This time the judging panel for the first round included Merill, Anton, Buddhike and me. Out of 42 Submissions Following are the five finalists (in no particular order) who are going to compete in the next round.

• Perfect Sleep & Energetic Wake Up
  Team Dream Team from University of Colombo
   
• Panchayudha
  Team Arunalu from Faculty of Information Technology - University of Moratuwa
   
• My Plant
  Team My Plant from University of Colombo School of Computing
   
• Smart Buddy
  Team Optimax from University of Colombo School of Computing
   
• Air Pollution Monitoring Application
  Team Amityfrom University of Colombo School of Computing

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I guess like last time MVPs will be assigned to mentor each team. If so what's the team I'm going to pick :)

So guys ... now get yourselves ready for the grand finals (Sri Lanka) which is going to happen on 31st May.

Guys go and register for the SmartClient Deep Dive organized by SL MVPs In association with INETA

Date/Time: 31st March 2006, 4.00 PM Onwards
Venue: NDB Bank auditorium, Colombo 02
Sessions:
(1) Data binding in smart clients - by Prasanna Amirthalingam
(2) ClickOnce Deployment - by Wellington Perera
(3) Developing VSTO Applications (Visual Studio Tools for Office) - by Dr. Nitin Paranjape

Register NOW @ http://dotnetforum.lk/register/deepdive

Hey Jinath :)  I copied the above text from your blog.

This journey started nine months ago. With lot of good and bad comments the program went on.

So finally Ajith Bandara, an extraordinarily talented guy from a distance area 'Mawathagama' is titled as the Sirasa Superstar. Congratulations .

He deserves it ...	Moment of truth ... Winner announced
a glory moment ...	Thats a big a** cup :)
With his mother and sister	Looking at the journey ahead ...

I never got a chance to watch all the stages of the program. Looks like I have missed the chance to see lots and lots of amazing talent. On another point ... It's a bad thing that Sirasa tries to copy American Idol (hope they will have a new approach next time), BUT the idea of the program and outcome of it are extremely good things. Without a program like this talented guys like Ajith, Manjula, Nishantha etc from distance areas will never be able to come up and be starts or at least it will take ages. So ... Hats off to Sirasa TV for organizing the whole thing.

Continuing the VS Community Launch events we had the second one on Last Wednesday @ the University of Moratuwa. Couldn't blog about it on Thursday due to the busy schedule and forgot the whole thing after that. :)   oops!

We had three sessions

• Developing Smart Client Applications with Visual Studio 2005 (by )
• ASP.NET 2.0 Enhancements (by Merill Fernando)
• Powering Up Web Applications with AJAX using Atlas (by )

This time Prasanna or Dinesh couldn't make it due to work schedules.

Where is the next ... Kandy?

One of my best best best friends Mahesh got hooked up day before yesterday (Thursday). I was the best man. Bride's maid looked cute though . 

Met lot of old freinds from my old office. Also met my X boss. Hey boss ... gaining weight everyday ... How about some jogging every morning.

Best wishes to both of you from . YO! ... All the good things are yet to come lu ... (I herd about something like that ... I have no clue. me not yet merried ne).

Mahesh and Niroshini
This snap was taken after the ceramony. We
(Mr & Mrs Mahesh, Gaurika and I) had a long
chat at the lobby for about an hour just to cool
down after the tired day.

Tons of photos are there .. have to wait till mahesh comes back to get those.

Last wednesday my good old sony ericsson stopped working ... trust me it is old now. During the last two years the number of talk time hours has gone up to 1000 hours and it faced couple of accedents  such as falling ... oops!. So I had to quickly take a decision to go for a new phone. Was too shourt in money to go for any of my dream phone models which I posted couple of days ago. Also didn't had much time to check the specs and compare models so decided to go for Sony Ericsson K700i. Spent 20k for this ... man it's worth every panny. Thanks to Sasinath for hooking me up with this kick ass phone. Coolest features are the Remote Desktop and Presenter Modes. Remote Desktop mode allows me to move themouse on the computer screen ... Well! desktop is not actually displayed there. Presenter Mode allow me to use the phone as a remote control for a powerpoint presentation.

Then I installer Opera Mini browser. Man! it rocks'.

Hats off to Windows Vista. It detected and installed my bluetooth dongle automatically. I still remember the hassel I went through to install it on WinXP. On XP it took ages install and configure the bluetooth drivers and it installed hell lot of things starting from moden, network card, com ports etc. even after installing the drivers configuring it to the phone is a very messy case. But now on Vista it just happened automatically. I just downloaded a free tool named MyPhoneExplorer and all the required features are there including sending SMSs, editing the phone book, backup the contents in the phone etc.

So ... K700i is going to be my buddy for several months.

