Nirmal Fernando's Blog

Desktop Capturing Software for Ubuntu

2012-01-29T19:50:00.000+05:30

I had a terrible time finding a good desktop capturing software for Ubuntu, so thought to write a post since I don't want you to get into the same trouble. I first tried "RecordMyDesktop", it is all good other than the format it outputs! As far as I could see, it only output in ".ogv" format. But I wanted to have it in AVI/mpeg format. Then I tried to find a converter. Downloaded some converters, but converted videos were in really bad quality.

This made me to search bit more. Then I found "XVidCap" software, which saved my day! It worked really well, and I recommend you to use it! You can easily search for it in Ubuntu Software Center and install!

A new design to Frame2Relex Component of OpenCog

2011-09-19T21:46:00.000+05:30

Input

Set of frames.

Onetime steps (should be done beforehand and serialize)
Step 1

Extract all unique frame templates from mapping rules (RelEx2Frame) file.

Eg: ^1_Arriving:Manner($Arriving,$var0)

Step 2 – Frame-Rule Bitmap

Create a bitmap for each frame template (of step 1 list) whose length is the number of rules (RelEx2Frame), where each bit corresponds to a unique rule i.e. if the ith frame template is present in the jth rule, the jth bit of the ith bitmap is set to 1.

Step 3 – Rule-Frame Bitmap

Create a bitmap for each rule (RelEx2Frame) whose length is the number of frame templates, where each bit corresponds to a unique frame template i.e. if the ith frame template is present in the jth rule, the ith bit of the jth bitmap is set to 1.

Step 4

Serialize all bitmaps.

Algorithm

Step 1

De-serialize all bitmaps.

Step 2

For each frame in the input: (eg: ^1_Entity:Entity(John,John) )

   Find the matching frame templates. (i.e. ^1_Entity:Entity($var0,$var0) )

Step 3

Perform 'OR' operation on Frame-Rule bitmaps of matching frame templates to obtain the Frame-Rule bitmap which corresponds to the possible rules that the input frames represent. Thus, we obtain a subset of rules using the positions that are true.

Step 4

All the rules obtained from step 3 are not necessarily the rules that are valid, since in some rules there are multiple frames as consequent. Thus, we perform a check on the subset of rules obtained from step 3, using the Rule-Frame bitmaps.

For each rule in the subset of rules:
   We check whether all its consequent frame templates are present in the frame templates correspond to input frames.

From this step we obtain a subset of rules (i.e. all necessary rules) of rules obtained at step 3.

Step 5

For each necessary rule:
   Using corresponding actual frames we map variables (eg: $var0, $Time) of this rule.
   We take its conditional part and remove all the 'NOT' true relations and 'OR' relations (ideally we should not remove 'OR' conditions, but handling this is tough/impossible?). Thus we take only the standalone 'TRUE' relations and 'TRUE' relations joined with an 'AND'. Note these are relation templates (eg: _subj($var0,$var1) ).
   We substitute values of variables in relation templates and obtain the actual relex relations.

That's it! :) Of course this will not provide all the relex relations that are needed to form a sentence, due to the limitations in existing RelEx2Frame rules.

Test case:

Input:

^1_Entity:Entity(John,John)

^1_Being_named:Entity(John)

^1_Transitive_action:Agent(throw,John)

^1_Cause_motion:Agent(throw,John)

^1_Cause_motion:Theme(throw,ball)

^1_Transitive_action:Patient(throw,ball)

Output:

noun(John)

_subj(throw,John)

_obj(throw,ball)

person(John)

Setting up a Huawei 3G Modem in Ubuntu 10.04

2011-08-07T01:26:00.000+05:30

After a loooong time, got a chance to write a post (since it's short).

I was planning to buy a HSDPA dongle for a quite a some time now, but didn't feel it is that necessary since I have an ADSL connection at my home and there's WIFI and LAN connections at University. But a recent incident made me to buy one and I bought a Huawei E171 dongle.

When I try it on my Ubuntu 10.04 it showed nothing but the software (mostly exe files) inside the USB. Then I tried creating a new connection under 'Mobile Broadband' and try to connect, still it failed to connect. :( (totally frustrated)

Then I Googled a bit and found out that I need to install "usb-modeswitch" package, due to a known bug.

So I ran, "sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch", and I saw that it installs an additional package called "usb-modeswitch-data".

After reconnecting my dongle and connecting to the connection I created under 'mobile broadband', I was able to connect to the Internet successfully!

Just thought to share, in case some of you get into the same trouble in future! :-)

See you all with another post!

Apache Tuscany - Develop a simple tool that can be used to generate composite diagrams

2011-04-09T01:00:00.000+05:30

Abstract:

Apache Tuscany provides a comprehensive infrastructure to simplify the task of developing and managing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions based on Service Component Architecture (SCA) standard. Tuscany Java SCA is a lightweight runtime that is designed to run standalone or provisioned to different host environments.

Task is to implement a tool which generates composite diagrams from the composite files to illustrate the SCA artifacts and their wirings. SCA artifacts are composite, component, service, reference.

This tool can serve multiple purposes:

1) Help to document Tuscany's tutorials and samples.
2) Integrate with the SCA domain manager to visualize the SCA domain (contributions, composites, nodes etc).

Implementation Plan:

Composite XML should be generated using the Tuscany's in-memory representation of the composite model. It will then give as an input for the Composite Analyser. Composite Analyser is not a single object but the whole program itself as a single unit. Composite Analyser then analyses the XML document and grab the relevant DOM Elements such as Composite, Component, Service, Reference, Property, Wire, Text etc. and starts to build the SVG document using SVG DOM API of Apache Batik.

Basically Composite Analyser contains three objects, CompositeFileReader, LayoutBuilder, and SVGDocumentBuilder.

CompositeFileReader is responsible for reading the input composite XML file and provide the necessary details to LayoutBuilder.

LayoutBuilder then builds a layout which uses the space optimally and provides the details of positions and sizes of each artifact to SVGDocumentBuilder. I already researched on few layout building algorithms and tools (JGraphX) but further research will be done and will pick the most appropriate algorithm.

SVGDocumentBuilder creates the DOM Elements according to the layout and builds the final SVG composite diagram.

Since DOM elements (Composite, Component, Service, Reference, Property, Wire, Text etc.) will be used multiple times in order to build a single diagram, I am planning to create separate objects for those elements. Each object is responsible for creating its own element according to the requirement and giving it to the SVGDocumentBuilder. Most of the artifacts will hold a same structure and behaviour, therefore I have implemented following class diagram for the prototype.

In the prototype I built to create a SVG diagram using Apache Batik I used following SVG elements for each artifact mentioned above.

Composite, Component: “rect” SVG elements with rounded corners
Property: “rect” SVG element with equal height and width
Reference: “polygon” SVG element with 6 vertices and coordination of point B of the following sketch should be given to the addElement method.
Service: “polygon” SVG element with 6 vertices and coordination of point A of the following sketch should be given to the addElement method.

Wire: “polyline” SVG element used to connect a Reference and a Service object.
Text: “text” SVG element used to add a given text

Following image shows a sample composite diagram which is built using Apache Batik as a prototype for this project after converting to PNG format.

Deliverables:

Code of the tool which will be built.
Tests to verify the accuracy of the diagrams generated.
User documentation on operation of the tool and sample diagrams generated.

Time-line:

Till May 10

Read on Tuscany SCA Java, understand the design, and concentrate on project relevant parts
Read on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1
Read on Apache Batik and write examples to get familiar
Recognize all the artifacts of SCA.
Research on layout building algorithms and tools and find out the appropriate algorithm

May 11 - May 24

Finalize the process view after getting the comments from the developers’ community and from my mentor.
Start initial implementations - building artifact structures

May 24 - July 10

Preparing for the mid-term evaluation of the project.

July 12 - August 15

Implement Composite Analyzer
Improve performance by using parallel design patterns.
Develop test cases to verify the accuracy of the generated diagrams.

August 16 - August 22

Wrap up the work done, and polishing up the code.
Preparing for the final evaluation.

