Its 3 years… I’m still here… :)

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Nimal

“Now I’ve landed in blogger. We’ll see what happens in the future.”

This is what I wrote exactly 3 years back, when I started this blog. And its surprising even to me, I’m still hanging around this blog. Though I haven’t been writing often or interesting in this, there were few posts in the total of 120+ posts, that would have benefited someone. Also thanks to the friends who have linked back to this blog, and for the few comments to some of the posts.

For the 4th year, I have nothing special, it will be as normal as before…!

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged | 4 Comments

Being Nice on a Linux Box – Process priority with ‘nice’ & ‘renice’

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Nimal

Problem (I had): Wanted to run a VirtualBox on a RHEL 4.7 Linux server which is shared by someothers. But as some other processes took more CPU, the VirtualBox performance was bad. So I wanted to increase the priority given to VirtualBox.

Solution (I found): VirtualBox can be given higher priority using nice command. Also renice command can be used to change the priority of a running process, which will also be useful.

nice -10 VBoxHeadless

Gives the VBoxHeadless process 1.5 times priority than the normal process, calculated as (20 – -10)/20 = 1.5

nice -20 make

Executes make at maximum priority.

renice +20 2222

Changes the priority of process 2222 to +20 (minimum priority).

renice -10 -p 13013

Changes the priority of a running process by specifying its process ID, where priority can be,

  • 1 to 20 : Runs the specified processes slower than the base priority.
  • 0 : Sets priority of the specified processes to the base scheduling priority.
  • -20 to -1 : Runs the specified processes quicker than the base priority.

References and further reading:

Posted in Tech Notes | Tagged , | Comments Off

SIGNS – by Patrick Hughes

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Nimal

A simple short film about communication. ‘Signs’ tells the beautiful story between a man and a woman who communicated to each other in opposing office blocks by holding up simple signs, they never talked.

Created by Publicis Mojo and @RadicalMedia. Directed by Patrick Hughes

One of the 2009 Cannes Lions winners! More info

You may also want to Watch in High Quality | Join the Facebook Fan Page

Posted in Media | Tagged | 1 Comment

Tweets and Results – A Post Exam Analysis – Part 2

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Nimal
I had a similar post sometime back, after the Level 4 Semester 1 Exams, when I twitted my in-time thoughts after each exam, and later posted an analysis on my thoughts with the results I got. This is just another similar post, but for the Level 4 Semester 2 Exams, which happens to be the final exam of my undergraduate course.
So nothing much here, just some crappy thoughts as always…
– EXAMS — Starts tomorrow….!
10:02 PM Feb 8th from web
The day before the first exam…
– EXAMS — I was expecting a hard paper for “Computer Vision”, but it was even ‘harder’….!!! 5 more to go…! Next on the 16th…!
5:40 AM Feb 10th from web
Computer Vision (B+)
– EXAMS — AdvCompArch, Better than Worse, Worser than Ok. Anyway done with it… Another 4 more to go…!!!
3:24 AM Feb 16th from web
Advanced Computer Architecture (A-)
– EXAMS — I was not prepared enough for Operational Research… The downwards trend in exams continues… For me…!!!
3:55 AM Feb 17th from web
Operational Research (A-)
– EXAMS — Tested my creative writing skills at MIS exam… :)
3:21 AM Feb 18th from web
Management Information Systems (A-)
– EXAMS — Done with 5 out of 6 exams…! No comments about today’s Advanced Algorithms…!!!
4:29 AM Feb 24th from web
Advanced Algorithms (B)
– EXAMS — End of another era for me… All my undergraduate exams are over with today’s “Professional Practice”…!!! :-)
3:58 AM Feb 26th from web
Professional Practice (A)


So thats how everything ended…
Posted in Undergraduate | Tagged | 2 Comments

CSE Batch ’05 in GSoC 2009

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Nimal

It’s exciting to know the results of GSoC 2009 selections, where 6 from my batch got selected. The following is the list of participants from my batch. (I think I didn’t miss anyone…)

Nimantha Baranasuriya
OpenMRS – Proposal for Implementing the Audit Module (Data Integrity Module) for OpenMRS

Thilina Buddhika
The Apache Software Foundation – Improving Rampart Tests

Gihan Chamara
Sahana – SahanaOCR module

Senaka Fernando
Ptolemy Project – Integrating Ptolemy and Esper

Hiranya Jayathilaka
The Apache Software Foundation – Implementing SQL Authorization Support for Derby dblook

Nimalaprakasan Skandhakumar
Creative Commons – Creative Commons Add-in for OpenOffice.org Updates

Yes, I also got selected. Its exciting as this is the first time I’ve applied and got selected. More updates about my GSoC project activities will be posted at my GSoC2009 blog at http://projects.techt3.com/gsoc2009/.

Also there are 14 selected candidates from CSE, including the 6 from our batch and 8 from our junior batch. As a university it seems we have 18 projects selected from UoM, which includes the 14 from CSE and 2 each from Tronic and IT.

Good luck to all the participants…!!!

Posted in Undergraduate | Tagged | 3 Comments