Gunadasa Mathota Arachchi, the great musician!

My father is a great musician I've ever seen. He has the ability to turn pieces of words into beautiful songs. Lots of beautifull melodies have been created by him. He has contributed toward the music community in Ampara and created lots of musicians who have become luminaries. I'm really proud of my father. He was appointed as a music teacher in 1972 to Walagampura Maha Vidyalaya in Ampara and started his teaching career. He got through the national examination of music in 1973. He had admission to the Teacher's Training School in Giragama for his proffetional education. After the completion his training he was appointed to Rajagalathenna Maha Vidyalaya and after a few years transfered to Bandaranaike Balika Vidyalaya in Ampara as a music teacher. He extended his service to the other institutions apart from school teaching. He was music instructor for National Youth Council and he was also the senior lecturer of the distance education center of teachers in Ampara.

He passed the examination for recruitment of principals in 1989 and started to work as a principal in 2002. First he worked at Hingurana Maha Vidyala then at Muwangala Maha Vidyalaya. After completing his service as principlal for 5 years he retired on 09th October 2007. Now he is relaxing in his later part of life.

I wish him a long life !!

The Team Linux in Unawatuna

We had another one day GNU/linux training camp on 14th October 2007 at Amarasuriya teachers trainng school in unawatuna. It actually proved to be a success with excellent organization, the place being an ancient Wallawa by the Galle Matara road in Unawatuna. Bikku Mettawihari had arranged everything for the program.

GNU/Linux Teaching Camp in Rartnapura

We had planned a sudden GNU/Linux teaching camp in Ruwanpura National Teacher's Training College last 6th and 7th. Suchetha and I left Colombo about 2000 hrs. we got to the place around 2330 hrs. When we got there Bikku Mettavihari and a few guyz had already got down to the business. They'd put Ubuntu and Edubuntu into 45 computers. Thanx to organizers, what a cosy place to stay overnight, we found!

The event was a success. Nearly 150 trainee teachers took part in it. I was to do a presentation on Introduction to GNU/Linux. That crazy guy Suchetha snatched off half of my time. The whole day we taught GNU/Linux. The day ended nicely with a few discussions with cute ladies. In the eveining we enjoyed a few movies, beers and had a chat. The second day was a success too.

The Software Freedom Day 2007

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September. The most recent event involved over 200 teams from all over the world.

We had lots of plans in this SFD. There was many FOSS events around the country. Colombo,Kandy and downsouth events were big events among them. Dassa and I took over the organizing part of Matara event. We planned that event with collaboration of university of Ruhuna. The head, department of computer science Mr. Aruna gave a big help giving their resources to the event.

We have planned to go to Matara in the 13th evening. Collected our money from LSF in the morning. But we had one big prob. There was Tsunami warning all over the country. We had to change our plans due to the Tsunami warning. Then we decided to go to Matara early in the 14th morning. We took a cab 6 in the morning and left colombo. Reached Matara at about 11. the street promotion was going on at that time. They had prepared a nice place for us to crash that night down. The university circuit bungalow. Its located in a nice place facing the sea. What a beutiful view. Then we decided to go out for lunch. We went to chuti akka's place and had our lunch. After a litle talk we left there and had a little walk in matara town. I had to meet some one there and we wait few hours. Visited the temple in the town which is located few yards toward the sea. Suchetha came from colombo and had dinner and beers, came back to the lab.

The event was very successful. There were about 500 heads. After the event we left Matara at about 5.30. We had to be in Excel World coz there was closing ceremony taking place there. We were there just in time. was a nice karoke. Suchetha and Dassa shout for few tracks.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Wayz

This i'm gonna talking about a little old thing but for me its really interesting. I was a little free after ma exams and i was hunting some movies to watch. The best chap who can recommend a movie is Suchetha. I borrowed a few movies from him and The Blues Brothers and Blues brothers 2000 is two of the movies. Those two movies are among the most exiting and funful movies I've ever watched. The Blues Brothers was directed by John Landis and Blues Brothers 2000 was also directed by him.