August 26

Final evaluation deadline.

Community Interactions:

Apache Tuscany developers’ community is the main community behind this project and I highly appreciate comments/ ideas of the expert developers of Tuscany and consider those as a great opportunity to learn and contribute more and more to the improvement of Tuscany.

Biography:

I am Nirmal Fernando, final year undergraduate at Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I am very competent at Java programming language, OOP, XML, XSL and data structures and algorithms. I am familiar with SOA concepts and web services.

I participated in GSoC 2010 for Apache Derby (RDBMS in Java) project and successfully finished the project. This is a sample of the work (final output) which I've done for Derby last summer (http://nirmalfdo.blogspot.com/p/my-work-at-gsoc-2010.html).

You can find my profile and recommendations at LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=54105394&trk=tab_pro).

I am looking forward to have an exciting summer with Apache Tuscany, and I consider this is a great opportunity to me, to apply my knowledge and skills into a real world application which benefits many people around the globe.

Thanks!

Using Java Executor Framework...

2011-01-27T21:22:00.001+05:30

Java Executor Framework provides a solution using a thread pool to the following problems of using threads directly:

Creating a new thread causes some performance overhead.
Too many threads can lead to reduced performance, as the CPU needs to switch between these threads.
You cannot easily control the number of threads, therefore you may run into out of memory errors due to too many threads.

Here's a code snippet on how you can use it:

import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;

public class TestExecutor {

    private static final int NTHREDS = 10;

    /**
    * @param args
    */
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        long l=System.currentTimeMillis();
        ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NTHREDS);
        for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
            Runnable worker = new Test(i);
            executor.execute(worker);
        }
        // This will make the executor accept no new threads
        // and finish all existing threads in the queue
        executor.shutdown();
        // Wait until all threads are finish
        while (!executor.isTerminated()) {

        }
        System.out.println("Total time: "+ (System.currentTimeMillis()-l));
    }
public class Test implements Runnable {

    private int id;

    public Test(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        int sum=id;
        for(int j=0; j<10000000;j++)
            sum += j;
        System.out.println("My sum = "+sum);
    }
}

You may note that I have used a thread pool with ten threads, you can change the size of the pool according to your need.

You may wonder what actually applying concurrency does to your application's performance. Here's a comparison of CPU usage without and with using threads.

My application without using threads!

Application is running in the time gap

of 40 - 0 seconds in the CPU history

graph. You may note that CPU

utilization is 30% & 100%. i.e. not

effectively utilized.

My application using threads!

Application is running in the time gap

of 25 - 0 seconds in the CPU history

graph. You may note that CPU

utilization is 100% & 100%. Thus the

both CPUs are effectively utilized.

There is another way that you can get the advantage of Java Executor Framework, I will elaborate on that in my next post! :)

Happy Threading!! :D

Sorting a hashmap by values?

2011-01-25T23:38:00.000+05:30

Hash map is a really useful data structure when it comes to coding. In some instances you may need to sort the keys of the hash map according to the values.

Here's a way (there may be many other ways), how you can retrieve the list of keys after sorting the hash map according to values.

public ArrayList<String> sortHashMapByValues(HashMap<String, Integer> passedMap) {

        ArrayList<String> sortedRels = new ArrayList<String>();
        ArrayList<Integer> mapValues = new ArrayList<Integer>(passedMap.values());
        Collections.sort(mapValues);

        for(int i : mapValues){
            for ( Iterator it = passedMap.entrySet().iterator(); it.hasNext(); ) {
                Map.Entry e = (Map.Entry) it.next();
                if(((Integer)e.getValue()) == i){
                    sortedRels.add((String)e.getKey());
                    passedMap.remove(e.getKey());
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return sortedRels;
    }

Hope this is help someone!

The Hymn Composed to Honour His Eminence Rev. Dr. Malcom Cardinal Ranjith

2011-01-13T10:00:00.002+05:30

කුල වදින රතු කුමරුනේ - නිදුක් සුවයෙන් යෙහෙන් වැජඹේවා
ලොවම දිනනා හිමියනේ - සත් වරම් දෙව් බෙලෙන් නැහැවේවා
කිතු හිමිගෙ රතු පුතනුවේ - ආයුබෝවේවා //

ලක එකලු කල දහම් පහනයි
මේ බිමේ මිණි කිරුල ඔබමයි
සමිදු ආ' සිරි 'ලකට ගෙන දෙන
ලක් මවගෙ පෙම්බර පුතාමයි

දරු කැලගෙ දුක් නිවන සිසිලයි
සෙත් සරණ දුන් ගිනි නිවාලයි
දම් දහර අම දහර විලසින්
දෙව් දනට නිති දෙන්නෙ ඔබමයි

දෙව් වදන පණ නලට මුසුමයි
සුදු සභය ගිරි මුදුනෙ හිරවේයි
බැටළු කැල නිසි මග රැගෙන යන
ලක් සසුනෙ නායක එඩේරයි

-Author unknown (let me know if you know)

Seven Steps to Get Accepted to GSoC

2011-01-09T23:15:00.000+05:30

SevenStepsToGetAcceptedToGSoC -

Bad smells in code ?? :O

2010-12-21T19:02:00.001+05:30

I think it is really important that you identify the "bad smells" in a code that you have written, simply since they are not good to have.

There are number of such "bad smells" which have been recognized and expected, programmers to be aware of. You can check most of them from here.

I had a research on the internet for a Eclipse plug-in in order to identify so called "bad smells". Luckily I found this wonderful plug-in called "JDeodorant".

JDeodorant is capable of recognizing four main types of "bad smells" that can be found in your code namely God Class, Long Method, Type Checking and Feature Envy. I have created a screen cast on "how to use JDeodorant?" and here it is.

Hope this post made your attention towards possible "bad smells" in your code, and hopefully correcting them (Oh I forgot to tell, using JDeodorant you can correct most of these bad smells as well ).

Happy Coding!! :)

Work done in the period of November 20th – December 3rd

2010-12-21T18:22:00.001+05:30

Within this period Imanaged to serialize the whole drools rules file as a Knowledge Base Object,and observed a significant improvement (approximately 10s) but still far lessthan the execution time of the current RelEx2Frame. Also that serializationneeded JVM stack size to be increased to 2MB. Still we felt that theperformance is not up to the requirement so we decided to split the droolsrules file according to 100 rules per file basis and Nisansa did that task.Danaja came up with a design which is focused on applying concurrency andparallelism for the RelEx2Frame system, and was accepted by all the members ofthe team as the basic design which will be altered and improved after furtheranalysis. 

In the current RelEx2Framethere is a significant limitation of the concepts or the words that aredetected. Statistical learning methods can be used to reduce this limitation.One approach is to use an existing application and the other would be toimplement statistical learner. Google Sets [1] is one of the existing applicationsthat we are considering. During this period I have implemented an applicationwhich accesses Google Sets and generate new set of words for a givencombination of words (<4). I have used an existing library called ‘XGoogle’[2] written in Python programming language which provides an interface toaccess Google Sets. Since I was not familiar with Python, I had to learn Pythonand which I successfully managed to do. We will keep the results came out fromthis application and will compare with the results from our statistical learnerto choose the most appropriate set of words.

Preparing the designdocument was the major work that we had done during this period, since it wasdue on 3rd December. All of us contributed to the design document inseveral ways and I contributed by writing design constraints, design decisionsand designing rule learning component. Design constraints part involvedbasically three sub sections, namely Operating Environment, End-userEnvironment and Performance Requirements. Design decisions consisted with majordecisions, some of which were already taken and others yet to be taken. Programminglanguage selection, rule engine selection, caching knowledge bases, statisticallearning of concepts and selecting the best suited data mining algorithm werethe main design considerations discussed there.

Designing the rule learnerwas the most challenging task to me. I read many documents [3-5] on existingrule learners, existing rule induction algorithms, data mining techniques etc.  After considerable amount of literature surveyI came up with the architecture for the statistical rule learner using datamining techniques, which will be altered and improved as it requires. Chamilkareviewed it and made few suggestions.

