Heart ♥ reacts

Do you remember when people were afraid to display affection, to express love was taboo and the FB HEART REACT changed everything?

2030

Nancy woke up on a weekday, perfectly rested, refreshed and ready to start her day. She woke up to a gentle nudge on her wrist by her newest smartwatch. Ever since she started using the perfect sleep time prediction application that mined data from her schedule, health monitoring devices -- her smartwatch, shoes and the whole lot, she has lost count of how many times she has experienced a perfect sleep. Humans sleep in cycles of time periods characterized by a lot of physical and mental attributes. Sleeping at the perfect moment to gain an integer number of sleep cycles. People wake up from this perfect sleep with a minimum disturbance. Waking up has never been this "easy"  or "perfect" ever before. Waking up is the best when she did not have any reason to wake up in the morning before she had to go to school. Every kid has to wake up to leave for school for more than a decade. Waking up for school is torture! Looking back, it was not all torture. There was mother's love waking her up, mother's tea "really" waking her up and sometimes her cat’s soft purrs near her ears. Then there were alarm clocks. The sonorous beating of metallic drums beeps in digital clocks and artificial rooster sounds on mobile phones. Clocks have sounds, but that was all. She bought her first smart band a little before a decade. It could nudge her wrist rather without the rooster in the mobile phone having to shout  --  not irritating, but not perfect either.


This seemed like the best waking up that could be. But things changed with the sleep monitoring feature update. The application let her know if she has slept enough last day, or if she has had deep sleep and what is not. She tried her best to sleep early so that the app will show  "enough sleep"  the next day.  Three other smart bands and millions of scientific breakthroughs in health sensing and pattern recognition later  --  sleep was perfect now! So perfect that she no longer missed her mother nor the cat. Given the choice, no one would have chosen the messy, late waking up. Almost no one would. Nancy would. Or would not. It did not matter because there was no choice. Perfect sleep was there. Her mother nor the cat was needed. Her mother, back at a faraway nursing home with the best health facilities and the cat, in the infamous barn where all cats go to spend their eternal lives once the veterinary surgeon decides to.  At least when the prediction algorithm in the veterinary surgeon’s workstation decides to.  Sometimes, Nancy wonders if her mother's doctor's workstation will be able to calculate the exact break event point of life's worth and suffering to decide a perfect time as to when she should go knocking on pearly gates. She wishes it would not happen in her mother's natural lifetime. Just like she sometimes wished the veterinary workstation was at least a little late so she could have woken up to the soft purrs of her cat for a few more times, neither perfectly rested nor full of energy to face the new day.

Not knowing GCP

A few days back, a friend of mine asked my help in getting a speech-to-text Google cloud service up and running. Trying to do that, I figured out how I know nothing that a Com.eng student is supposed to know. I have no idea about compiling a project with maven, setting up GCP authentication or sessions!

This opens doors for two possibilities:
(1) Jobless future!
(2) I will always work in big teams with people of various skills and background (because I don't know shit). The work will be collaborative and co-dependent! I will work with interesting people and their ideas as much as I will be writing code.

50% chance of this interesting CS career ahead is a decade worth looking forward for!

Internship predictions

This post is to archive a set of hilarious hypothetical scenario where a few students in our batch will go for internship, will piss off all the coworkers and be scolded in the following words!

Harshana
මේ පණ්ඩිත කතා කිය කිය ඉන්නේ නැතුව මොනවා හරි කරපන්කෝ!

Podi rama
දෙයියනේ දැන්වත් ඔය බොරු කිය කිය ඉන්නේ නැතුව මොනවා හරි කරපන්කෝ!

Rahal
ඔය කෙල්ලෝ කොහෙවත් යන්නේ නෑ. වැඩක් කරපන්කෝ උන්ට පාඩුවේ ඉන්ඩ දීලා!

Punky
යකෝ දැන් දවස් 5ක් මොනවාද ඔය පොඩි වැඩේ කරන්නේ. උඹට කිව්වේ printf එක හදන්ඩ කියලා නෙමෙයි තියන එක ගහන්ඩ කියලා.

