I am using two products, my smart phone and a Kindle basic. I love my experience with Kindle so far. For like one hour reading daily it lasts for a month by single charge. The story is quite different for my "smart" phone, barely a day. Why not merge the two? I would not care whether it is a high resolution color display or low resolution mono color display if the device can stay up for a week by a single charge. You get reduced or nearly no eye fatigue as a bonus point when you are in e ink display mode. The closest example I can think of in today's mobile device spectrum is YotaPhone. But we cannot expect a broad market for a device where you have to swap it repeatedly. Thought of sharing a possible solution idea which seems to be feasible with current technologies before it comes more officially from Google or Apple. Seriously it happened in few previous cases for the ideas on modular phones and multimedia search engine. Sadly the sharing was limited to few of my close relatives back then beforehand the implementations by Google. This time I am gonna shout about it at least in this space.

Back to reading, as it was mentioned I have never regretted the decision to buy a Kindle even though it is not a very much popular choice here in Sri Lanka. But we cannot ignore the fact that how finely it makes our reading experience more natural with minimum distractions and paper like display. Still it is pain to browse the web and to do social networking using the device. After all we need to have two devices to do things which are closely related. With two layers of displays in same device, one being a full color LED and the other an e ink display with easy switching in between, it should work like a charm for both heavy content readers and multimedia users. If one needs full color viewing for photos, videos or gaming which obviously consumes more battery power he/she can go with that display mode. And for basic reading and browsing plus for most of the communication tasks e ink display will serve the purpose consuming much less battery power.

To date and to my knowledge Amazon is the only manufacturer who is in producing both device lines parallelly. There is a higher chance for them to go for a product like this by merging the best of technology and we can be quite certain that it is going to be a huge hit if they do it correctly.

Wow! It's Apple this time and they have patented it as always they do. Reminder to self, search before you type.

[cdathuraliya]

Transcendence of Nineteen Eighty-Four

My type of movie after quite some time, Transcendence. I hardly get movies of my type out of them most being very predictable which I consider a waste of my time. Post examination freedom at its best as it was just yesterday I faced the last paper of my university life. Unlike for most of them, big yay!, for me it's a mixed feeling. Life is or was simple as a student. Anyway, Transcendence seemed to be very familiar even in its trailer with dialogues on AIs, singularity, quantum computing and neuroscience. But the affection began to fade when it started to sound like another typical action thriller half way through making a clear separation between blacks and whites. Yet the end made it back to the place where it deserve with a question to myself, "what do we really need?". It could have been that majority type of movie if it ended with the AI not being Dr. Will Caster. But it is Dr. Will Caster and that raised the question. Well, now you need to watch to totally understand. It's not something new to me that we are ignoring most of the fundamental questions of existence in our everyday life. We are provided with answers (?) for these by religions most of the time. Or we have selected to ignore them by our own choice because it is much easier. Once again, what do we need? In a plain view we all need perfection in everything. Think of it, we need governments to be perfect, economy to be perfect, our lives to be perfect. Yet what do you mean by perfect? Are we satisfied with perfection? Why utopianism and totalitarianism sound so terrible? Will we ever be able not to attain but even to define the perfection we are looking for? These questions just fascinated me for few hours outpacing thoughts on machine intelligence which I am ought to be fascinated. Acquisition of true intelligence by machines is not so far away as I see, at least they will soon imitate us in a precision that we cannot notice as Turing said. Nevertheless will it be enough? Anyone is interested in giving some heart to machines? No? Well, that's rude don't you think?

Ending a long wait, started reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. You think it is coincidence? Not really!

[cdathuraliya]

Oh Tesla!

This is not supposed to sound like a promotional campaign. But I must make a note on my second expressible bucket list item. “Drive my own Tesla.” Yes, it is! After all these things should not be that easy. If anyone is curious, first one (again exp.) was watch Yanni play live which was ticked off causing much less effort than expected. Tesla haunted with its pure to the core tech specs for sometime but watching this made it finally to the bucket list. And Tesla has a new challenge to make its cost feasible to a third world country government worker! And I like being optimistic in technology, make it self-driven and charged by my solar powered home station! Take that self-driven part Google. We are simply living in an era where decades of science fiction becomes our day-to-day life.