We were successfullymanaged to submit the design document on 3rd of December.

[1] “Google sets labs,”[Online]. Available: http://labs.google.com/sets

[2] “XGoogle,” [Online].Available: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/python-library-for-google-sets

[3] K. Mhashilkar. “DataMining Technology,” [Online]. Available: http://www.executionmih.com/data-mining/technology-architecture-application-frontend.php

[4] J. Grzymala-Busse, “Three strategies to ruleinduction from data with numerical attributes,” presented at the InternationalWorkshop on Rough Sets in Knowledge Discovery (RSKD 2003), associated with theEuropean Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software 2003, Warsaw,Poland, April 5–13, 2003. 

[5]“Rule Learner,” [Online]. Available: http://openrules.com/RuleLearner.htm

Work done in the period of 6th to 19th of November

2010-12-21T18:18:00.002+05:30

Duringthis period my main task was to integrate the converted Drools Rules to theRelEx source code. For that first I just created a Drools State-full Knowledgesession which creates the Knowledge Base based on the converted Drools Rulesfile. At the first debugging time, I got hell of errors, which is some whatexpected since we had not done any debugging of created Drools rules beforethat moment. So I started to look into each and every error thrown. Few errorsamong hundreds of errors are noted below.

Importstatement was missing from the drools rules file: I altered the RuleConvertercode such that it adds that. 

Therewere lot of typos found in the RelEx2Frame hand written rule file, whichmislead our RuleConverter to generate malformed rules: I debugged and editedthe hand written rule file as needed.

Once Imade the Drools to create the KnowledgeBase successfully, I started to debugthe methods used inside the Drools rules which were implemented by Danaja andNisansa. They didn't have a way to debug there method earlier, so we expectedfew bugs from those methods. I found few bugs in one of the methods (which isthe tricky method), and successfully fixed those bugs, and got the rules towork.

Then Ifound out that currently we were not outputting the given sentence relatedoutput but only the rule. So I went ahead and implemented that functionality.It needed few changes in the Drools rules file (i.e. RuleConverter) and also infew methods in the RelEx2Frame. While doing this I observed that the 'then'part of the rule is not get executed suddenly after the activation of a rule. Ihad a discussion about this behaviour in Rules Users List mailing list and got to know the following:

“ In therete algorithm the agenda is a list of activated rules who's actions areeligible to fire. The "first" one on the list is selected, it'saction is fired, and the agenda might change as a result. "First" isin quotes because the agenda list is sorted by conflict resolution rules.”

So Ialtered the code a bit such that it solves this issue as well.

I did fewtests with the new Rule Engine, and found out it takes ages (10-15mins) todisplay the resulted frame outputs. I raised this issue in front of my groupmates and made the point that a possible approach of caching which I have seenin few mailing list discussions. 

Further Iedited the existing RelEx build.xml file such that it adds necessary Droolsrelated executables to the classpath before compiling the source code.

We hadfew discussions on preparing the design document as well, again Chamilka tookthe lead and cooperated with others and divided separate parts among four ofus.

Work done in the period of October 23rd – November 5th

2010-11-23T20:28:00.001+05:30

I updated our external supervisor Dr. Ben Goertzel about our current progress on 25th of October.

I communicated with my group mates and completed the initial version of the SRS on 26th October. As requested from the course coordinator I uploaded that version to the Moodle on 29th October. After the project meeting with course coordinator, we thought of altering our SRS a bit, and agreed to again look into parts did in the SRS by each one of us and come up with an improved version by 1st of November. As discussed I made few small changes to the parts I had done in the SRS, and send them to Chamilka, for formatting tasks on 31st of October.

Meantime I had few chats going on with the OpenCog developers community, mainly with Dr. Joel Pitt, Jerad, and Linas, at the #opencog IRC channel, for better understanding of our requirements. Since our project idea came from Dr. Ben Goertzel, I thought to have a chat with him to get clarify few problems. I had a google chat with him on 1st of November and the points discussed were following.

Why the existing RelEx2Frame code is kind of hacky?
What if the introduction of a standard rule engine degrades the performance?
Is there a corpus that can be used for testing purposes?
For final presentation purposes is it possible to use the virtual dogs developed by OpenCog?

That discussion was really worth, and I shared the chat log in our mailing list.

I did a bit research on the generated drools rules after converting hand written rules using the Rule Converter developed by Danaja and Nisansa. To get clarified few things which I came across from those converted rules, I contacted the Drools community through their mailing list on 31st of October. There I had a discussion with a Drools developer called Wolfgang Laun and figured out few important facts that we should condider.

In Drools rule eval() function is the least efficient way of formulating a condition; none of the optimizations will work this way.
eval() cannot be used on the RHS, after 'then'. It is a wrapper for general
boolean expressions, to be used as a constraint in a Pattern.

I shared these with my group mates and did necessary modifications.

In this period I had taken up another task which is to integrate RelEx with Drools, using minimum number of dependencies needed to get Drools to work. I integrated a test class given by Drools into the successfully configured RelEx Eclipse Project Folder, and built it and find out the missing libraries (JAR files) and added them to the Java Build Path of the RelEx project. Following were the minimum JAR files needed from the Drools 'bin' folder for a successful build.

drools-core-5.1.1.jar
drools-compiler-5.1.1.jar
drools-api-5.1.1.jar
lib/antlr-runtime-3.1.3.jar
lib/ecj-3.5.1.jar
lib/mvel2-2.0.16.jar
lib/xstream-1.3.1.jar

SeMap - final year project (9th - 22nd October)

2010-10-31T11:46:00.000+05:30

On 9^th of October I have created a new privatemailing list in our sourceforge project account, nldex-devs, since that would be much easierplatform for us to have our project discussions going on. I added all my group members to the mailinglist and made them aware about it and requested them to always use this mailinglist for project based discussions.

Around 13^th October we got few comments from ourinternal supervisor Dr. Shehan Perera, on our project proposal. We altered ourproposal according to his suggestions.

I found few sample SRSs on 15^th October, from ourseniors and looked at them and discussed with the group members. We figured outthe necessary parts for our project’s requirement specification, and dividedparts among each of us. I took up the sections of Operating Environment, UserDocumentation, Assumptions and Dependencies, and went through few resources tofind out what I need to write. I put up the basic draft of my parts on 17^thOctober; in our mailing list so all my group members can review them. Weplanned to finish the SRS on 26^th October.

Throughout this period I continued to read on Drools documentation. I had downloaded Drools examplesprojects and ran them in Eclipse IDE and play around to get familiar with itsbehaviour. Also I looked at a rule creation method in Drools, called DomainSpecific Language (DSL) and will be continued to look at them in coming days aswell.

I tried to setup the RelEx in the Eclipse IDE since as it willmake our lives easier when dealing with RelEx code. So I successfully setup theRelEx source code in Eclipse IDE. Following are the steps I followed.

· File --> New--> Java Project --> Create project from existing source --> specifiedthe path to relex folder

· Now an eclipseproject will be created based on the existing project

· Go to the projectroot in the Package Explorer in the IDE

· Right click on it--> properties

· Select "JavaBuild Path" --> Libraries --> add external jars, and add thefollowing jar files and press ok.

· gate.jar

-download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gate/files/gate/4.0/gate-4.0-build2752-BIN.zip/download

-gate.jar can befound inside the bin folder

· jwnl.jar

-download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/jwordnet/files/jwnl/JWNL%201.4/jwnl14-rc2.zip/download

-jar file can befound inside the extracted folder

· linkgrammar-4.7.0.jar

-download from http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/#download

-jar file can be found inside the extractedfolder

· opennlp-tools-1.4.3.jar

-download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/opennlp/files/OpenNLP%20Tools/1.4.3/opennlp-tools-1.4.3.tgz/download

-Go to the path of the folder from aterminal and run "ant" command

-That will build theopennlp-tools-1.4.3.jar for you inside the "output" folder of thesame directory.

· Go to Project andun-tick "Build Automatically" in the menu strip of the IDE.