Chandima
මැනේජර් මහත්තයා මාරු වෙලාද?

Sentimental inclinations

Operating systems lecture:

Lecturer: Are there any advantages of writing threaded programs for a single core computer with no hyper-threading capability?
Me: There is! We humans have a sentimental inclination to implement the human thinking as if the problem could be solved in parts and threaded programs satisfy this sentimental need.
Lecturer: I don't think the compiler writers thought about the sentimental needs of people.
Me: But why didn't they leave computers at machine code? That was the sentimental attraction towards human like languages.


Some random discussion with pure mathematics lecturer:

Lecturer: Patterns within integer sequences exist in the universe. Humans have a special ability to find these patterns than any machine.
Me: Are integers or their patterns that important to the universe?
Lectuer: Must be. We can use the integer set to extend up to the rational set and probably the reals.
Me: But don't you think that integers looks important to us because of our sentimental attraction towards them?
L: How come?
Me: We developed this sentimental need to interpret everything based on integers because we were a counting civilization. Think about corals! if not for fish they would not have any reason to count integers. Corals are not individuals. The water around them is continuous. They would not have fallen in love with integers the way we did. For them, integers would not be something important out of reals. There are two books by Arthur C Clerk and Ian Stewart discussing this.
L: Interesting.

ආදර වස්තු

I have been to stage dama's at Prof. Ediriweera Sarathchandra open air theater at University of Peradeniya only for only a very small number of dramas. Despite the "wala" being all that prestigious and everything I find the 2 hour buffering period (have to stay there from 5-7 until the drama starts) and the 30 min non-skip-able advertisement period too much for a 90 min drama.

But this week was special because the drama had Thumindu Dodanthenna in it! (and the drama was staged on 14th February).

Notable lines :-)

"ඔයා ඇතුලේ හිටපු රැඩිකල් කෙල්ලට නම් මම තාම ආදරෙයි. ඒත් ඒ දවස් වලත් ඔයා ඇතුලේ හිටපු සාමාන්‍යය ගැහැණිය මතු වෙද්දී නම්, මම කියන්නේ නෑ එපා උනා කියලම. ඒත්..."

I have a lot of friends who claim to be /seem to be /are out of the box thinkers -- The misfits, radicals, revolutionists, poets, writers and all sorts of cool ones. And this is the story of most of them!

Most of these people are in love with the idea of being in love with a special person or having an "unusual" relationship. But when it comes to the actual person they are with, they ignore the not-so-interesting parts. They fail to notice how the radical girl (or boy, or the relationship) is intertwined with the usual/average parts -- and how they should accept both parts equally; if they are to ever make it work. Best case, they consider the relationship with the not-so-interesting personality as the "price" they pay for the interesting bits. Sad! Isn't it?

My stance on SL Local Authority Elections 2018

SL Local Authority Elections 2018
Given that there is no party which,
0. Has not compromised their long term principles for the sake of short term benefits (benefits including ones for their party and the country).
1. Is not maintaining it's vote base on racism and religious differences.
2. Accepts the need for a secular constitution.
3. Wants to drift the country to a centralized economy (at least as a long term goal)
6. Believes in gradual administrative changes to attain that state instead of armed struggles.
4. Will take steps against corruption for real (including bringing out the past cases and taking steps to avoid future cases).
5. Will take steps against the government agency violence for real (including bringing out the past cases and taking steps to avoid future cases).

NSSP was all fine. They never compromised their principles on economy or society. I personally believe in with their right to question the SL military conduct as well. Given that SL "peace keeping forces" have never come clean out of brutally suppressing the uprisings in the past(1971,89) it is anyone's right to question them in a future case. But NSSP is making way too much weird accusations as to what happened in international stages without actual facts and seems to be overselling minority matters.
In a recent interview Dr.Bahu is saying "we should let go of this central bank corruption since the present government is taking good steps support minorities in the country." which is a way too much of a COMPROMISE for a party with a history of staying true to their values.
Therefore, I will no longer accept them as a suitable party to vote for. (even if I did, it is not like they are competing on every place)
I would most probably stay home instead of going to vote. (I know it is bad,selfish or whatever. But I have severe issues when it comes to compromising)
Foe everyone, do not vote for racist parties. We don't need them to create civil unrest once again so their vote bases would consolidate in long term.
For those who are not as sticking to ideals and those who believes these election as all about practical solutions for practical problems in local authorities for the next 4 years or so, obviously JVP!

