Simple as that ....

Everything is set for the presidential election 2005 in November. What ever the parties are, who ever the candidates are competing, for me, its just another battle between my school and my dad’s.

RSS vs Atom

Web syndication feeds are extremely trendy, advantageous and widely used present days. There are two main methods in doing this. RSS [Rich Site Summary] and Atom. When I was searching for distinctions between two, I found this cute resource.

Its all about Web-Designing

I found these two articles on ‘mistakes’ of web designing. One is bit old but has some good points. Whatever the authors say, none can criticize the use of animated images, various font colours or opening a page in a new browser window as bad practices. Its all depend on the requirement. Still these write-ups present some important tips.

• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html
• http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/DesignMistakes/

All new IM - Google Talk

New movement of Google, Google Talk

Make every web page printer-friendly.

What we've acquired with the electronic age is an unquenchable thirst for printing. The bigger the online archives the more we print. I think no PDAs or TabletPCs will change this trend.

You found an article online and want to print it to nicely punch thee holes on the side and store it with other useful stuff. Almost every site nowadays provides a printer-friendly page of this and that, but some sites don't and you're still stuck with staring at their printed navigation bar, footer, ads, etc, for ever and ever. All this online decor means nothing on paper. This article describes a simple strategy to strip page parts that are irrelevant for print.

Its all with CSS. The CSS standard defines a number of media types like screen and print (I got it here for the first time). We can play around these tags to achieve what it says in the topic.

Google Sets

Checkout the cleverness of Google Sets

Deprived Dealer

With a mind of looking a wristwatch, I went to Robert Agencies, the Casio agents in Sri Lanka this evening. What a funny!!! They had only three gents’ simple wristwatches to show….

Once again I knew I am not alone!

Thanks for all the people who remembered the day...

A Story on a Sinhala FM Station

I was traveling towards Colombo Fort last evening on a 138 Maharagama bus after the office in the evening. The radio was on and the station was ‘Raja FM’ . They were playing nonstop songs, I was really embarrassing about what I have heared.

”Passa passa passa passa, Surangani ge gee piti passa” – usually guys singing these types of songs, when they get together and having some fun accompany. Its amazing to hear these things in a public transport service.

One another thing I got to heard at the same time was, one of their advertisements. A lady whispering, with a yearning voice “peya dekak, eka digatama, nawaththannema nethuwa, sepa denawa”. The name of the program was something like Raja Sepa – Nonstop.

These are the consequences of loosing people like Ven. Soma Thero.

Earn your Black Belt in Java

http://www.javablackbelt.com/

I found this curious JavaBlackBelt, community for Java & open source skills assessment where you can test and demonstrate your skills. This is the place where Java developers have their technology knowledge and development abilities recognized. It is dedicated to technical quizzes about Java related technologies. You can take exams and earn various Belt statuses till Black Belt, the highest.

The Response

Veteran Java author Bert Bates has replied to my posting at Javaranch. Its coooool for me.

http://saloon.javaranch.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=44&t=005518

Worm spreads over continents

A hasty worm is spreading on Windows 2000 and early versions of XP this morning hitting some of the major business and media organizations. Security experts point that quite a few versions of this new worm have deployed. Microsoft was in an "emergency response" mode and they have activated their two war rooms against the attack. CNN Reports.

Packing Baggages for Whidbey

Good starter for Visual Studio 2005 [code named Whidbey] available here, loads of code samples.

But in my case, I need to conquer VS 2003 before stepping to VS 2005 :-)

Windows Reserved Names

Referring to my early posting on July 21, 2005, not only AUX, CON and NUL, you cannot create directories in windows with the names

COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3 and PRN as well, coz they are reserved words for the os.

A bulky article goes here explaining the theory. So, no need to bother the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft.

Splash Screen for C#.Net windows apps.

There is no built-in support for the splash screen in the Microsoft.NET win form applications. However, with the help of threading, we can create a splash screen.

We can create a splash screen by creating a form with

no title bar (by setting its FormBorderStyle to None),
making it not appear in the taskbar (by setting its ShowInTaskbar property to false),
making it the top most form (by setting) its TopMost property to true,
and making it appear on the center of the screen (by setting its StartupPosition as CenterScreen).

We can show this splash form when the main application is loading.

//formload method of my main application

private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
this.Hide();
Splash frmSplash = new Splash();
frmSplash.Show();
frmSplash.Update();
Thread.Sleep(3000);
frmSplash.Close();
this.Visible = true;
}

//frmSplash is an instance of our Splash Screen

Dealing Deeper with 0 and 1

I got bit confused with my academic project first. It was puzzling, which language to select for the coding, coz it involves some hw programming. Finally got selected one, good old C#.net, but I got no experiences in developing widows applications using C#. I got lots of gigantic people to provide helping hand, but the depressing thing is none of them has enough time, typical programmers :-)

At the mean time, I got MCAD/MCSD Training Kit—Developing Windows-Based Applications from a pal. And started doin it alone, now continuing with a super boost.

The Complete One-Dayer

Sanath Jayasuriya: the complete one-day cricketer slapped the ball above line to acquire the membership of the 10k club. An unseen corner of the picture goes here, records of allrounders with more than 3000 runs and at least 150 wickets in the oneday history.

Music de Sri Lanka

For all those people, seeking all new Sinhala audio releases, Here are the best places to persuade the need.

www.ahamu.com
www.sinhalamp3.com
www.sinhalasongs.net
www.clublk.us
www.kaputa.com

Windows Codenames

Lookup for Windows Codenames

http://www.phm.lu/Documentation/Windows/Codenames.asp

Which Code to Crunch ?

After immersing a lot in java during recent past, I feel like I wanna stay with java forever. But the destiny at the moment is c#, anyway no big worries, coz both are kinda similar. However I will not give up James Gosling’s invention. Seeking Kathy’s and Bert’s all new book “Head First Java”, it seems to be a novelty art of teaching the language.

I was able to score 80% in SCJP, mainly due to Kathy’s book. I’m really happy abt it. Since I have gained the certification, don’t wanna hold up there, Need to step forward. But before all I have this BIG target on December, My finals @ London Met Uni.