· Then go to theproject root in the Package Explorer in the IDE

· Right click on it--> Build Project

· This will build theRelEx source without any errors.

SeMap - final year project (25th Sept. - 8th Oct.)

2010-10-12T21:20:00.002+05:30

Istarted from what I left earlier week, basically to setting up theenvironment for us to use RelEx. RelEx has lot of dependencies whichare in turn needed some other dependencies. I gave a try to set upRelEx in a windows environment, using MinGW which is aminimalist development environment for native Microsoft Windowsapplications. RelEx developers preferred us to use linux environment,but they asked me to give a try on windows (since most of us wantedto use windows) which they had no experiences of building RelEx. Inan IRC discussion I told them that if I got successful, I will comeup with a “how-to-do” document which will help someone who isplanned to use OpenCog on windows and they were appreciated that.

Link grammar parser isone of the dependencies of RelEx and I had a nightmare of building itin MinGW environment, since some libraries used by them are not therein the windows platform. So I tried to manually download some of themissing libraries after debugging the build, but was unsuccessful.Then Nisansa started to build link grammar using Visual C++, neitherhe got it to build without errors (I think he will continue hisinvestigation). Without further wasting our time on just setting upthe environment, we thought to move to Linux based OS. I already hadsome experiences of using Ubuntu, so I just re-booted and logged intoUbuntu. Amazing fact is that within 10 minutes I was able to buildRelEx successfully! But I had no regret of trying to install RelEx inwindows.

I came up with a set ofsteps which one should follow in order to get RelEx installed inUbuntu. Here I list them.

Download link-grammar http://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/#download
Extract link-grammar
Issue following commands in a terminal invoked in the place where you have link-grammar extracted. (eg: /media/OS/OtherNirmal/L4-S1/Project/link-grammar-4.7.0)

*sudoapt-get install build-essential

*./configure

*make

*sudomake install

*sudoldconfig

*cdlink-grammar

*./link-parser (this will run LGP, you can just verify that it is working)

*sudocp linkgrammar-4.7.0.jar /usr/share/java

Install libgetopt-java package:
Install Wordnet:
Download JWNL from http://sourceforge.net/projects/jwordnet/files/jwnl/JWNL%201.4/jwnl14-rc2.zip/download and Extract it.
Go to the folder where jwnl.jar contains (in jwnl 1.4 it's inside extractedPlace/jwnl14-rc2) and issue following command to copy the jar into /usr/share/java
Go to http://wiki.bazaar.canonical.com/Download and download our VCS bazzar or simply open up a terminal and type

sudo apt-getinstall bzr

Go to the folder where you need the RelEx trunk to be in and issue following:

bzr branchlp:relex

;this will checkout the relex source code

In relex source code there's a build.xml file. Open it up and change the following:

line 20:

pathelementlocation="${PREFIX}/linkgrammar-4.7.0.jar"

Save it!

Finally go to the folder which contains build.xml (relex) & issue:

*ant-Check whether the "Build Successful". This will build thecode.

*antrun -to run the relex

*anttest -to test the relex

Project proposal was dueon 8^th of October so we had started are work on theproposal on 30^th September. We discussed and distributedparts of the project proposal among us. I had taken the parts ofintroduction and methodology. Danaja and Nisansa proof-read theseparated parts of the proposal and Chamilka did the most of theformatting part. I did help them in possible ways that I can. Ishould note here that I was down with a contagious eye disease, from6^th - 9^th of October where I was instructed tokeep my eyes rest. But I participated in group chats in that periodas well, to keep me in touch of the project. We submitted ourproposal to Dr. Ben Goertzel; our external supervisor and also to Dr.Shehan; our internal supervisor to get their approvals on 5^thof October. Dr. Ben had reviewed our proposal within 24 hours andsent us few suggestions, and we all agreed to alter our proposalaccording to his amendments, and sent the revised proposal to Dr.Shehan. Unfortunately Dr. Shehan was attending a conference in US, sohe was unable to sent us a reply.

Dr. Shantha had askedproject groups to appoint a leader, and my project members appointedme as the group leader. I will try to do my best as the group leaderand is desperate to make our project a success by gettingcontributions from all my passionate and highly talented group mates.

Inception of an exciting time!

2010-10-02T11:01:00.001+05:30

Ok, now I'min my final year as an undergraduate, and this post is all about the 10 creditsworth final year project of me. We've formed our group when we were intraining, and my group mates are Nisansa de Silva, Chamilka Wijeratne andDanaja Maldeniya. Further this post carries what I did in first two or so weekssince the start of the semester.

During thisperiod we went across an exciting time with the selection of a project idea andanalysing the feasibility of ideas for a final year project in the area we aremost interested i.e. Artificial Intelligence. We had few interesting ideas,some are posted in Moodle, and some ideas came up from my group mates. We hadmet with the lecturers and got to know about their expectations etc. aboutthose ideas. But we decided to explore few ideas which are more interesting tous.

While I was thinking about a project idea, suddenly I remembered about an AI related open source project which I got familiar with during GSoC-2010, that is OpenCog. OpenCog is an open source Artificial General Intelligence framework, intended to one day express general intelligence at the human level and beyond. I did surf about OpenCog to get more familiar with it. Meanwhile I sent an email to the co-founder of OpenCog Dr. Ben Goertzel (CEO of Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC, CTO of Genescient Corp., Chairman of Humanity+, Advisor in Singularity University and Singularity Institute, Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science, Xiamen University, China) and Dr. Joel Pitt who is a developer in OpenCog, by mentioning our interest to work under OpenCog and inquiring him possible project ideas with good research value. I got a really quick response from Dr. Ben with four possible categories namely NLP, machine learning, virtual embodiment and cognition, including brief descriptions. I shared Dr. Ben’s reply with my project members and went on a process of selecting the most interesting and doable two categories. We were able to select two categories i.e. NLP and machine learning and requested Dr. Ben to give us more detailed descriptions, at the same time I introduced other members of my team to Dr. Ben.

Dr. Ben was on a trip for couple of days, so we were asked to wait till he is back at home. Meanwhile I did few readings on OpenCog, NLGen and RelEx. On 26th I had a chat in gTalk with Dr. Ben and got to know that machine learning involves pretty hard core C++ programming including lots of templates and use of STL and Boost, since most of us were not familiar with C++, he suggested us to do a project in NLP which is more java based. Dr. Ben suggested three possible project ideas with brief descriptions on each, all were really interesting. After discussing with Vishaka Madam and Dr. Shehan we all agreed to do the project which is involved in improving the RelEx2Frame rule engine, which is used to identify the semantic relationships in English sentences. Dr. Shehan extended his support as our internal supervisor, while Dr. Ben Goertzel will support us as an external supervisor.

Dr. Ben provided us with the list of tasks that would be possible to do under the selected project, which will help us to come up with a comprehensive project proposal. Last few days I had looked into RelEx and RelEx2Frame, and tried to set up the environment to use RelEx. Also today I had a useful discussion on #opencog IRC channel with two OpenCog developers including Dr. Joel Pitt, and got very useful information about the project and they asked me to give the details of our group and our university etc. to mention us on the OpenCog Recap which is a fortnightly summary of stuff that is happening in the OpenCog community.

This is how things went since the inception of our project group.

Process of getting a valid certificate..

2010-09-25T22:02:00.000+05:30

ගූගල් සමර් ඔෆ් කෝඩ් -2010 ඉවරායී....

2010-08-22T13:31:00.001+05:30

අගෝස්තු 20 වෙනිදා "ගූගල් සමර් ඔෆ් කෝඩ් -2010" වැඩ නිල වශයෙන් අවසන් කලා :),එ අවසන් ප්‍රතිඵල නිකුත් වීමත් සමගයි. ගූගල් නිල වශයෙන් ප්‍රතිඵල 23 වෙනිදා දැනුම් දීමට නියමිතයි. මගේ ප‍්රජෙක්ට් එක වූනේ Apache Derby වලට අලුත් ටූල් එකක් හදන්නයි. Derby කියන්නේ සරලව කිව්වොත් දත්ත ගබඩා කරන්න සහ අවශ්ය දත්ත ලබාගන්න උදව්වෙන FOSS software එකක්, ඉන්ග්‍රිසියෙන් කිව්වොත් Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) එකක්.