After all this time ♥

I find it interesting to visit cemeteries for the sake of architectural beauty of tombstones and the poetic beauty of their engravings. The best place in Kandy for both these metrics is the Mahaiyawa Cemetery which is filled with tombstones of different cultures, eras, sizes, material etc. But this post is not about the Mahaiyawa Cemetery but a lesser known one.

Kandy war cemetery is located in "Deveni Rajasinghe Mawatha" which most of you will not know by its name so let me drop a pin.  This is the burial ground for British military personnel who died mainly in World War 2 (These are not only british but Sri Lankans, Indians, Canadians, East Africans etc) and one person who dies in World War 1. The following (links-02) are the links for information about the cemetery (the objective of this article is not to educate you about the cemeteries whereabouts.)


I first visited this place 11th of March 2016. Bellow are a few photographs from the visit. As you will see this graveyard has a uniform style for tombstones and a well planned architecture for the whole place. (as expected out of military maintenance.)

And this was the tombstone of D.H.Groves who died at the age of 27 in 1942.

And there was a wooden cross places near the tombstone, which read:

In loving memory of Dennis.

Still missing you after all this time.

~ Your sister Stella.

If Dennis was 27 years old in 1942 he would have been 101 years old by 2016. Assuming an age gap of not more than 10 years, Stella would have been 91 years by the time she visited this grave to place the cross.

A 91 year old British woman fying over 8000km s to Sri Lanka to visit her brother's grave even after 74 years and claiming to "still miss him after all this time" is worth blogging about  :-)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: I am aware of other rational explanations such as

1. Their whole family lives in SL since colonial era. This even explains how he died in action in SL.

2. Since this cemetery is maintained by Commonwealth Graves Commission she could have just handed over the cross to their office in UK.

Still, let us go with my version.

link-01: Pin
https://goo.gl/maps/6f51ZaUhHqr

links-02
https://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2009501/KANDY%20WAR%20CEMETERY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandy_War_Cemetery
http://www.lankalibrary.com/geo/warcemeteries.htm

link-03: Dennis Groves

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2111845/groves,-dennis-harry/

Scorpion

Taking note of two lines from adjacent episodes of a TV series I started watching recently.

Scorpion - season 02 - episode 19:
"It was not terrorism, was capitalism"

Scorpion -  season 02 - episode 20:
"There is nothing more stunning than seeing perfection with a little imperfection"

Judgmental me

I am not saying I am judgmental,
But most of the time when someone forward those text messages with "rate me as a person on a scale of 1 to 10",
I have a ready made score for their personality calculated up to two decimal places and tips on how they can improve!

Qualitative and quantitative subjects

During a general elective lecture (which we computer engineering students are forced to take because the admin believes that it will make us well rounded people by some magic!)

Lecturer: "There are two types of subjects in the world. The quantitative subjects like pure mathematics, applied mathematics, chemistry -- the stuff you normally do. They have all these models, equations and universal standards to make decisions. On the other hand there are quantitative subjects which has a lot to do with the personal skills of the person. There are no models or equations to decide which piece of art is the best. It is just depending on personal judgement. You should understand that how you do good in a quantitative subject and a qualitative subject is very different"

Someone whispers "and then deep learning happened!"


PS 1: I don't agree with someone calling pure mathematics quantitative
PS 2: Yes, I do believe we humans are just intelligent machines, and therefore AI algorithms will do as good as we do in qualitative subjects in future.
PS 3: The story is slightly altered to make it interesting.

Law

Ironic things you hear in the law lecture :-)

"Racism was and is accepted in certain countries as a law. It is pathetic, it is bad, it is wrong. This is the DARK side of the law. The law itself is BLACK!"

