When Flickr started life was great. I never saw anything so cool for sharing photos. It was simple, fast and had all the Web 2.0 buzzwords that made anything possible, integrating it into this site, uploading from phones, etc. They were innovating every week and I never knew what I would find. The ‘interestingness‘ algorithm, the geotagging, camera finder, the Creative Commons licensing (for fair use), etc. Slideshows, tagging, RSS, these things are all priceless and I use them still. However, once Yahoo bought the young company they basically stopped innovating and became more like, well, Yahoo. The only notable changes I’ve seen are that you have to use this kludgy Yahoo login now and the pages stopped working on Windows Mobile. Besides that I assume that Yahoo is covering the server costs and keeping the thing online (no small thing) but not really innovating. I love Flickr and we have a long relationship, but the thrill is gone. I find myself looking around.

Anarkalli is a Sri Lankan actress, model and ‘personality’. I saw her first campaign video on Facebook. She’s not the sharpest cookie in the shed, but at least she doesn’t have a history of violence, extortion, rape or corruption. Sadly, this makes her an above average candidate. However, I hear that she’s running her hotel out of the Heritance Hotel in Ahungalla. So, I’m not sure how she A) wins and B) represents a district from a hotel. I also hear that a very competent, hard-working and loyal SLFPer was bumped so Anarkalli could run, and that this is making a bunch of people (rightly) unhappy. More to the point, however, it is simply fun to watch Anarkalli run. She’s not getting in any fights, so it’s all a good show.

This is a double exposure. The shutter is open for 20 seconds. For the first 10 the subject holds a pose. Then they jump and held another pose. In this case the subject got too ambitious and fell over so there are actually three exposures. This was at night, after the sun had set over the Kalutara hills. The light you see on the plants is not visible to the naked eye. All we saw was dark. However, all that information is there, if you keep the shutter open long enough. I find it weird, ghostly, ethereal. Some of the lighting you get from long exposures is another world, neither day nor night. I’m used to cameras approximating what we see during the day, but it can exceed what we see at night, sometimes taking us to strange places.

I have gotten pretty good at online Scrabble and I rarely lose. Alas, this makes me a bit of a loser. Playing online (with the Scrabble dictionary) is a bit of a skill in itself apart from the usual double words of friendly play. Rather than a big word, the ideal formation in this Scrabble is something akin to a square. A tight bunch of usually nonsensical words which make for a bunch of score in one turn. Also, whoever gets the high scoring K, J, X, Q and Z tends to win. Since words like ko, jo, xi, qi and za are permissible this leads to numerous double and triple word bombs. I previously thought this Scrabble dictionary was bullshit, it includes words like nae, kat and others humans never really use. The titles of what seems like the entire Hebrew alphabet for example. However, being rules, it tends to make for a good game as long as everybody follows the same.

I finally caved and got a Mac. I love my little netbook but I can barely edit photos and can’t edit video at all. Hence. It’s a bit of a risk, but I got a 24 inch floor model with 2G extra RAM for Rs. 80,000 from EPSI (Majestic City). They say they have a year old MacBook Pro laptop for Rs. 120,000 if anybody wants. These aren’t list prices or anything, I just went in an negotiated. They gave me a free book on income tax that I saw lying around. The risk is no warranty, so if the thing bricks I’ll be hari dukkai. However, I can’t afford a full ticket new one and this model is quite frankly ill as fuck. I have icons bigger than my netbook screen. More to the point, I can edit RAW photo files and HD video without intermittent tea breaks. I think there’s something stuck under the space bar. Besides that everything is OK.

Looks like the Southern Expressway is happening. I saw them building huge 20 foot tall bunds near Kalutara. They say this will make it possible to get to Matara in one-and-a-half hours (!) and should be completed by end 2010. This will be sweet. The problem with Galle Road is that it is both a highway and the main street of every little town it passes through. This means that someone going to Galle is on the same road as a guy pushing a garbage cart a hundred meters down the lane. In Hikkaduwa drunk people are dawdling and eating roti on the side of the road. This is obviously untenable.

I like music, but getting it stresses me out. There are good pay services like Rhapsody with almost infinite catalogs, but they’re terrorists and don’t work in Sri Lanka. iTunes, also, doesn’t officially work in Sri Lanka and is way overpriced. That leaves internet radio and piracy. Pandora is supposed to be good Internet radio, but block Sri Lankans. Instead, I use last.fm and Hype Machine for internet radio. I’ve also started using SoulSeek for downloading individual tracks. None of these solutions are ideal, but I’ve listed some options below.

The train is pretty sweet. I’ve spent 7 hours getting out of Anuradhapura but the Yal Devi got me home in 4. I had a nice nap, took some photographs, stuck my head out the window like a dog, it was nice. Played a little online Scrabble on my netbook even. Out of town and the mobile broadband still connect. I should say, I recommend the train. First class is Rs. 600 from Apura to Colombo. It’s pretty comfortable. Dudes sell short eats. Cups of Nescafe.

I’m on the train back from Anuradhapura. Spoke to a member of the Chamber Of Commerce there, Mr. Amal Piyathilake. Young guy, quite energetic. He said they planned to bring the capital back to Anuradhapura in 2020, in all seriousness. He mentioned one issue they were having there which I thought I’d relate. Apparently, and a few chaps told me this, it’s very difficult to get deeds for land. They calculate that the documents have to pass across 48 desks, and there are significant conflicts between the Provincial Councils and Colombo. The end result is no land, no collateral, and no capital for local business. Which is bad.

I’ve been travelling around, mostly the south. I don’t talk about politics, but stuff still comes up. What’s surprising (as in I’m an idiot) is that people outstation have more nuanced views than ‘LTTE bad, Mahinda good’. Duh. One issue that comes up is cronyism. Positions, contracts and money go to people connected to power rather than the capable chaps. Which is, in my experience, obvious. It seems to be obvious to people outstation as well, and they’re not happy about it.