මගේ ටූල් එක ගැන කිව්වොත් එය Derby යූසර්ස්ලට තමා execute කරපු query එකක් execute වෙන අවස්ථාවෙදී Derby අනුගමනය කරපු පියවරවල් tree අකෘතියක් ලෙස බලා ගන්න හැකියාව සලසනවා. Tree අකෘතියේ තියෙන හැම node එකක් ගැනම තෝරා ගත් විස්තර සමූහයක් අන්තර්ගතයි. මෙමගින් Derby යූසර්ස්ලට තමා execute කරපු query එකේ performance බලාගන්න පුලුවන් වීම නිසා, performance අඩුයි වගේ පෙනෙනවානම් එ query එක වෙන විදියකට ලියන්න උනන්දු කරවනවා. මෙම අලුත් ටූල් එක Derby මීළග release එකට එ කියන්නේ 10.7 වලට අන්තර්ගත කරන්න ඉන්නෙ. ටූල් එකේ එක interface එකක් මෙතනින් බලන්න පූලූවන්.

මගේ ප‍්රජෙක්ට් මෙන්ට වුනේ Bryan Pendleton. Bryan ගෙ උදවූ මට ගොඩාක් උපකාරී වුනා ප‍්රජෙක්ට් එක වෙලාවටත් ඉස්සෙල්ලා ඉවර කරන්න, මට කියන්න බරිවුනානේ ප‍්රජෙක්ට් එක මම වෙලාවටත් ඉස්සෙල්ලා ඉවර කලා (අගෝස්තු 4) (මෙන්ට බලාපොරොත්තු වුන විදියට), ඊට පස්සෙ community එකෙන් පොඩි පොඩි අදහස් මතු වුනා. එ අදහස් වලට ගරැ කරමින් මට අගෝස්තු 16 ට ඉස්සෙල්ලා කල හැකි දේවල් මම කලා, community එක එකග වුනා අනිත් අදහස් ඉදිරියේදී කරන්න, තව සාකච්චා වලින් පස්සෙ. මෙහෙම තමා FOSS ප‍්රජෙක්ට් එකක් ඉදිරියටම යන්නේ.:)

Community එකේ හැමෝම මට ගොඩාක් උදවු කලා Derby එක්ක familiar වෙන්න. හැමෝටම ගොඩාක් Thanks! ගොඩාක් අය මට සුබ පැතුවා, එ අයටත් Thanks! මේ මගේ පළමු සිංහල බ්ලොග් පෝස්ට් එකයි.:)

ස්තූතියි!

My Second Project at IFS as an Intern

2010-08-07T21:47:00.000+05:30

It was a requirement of the training division itself, and an idea of Nalin, my training manager. He wanted me to write a C# GUI application, which will automate a hectic, tedious manual process. They already have a pretty old GUI, which is capable of doing 2/3 of work that the new tool should cover. But the problem with that is they need to follow a process which is sequentially ordered and they have to closely watch till one step over to proceed with the other step. So a successful solution will save lot of money and effort.

I was not familiar with any of scripting languages before start up of the project. The most challenging task was to find a scripting language which can be used to automate a Windows GUI. After searching in the Internet I found a scripting language called AutoIt (AutoIt), which is capable of automating Windows GUIs, and also very easy to learn type of language. After went through some tutorials on AutoIt, I started writing small scripts, which are basically will automate a simple installation process. Next I got familiar with the tool that is currently used at IFS. After designing a process view I implemented the needed functionality.

GUI is a most important part of an application, which I haven’t done enough thinking into. But Nalin gave me wonderful ideas and best practices of designing a GUI, which I think will help me in my future work as well. GUI has created using C# programming language, such that it takes the minimum possible inputs from a user.

· GUI consists with four steps.

· Easy to use, user friendly design.

· User will be guided through steps, minimized the number of scary messages.

Following our the screen shots of the GUI.

My Work at Google Summer of Code -2010

2010-08-05T19:48:00.001+05:30

As I am reaching the end of successful summer, with Apache Derby and Google, I like to share with you a prototype that I've done using the tool, PlanExporter, which I've developed to Apache Derby.

You can visit this page to see the prototype.

This tool provides a high level view of the execution plans of complex queries you have executed. You can see the steps followed by the "Query Optimizer" of Derby, in order to execute the particular query. In this case Optimizer had followed a query plan with four "plan nodes", namely PROJECTION, HASH JOIN, TABLE SCAN and HASH SCAN. Intermediate results flow from the bottom of the tree to the top. In this case the filtered results of TABLE SCAN and HASH SCAN was given as the input for HASH JOIN. After performing the HASH JOIN the filtered result set given as a input to the PROJECTION node.

You can move the mouse point over an any node of the query plan to view set of available details about the execution at that step.

It is just the output that shown there. To convert to this output I had done lot of coding :).

Thanks for reading!

Last day as an intern at IFS

2010-07-30T21:49:00.000+05:30

It's 30th of July, 2010, the last day of another remarkable journey of my life at IFS R&D Internationals as an intern. A day with full of emotions. Really happy after seen following at the back end of my diary, from my training manager Mr. Nalin Sugathapala:

Thank you Nalin, for all the wonderful comments on me.

Following our the few of many mails I received today(30th):

HI Nirmal,

I saw the Linked in request. Give me a bit of time on that pls, will send a recommendation, but want to make sure that it reads well :D Best of luck with all that you do in the future and do let me know if there is anything that I or my chaps can do for you.

Cheers,

nalin (Training Manager)

Wish you all the best Nirmal. And thanks for the letter. :)))

You are such a brilliant and well motivated guy. Actually you motivated me as well. :D :D :D

Keep up your good work.

Hope you will join with us soon. : )

Again wish you all the very best.

TC and KIT

Subhashini. (Senior SE)

We also felt that sad my friend. Really. Be the best u can be. Bcoz u r a really talented one. Also not to forget keep Ur good personal qualities forever. I’m sure u will. J Wish u all the best dr Nirmal ,from bottom of my heart.

-Ruwani (UCSC)

Hi Nirmal,

The six months went really fast. It feels like a few days back when I showed you guys around IFS. It is good to hear that you found your time spent at IFS useful. You can feel free to ask any help from me at any time. I will do my best to help you out. Thank you very much for the hint on f12 I didn’t know that.

I will definitely add that next time when I do a training. Thank you once again for the hard work you put in and I wish you the very best in your future endeavors.

Please do keep in touch.

Kind regards,

Roger (Senior SE, training dept.)

Hi Nirmal,

It was a pleasure working with you and I hope that we will meet again. Wish you all the very best in your future endeavors.

Keep in touch.

Regards,

Chanaka (Team lead- Senior SE)

Hey nirmal,

Indeed you were a very good friend..you made the environment comfortable for us when we were feeling quite alienated when we came here. We got to know others through you. So indeed it’s sad to see you guys leave today after the bond we have made during the last 3 months. But no matter what happens ,life has to go on. You have great talent mate. im more than sure you can reach limits beyond the sky.So keep it up..work well, and I hope all of you end up in a great place in this time space continuum. Indeed we’ll meet up again..no worries..we can keep in touch.

All the very best bro!!

Miraj (Uni of Pera)

Dear Friend,

It’s hard even to think that we are missing you, anyway thanks a lot for being such a good friend for us.

WE will remember you with each and every line of code we do in C#. Actually it was the most enjoyable training I ever had in my life. We saw you NOT as a boss BUT as an innocent friend who is trying to help us to settle here.

As you are interested in higher studies, I wish you all the best for them. I surely know that you have more than enough potential to do significant things for our field….

Sorry If anything wrong is done by words, actions and even thoughts of mine.

I wish to see your innocent smile in the near future……… J

Thank you very much

CHINTHAKA (Uni of Pera)

Hi Nirmal,

It is so sad that u guys are leaving us today… But we really enjoyed the time that we spent with u.