"screwed up"-"nailed it"

How come "screwed up" and "nailed it" be so similar but mean totally opposite things?

Fears and Phobias

This speech is co-authored as well! Again, I am not going to say which version is mine.
Gender crossovers might be found in the text.

Essay 01

Who here will admit to have phobia? I can see quite a few people. Almost all of has something that we are afraid of in our life. Good morning dear lecturer and my dear colleagues let me take you through the world of phobias.
 Now I want all of you to imagine a giant hairy spider crawling on your arm. It’s not doing any harm but it is just sitting there; for some of you, this is your worst nightmare. If you are one of those people you may have arachnophobia. Not familiar with the word? It is the extreme fear of spiders. If we define the word ‘phobia’, it is to have an extreme and irrational fear of something to a point where it is disabling and is considered a mental disorder.
The most common phobias are acrophobia, the fear of heights and glossophobia , the fear of public speaking. Most of the times people who say they have a phobia do not have a phobia, they are just afraid of that thing. Some psychologists believe that no one is born with a phobia, that it is learnt over time. You get scared about something, re-play it in your mind over and over again, making the fear worse until it becomes a phobia. For an example if a person fell down to a well in his childhood, that traumatic experience will make him an acrophobic and aquaphobic; fear of water over time.
I already have mentioned you four phobias. Well that is just a tip of an iceberg. You name anything; there is probably a phobia for it. I can tell you two types of phobias that most of you in this room will have. Nomophobia; the fear of losing your phone signal and anoptaphobia; the fear of staying single. There exist even stranger phobias than this. Bearophobia; the fear of gravity. That is really strange. I fear no gravity than there is some gravity. Then archibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking at the roof of your mouth. You may feel all these really funny but for the people who suffer from these phobias, those fears are real for them. These phobias affect hundreds of people around the world.
Talking about strange fears, the person who comes to my mind is my mother. She has a fear of birds, specially chickens and that also do have a name; alektrophobia . I know that it is really weird. I wonder what things in a bird can cause this phobia, whether it is their feathers or whether it is the fluttering of their wings. Also I have a friend who is extremely afraid of butterflies. Surely a butterfly cannot do you any harm. Out of all the other dangerous animals in the world why is she afraid of this innocent butterfly? Well that is the nature of these phobias. For some it may be very funny to fear a butterfly but for her it is not. You may wonder whether I have a phobia. Well I do have a phobia. I have a fear of speaking to people and also an acute phobia of public speaking. Almost 75% of the world population suffer from fear of public speaking; glossophobia. I know some of you here know this feeling very much like I do. Sweating on your forehead, with your knees shaking, your heart is beating so fast and some of you may even feel nausea.
 The world is a scary place, it's true. We are most of the times surrounded by things that frighten us. However, we seek out things that terrify us anyway… horror films, roller coasters, and all sorts of dangerous sports and other stuff. Why do we do it? I can't really tell you. But I think that it may be to remind ourselves we are alive. And if you ask me, fear is one of the liveliest emotions out there. Today being on this room in front of you I have embraced my fear of public speaking. I would like to invite all of you to step out of your phobias and embrace your fears.

