Political Views: Liberal

today on TNL i saw this JHU monk... rathana hamuduruwo saying that being politically liberal tends to embrace western values... where ppl eat well... get drunk etc..

it was a political debate... they were debating some act passed by the parliament on having bars close to schools and religious places of worship...

its good that the act specifically mentioned "religious places of worship".... 'cos a bar is a place of worship to some liberals....

if i had no desire to eat tasty animals... drink alcohol... get high... and eat again... and use deodarants... i'd be a bigger monk than him... and since this abstinence would make my smug cloud so big i'd want to go preaching to those lost souls about how drinking is bad... (and how its okay to pirate software, music and movies...)

and now they want the govt to ban alcohol and tobacco completely... 'cos apparently the natural log of the rate at which the natural log of the rate at which ppl are getting high is increasing exponentially...

y = e^((ln (d(ln (dx/dt)/dt).c)) + C

and they'd ban meat and the whole country will eventually turn up to be a monastery... and there wont be anyone to populate... 'cos no one will have the desire to populate...

ah not cool... so as an act of civil disobedience... we should drink more and eat more tasty animals or else there wont be anyone to populate the country!

i wonder what the govts policy is on software and movie piracy...

hmmm

time dilation and the international space station

surface radius of earth,
R = 6,378.137 km

orbital radius of the international space station,
r = R + (319.6 + 346.9) / 2 = R + 333.25 km = 6,711.387 km

from gravitational time dilation:

r_s = 0.0088356 m

t₀ = 1s * 0.99999999934 = 0.99999999934 s

so someone living in the the ISS will be 0.00000000066 seconds younger for every second on earth...
hmmmm

that is... for every 1 earth year... a person living in ISS will be 20.77 milliseconds younger!... so if he/she lives for 48 years in the ISS he/she will be 1 second younger!

NZ pwned!!!!!

we totally pwned the kiwi's!!!

i'm selling my iMac G5

i'm selling my iMac G5
well it's not really mine... it belongs to UITier (my company)

the bid starts at: Rs 85,000

i bought it in Sept 2005 but its like brand new... 'cos i like to keep things clean
;)

i have the original DVDs

check the wikipedia article on iMac G5s

and also the official Apple press release

why am i selling it? 'cos they are gay... havent you seen those mac vs PC youtube videos? and 'cos its redundant...



for a list of installed software pls contact me via gmail: shehal@gmail.com

this model does NOT come with the remote or does NOT have built in blue tooth

Machine Name: iMac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac8,1
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Bus Speed: 600 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.2f2
Serial Number: YD4415SFPP8

DVD-Writer: MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-825
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO

Memory: 1GB
Size: 2 x 512 MB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330

Hard Disk: 150 GB
Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: WDC WD1600JD-40GBB2
Revision: 09.05M09
Serial Number: WD-WMAES3955685
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ata
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Serial-ATA
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Connectivity:
Built-in Fast Ethernet
WiFi

Video
GeForce FX 5200:
Chipset Model: GeForce FX 5200
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: AGP
VRAM (Total): 64 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0329
Revision ID: 0x00b1
ROM Revision: 2103
Displays:

20 inch Display:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Depth: 32-bit Color
Built-In: Yes
Core Image: Supported
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported

Colombo at Night

about yesterday's match...

i was reading this article on cricinfo... written by some guy called Andrew Miller... he's a pretty pissed off 'cos we didnt play at full strength...

quote:
To have sprung a major surprise in a game as meaningless as this encounter had become would have been a criminal waste of their energies.

quote:
Sri Lanka will face all sorts of accusations in the coming days of bringing the game into disrepute and of devaluing the World Cup with their tactics.

so mahela has put the game in to disrepute by not playing with the standard team... rested vass and murali...

well i wonder if he'd say the same thing if we rested malinga , vass and murali with the ireland match!

last night...

Venus

i was looking at Venus thinking its Saturn
and when i checked the chart it was Venus with Pleiades (The Seven Sisters)



the above is an "infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope"

i took some pictures and they were pretty bad so i'm not going to put them here

Jupiter

we were getting thrashed by the aussies...
and i just couldnt watch match...
so i decided to go have a look at Jupiter...
and there it was... with three of its moons...
i called my bro and asked him to have a look...
and he was like "ko ko"... he's blind or something... 'cos it was there
and then after a few tries he goes "ahhh... dakka dakka"
i took a few pictures but they were all blur...



the above are Galileo's notes on observing Jupiter...

The Telescope

i borrowed a Meade ETX-90EC from a friend of mine... with attachments for my Canon EOS 350D Camera...

i had to take the telescope out of the house 'cos we dont have a balcony and the roof doesnt support my body weight...
there was a street dog (female) who had a few puppies and she was like "what're you doing"... and i was like "there dog... jupiter!!!!" and she goes "hmmmmm... thank you... just what me and my pups want..."

facebook is...