You are the first friend that we met @ IFS…You did a wonderful C# training for us.

It was very useful to us because these days we are working with it.

Thanks to everything….

And I wish all the best to your future.. and also for the Gsoc 2010..

Though you are leaving us today, One day in near future we will definitely

Meet…..I am sure..

HAVE A NICE LIFE……….

Regards,

Dananjaya. (Uni of Pera)

We are pleased to have you with us and also impressed with the work you did and the talent you showed.

In my humble opinion you should plan to do the higher studies now onwards and become good inventor one day.

Doors are always open for you. So do not hesitate to contact us at any time if you need any help from us.

Good luck and all the best for your future endeavors.

Regards,

/Ruchitha. (Senior SE, training dept.)

Thank you very much everyone for wonderful comments and well wishers, really happy to be with such a bunch of people :))).

I have a lot to post regarding my training period, hope to post them soon!!

Mid term evaluations of GSoC-2010

2010-07-24T00:38:00.002+05:30

It's being a while from my last post, but can't help, I hardly got time to write a post :(.

I had my mid term evaluations of GSoC-2010 in mid July, and I received my results on 17th of July at 01:12 AM through a SPAM mail :D.

Here it is:

Hi Nirmal Fernando,

We have processed the evaluation for your project named Apache Derby-4587- Add tools for improved analysis and understanding of query plans and execution statistics with Apache Software Foundation.

Congratulations, from our data it seems that you have successfully passed the Midterm Evaluations. Please contact your mentor to discuss the results of your evaluation and to plan your goals and development plan for the rest of the program

Greetings,

The Google Open Source Programs Team

This was another thrilling moment to me :). After the evaluation day, I saw following on Derby-dev mailing list, sent by my mentor Bryan.

"I think that the core mission of PlanExporter is to enable the export

of query plan data in a complete and well-structured XML document, with

a documented schema, tested by our test suite.

I think that Nirmal's current patch in DERBY-4587 is extremely close

to meeting that goal. ..."

This boosted me up !! :)

Here's a basic vanilla HTML, that shows a small portion of what I'm doing in Derby.

I have lot of things to post and I'm waiting till I finish my training on 30th of July.

See you soon with a post !

Why not create a PDF of your own?

2010-06-14T15:46:00.000+05:30

My first project at IFS was about applying PDF/A standards to IFS reports. This project involved a conversion of PDF version. For that I needed a some kind of Java library which will provide me a set of functionality to perform a conversion.

While searching for few hours I found this wonderful Java library called iText. It has both Java and C# .NET versions.

You can use iText to:

Serve PDF to a browser
Generate dynamic documents from XML files or databases
Use PDF's many interactive features
Add bookmarks, page numbers, watermarks, etc.
Split, concatenate, and manipulate PDF pages
Automate filling out of PDF forms
Add digital signatures to a PDF file
and much more...

You can download iText binaries and source files from here.
iText API from here.
An excellent tutorial on iText can be founded in here.

Create a small PDF file and enjoy seen it's working, if you like to do more work using this that would make my effort even more success.

Introduction to PDF/A Standards

2010-06-14T15:22:00.000+05:30

Most of you may not familiar with PDF/A standards, neither me, before four months. So I decided to make a post on this to share what I know about PDF/A.

What is PDF/A?

I am sure at least some of you might got into some troubles if you tried to open PDF documents which are in different fonts,and if matching fonts not installed in your computer.This is because that PDF file does not contain embedded fonts. You can embed fonts that are used in the file at the moment of the creation of the file.
Not only fonts but the colour profiles used, and etc.

PDF/A standards ensure the documents can be reproduced in the exact same way, at any place and even after a long time. Current version is PDF/A-1.

DOs and DONT'S in PDF/A-1

PDF/A-1 files must include:

• Embedded fonts

• Device-independent color

• XMP metadata

PDF/A-1 files may not include:

• Encryption

• LZW Compression

• Embedded files

• External content references

• PDF Transparency

• Multi-media

• JavaScript

Levels of Standards

1. PDF/A-1a: All the requirements of PDF/A-1b + additionally requires that document structure be included being "tagged

2. PDF/A-1b: ensuring reliable reproduction of the visual appearance of the document

Reference:
PDF/A FAQ

I hope to put a post on PDF creation, as soon as I got some time. These days I'm busy with my work at IFS and GSoC.

Suggesting Process View of the Design

2010-05-16T18:39:00.000+05:30

Creating a batch file...

2010-05-06T10:55:00.000+05:30

A batch file allows Windows users to run a sequence of commands automatically, after just double clicking (executing) the file. A batch file is just a file with an extension of ".bat", you can simply edit this file pressing 'edit' after right clicking on the file.

You can find some useful information about batch files, commands etc. from here.

Here's a simple batch file created by me:

cd /d C:\Documents and Settings\NirFLK\Desktop\Project2
auto_aaaBuild.exe C:\Program Files\aaa Applications\aaa.exe
CALL 2.bat
del 1.bat

Explanation:
line 1: Does the job of "cd" in a command prompt. (i.e. switch to the given path) Note: you need to include '/d'.
line 2: Running an exe file with a parameter
line 3: CALL used to execute another batch file within this batch file
line 4: After executing the 2.bat file, this line will delete itself.

Do you want to automate a process?

2010-05-05T12:13:00.003+05:30

Sometimes we have to do a same set of things manually everyday. Personally I felt some processes are really tedious, so it is really inefficient to do them manually. There's a solution if we can spend some time on coding. To automate a process we normally use scripting languages, eg: shell scripting, AutoIt etc. In this post I will focus on AutoIt scripting language, which I got to know from a friend of mine.

AutoIt is a freeware scripting language which is mainly useful in automating Windows GUIs (it can use for general purpose scripting as well.). You can download AutoIt from here. I suggest you to download the full installation package since there are some other tools (such as AutoIt Window Info tool) other than the editor, which I found very useful.

You can find AutoIt documentation from here. It has nicely documented, and some examples in "Tutorials" section which is really useful to learn AutoIt. List of functions in AutoIt is listed here.

I used AutoIt to automate some GUIs in my training place (#IFS), and at my home to compile, build, and run Derby from source and also to establish a connection to a database in Derby.

I like this because it is easy to use language, and anyone can get use to it with one full day :).

Here is a script to automate the installation of a software (trial version) called PDFAppraiser:

Run("PDFAppraiser_1_0_1_Install.exe")

WinWaitActive("Apago PDF Appraiser 1.0.1 Setup", "&Next >")
Send("{ENTER}")
WinWaitActive("Apago PDF Appraiser 1.0.1 Setup", "I &accept the terms in the License Agreement")
Send("!a")
WinWaitActive("Apago PDF Appraiser 1.0.1 Setup", "&Next >")
Send("{ENTER}")
WinWaitActive("Apago PDF Appraiser 1.0.1 Setup", "&Next >")
Send("!n")
WinWaitActive("Apago PDF Appraiser 1.0.1 Setup", "&Install")
Send("!i")
WinWaitActive("Apago PDF Appraiser 1.0.1 Setup", "&Finish")
Send("{ENTER}")

You can download the .exe of the script from here.

If you want to test what this script does, place both the exe of the script and pdfAppraiser.exe in the same path, and double click on the exe of the script and watch it runs within seconds.

Explanation of the code:

Run(...) - this method starts the installer

WinWaitActive(title, active button/etc.) - this method waits until the window that titled as title appears with an active button specified.

Send(...) -Sends a command to proceed to the next window or else you want to do.

You may wonder how I found these &Next > and other names of the buttons, I found these by using AutoIt Window Info tool, this tool will help you to see what are the names or commands or mnemonics used by the GUI developer.

Hope this post will give you some idea about AutoIt, and believe that you will use this tool.

Google Summer of Code- 2010 - A Moment of thrill

2010-04-28T08:25:00.014+05:30

Finally the 26th of April came after waiting for sometime. The nervousness was maximum. Google planned to announce the names of the students who are accepted by UTC 19:00 (00:30 on April 27th from SL time(GMT +5:30)).

