nStation

Note: My attempt here is to show the negative impact of Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage program on users. I do not hate Microsoft. I love most of their products.

I despise Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). Even cooperates are uncomfortable with the extra burden. In my opinion WGA is an annoyance to users. The simplest update or hot-fix available on the Microsoft website requires a validation.

There have been numerous gigs on “what if Microsoft made …” – the most circulated being a notable urban legend with a comment made by General Motors in response to the Bill Gates’ COMDEX address where he compared the auto industry to the computer industry. This post is about what if Microsoft made automobiles with WGA. More »

Often designers have to face this at least once in their career. Just for having a creative edge in one specialization makes others presume that you have a knack for design in general; people expect you to be creative in all areas. It is true that designers usually tend to cross boundaries on their main discipline and try to reach new creative heights. But that doesn’t necessarily make designers a breed of magicians. Comic from OK/Cancel

Halloween is around the corner. Even without strong cultural affiliations to the society, it is embraced by many Sri Lankans. Some prefer to challenge their creative skills; some prefer making it another occasion to booze . However I updated my website theme to match the Halloween mood with a Jack-o’-lantern family.

The Jack-o’-lantern (or Jack O’Lantern) family consists of five members, each with distinct personalities. Define them the way you want but notice the self-evident characteristics. Personas anyone? I made them using Adobe Illustrator. The original artwork and few variants of it are available for your download pleasure. More »

Last week Engadget, TechCrunch and many other tech sites reported Gmail going IMAP. That’s a big deal for anyone who prefers to have control over their email messages. But for a long time the Gmail inbox was available as an RSS feed. Several people blogged about this feature on their sites soon after discovering it. But now you don’t have to follow the old School method of manifesting credentials on the RSS URI anymore. It’s as easy as subscribing to any other RSS feed out there. All you need in an RSS aware web browser and an email client. Here’s how to do it. More »

I listen to Leo Laporte on several of his Netcasts (a.k.a. Podcasts). He recommends audiobooks from Audible on most of his shows. That’s how I ended up listening to NEXT by Michael Crichton, The Chopin Manuscript, etc. Listening to audiobooks is the best habit I have developed after a long time. It is the best way to utilize your commuting time otherwise wasted for no particular important thing.

On many occasions I heard Loe recommending the book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee. I never got the chance to add it to my library for some reason. So I thought of adding it to my collection today. Guess what, according to Audible, my geographic location prevents me from listening to this great book (see screenshot). My question is, if I can buy and listen to other audiobooks from Audible, why not this? I find the notice ‘We are not authorized to sell this title to your geographic location’ somewhat a feeble excuse. More »

I am twenty nine today (and with a lot of mixed feelings).

Many people have born on October 7th according to these statistics. Apparently the pop-star Alesha Dixon and cricketer Zaheer Khan were also born on this day.

“Happy birthday!” to everyone who is celebrating their birthday on 10/7 and a big “thank you” to everyone who took the time and energy to send me wishes. More »

http://www.meteo.slt.lk is the Department of Meteorology website. Although the website is poorly (or perhaps badly) designed, it has all the weather related information on Sri Lanka. Detailed information on Sri Lanka weather, forecasts, statistical information and warnings are available freely. To my knowledge recent forecasts from the department has been somewhat accurate compared to those days where the common understanding was “if the forecast say it’d rain, one may leave the umbrella home”.
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Recent Apple products have proven to be very well designed. In my opinion the Apple way of using things are very natural. Take the iPod Click Wheel for an instance. The standard volume control proven to be effective for decades has been successfully integrated to a modern product. It can’t get any better than that. This post is not about the iPod thought. It’s about Apple’s latest release of their web browser; Safari for Windows1. More »

This is a boring short story on how I ended up making this website.

Most of the free blog-like services didn’t fascinate me. Either they offered too little or too much to deal with. So I bought a domain name – started working on my very own PHP-enabled website. I had done several web designs before but none had server side processing or at least I hadn’t done it myself. After mingling for few days I managed to establish the concepts and come up with a simple but decent looking website. The blog was made possible with a third party blogging system that looked good, very simple and easy to use. More »