(1) addictive!!!

Subha Aluth Awruddak Wewa!!! or IS IT???

Subha Aluth Awruddak Wewa!!!
but i think the times are wrong

Aluth Awrudu dawns at 12.29pm on Saturday... and at 12.29pm the Sun is still at Pisces!!!! The Sun crosses over to Aries on April 19!!!

check the following animation..... (click the image to view the animation)

i used a software called stellarium to generate the chart




i think these astrologers should download a sky atlas software... the one i'm using is FREE... its open source...
'cos they must be using an ancient star chart!!! not realizing that there are deviations in spacetime over time!!!
PFFFTTT!!!!

if this is greek to you... in english this is what it says...

On April 14
Sun is CLEARLY at Pisces (Meena Rashiya) !!!!
if you look at the April 14 image you'll see that its inside the polygon connecting the stats of Pisces
The Sun crosses over to Aries (Mesha Rashiya) on April 19!!!
so all the other auspicious times the astrologers claim to be "Suba Nakath" are way off...
and i also hope they dont kick my ass!!!

and also the star charts!!!


Source Your Sky by John Walker


Source Your Sky by John Walker

Pi is wrong! It should be 2.Pi

Malinga ruled out of New Zealand game

CricInfo says:

Lasith Malinga may be out for up to two weeks

Lasith Malinga, the World Cup's equal leading wicket-taker, has been ruled out of Sri Lanka's match against New Zealand on Thursday with a grade two tear in his left ankle. With the recovery period set between seven and 14 days, Malinga will almost certainly miss the Australia game on in Grenada on Monday and perhaps even the Ireland clash there two days later.

more...

lasith malinga pwnage!!!

am i a traitor?

my brother had this posted in his blog sometime back
and since i've been pounded by 5 kiloton thermo nukes several times by several ppl.... i thought i'd talk about it...

i've been accused of being a traitor to my race because i don't know a word of tamil or practice their culture

my brother says:

It’s not easy being a “Sinhalised Tamil”. The Sinhalese would always look at you with a sense of cynicism - “yeah … but he’s Tamil.” And if you dare espouse the Tamil “cause” you’d be asked “so what are you complaining about? You’re better off than most of us …” Tamils on the other hand would look at you as a traitor, although deep inside I am sure they feel “whatever it is, he’s Tamil.”

The positive side of being a “Sinhalised Tamil” is that you get an intimate view of the fears, hopes and feelings of both sides. So actually you could help to clear up some of the prejudices each side holds about the other as long as you can walk a tight rope. As you can see this cross mixing of culture and identity could help promote ethnic harmony.

I think the problem is that people think that identity is a congenital attribute and that you have to stick with your “clan” whatever happens. I do not subscribe to such primitive thinking. I think culture and personal identity must be, as much as possible, a voluntary choice.


1. languages
ppl accuse me of the same thing... and i tell them... i speak sinhalese, english, php, html, javascript/css, a bit of C, xslt/xpath and director lingo. btw i find it easier to learn a programming language (like php) than a human language (like... japanese or something)

2. mother tongue
noun
the language that a person has grown up speaking from early childhood.

so its not the language the mother speaks :) hehe
apparently my brother had been speaking tamil 'cos his nanny used to speak tamil and thats how she communicated with her...
but i've never spoken tamil... and its shit hard to learn a language... i've tried... its just not in me... i mean my sinhalese is bad... and my english sucks as well... (but my php is good :) hehe)... i found calculus, analysis etc easier than learning a human language... like japanese or something... some ppl find it easy to learn new languages... i know so many who know hindi just by watching hindi movies...

3. my mother's decision
well like any mother... she thought that it was more important to protect the children than anything else...
my dad is from jafna... but we never spoke tamil at home... i guess my dad was wiped or something hehe... my mom was determined that we didnt learn any tamil... i've been compared to jews who turned traitor during wwii... i'm not blaming her... what would you have done?
it is not easy resist discrimination of that sort... but she did what she thought was right to protect the children... expecting that some day in the future... things would be better... but its like 30 years... and the its still on...
its not the strongest or the bravest of species that survive.. it is the most adoptable... charles darwin

4. culture
i agree with my brother on this one... (there are issues we disagree on like eating habits)... i dont see why i should embrace the tamil culture for the mere fact that i am a tamil... its not that i dont respect the tamil culture (or any other culture for that matter...)
in that sense i dont practice any sinhalese customs other than having kiribath on the first day of the month and on birthdays :)

5. betrayal
am i a traitor? who (or what) have i betrayed? my people? tamil ppl?

ppl are ppl... dogs are dogs... cats are cats... well there are various dog breeds but they are still dogs to me... they shit and have sex when and where ever they want... wag their tail when you yell at them... dogs are dogs!!!!
people are people... we eat meat/fish (except for peta worshiping pussy vegetarians :P)... get drunk (except for cats, dogs and pussies)...
i dont see race... color... religion... etc... i really dont discriminate ppl like that... i mean i dont go asking "hey are you a tamil?"