"They'll never get caught. They're on a mission from God".It is a story about the Blues band Blues Brothers. Dan Akroid and John Belushi playing main roles in it. Jake Blues (John Belushi) out from the prison after three years, put together his old band to save the Catholic home where he and brother Elwood were raised. They did lots of things to put their band and save their home,full of action, comedy & Music. The most attracting feature is the songs they play. If you watch this movie I'm pretty sure you'll never take yo eyez off from the screen until it is over.

FOSSed on Wheels in Kandy

A few weeks ago I got a nice chance to take part in the FOSSed on Wheels in Kandy last 3rd and 4th which I was looking forward to for a longtime. That was the first FOSS event of the new year. I thought all our FOSS buddies would be able to join the event. Unfortunately most of our geeks were busy at that moment. It was a two days event. That event was organized by the foss community supported by the few geeks of the University of Peradeniya. The program was carried on in the Kandyan Art Gallery.

The day before the event I reached Colombo and in the morning I went to the university. And in the evening at abt 1400 I went to the TLC where I was gonna crash that night. But Suchetha was not there.. after a few hours he came back and we went to bring some beers. Its was time for dinner. Sushe and me got down to the Splash and had a BBQ. Got back to TLC. Gayal and Raj came to crash with us.

Early in the morning we got ready for the journey. It was abt 0500 when we depart. We reached the venu within a few hours. The program was about to begin. In the meantime I went out for a moment. you know guyz, google would pay everything. Came back after lunch. The event was cool and well organized. After the event our guyz had a few drinks and fun. The second day the event went on well and it was the one of the best and well organized events we participated in.

We packed our bags to return to Colombo. We just got down at Mifan's place on our way. His house is located in the middle of a jungle in the University park at Peradeniya. His mum and dad treated us well. we came back to Colombo at about 2200. It was time for our dinner. we again got down to the Splash for our dinner. we had a good time there.

Linux, Bluetooth & GPRS

Hey guyz..! after a long time .. howzi going? yep I was bussy with ma studies and work. Dudring the past dayz I tried to be connected with the internet using GPRS and Bluetooth. Has anyone tried to be connected with the internet using yer mobile phone as a dial up modem? Dassa and Anu have experiences in that and I got lots of advice from those guyz. Lots of googling and after a few dayz hacking I could do that successfully. I found a few scripts and I edited those scripts as neceasary.

I have Motorola L6 mobile phone with bluetooth. My system Is Debian GNU/linux, kernel 2.6.x. And I have a box with Intel Pentium IV 2.6 GHz and 256 MB RAM. I'll show how I could manipulate the script for better work.


Step 1: Make sure the Bluetooth connection between system and phone is working well.

* Switch on the bluetooth of the phone and run 'hcitool scan' on root terminal to ensure that the Bluetooth system is up and running. This should find the Bluetooth address of the phone. The address of my phone is 00:16:75:50:DE:1F

* Run 'sdptool browse ' to find which channels are being used for each of the services. The important entry for using the phone as modem is the one labelled 'Service Name: Dial-up Networking, For me, Channel 1.

debian:~# sdptool browse 00:16:75:50:DE:1F

"Service Name: Dial-up Networking Gateway
Service Description: Dial-up Networking Gateway
Service Provider: Motorola
Service RecHandle: 0x10001
Service Class ID List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 1"


* Set up RFCOMM device. /dev/rfcomm0 is the default bluetooth modem device. So I edited /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf to ensure that /dev/rfcomm0 connects Channel 1. I edited the /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf as follows.

vim /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.confg


rfcomm0 {
bind yes ;
device 00:16:75:50:DE:1F ;
channel 1 ;
comment "mot Dial-up Networking Service -- for PPP" ;

}


Tip : Whenever u change the configuration file restart the bluetooth survice each time.

/etc/bluez-utils restart

Step 2 : Make the PPP (Point-tp-Point Protocol) sub-system. for that first I made the peer specification. and I named it mot. "vim /etc/ppp/peers/mot" ma peer specification as follws.

connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/mot"
/dev/rfcomm0 115200
defaultroute
crtscts
lcp-echo-failure 0
#=======
/dev/rfcomm0 115200
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat-gprs'
crtscts
modem -detach
noccp
defaultroute
usepeerdns
noauth
ipcp-accept-remote
ipcp-accept-local
noipdefault

Then I created a chatscript mentioned in the peer specification and I named in the same way as peer specification (mot) "vim /etc/chatscript/mot. thats script like this.