It was nice to see the bloggers. Until last evening most of them were only online buddies ... but this was the first time we actually meet and have a chat. Couple of my old friends were also there.

At the start it looked booooooring, But after we get to know the crowd it went pretty well. Well! that was the whole point.

Thanks to Indi for setting up this ... BAREFOOT was a nice selection for the meetup ... we should continue this man ...

Some Bloggers. Not sure whether techy bloggers or not	Casper telling me to get lost with my camera	Indi ... Once upon a time an Open Source guys now thinking
Well! for all these time I was wondering who is this mahangu. Finally met him ... He is a true Open source guy. Unlike most Open source guys ... this dude truly talks about is and uses linux on his laptop. Keep up the good work dude.	Bloggers into deep conversations. Some were blogging live I guess. Well! few of them were not actually bloggers. They were Flickers! Couldn't get an exact head count. But I think it was around 25 Bloggers + Flickers + Friends	One of my old friends. Man! this guy is everywhere. Once I was with a friend in his car and he his a three-wheeler. Suddenly a known face jumped out and started shouting. It was him (Nilam). After he saw us it was all cool.
Indi told me about this dude but I don't remember. There were too many new faces.	happy to actually meet the online never before met bloggers.	Casper (man! he is up to something), Razor and Charith talking about when to bounce?
Jua ... another Old friend working @ MakeStuffHappen with my good old budy Faizal. She is a designer and photo nerd with a good eye. I have seen some of shoots @ flicker.	Mahangu and me ... talking about the Open Source and Microsoft Stuff. I think it went up to atleast 45 minutes. After a long time met a true Open Source guy.	Mahangu and me ... After a long chat about the most debated topic 'Open Source vs Microsoft' ... Battle will go on forever, but we'll stay as buddies.

This contest is all about cool stuff you can do with Express. Guys if you only have Express editions stop worrying (I know few) that you dont have the Professional or Team Editions. It's your time to do something kick ass.

source: http://www.madeinexpresscontest.com/ 

YO! Bloggers ...

Sri Lanka Bloggers meet up is hapenning today 6 PM at the barefoot gallery, Colombo 3. Indi (www.kottu.org) is organizing things. Hope to see all the un-seen but known through blogs faces ...

Cheers!

Gold medal winner Sri Lanka's Chinthana Vidanage waves from the podium during a medal ceremony for the 2006 Commonwealth Games men's weightlifting 62 kg category in Melborne, Australia, Friday, March 17, 2006.

source: http://news.sinhalaya.com/wmview.php?ArtID=10850

Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They like twinkies, coke and palate-scorching Szechwan food.
Real Programmers don't write applications programs. They program right down on the bare metal. Applications programming is for the dullards who can't do systems programming.
Real Programmers don't write specs. Users should be grateful for whatever they get: they are lucky to get any programs at all.
Real Programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand and harder to modify.
Real Programmers don't document. Documentation is for simpletons who can't read listings or the object code from the dump.
Real Programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look at how much good it did for them.
Real Programmers don't read manuals. Reliance on a reference manual is the hallmark of the novice and the coward.
Real Programmers don't write in RPG. RPG is for gum-chewing dimwits who maintain ancient payroll programs.
Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for COmmon Business-Oriented Laymen who can't run a business, much less write a real program.
Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks. They get excited over finite state analysis and nuclear reactor simulation.
Real Programmers don't write in PL/1. PL/1 is for insecure anal-retentives who can't choose between COBOL and FORTRAN.
Real Programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmer writes in BASIC after reaching puberty.
Real Programmers don't write in APL, unless the whole program can be written on one line.
Real Programmers don't write in LISP. Only idiots' programs contain more parenthesis than actual code.
Real Programmers don't write in PASCAL, BLISS, ADA, or any of those other sissy computer science languages. Strong typing is the crutch for people with weak minds.
Real Programmers' programs never work right the first time. But if you throw them on the machine they can be patched into working order in "only a few" 30-hour debugging sessions.
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any Real Programmers are around at 9:00 am, its because they were up all night.
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport which requires a change of clothes. Mountain Climbing is acceptable. Real Programmers wear climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room.
Real Programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming is for compulsive neurotics who were permanently toilet trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up sharp pencils on an otherwise clear desk.
Real Programmers don't like the team programming concept. Unless, of course they are the chief programmer.
Real Programmers never write memos on paper. They send memos via computer mail networks.
Real Programmers have no use for managers. Managers are a necessary evil. They exist only to deal with personnel bozos, bean counters, senior planners, and other mental defectives.
Real Programmers scorn floating point arithmetic. The decimal point was invented for pansy bedwetters who are unable to "think big."
Real Programmers don't drive clapped-out Mavericks. They prefer BMW's, Lincolns, or pick up trucks with floor shifts. Fast motorcycles are highly regarded.
Real Programmers don't believe in schedules. Planners make up schedules. Managers "firm up" schedules. Frightened coders strive to meet schedules. Real Programmers ignore schedules.