UPDATE: Tesla is doing it sooner than expected.

[cdathuraliya]

Not so Funny

I truly wish if we had a translation of Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy in native language. But still I wonder how will our readers embrace such writing especially with its homosexual theme and also who will dare to translate a book which carries a number of other controversial themes. Right now my concern is on the applicability of what book has to offer on ethnic conflict and 1983 riots which took place before our generations’ presence which seems to be forgotten intentionally by preceding generations. The way Selvadurai has presented the reader most probably first hand experiences of him on destruction of the state at that dark period should be retold amongst today’s youth who were blinded by opportunists. Especially the last chapter Riot Journal: An Epilogue, will help them not only to understand how that massacre was executed with the patronage of throne but also how it affected generations of people up to now.

Selvadurai was introduced to me by “the blog writer” of Sri Lankan blogosphere, Taboo. I cannot recall a memory about this author before it was mentioned in Taboo’s blog. Now I see the coincidence between what they wrote. He was mostly referring to the next novle by Selvadurai after Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens. The name was in my mind for a long time, but did not came across with a hard copy at bookstores or at book fair. Honestly few other books topped in my list to be bought so I was not so keen in finding this particular book. Selvadurai came to mind again because of a random post I saw in facebook about the book launch of his new book, The Hungry Ghosts, which I could not attend due to many reasons. But this time I did not let him slip away, found some soft copy to be occupied with just after end semester examinations. I could not resist the call to share some of flooding thoughts in my web journal just after reading the book to urge someone else in reading few hundreds of pages which he/she will never regret.

[cdathuraliya]

Halal shake

Did I misspell anything? Guess not. Another viral video is trending all over the internet with hundreds of replicas following. One eternal truth can be composed(?) for them, soon they come sooner they go.

Meanwhile in Sri Lanka Halal seems to be shockingly fraying the common conscious between ethnicities. Firstly it was just a rumor. But now it seems to get scandalous wings through social networks. Censorship is clearly not a solution, but a prominent group like Bodu Bala Sena should be more responsible in releasing its propaganda to a media like Facebook. Notorious fake profile holders and few other groups are having a field day by making this a sensation. What we are wondering about is the end of this sensation. All the complications arose up to this moment are not worth even a droplet of blood fallen at battles. Majority of social network users are less matured to come up with handy solutions for situations like this. Rage could be easily tempered within them and henchmen of opportunism seem to be fueling the flames. Roots run behind the throne some say. Who knows? It's quite disappointing how nationalism is used for a power willing burlesque. Issues might raise. May it be Halal certification or the Law College incident, but this moronic generalization of racism should be condemned at any extent before it completely cripples the ethnic harmony of this country. We are just ended three decades of bloodthirsty war. Extremists who are not rare in any race and hypocrites who are in a never ending thirst of power are the only people backing up this rampage. Patriotic veins of innocent citizens have been boosted villainously to be used them as pawns of a cheap political agenda. They seem to be blindly following the torch without knowing that first blaze will set themselves into fire. We are ignoring the screams of unspoken past, letting a repetition of tragic history which no one wants. Rumors are freshly made into facts by just typing them on images! These facts are shared by thousands without making a single question about their accuracy and relevance. A whole race is addressed in words we dare to speak forgetting the friendly neighbor, faithful friend of same nationality. Are we this much blind not to see where all these are headed? True that we are the majority of this country. But it doesn't give us the ownership of this soil. We need to reach the pinnacle of maturity as a society before attain the dream, miracle of Asia. Hopefully not never.

Self advisory rule was imposed to keep it short. Skipping to bottom line, country is in need of an active intervene of all the moderate and peace willing people to end this holocaust. Wish a Harlem shake could shake all the misled brains back to their initial state.

[cdathuraliya]

Hello world

Amateur blogger is departed for sometime with all his novelty. Only the confused psyche was fighting in flickering time. Thoughts have been echoing and striking in his mind for freedom of expression. When the level of intensity becomes intolerable alternativity of writing was banished. A decision was made to unleash which were callously held. Typical tech blog start was the result despite of his last wish for another tech blog.

Okay, enough! Let's hope above will be a curtain raiser. :)