# This chatfile was generated by pppconfig 2.3.10.
# Please do not delete any of the comments. pppconfig needs them.
#
# ispauth chat
# abortstring

ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT VOICE ABORT 'NO DIALTONE' ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED
# modeminit
'' ATZ
# ispnumber
OK-AT-OK "ATDT*99***1#"

# ispconnect
CONNECT ''
# prelogin

# ispname
#login: xxxxxx
# isppassword
#password: yyyyyy
# postlogin

'' \d\c
# end of pppconfig stuff

" *99***1# " is the dial up number which is provided by the survice provider

Finally I wrote a script what I called chat-gprs which is also mentioned in the peer specification. "vim /etc/ppp/chat-gprs

'' ATZ OK

#AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","www.plusgsm.pl"
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","wap"
OK "ATD*99***1#"
CONNECT ''


Now I finished ma Scripts. So lets check out those scripts are weather working or not.???

Okay... I gonna check ma connection. First I had to make a bluetooth connection with phone and system. here the commands.

debian:~# hcitool cc 00:16:75:50:DE:1F
debian:~# hcitool auth 00:16:75:50:DE:1F

When authenticate the connection it ask PIN. Most probably the default PIN is 1234.

Then run the comand "pon mot" to up the dialup connection. If you want to disconnect just run the command "poff mot". It is almost certainly a wise move to monitor /var/log/syslog run "tail -f /var/log/syslog" in a separate terminal to check that all the right things are happening.

Yeahhhhh......! Its working.....................!

AR got married...!

Today is rather a special day for our LUGers coz one of our old members AR got married. Early in the morning I reached Linux Center at about 0500. Dassa and his wife came to LC and we drove our selves to Suchetha's place. we reached there at about 0800. Took a shower and got ready to go to the wedding.

It was already started when we reached there. He was on the Poruwa and Poruwa ceremony was going on. Ahh what a nice couple. The wedding was rather traditional. You know guyzz, Anuradha is a person who appreciate the Sinhalese culture all the time. Couple was wearing National dress. We had a nice time there.

The most outstanding moment is their going away. they were wearing a traditional dresses and gone away in a bullock cart. I wish them all the success and bright future....!



(Pics by Suchetha and Anuradha D)

Busy.... Damn it

Last October one of ma best friends, Dassa got married. And took his wedding at the Earls Regency hotel on october 12. We set off from Ampara the previous morning. That evening we had a nice shopping. And one of ma good friends, Rishani who is living in Kandy joined with us. The following morning we went to dassa's wedding. what a nice time there. after that we directly drove our selves to colombo. at about 2230 hrs we reached there then we caught a bus to Dassa's home and we crashed there that night.On the 14th night we joined his homecoming at Fingara club. And the following day we came back home.

I was badly busy with ma work and studies last few months. in november i had ma final exams. i have few subjects to rush up. apart from that things I had to finish ma article for Soba Viyamana. Soba Viyamana is an Environmental Education magazine published by the Society for Environmental Protection. This is the one and only digest magazine on environmental protection. Im one of the editors of the magazine. The 4th volume of the magazine was issued last week. I wrote to it about Turtles & Tortoises in Sri Lanka. I really appreciate that work and I think it is a great service we are rendering to our next generation. I have to say a word about Dr. Rohana Dayaratne who is the founder of The Society for Environmental Protection and this magazine is one of his concepts. Now he is working at the general hospital Badulla as a consultant doctor.

we have a sudden Linux work shop on 4th last month in Ampara. Suchetha and a few of UCSC guyz suddenly came here within 24 hrs notification. it was sataurday and I was free. i joined with them and we did the wokshop well. after the workshop we went straight back home and then again went for an open bath. we went to channel near the Kondawatuwana tank and had a very nice and funful bath. Then we had to find some stuff for SUCH but unfortunately we couldnt find that for him. They left here after dinner.