Essay 02

Who here will admit to have phobia? I can see quite a few people. Almost all of has something that we are afraid of in our life. Good morning dear lecturer and my dear colleagues let me take you through the world of phobias.
First of all, let me tell you what qualifies me to speak on this topic. There was this little girl I know a lot about; somewhere back in 2005 she had to make a speech in front of the school assembly about the typical topic given back then “My country (put some topic here!)”. She wrote a beautiful speech for about a week, remembered all the lines by heart and boasted to her parents about how she is gonna make a speech in front of the whole school. Even her sisters were proud to applaud their big sister’s presence in front of everyone.
The big day came and she went to school in a bright white frock ready to make her speech. The assembly started and the usual agenda went on and then she was invited to the front. She went there, greeted the gathering and started the speech. But the words were stuck in her throat. She couldn’t make a single sound. My throat was dry and my knees felt weak. The whole audience was staring at me. I was scared. I felt humiliated. I wanted to cover my face and run away.
Seems like I’ve turned from third person to first person within the speech without even noticing it. I got carried away with the memory and forgot to keep the cover. Yeah it was me. I do suffer from the fear of public speaking—glossophobia– the world’s most commonplace phobia. I am one among the 75% of the world population who suffers from this problem. Enough about me, let us go to the topic.
Now I want all of you to imagine a giant hairy spider crawling on your arm. It’s not doing any harm but it is just sitting there; for some of you, this is your worst nightmare. If you are one of those people you may have arachnophobia. “Arachno” is for spiders. And “phobia” is to have an extreme and irrational fear of something to a point where it is disabling and is considered a mental disorder.
Next is the fear of heights and glossophobia. Let me show you a photo of another small girl. This time it is not me. Once she decided to ride a roller coaster even though she had glossophobia. Her fear is clearly visible on the photo (point at the projector).
You name anything; add “phobia” suffix and then there is probably a phobia on the medical books by that name. I can tell you two types of phobias that most of you in this room will have. Nomophobia-- the fear of losing your phone signal; and anoptaphobia-- the fear of staying single. There exist even stranger phobias than this. Bearophobia; the fear of gravity. They fear that they will be stuck Then archibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking at the roof of your mouth. You may feel all these really funny but for the people who suffer from these phobias, those fears are real for them. These phobias affect hundreds of people around the world.
Some psychologists believe that no one is born with a phobia, that it is learnt over time. You get scared about something, re-play it in your mind over and over again, making the fear worse until it becomes a phobia. That means we create our own fears. So why don’t we conqueror them as well? I assure you that it is exciting! That is why most of us watch horror movies, ride roller coasters, go bungee jumping and in my case I am making this speech! I hope u didn’t notice the sweat on my forehead or notice the fact my face is redder than usual. Today being on this room in front of you I have won my 11 year long battle against my fear of public speaking. I hope I made my 10 year old self proud in doing this. I would like to invite all of you to step out of your phobias and embrace your fears.

Power of a smile

This speech is co-authored :-) I am gonna put my version of the essay and  the original one as well. It is up to you to figure out which one is mine.
Gender crossovers might be found in the text.

Essay 01

Good morning dear teachers and my friends. How many of you have read the famous novel “Love in times of cholera”? Anybody? Eh.. There is a famous quote by the author of this book Gabriel Garcia-- “Never stop smiling even when you are sad; someone might fall in love with your smile”. (Point to someone) You there! Don’t smile! I am not gonna teach you about making people fall in love with you. Instead, I am going to talk about the POWER OF YOUR SMILE.

Smiling can be intentional or not. In the simplest interpretation the intentional ones are for greeting and the spontaneous ones are for happiness. But today, I am not going to stop at the primary interpretation. Let me go beyond that. Smiles do represent a wide spectrum of emotions. To begin with; the big ear to ear grins those mean happiness and joy. Then the beaming smiles of excitement when you get good results in an exam. And those evil smirks of mischief after pulling a prank on a friend. (Oh I see it on <Put some name here>’s face right now. What did you do to <Put the name of the person in front of the previous person>?)

Smiling is a language itself. Did you know that you can say you have no idea about something by smiling with the lower lip turned down? Or else that you can say “yes” or “no” with a smile plus a nod? There are some pretty complex smiles as well; like the nostalgic-homesick smiles with the eyes fixed on distant scenery out of the window. And then there is my favorite type, smiles to avoid conversations!

Thanks to some connection between the facial muscles and the brain, we can get the positive emotions even by imitating a smile by clenching a pen between the lips. Smiling can also reduce your stress level – something we all suffer from these days. The simple action of smiling can soften your breathing pattern reduce the heart rate, thus the stress level. Moral of the story (look around)—you cannot be so busy that u don’t smile when you are stressed with the next MA1023 submission.