It was exactly 00:16, I saw a tiny window appearing at the right bottom of my screen, subjected "Congratulations !!", I murmured "Oh My God !! (with full of excitement)" and rushed to my gmail tab. Yeppy, I was thrilled with happy, after seen the mail (I have no words to express my feelings) from GSoC Admin team. Here I quote from that mail:

Dear Nirmal,
Congratulations! Your proposal "Apache Derby-4587- Add tools for improved analysis and understanding of query plans and execution statistics" as submitted to "Apache Software Foundation" has been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2010. ...........

The happy I got doubled after seen many of my colleagues also got through it. At about 00:30 I refreshed the GSoC web site and got confirmed my acceptance after seen the list of accepted students.

Following are the statistics:

CSE-Batch-07: 12 students
CSE-Batch-06: 10 students
____________________
CSE : 22 students

ENTC-Batch-07: 1 student

IT Faculty: 3 (not confirmed)

You can find my proposal to Apache Derby from here.
Here are some comments I received for my proposal.

Your proposal looks very good to me, thanks for letting me preview it. I think it is well written and clear.

bryan

--------------------------------------------------------
Nirmal,

I do not have any specific technical input, but wanted to say that I think this is a very good and thoughtful proposal and appreciate your efforts to provide this capability for Derby. I also think your interaction with the community has been very focussed, relevant and and shows good technical understanding.

Kathey

Few days before this day (26th of April), I was asked to submit my ICLA to The ASF, normally only major contributors get this chance to become an Apache committer, this implied some things to happen in the future, but I didn't take it that seriously.

This is the mail I received from my mentor as a reply to my thanking mail to him.

Congratulations! I am pleased. Several other members of the community voted positively on your application, as they felt that you had been working well in the community this spring.

I hope that you will have a productive and rewarding experience, and I'm looking forward to helping you with the project over the summer!

bryan

First and foremost I would like to thank Almighty God for bestowing his eternal blessings on me. Next to my mentor for this project Mr. Bryan Pendleton for the enormous support he gave me throughout this period, and I hope to get his help for a successful completion of the project. It's my duty to thank the Derby community, for the helpfulness and commitment they showed, it's a privilege to be a member of this wonderful community. Sincere thanks to the Head of Department, and the dearest staff members for guiding us to reach the success. To my dear colleagues who encouraged me a lot. Last but not least I would like to thank my family for the remarkable support they gave to me.

My GSoC-2010 Proposal

2010-04-01T09:23:00.015+05:30

GSoC-2010-ProposalByNirmalFernando -

MatrixManipulator 1.0 is released....

2009-12-13T17:21:00.005+05:30

I have released Open Office.org extension MatrixManipulator 1.0 today, 13/12/2009.

You can download it from following link:

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/MatrixManipulator

It still in the implementation phase and I hope to release improved versions soon.

Please put a comment on that extension, on the extension page, because it will immensely help me to improve this.

Hope you get a Graphical User Interface solution for Matlab, up to some extent in the area of matrices.

MatrixManipulator 1.0 is going to be released.......

2009-12-12T08:47:00.002+05:30

Here is the overview of the project:

Project Overview

Code Base: OpenOffice.org

Type: Extension for Calc & Math

Name: MatrixManipulator 1.0

Description:

The MatrixManipulator 1.0 is addressed to anyone who is following Advanced Mathematics. This can be used as an extension for both OpenOffice.org Calc & OpenOffice.org Math. It's really useful to have a way to check your solutions for the problems on Matrices, that encourages me to develop such thing.

Constraints of the MatrixManipulator 1.0: Since this has a Graphical User Interface there is a limit to the dimensions of matrices. The maximum dimension that MatrixManipulator 1.0 can take is 10x10.

m={2..10}, n={2..10}

MatrixManipulator can determine :

Addition & Subtraction of two m x n matrices
Scalar Multiplication of a m x n matrix
Multiplication of m x n matrix with n x m matrix
Transpose of a m x n matrix
Whether the given m x n matrix symmetric or skew symmetric
Inverse of a 2 x 2 matrix if it is invertible
Whether the given two matrices are inverse of each other
Determinant of a square matrix

Await for the link that you can download the MatrixManipulator 1.0, in my next post.

Increase the Import File Size limit in phpmyadmin

2009-11-21T14:49:00.006+05:30

Find the php.ini file, it's in the "\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.8\bin\php.ini " location.

Open it with WordPad.

Find (ctrl+f) the upload_max_filesize variable and change its default size of 2MB to any size you need.

Then restart the wampserver.

Too bad!!!

2009-10-29T18:42:00.002+05:30

My desktop computer again gave an error!!! er...... This time it's my VGA!!! This makes me to stay in SMART lab till 8.30 pm :(

GOD !!! When will I be able to get rid of this???

OpenOffice NetBeans Integration

2009-09-21T11:17:00.008+05:30

Here's the link to download OpenOffice.org plugin for NetBeans:

http://api.openoffice.org/files/documents/22/4546/org-openoffice-extensions-2.0.5.nbm

Here's the link to download OpenOffice SDK:

http://archive.services.openoffice.org/pub/openoffice-archive/stable/2.4.0/

You can find a tutorial on "OpenOffice NetBeans Integration" here:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice_NetBeans_Integration#Requirements

Third year has started......

2009-09-20T22:11:00.005+05:30

First semester of the third year of my degree course started on 14.9.2009, it's a beginning of another hard working 16-weeks.

In this semester we are learning lot of interesting CS subjects such as Software Engineering, Computer Networks, Database Management, Intelligent Systems & of course Programming Project.

Hope to dedicate this semester to my studies!!!

CSE-Programming Competetion-2009

2009-09-01T21:39:00.011+05:30

After many tiresome days of coding & debugging the day of "CSE
Programming Competetion-2009" has arosed yesterday (31st of August). Many attractive clients were competed in order to hunt treasures as quickly as possible.

There were some eye-catching GUIs. One was Nisansa's GUI, it was simply amazing work done by him.

Here's a screen shot of my client.

Briefing about the Client:

Its main objective is to grab many treasures as possible which were send by the Server, before they dissappear or before other players take them.

Client plays without any user interaction. It was done by an artificial intelligence(AI) which coded by us. We used the A-star algorithm as our main algorithm with some modifications. In this game players are not allowing to move diagonally.

There're obstacles & pitfalls which are not change after game started, player get a penalty if it hits an obstacle & player will die if it has fallen into a pitfall.

Have you ever wanted your Form(java.swing) to be displayed on the center of your screen?????

2009-08-22T13:19:00.009+05:30

In java there's no straight forward property to get displayed your FORM on the center of the screen.

Here's a method to do so...

First you have to import two packages ....

import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Toolkit;

Next go to the design view of your form & click on the form. In the properties of the form see what's the prefferedSize is.
say, prefferedSize = [426,473]

here 426 is the width of your form, & 473 is the length of the form.

Next initiate following variables,

Dimension screen = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
//this will get screen dimensions
int X = (screen.width / 2) - (426 / 2); // Center horizontally.
int Y = (screen.height / 2) - (700/ 2); // Center vertically.

here 426 is the width of your form & 700 is a value which makes your form vertically centered.
But you can change this 700 according to the vertical position you want.

Next again go to the properties of your form & go to bounds.
There select Custom Code & enter the following line.

this.X,this.Y,426,473

here 426 is the width & 473 is the length of your form.

Then press ok & check again whether the code line you entered is there.

Now run your form & see.

Convert java applications to .exe

2009-08-18T15:45:00.031+05:30

Recently I needed a software(ofcourse an Open Source software) which converts my java applications to .exe file. I have searched Google & find out a software called "jarToexe"(It was mentioned as FREE). But after I was installed it I came across that it's valid only for 30 days. :P So I asked one of my friends. He told a software called "j2e". After installed it & having a look I realise that it's pretty primary software & I can't find a way to answer the questions they raised too. :P

So I decided to have a go in Google Search again. Accidently I have found a software that works userfriendly. :P So I thought of sharing that. It was named as "exe4j".
here's the link to download.

