I can’t speak Sinhala let alone type it, yet I know that it is a need. Years ago I wrote a Sinhala font and always imagined a transliterated solution, where you could type ‘mata bada gini’ and it would type the appropriate Sinhala. Right now the dominant way to type is with the Wijesekera keyboard layout which has no relation to the letters on the board. Transliteration at least lowers the learning curve a bit, especially since almost everyone in Sri Lanka can recognize the English alphabet. I just discovered (via @dinidu) that Google has a transliteration solution which works for Sinhala. It’s pretty cool. Try it out.

I’m writing this on the way back from Menik Farm. The roads are good. They’re digging new drains. There seems to be enough medicine. People are growing vegetables and sewing clothes. Behind that, however, there is a weariness in people’s eyes and a constant refrain on their lips. These people don’t want charity anymore. They want to be free.

Reading this webcomic, xkcd. Very intelligent. But seriously, how did this happen? If you live at the center of the world (Columbus, Ohio), Tupac is West and Biggie is East. And yet, continue past LA – to the West – and you reach… the Far East. At some point were West and East reversed? Where does it all start from. Damn. For example, after Europe (the Western World), the view suddenly lurches to the Middle East. This, along with Native Americans being called Indians, in one of many interesting quirks of geography. Which, I suspect, is more of a political construct than anything else. They call it a political map anyways. Good webcomic. Thinkable

I do a lot more reading than writing and this is an attempt to bridge the gap. These are some of the things I thought were interesting this week, as posted on del.icio.us. Delicious, incidentally, is owned by Yahoo (like Flickr) meaning the dullard of the Internet giants is at least buying OK stuff. This week in the SL Blogosphere there was a good sex post from Ravana, a soft launch of a Digg-type ratings site and a report from an Italian fellow in Galle. There was a more general report on why 90% of people don’t contribute online but rather read (not a bad thing). In other stuff, I also saw a few things on Iraq, menstruation, solar-powered backpacks and why Hip-Hop has degenerated to the point that it’s hard to listen to.

My favorite imaginary friend Lifehacker had an interesting link to ‘How to Win an Argument‘. The page is a list of tips from the philosopher Schopenhauer, and they’re very interesting. It’s interesting seeing what I like to use, and what other people are using on me. Many people that comment here (and anywhere) seem to rarely stray from #38. Some of my personal favorites are, ‘make your opponent angry’, ‘put their assertions in an odius category’ and ‘use your opponents beliefs against them’.

This is a satellite view of where I used to live. You can see the golf course and the nuclear test site that is Hilliard. I went swimming at the country club once with TJ. One day in like 1997 you would have seen one brown spot in a sea of white in the pool. To the top left you can see Fishinger Bridge, where we used to row past on the crew team. We also had to run across that bridge a lot. There’s a McDonald’s at the end where I used to work. Anyways, the map gets better cause you can zoom. You can see the Scioto River, and to the bottom right, the old quarry. We used to go mountain biking there. At that bend right there I flipped my bike and got stabbed with the gear-circle-pointy thing in the leg…

This is from a nice little speech by Milton Glaser. I am posting a few things I want to remember here. Do read the Full Text if it interests you. There is no particular guide for freelancing, but this is as close as I’ve got. 1) You can only work for people that you like: It took me a long time to learn this rule because at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism inferred that you didn’t necessarily have to like the people that you worked for, and should maintain an arms length relationship to them. 2) If you have a choice never have a job…

I’ve been reading LifeHacker lately and I highly recommend it for speeding up life and work flow. It tells me a lot of stuff I do know, but a lot I don’t. These are a few specific things that I now can’t live without. For example: the Windows Desktop Search is beyond useless. The short of search is that any search engine makes a catalog of your files and searches that, not your actually computer. That should speed things up, but I can find something faster on my blog than my desktop with the built in search. Window Search actually slows down your computer with the Indexing it’s doing 24/7, so I’ve noticed a speed increase by just turning it off. Instead I use Copernic…

This is weird, but I’ve been reading this blog written by a Robot. Actually, a PERL Script plugged into the Blogger API. What’s weird is that it sounds exactly like a teenie blog on Xanga. Like, if I just browsed into it I would assume it’s a human.

Here are 3 posts. Guess which one is the AI.

“Eric Watson. March 11th, 2004, 7:40-8:40pm” – Matthew Pillsbury This photo is by runner-up Matthew Pillsbury. The actual winner was Sarah Stolfa – a 29 year old graduate from Drexel. I post because it reminds me of Shannon, what with the photography. Anyways, congratulations to Matthew Pillsbury, who currently has a show at the Bonni [...]