although i've been asked by my friends (who are mostly sinhalese who communicate with computers using MS Word :) )... they've never discriminated me... they make fun of me saying i'm fat and that i'm ugly (but they agree that my brother is uglier)... i dunno if they discriminate others... but i know that they are nice people... they dont have issues with getting along people with other cultures... hmmm... but thats not the point here... nevermind...

so if i'm a traitor go ahead and throw the first stone! i dont care....
i value my freedom more than anything (other than food - 'cos thats #1 in my list)

25/4

this is where i live

this was taken off my 1.3 megapixel phone camera

crab

i had baked crab at beach wadiya today
was nice
another tasty animal had to die to satisfy me

First EU Commercial Concentrating Solar Power Tower Opens in Spain

First EU Commercial Concentrating Solar Power Tower Opens in Spain

SEVILLE, Spain, March 30, 2007 (ENS) - Europe's first commercial concentrating solar power plant was inaugurated today near the sunny southern Spanish city of Seville.

The 11 megawatt, MW, plant was inaugurated in the presence of the heads of the regional government of Andalusia and executives of the solar company Abengoa, whose parent company, Solucar, built the power plant.

The power plant in the municipality of Sanlucar la Mayor, 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Seville, took more than four years to build, from July 1, 2001 to December 31, 2005.

Known as PS10, the project produces electricity with 624 large movable mirrors called heliostats.

Each of the mirrors has a surface measuring 120 square meters (1,290 square feet) that concentrates the Sun's rays to the top of a 115 meter (377 foot) high tower where a solar receiver and a steam turbine are located. The turbine drives a generator, producing electricity.

PS10 is the first of a set of solar electric power generation plants to be constructed in the same area that will total more than 300 MW by 2013. Power generation will be accomplished using a variety of technologies.

The first two power plants to be brought into operation at Sanlucar la Mayor are the PS10, the world's first tower technology solar thermoelectric power plant constructed for commercial operation, and Sevilla PV, the largest low concentration system photovoltaic plant in Europe.

The EU's first commercial concentrating solar power tower near Seville, Spain (Photo courtesy Abengoa)

When completed in the year 2013, the Sanlucar la Mayor Solar Platform will produce enough energy to cover the consumption of some 180,000 homes, equivalent to the needs of the city of Seville, using the concentrating solar power plant and other technologies.

Partly financed with European Union funds, the entire project requires an investment of 1.2 billion euro. The investment required to build the concentrating solar power plant amounted to €35 million, with a contribution of €5 million from the EU's Fifth Framework Programme for research, awarded for the project's innovative approach.

"These new technologies give Europe a new option to combat climate change and increase energy security while strengthening the competitiveness of the European industrial sector and creating jobs and growth," said Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.

Concentrating solar power plants have few environmental impacts other than land use. They produce no environmental contaminants or greenhouse gases.

When complete, the Sanlucar la Mayor Solar Platform will prevent the emission of more than 600,000 metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. These emissions would have resulted from burning fossil fuels to supply electricity to the 180,000 homes that will be served by the Solar Platform.

The need for concentrating solar power technology like PS10 arises because solar radiation reaches the Earth’s surface with a density that is adequate for heating systems but not for an efficient thermodynamic cycle for electricity production, Piebalgs explains.

The potential contribution of concentrating solar power plants to a more sustainable energy system has still to be fully exploited.

The EU has been supporting the concentrating solar power sector for more than 10 years, spending some €25 million to research projects working to develop this technology.

Piebalgs says this contribution has had a multiplying effect by leveraging a large amount of additional private investment worth several hundred million euro, in a ratio of about €10 for each euro invested by the European Union research program.

Also today, the European Commission published a map of the solar power potential of Europe. The map is produced by the Photovoltaic Geographical Information System of the Joint Research Centre which also includes an interactive service allowing users to calculate the solar power potential of any location in Europe.

The information in the map shows that an identical solar system will generate twice as much energy in sunny areas of Europe, such as Malta and Southern Spain, than in areas such as Scotland or northern Scandinavia.

The interactive information service map allows very specific calculation of the amount of energy that can be generated in any given location in Europe and its neighboring regions. This calculation is based on knowledge of the Sun's energy, geographic distribution, the different terrain across Europe and detailed technological analysis of the available photovoltaic technologies.

The map shows that considerable potential exists in Europe for greater use of solar energy. The EU is seeking to increase the share of renewable energies in its consumption to 20 percent in 2020.

Abengoa now is open for business in the United States. The $3 billion diversified energy company responsible for the Sanlucar la Mayor solar platform has created Solucar Power, Inc., a new U.S. subsidiary that will handle market development in solar energy.

Solucar Power Inc. will respond to utility requests for electricity using concentrating solar power technologies.