Click Here
(Please note that this is an evaluation copy)

Here's the way......

1. Extract the ZIP file.
2. Goto 'bin' folder inside the 'exe4j' folder.
3. Next double click on 'exe4j.exe' file inside the 'bin' folder.
4. Follow the steps!!!

In this welcome screen jus press NEXT

here just select the Regular Mode & press NEXT

here give a name to your project, select a path to a folder where you need to place your .exe file, just leave other field blank & press NEXT

If your application is a GUI select 'GUI application'.Give the name that you want. (if you give 'sun', you get a 'sun.exe' file)
If you want to add an icon image(.icon) to your final .exe file select 'Icon file' & choose an icon.
Then press NEXT

First provide the class path by clicking on '+' mark at your right hand center. Then a dialog box will pop up. In the archieve field give the path of your '.jar' file. Press ok. Then in Main Class field give the path of your 'main class'. Then press NEXT.

In Minimum Version field just put 1.3
Press NEXT.

For the simplicity just select No splash screen
If you select exe4j splash screen, you have to give an image file(.GIF image etc.)
Press NEXT.

Just click on NEXT in stage 8.

After that in stage 9 it will create the .exe file.

Finally we have done with it!!!! To start application immediately press 'Click here to start application' or else go into the folder that you gave earlier.

It is very user friendly!!! Have a GO!!! Hope you too enjoy it !!

Hiii All......

2009-08-18T15:34:00.005+05:30

I was out of blogging for months.... So, I decided to start blogging again... :P
All this time I had my Level 2 semester 2 exams + Preparation for the Programming Competetion + My Personal Projects + many more.....

I was really happy until I receive my Acoustics results(Don't ask me the result(I have passed it anyway)). Do you beleive at the start of the semester it was the easiest subject :P . I have applied for a recorrection... & hoping against hope that it will change(Oh God help me!!!).

So, I wish that I will continue blogging without any pauses!!!

regards,
Nirmal

Google Summer of Code-2009

2009-04-03T17:45:00.000+05:30

Yaaaa........finally managed to upload a project proposal to GSoC 2009....and hoping to get accepted.....

I have chosen the project Survey Application under the XWiki Organization.

You can find it by clicking here. I expect valuable comments of you all.

Thanks!!!!

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

2008-10-19T12:24:00.000+05:30

Mother Teresa of Calcutta (August 26, 1910 – September 5, 1997), born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was an Albanian^[2]^[3] Roman Catholic nun with Indian citizenship^[4] who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata (Calcutta), India in 1950. For over forty five years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity's expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries.

By the 1970s she had become internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book, Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counseling programs, orphanages, and schools.

She has been praised by many individuals, governments and organisations; however, she has also faced a diverse range of criticism. These include objections by various individuals, including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Parenti, Aroup Chatterjee, Vishva Hindu Parishad, against the proselytizing focus of her work; this included baptisms of the dying, a strong pro-life stance on abortion and a belief in the spiritual goodness of poverty. Several medical journals also criticised the standard of medical care in her hospices, and concerns were raised about the opaque nature in which donated money was spent.

Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and given the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

Ajantha Mendis....

2008-10-19T12:14:00.000+05:30

Balapuwaduge Ajantha Winslo Mendis (born March 11, 1985 in Moratuwa) is a cricketer who plays for the Sri Lankan national cricket team.

Mendis, although classified as slow-medium, bowls a mixture of deliveries, including googlies, off-breaks top-spinners, flippers and leg-breaks, as well as a Carrom Ball, released with a flick of his middle finger. For Sri Lanka Army in 2007-08 he averaged a mere 10.56 and took 46 wickets in six games, his strike rate a startling 31. This gained him a call-up to the full Sri Lanka squad for the Caribbean tour in April 2008.

His best bowling performance in a one-day international came in the final of the 2008 Asia Cup, where he took 6 wickets for 13 runs in just his eighth match. His 17 wickets in the tournament earned him the Man of the Series award.^[1]

Mendis made his One Day International debut against the West Indies at Port of Spain in 2008 and took 3 for 39. He also plays for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League.

His first Test Match was against India at Colombo on July 23, 2008 in which he returned match figures of 8-132, thereby becoming the first Sri Lankan bowler to get an eight-wicket haul on Test debut.

Ajantha Mendis won the Emerging Player of the Year award at the LG ICC Awards ceremony held in Dubai in September 2008.

Hiiiiiii

2008-10-16T09:10:00.000+05:30

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Thank you! Visit Again!

Google Chrome- The New Web Browser

2008-10-15T22:05:00.000+05:30

One of the problems in other web browsers is they're inherently single-threaded. Google Chrome developers wrote APIs that are asynchronous. They thought about having multiple processes instead of multiple threads, each having its own memory and its own copy of the global data structures. So not like other browsers Chrome has separate processes rendering separate tabs. It eventually makes separate threads as well.
In normal web browsers they only have one process and one address space that we keep loading web pages into. When we have too many tabs open we close some tabs to free up memory. But when time goes on little bits of memory still get used even when the tab gets closed. Which means that we have memory that nothing can refer to again or there’s a piece of de-allocated memory we still have pointers to. If browser wants to open a new tab it can’t fit in the existing space. So browser has to grow its address space. But when a tab is closed in Google Chrome, you’re ending the whole process and all that memory gets reclaimed. If you open a new tab now, you’re starting from scratch.
By experience of using Goggle Chrome I feel that though it is multi process, it takes fairly long time (when we have opened many tabs) to load pages than Mozilla Firefox. I don’t know whether this is correct, but I saw when I opened only one tab, it has made 3 processes(chrome.exe) !!! Something to think !!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Our First Mentoring Session

2008-10-15T21:53:00.000+05:30

First meeting

Our Mentor is the Country Manager of Sri Lanka Mr. Sriyan De Silva who was a past pupil of St. Peter’s College; Colombo 4, in my point of view is a very simple person but an anonymous one.

We had our appointment at 8.30 a.m., but we were there at DHPL building, Colombo 2, at about 8 a.m. Microsoft Sri Lanka is located in 11^th floor. We were asked to wait at reception until Mr.Sriyan comes. It was a pleasant environment though not that awesome. His Secretary arranged some tea for us and invited us to take seats in a Board Room. He was there at the room on time. We haven’t seen him before; he entered room by telling “Good Morning Guys...”. He had two files which I think given by our department, with him. He greeted five of us by telling his name. He first asked us “How many sessions am I supposed to do with you?”, we answered 12 sessions. Then he told “What 12 no way!!!, I’ll do probably 8 sessions, 2 hours per each session. Otherwise it doesn’t worth you to come such distance and have a session of 1hour. It’s wasting of my time too, because my time is very expensive”. This shows that how well he manage time. Next he told each one of us to give a self introduction. While we were introducing our selves he wrote down some things on a paper. After listened to us he asked a question which we never expect. “Why people so worrying when they asked to introduce themselves?” I think that each one of you must think about.

After a discussion about above topic he gave us 10 minutes to think about ourselves and to deliver another self introduction. After listened to our speeches he introduced himself to us. It was a nice story. He was the Head Prefect in school time and was captained the College Basket ball team & Badminton team. He was appointed as the President of Commerce Society too. He was a very bright student. He did his A/L’s in Commerce stream and obtained Island First. Then he was selected to the University of Sri Jayewardenepura as an undergraduate. He did CIMA while he was in University. He participated in many youth societies actively. He earned money for his expenses by playing as a keyboardist of a band performed by some friends of him. He passed out from University with the Gold Medal for the best undergraduate, after 6 years, due to the bad condition in country at that time. Though he had the chance to join a managerial level job, he joined Nestle as a Sales rep as he stated simply because he wanted to get some experience in the field of Sales. He was really UNBELIEVABLE!!!! ISN’T HE???

Next he asked us about our expectations from this mentoring programme.

Finally he told that he’ll arrange next session on interviews. We finished our first meeting at about 10.30 a.m.