by Wela on 31 August 2010 04:01
In case if you guys have noticed McDonalds don’t have any of the beef meals these days. This has been the case for about a month now. When asked both Kolpity and Rajagiriya restaurants said they don’t have stock of the beef slices. For a day or two I can believe that … but for a month … I’m not stupid. Something else seems wrong here.
At the end right now McDon don’t have their signature meal the BIG MAC … I mean … just think about it for a minute. How on earth can you have a McDonalds with out a BigMac?
by Wela on 16 July 2010 01:43
I’m (was?) not a big football fan but watched many world cup matches during the last 4 weeks. Head is still on echo mode after hearing that Vuvuzela for so long. At time it sounded very annoying but then again the tune in the entire FIFA 2010 was that. Wonder how a normal football match will look and sound like without the Vuvuzela. It became so popular … even YouTube added a special button to play the sound on the video player.
Anyways … couple of us got together to watch the finals and during that I was thinking. A FIFA comes once every 4 years. Same goes for Olympics, Cricket world cup and I don’t know what else is out there. If a human lives an average 60 years and if we consider only 40 years of that … the fella gets to see only 10 of these world events. In my memory … in the parts that I can recall … I have watched/seen three cricket world cups, three FIFA’s and three Olympics … anything before that I barely remember. Dang! only 7 left for me … I’m not going to miss any of those in the future.
by Wela on 15 July 2010 02:10
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/14/chicken-egg-mystery-finally-cracked/?test=faces
British scientists believe they have found the answer to an ages-old question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Scientists cracked the puzzle after discovering that the formation of eggs is possible only thanks to a protein found in chicken's ovaries. That means eggs have to be formed in chickens first.
The protein -- called ovocledidin-17 (OC-17) -- speeds up the development of the shell. Researchers from Sheffield and Warwick universities in England laid out their findings in the paper "Structural Control of Crystal Nuclei by an Eggshell Protein."
They used a supercomputer to zoom in on the formation of an egg and realized the protein is vital in kick-starting the crystallization process. It works by converting calcium carbonate into the calcite crystals that make up the egg shell.
Dr Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, said "it had long been suspected that the egg came first -- but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first."
"The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation, but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process," Freeman said.
"It's very interesting to find that different types of avian species seem to have a variation of the protein that does the same job."
It is hoped the discovery leads to the invention of new materials.
by Wela on 5 July 2010 21:20
Not sure where many of you know about this. 2nd-4th July an exhibition was hosted by the Rotary Club of Colombo at the Exhibition and Convention center which was called the Hobby Fair 2010.
Organizers invited Microsoft to put up a stall and demo some products. So our Student Champs gang took the challenge and did a fantastic job manning the stall for 3 full days and kept the tempo going. This was the first time Sri Lanka hosted an event on this nature. I mean not the exhibition … but an exhibition of hobbies. There were 70+ stalls and some pretty awesome stuff. I loved the coin collections and stamp collections.
At our stall Champs demonstrated products like Windows Security Essentials, Songsmith, Worldwide Telescope, AutoCollage etc. Couple of presentations were also delivered for large audiences.
It was a bit disappointing to see a low crowd. I mean hobbies are something which people are drawn into. I mean who doesn’t have a So theoretically unlike any other exhibition this should have more attendance. It was pretty obvious that something had gone wrong in the awareness creating. Anyways … it’s the first time something of this nature was organized, so there is enough room to improve next year.
by Wela on 30 June 2010 22:55
No not me. I only drive fast. Never like an idiot. If you are driving you’ll understand what I’m saying here and I’m pretty sure that you already understand that driving is not an easy task when there are plenty of idiot in the road. Let me explain …
There are plenty of obvious kinds of idiots like … who go in the wrong side of the road; especially 3 wheelers and bikers. Some who signal right and turns left – most of the times motor bikers; met one today morning also. One most annoying type is people who drive really slow in the right-hand side lane. And another type is people who keep headlights on at nights; this almost blinds everybody coming from the opposite direction.
Last night I was on my way back and this jeep guy behind me was having the headlights switched on the whole time. It was pretty annoying as the lights were crystal white and extra bright. I was very patient from Orugodawatta to Peliyagoda. But right on the ‘Aluth Palama’ bridge in a major traffic jam this guy started flashing the lights, there were no room to go anywhere. But still this guy kept doing it. So I just stopped in middle the road and went to him and gave a piece of my mind. ‘idiot’ was decent enough to knock off the headlights after that.