Ever wonder why are we always asked to smile in photos? It is because people usually look their best when smiling. Smiling can make you look more attractive. When you are facing a job interview you may think that your appearance is just about wearing nice clothes, but it is not. You have to wear your suit with a nice pleasing smile. So the next time when you are dressing to impress someone, make sure that you a beautiful natural smile on your face.

There was a time I believed the smile to be the most powerful expression for all the above reasons. But I was wrong. I have been through bad times as well as good times in my life. I could smile with no effort in good times but it was not easy in hard times. But I always knew good times are on the way. It gave me strength to smile even through the hard times. But few months ago I went on a social service project of the rotaract club at the cancer ward and met a society who has no good times coming around the corner. Their bad times do last until their last breath. And they had no reason to smile!
I am not going to give you the long details of the day. After a few efforts on getting them involved in fun activities we witnessed the miracle-- smiles on the faces on the people who did not want to smile. Believe me when I say this; to smile is not the most powerful thing. It is to make others smile even when they don’t want to!

Essay 02

What is more beautiful than a blooming flower; what is more charming than a lovely sunrise? I hope you guessed it right – yes, it is your smile! Good morning my dear teacher and my colleagues! Today I would like to share my thoughts with you on “Power of your smile”.
When talking about smiles, what comes to my mind first is something that happened to me when I was a kid. At that time I was in grade three, my classmates and I went to an elders’ home to sing carols for the elderly. That was the first time I visited a place like that, so I was a bit nervous. First of all our job was to go and speak with the elders and ask things like how they are and what will they be doing for the Christmas. I still remember what my teacher said to me when I was reluctant to do that, “Most of them just need a friendly smile, so go ahead and smile”. So I kept on smiling the whole day even when we were singing carols. Some smiled back at me and some didn’t. However as a small kid I did not understand why my teacher asked me to smile but now I understand what great things a simple smile can do.
Smiling is a very natural response that shares your happiness with others. Smiling happens without much thought. When you see our friend doing something silly, you smirk, when you are recognised for your top performance at the exam, you beam and when you have done something wrong and you go off without others notice, you grin. There is a smile for every time and most of the feeling: compromise, happiness, excitement, sarcasm and love. There is a lot of power in this little smile.
How often do you smile in a day? If you are not smiling frequently, make sure that you smile whenever possible because that will make you happy even when you are not happy. There is a serious relationship with your body and your brain. It turns out that the simple acts of smiling sends a message to your brain saying that you are happy, then the brain will pump all the good things to your body. It is interesting that people have found that you will just feel happy even if you clenched a small pen between your teeth, imitating smile. It is a wonder that a smile can make you happy and at the same time, it can make someone else happy too. In that sense, if you smile well you are making this world a better place to live in. Imagine, if all the people you met each day would smile. How great this world would be?
Smiling can make you to reduce your stress level. These days almost all of us live in some kind of a stress. The simple action of smiling can make your breathing and heart rate reduced, thus reducing your stress level. This point out that smiling is beneficial for your health. The next time you're stressed about work make sure that you smile even if you don’t want to!
Ever wonder why are we always asked to smile in photos? It is because people usually look their best when smiling. So smiling can make you look more attractive. When you are facing a job interview you may think that your appearance is just about wearing nice clothes, but it is not. You have to wear your suit with a nice pleasing smile. So the next time when you are dressing to impress someone, make sure that you a beautiful natural smile on your face.
A smile adds many more plus points to your life other than in the things that I mentioned. Smile is of no use unless it is given away. It may only take just a few seconds to gift a smile to someone. Therefore smile. Find the whole world smile back at you. Thank you!

Light pollution

Let me start my speech with a question from our teacher.


What brought you here? Obviously it is the z score and your talent in Mathematics is what brought you here. But we all prefer somebody giving that poetic reply about the floral beauty and scenic surrounding calling you here to Peradeniya from the distant parts of the country. And what else? Humming of bees, colonial architecture and Robarosia trees. Once we agree that the love of flora is what drove us here; it is immediately followed by the Ptolemaic notion, the notions that tell us that we are at the center of the universe. We feel special, we felt that we are the privileged students among everyone in the country. And we convince ourselves that we are in "heaven"on earth.






