Most of my friends know me as a person advocating for Linux and FOSS . But most of them get surpurised to see me using Vista half the time. There are few reason I have for that, but this post is not about that.

While I’m on Linux I really enjoy the text editors such as Kate and gedit , (I’m not a big fan of vi and vim ). But when it comes to Windows I missed them with the default Notepad. Then only I found Notepad++ . A cool feature to Notepad++ that was available not in the Windows Notepad is a spell checker feature. This feature is not automatically installed with the initial installation of Notepad++, but we just have to install GNU Aspell , a pre-compiled dictionary. Once you download and install the latest version of Aspell, and a dictionary from for your language of choice (English in my case), from the GNU ASpell site you are ready to use this is a cool feature, and this helps me a lot for sure.

Notepad++ also has many more plug-ins, which make it more like a full fledged IDE, specially FTP browser, Syntax highlighting, Auto-completion and others will help any developer have a great time coding. Here are some of the features it offers with the default install of Notepad++:

• Syntax highlighting (and brace and indent highlighting)
• Regular expression find and replace
• Split screen editing
• Zooming
• Spell checker (built in but requires Aspell)
• Tabbed document interface
• FTP Browser (plug-in included in standard installation)
• Support for various file formats including Unicode.
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Auto-completion (language and file)

I have found working from home interesting due to few reasons. There are plenty of advantages to working from home, but there are certain pitfalls as well. I found this interesting article on Tech Republic by Calvin Sun. He offers some pointers for making things go smoothly.

[via: TechRepublic]

It’s all the rage and has been for some time. But now, with recent issues regarding energy consumption, the environment, and “work/life balance,” working from home has grown even more important. Whether you’re an employee of a company or an independent professional working for yourself, you might have a chance to work from home. Be aware, though, that this arrangement can cause problems if you’re not prepared. Here are some tips.

[Also available as a PDF download]

Level 4 Semester 1 exams are now history and I have already posted my in-time thoughts sometime back in this blog. Now the results have arrived and just though of doing an analysis on what I have thought just after the exams (my Tweets) against the results I’ve got. I’ll say the conclusion in the beginning, thus those who don’t want to read this can skip.

Conclusions:

• My estimations were wrong (less likely)
• Examiners did some mistake (I’d say less likely)
• Read and decide (Recommended)

Analysis:

• Subject: Software Architecture and Design (SAD)
  Tweet: Exams start with “SAD” which was sad…! – View Tweet
  Results: A

• Subject: Computer Security
  Tweet: Exams: Computer Security paper was a cipher. Didn’t get the key to decrypt…. – View Tweet
  Results: A

• Subject: Linear Models & Multivariate Statistics
  Tweet: Exams: Linear Models paper was in a different model than expected… Better than others…!! – View Tweet
  Results: A

• Subject: Organizational Behavior & Management
  Tweet: Exams: Management exam was ok… had 1 hour more.. but nothing to write… Tomorrow ToC…!!! – View Tweet
  Results: A

• Subject: Theory of Computing
  Tweet: Exams: Done with ToC…. Paper seemed easy, but answering was hard… 5 Done…. 3 More… – View Tweet
  Results: A-

• Subject: Advanced Database Systems
  Tweet: Exams: Done with ADB, knew what was asked, but not the answers… – View Tweet
  Results: A-

• Subject: Compiler Theory
  Tweet: Exams: One more to go…. :X – View Tweet
  Results: A

• Subject: Bioinformatics
  Tweet: Exams: Done!!! Level 4 Semester 1. – View Tweet
  Results: A+

Take the red pill. Get the blue screen.

“The Matrix Runs on Windows” is a hilarious video that describes some of the “great featues” we get with Windows and other Microsoft products.

The video ends with a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death ) and finally saying “Ubuntu, I’m going to learn Ubuntu“.

Video by: http://www.collegehumor.com/chtv

Un Ninaivinilae – (Dreams Forever)
Sri Lankan Tamil Film on Shakthi TV (with English Subtitles)

Sunday, November 16, 2008
9:30pm – 11:00pm
On Shakthi TV

The production team has posted this message about the screening on television. They were also hosted on an interview at Shakthi TV this morning.

Hi Friends ,

You may know about the film created by students of the University of Colombo Faculty of Science and UCSC .It was initially released at a cultural event on 13/10/2007 at kathirasan hall bambalapitiya.

Now we are very glad to inform you that this film will be telecasted on Shakthi TV on coming Sunday (16/11/2008) night at 9.30 PM.

Invite your friends as well if you feel it’s worth doing it..

Thank you,
SciTam productions