Road in front of the national library is now properly built with 4 tracks marked etc. Last week I was driving towards the Museum and I was in the second lane on the library side. I saw an army jeep parked right at the other side of the road. When I got near the new color lights this army jeep just went passing me … basically a 4 lane cross in less than 50ft … and turned to the road parallel to the Viharamadevi park. I actually turned to left in a split second and ended on the pavement … actually 2/3 of my car was on the pavement at the end. Still the jeep just missed the front right side of my car by inches. There was a traffic cop right there who saw the whole incident but when I looked and him he was stupid enough to give an answer as ‘what to do .. they are army ne’ … I got really pissed … and put my 2000cc engine to use and chased after the army jeep and crossed them and stopped before the color lights and blasted the hell out of them. I respect our soldiers a lot for the dedications they have made to eradicate terrorism. But still this kind of behavior is not acceptable at all.
Everybody who passes town hall knows that there is a big bottleneck just in front of the Buddhist Ladies College. There’s only two tracks in the road and most of the times one is occupied by the busses because there is a bus stand right there. Couple of weeks back I faced a situation where one bus driver stopped the bus blocking both lanes and loaded passengers. this was creating an utter mess; the whole road was blocked. Surprisingly there was a cop right there who watched the whole incident but did nothing. When I asked him later he said that’s not what he was assigned there to do. Funny … but fair enough. So after the road got cleared I stopped the car right in front of the bus (without blocking the other lane of course) … so he will feel the pain as myself and many other drivers behind me felt. I actually kept it there blocking this bus’s way for about 10 solid minutes 
till another cop came there to resolve the situation.
by Wela on 9 June 2010 21:08
Dang! Silly mistake or what. This morning when I logged in to my Live Home I was thrilled to see the Wave 4 Menu. At the same moment I saw a post in Bink mentioning the Office is now live on SkyDrive!. So I rushed to http://www.windowslivepreview.com and saw the whole site is updated. Without thinking much straight went to the control panel and uninstalled all my current Windows Live tools.
After that just before clicking the download button on the new site saw the message … ‘Newer version of Windows Live Essentials will be available soon … bla bla bla’ … good kick for me for not reading and rushing to get the new version.
Anyways Skydrive is updated and few bits and bobs. Not sure when the desktop tools are coming. I just finished re-installing the good old Live Essentials and seems like going to have to wait a while to get my hands on to Wave 4.
by Wela on 7 June 2010 19:25
Couple of weeks back Madhuka pointed out that Sri Lanka is not listed in the country dropdown when entering comments.
I just checked the BlogEngine.Net Code and realized it's loading the coutry list from Cultures and for some reason Hosting Server didnt had Sri Lanka in the list. I have no way of fixing it in the server. So I added a customer culture in the code and fixed. Now you can select Sri Lanka in the list.
Apart from that I have done couple of enhancements to BlogEngine.NET, basically replaced the basic edior with the FreeTextBox and reformatted couple of options in the admin section ... bla bla bla. Still havent had a chance to test these fully and put live.
by Wela on 30 May 2010 03:14
Just checked the IMDB All-Time Box Office: World-wide page and I'm surprised. Earlier I have written about the movies that generated a total sum of over a billion dollars. Since my last note on this couple of movies came so close to the big number and Avatar by James Cameron kicked ass on all existing records. So far Avatar has grossed over 2.7 billion dollars. Good heavens! that's a sh*t load of money.
Right now I'm surprised to see Alice in Wonderland is only 5 million below the big number. Without a doubt this is one of the most popular fairy tales and this is not the this story was taken to a movie, probably its like the millionth time :). But this is the first time it grossed so much money. So what the deal? I think its the 3D.
Now! when on earth are we; poor movie fans in Sri Lanka going to be able to watch a movie in 3D.
by Wela on 18 May 2010 18:51
Was exploring Windows Live Writer a bit more and noticed this nice feature to include a photo album in a blog entry which is directly linked with my Windows Live Photo Gallery.
If anybody needs the high resolution printable versions please feel free to contact me. i can point you to a download location.
I have like a zillion photos and a million albums … well! not really that much. Now my brain is thinking … whether to upload all those into the blog using the Insert Album features in this.
On a separate note … Windows Live Wave 4 release is just around the corner and I the new Live Writer have some cool features packed with it. Just saw some screenshots etc on the web, and I cant want to get my hands on it.
by Wela on 16 May 2010 05:33
I just uninstalled my antivirus software (too bad I had paid for it for 2 more years) and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. Installation was simple. Just a 7 MB download, and then the updates; all took only 5 minutes. It was worth the risk. It has already detected two major viruses that existed in my machine which my old virus guard didn't detect. In terms of performance it seems like this is far ahead than any thing out there. Over the last couple of years I have used Norton, McAfee, CA, Kasprasky, OneCare etc, but I think the simplicity in this out beats all ... it loads faster, performs the scans like a charm, and the security seems much better ... i'm not 100% convinced yet though.
Surprisingly the UI is so simple. None of those unwanted useless memory hungry features are not there. If you are really tired of those memory hungry bloated security software (bloatware); and if you haven't already tried this yet, I would like to highly recommend. The best part is it FREE.