Source: http://funnies.paco.to/RealProg.html

There has been no .NET Show update in ages ... Last show was Live from PDC.

I wonder what happened !!!

I was working on the Vista December CTP and Office 12 for couple weeks and had to switch back to Windows XP because Vista didn't had driver support some of my hardware stuff and it started giving problems. After switching back it worked smoothly. But in last couple of days it started giving problems ... unexpected sudden crashes of office applications, Hibrenate is not working ... etc etc. I have Vista February Build and Office 2007 downloaded, but still couldn't install due to my schedule got busy unexpectedly. 

It sounds like ... my machine is telling me ... I NEED VISTA ... I NEED VISTA ... !!!!!!!

I have been using my good old Sony Ericsson T610 for more than 2 years now. Have used it heavily and now it is transformed from it's former glory to an old phone ... all those shining sleek looking surfaces are now gone ... there are skratches and skars all over it ... and i have been using the same theme, colors, ring tone for ages ... my interest for those have faded. At the time I got it I use to change all these almost everyday. At that time It was one of the first phones came out with a 65k display and it was one of the kick a** phones. I spent about $420 to buy it, but today it is available for $120 .

So now it is time for me to switch for a new one .

I have been keeping my eye on couple of cool new models. Anyways last night started hunting in GSMArena to check the latest available models and up coming models. Now I have to make up my mind for new one  ... following are the current selections.

Last Friday (3rd, March) I did the 3rd workshop of the series (first one was on Windows Applications and the second one was on Web Services. This time it was 'Developing Web Applications with ASP.NET 2.0'.

Session went on for 3 hours with full of demos. I was happy to see their amazed faces to see the cool features in ASP.NET 2.0 ... hope to see atleast few of them come up with their own sites created with ASP.NET 2.0

So, thats the end of the third workshop of a series. What's next?

We all know that we had a big a** VS Launch couple of weeks back. This time it was a mini scale VS Launch with the title 'VS Community Launch'. It was @ University of Colombo Auditorium on 2nd Thursday (March).

Things were planned very nicely, event started with lighting of the oil lamp and welcome speech. Then we had three main sessions as follows.

• Language Enhancements in 2.0 (by Prasanna - MVP)
• SQL Server 2005 Enhancements (by Dinesh - MVP)
• Developing Smart Client Applications with Visual Studio 2005 (by )

Some photos from the event.

Jina and Dr. from the uni lighting the oil lamp	Merill giving the kick start to the event	Part of the audience who are University Students
Prasanna doing his presentation on Language Enhancements	Dinesh doing his presentation on SQL Server 2005	Me trying to get the back rows interacting and awake the sleeping dudes
Me doing my presentation on Developing Smart Clients with VS 2005	A bigger portion of the I think the count was above 250 students	Jina wondering what the hell these MVP geeks are talking about.

More photos can be found at the .NET Forum

We had the March User Group Meeting last evening. This time we had two sessions. First one on Windows Workflow which Isuru did, and the second one was by me on SmartClients. Crowd was pretty ok.

And the Q&A session was better than most meetings.

   

It's been 2 weeks since my last blogging ... was too busy with things.

Had to get involved in couple of new BIG project proposals, regular work, few presentations, then Microsoft Partner Event Velocity was there. Had a pretty good time @ the event @ WatersEdge. It was nice meeting Chris Sharp and Mathew Hardman. I wonder why open source buddies are so scared of Chris . And Matty rocked WateredEdge with couple of creazy dance moves. Also when the party became boring for few minutes he kicked out the bar tender out of the cocktail bar and jumped in and started making some cocktails . Some were good ... some were really crappy with too much soda.

I have missed lot of blog readings, Gizmodo Gadget updates, WinSuperSite Reviews, Bink News etc etc, got tons of catch up to do in the weekend. And purchased a new game DVD - Quake 4, have to 'explore' that too. Among all things I have to install Vista .

Today evening and next two days of the week is going to super busy, because today its the .net user group meeting. Tomorrow there is a Community Event @ Colombo University, and on Friday have a workshop @ Moratuwa University plus a ImagineCup Intro session at APIIT in the evening.

Today morning upgraded to the new release of Live Messenger. Well! had no option but updating, because it didn't allow me to sign in without updating. After the instalation I was like "where the hell is my cool interface?"   New interface looks more similar to the old MSN Messenger. I prefer the earlier live messenger beta look and feel.

Anyways this is what I got with the new update ...