Wela's Blog

Have you ever wondered how USB have changed the computing world drastically over the last couple of years? I still remember when I first herd about this. It was when I was @ NIBM in 1998. Not that I understood much of it at that time. Actually those days USB devices was kind of rare. But ... see around today ... we have basically almost EVERYTHING coming in USB ... you just plug the damn device to your computer and it works. Right now I have a thumb drive, a mouse, a phone, an external hdd, a mini fridge, a card reader, a camera, a printer and several other stuff on my desk which is just USB plug and play. Recently I went to a digital printing press that prints these large hoardings ... guess what .. that big a** printer is connected to the computer through USB. New car audio setup I put has a built in USB so I can plug a thumb drive directly and listen to MP3s.

I only have3 USB ports in my laptop. With the docking station it's a total of 7, and with the external USB hub I have a total of 15 USB ports. But still there were couple of times which all of them were occupied. CRAZY!!!

I think Universal Serial Bus is one of the most futuristic inventions in terms of connectivity in computers. Hell! still there are many other ports available with our computers and other devices, starting from VGA, HDMI, FireWire, Modem sockets, Network Sockets, PCMCIA ... and the list goes on. I think all these folks should cut the crap and start thinking about moving to USB, may be not everybody due to technical reasons ... but i'm sure most of them can, Because that'll make things easy for us consumers.

How many of ya'll are talking backups of your system? Documents, Project files, photos, emails etc .... I guess not many. Even if some takes backups majority of them never even look at those. But as a habit I have been taking backups of my stuff since 2002. So I have a huge pile of CDs + DVDs with just backups. Actually never had to fully restore any of these. But there were couple of times where i had to extract some files from the backups.

Last week suddenly I got a mail from an old customer of mine requesting some info about a website I did for him about 5 years back. Luckily I had all the emails related to this project in an old PST backup. and thanks to Advanced File Organizer from www.softprime.com i was able to find it in no time. This small tool Advanced File Organizer is the first piece of software I purchased a long time back for about $50 and it's fully worth it.

So after all ... backups are dang! important. In case if you haven't taken any ... I suggest that you do :)

Yesterday evening I launched the Imagine Cup 2009 Sri Lanka website www.imaginecup.lk. As always it is Imagine Cup is getting bigger and more challenging every year. This time also there are many students and teams geared up to compete and win and of course with the aspiration of bringing the BIG! cup to Sri Lanka.

Well! I think you got the skills. Tools and Technologies are now available to all students at their fingertips.

Anytime if you need to find more details about the competition … please feel free to contact me through any of the methods mentioned in the website.

Also, thanks for all the guys who gave me feedback on the website, overall competition.

Good luck to all the competitors … Folks …. It’s high time that we win a worldwide award in Imagine Cup. So … are you ready to do it this year :) … spotlight is on you.

Just thought of writing about this, because this is important as hell. Wanted to write this on Saturday the moment I saw this news in Swarnavahini evening new (8). But my Internet connection at home was not working for some stupid reason.

Well! the news was about an artist who is extremely good in wood carvings, who had won international awards for Sri Lanka in hand carving competitions ... and now the guy is leaving to Russia because he was invited to teach his art to students there ... It seemed like the Russians are actually valuing this as a very important area. So this person has decided to leave the country because everybody gotta make a living in this commercial world. Unfortunately officials here haven't made any efforts to support this person. As the result he is leaving ...

Think for a moment ... reality of this story is we (Sri Lanka) are going to loose another amazingly talented individual to the country. Guess what! Nothing new in this for us in the IT industry. This is happening in a daily basis. There are many good techies who are leaving the country to find better jobs in Middle East, Australia etc. Few days ago there was an indecent where key 5 techies in a company left and now they are almost closed down. I have many friends who have permanently left the country because they were frustrated here for not getting something decent for their talents or due to chasing for more $$$$. It's perfectly fine for going after a better life but the sad part is ... all of them benefited from the free education system we have in the country which the government spends a loads of money on each individual and without making their contributions back to the country ... now they are leaving. No matter what the reasons are ... that is unacceptable. In case if you didn't know it's everybody's hard earned money that is being spent to teach all of us for 13 long years. If this continues we will never be able to come up from this mess as a country. Because it's people is the most strongest force in any country.

So if YOU are thinking of leaving ... think twice ... have you done your part? OR are you just going to become another selfish person? Lot of people ask me why am I still here ... when am I going to leave bla bla bla. But for your info ... NOT INTERESTED :)

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