But believe me when I say we are not that special! Flowers do bloom everywhere. They do wave to the dry winds in Rajarata, shine brightly under the warm sun in Jaffna and spread their fragrance along with the salty smelling winds in Ruhuna. Despite whatever we convince ourselves to be, they do emerge through cracks in the "concrete slabs" within our counterpart in Moratuwa. We arn't special for having flowers. But each place has a different type of flowers. Their fragrance may dependon the soil, their color on the sunshine and their size on rainfall. Simply floral beauty if geography specific.


On a personal note; for me it was never about the flowers!






Have you ever taken a moment to gaze into the night sky? Have you peeped out of the windows while you were studying late night, looked up while you were making those late night phone calls while wandering in the balcony, laid down on a roof top with a bottle of booze or even seen a session of the planetarium.


"Twinkling little stars" have always been the most amazing part of nature for me. I have been in love with the glittering lights even before I knew them to be burning fission engines. Let me tell you why!






Stars are the same everywhere! We see the same shining dots in the big black umbrella wherever we go. Unlike flowers; stars are not geo specific. You cannot go away or reach closer to stars how much you try. They don't end at your fence or you don't find more of them in Peradeniya than in Colombo. I fell for stars over flowers because of their indifference over narrow human invented boundaries.






But there are some fine details about stars that many of us fail to grasp coz we don't concentrate enough to reveal them. If you take a moment out of your busy lives and lay on a lawn to look up into the night sky; naturally you might be tempted to count stars. But I bet you will loose count after a while. Then you might actually start noticing how beautiful they are. This is when you understand the lesson about appreciating things without trying to quantify. In other words happiness doesn't depend on HOW MUCH you have got but on how u appreciate the beauty of the universe around you. and of course GP112 is not absolute!






Marking the extents of the cosmos have been the dream of every stargazer from the earliest of times stretching back to the Babylonian era. But this has proven to be a quest with no end. Today we are pretty much convinced of the limitlessness of the universe. I find the very thought of being just one of the billion humans; humans being one of the millions of species on earth and earth being one of the eight planets revolving around the sun-- who happen to be just one medium sized among the infinite amount of stars to be a great relief for all my day to day life problems. This knowledge makes me wonder how petty all our great personal hardships are with respect to the cosmic standards.














I hope all of you know what constellations are. They are the images we create by connecting the stars. The constellations as we know are just the connections agreed upon by some famous astronomers in the past. They have in scripted the mythology, stories and fables of their times between the heavens and made them to be heard up until now. But can't we do the same?


To be frank the night sky is just a randomly distributed array of pixels awaiting to be connected into images of our own perception. What if you or I connect these glittering dots with our own imaginary lines? Wont we be able to create our own constellations? And write our own tales between the heavens! Let me tell you apersonal secret. I have grew writing my own story between the stars. The three bright stars in the belt of Orion knows everything to do with the three members of my family; and the pole star-- well known for guiding explorers in unknown seas always reminds me of my sixth grade teacher whom I consider to be the best mentor ever. Castor and Pollux are obviously the ones to remember the memories I share with my best friend. Whenever I wanted the affection of my family, guidance of a mentor or craved the warmth of friendship all I had to do was to look up into the sky.






But during the past couple of years I felt some difference in the night sky. Some faint stars have disappeared from the sky with the faint memories they carried. Some bright stars aren't as luminous as they used to be and they don’t scream loud with their stories as they used to do. The flickering patterns are much different from what I am used to and they don’t seem to resonate with the rhythm of my thoughts or else the heartbeat as they used to do. Something ought to be wrong with the stars. Is the universe nearing its end or is my eyesight failing. Listen to my friends and you will find out.

Software vocabulary

Isn't it rather odd how much software people use the words like
"Build from scratch" ,"Full package", "Rip it", "Burn it", "Install on bare metal"
compare to people who actually do them on the physical world?

I posted this on fb and got this comment
Madushan Nishantha: To further complicate​ the confusion consider the phrase "I killed all the children because the parent was struggling for resources"