Tsunami 2004

Occasion: On the way to a health camp after 2004 Tsunami
Location: Ferry, Verugal aru
Date: 2004 Dec 27

Ferry at Verugal Aru (marked) Google Map

Ministry of Education Hacked into...

Well not exactly...
I was browsing among the Government Web sites, when I came across our Ministry of Education web site (see the image on right). I was shocked to see that it had been Hacked by some hackers. I quickly checked the Google cache for the snapshot they had created (see the image on left side). It was dated 15 Aug 2007, 14:18:06 GMT. So this site had been hacked during last 3 days. The hackers intentions are not very clear from what they had done. May be they just wanted to deface a government web site for fun.
It seems only the home page of the site had been hacked.
On further research I came across Zone-H which has an archive of Web sites that have been hacked. I was amazed to see the number of Sri Lankan Government web sites that had been subjected to defacement by various Hacking groups.

As I could not link to the particular table, I have copied the text, as you can see below:

Date	Attacker	Domain	OS	View
2007/07/30	RitualistaS	mcg.mpi.gov.lk	Win 2003
2007/01/27	Dr.Jr7	dmc.gov.lk/external.asp	Win 2003
2007/01/06	yas	mail.samurdhi.gov.lk	Linux
2006/12/04	DeltahackingSecurityTEAM	primeminister.gov.lk/record/delta.htm	Linux
2005/12/12	Devil Code	mpdinor.gov.lk	Win 2000
2005/10/16	Tz4r	muslimaffairs.gov.lk/forum	Linux
2005/03/14	batistuta	muslimaffairs.gov.lk/forum	Linux
2005/02/06	H4ck3rsBR	slelections.gov.lk	SolarisSunOS
2005/02/06	H4ck3rsBR	sec.gov.lk	SolarisSunOS
2005/02/06	H4ck3rsBR	ports-aviation.gov.lk	SolarisSunOS
2005/02/06	H4ck3rsBR	npd.gov.lk	SolarisSunOS
2005/02/06	H4ck3rsBR	trc.gov.lk	SolarisSunOS
2004/01/24	Red Eye	ibsl.gov.lk	Win 2000
2003/06/19	[ LunixO ]	moe.gov.lk	Linux
2003/06/07	Digital lords	moe.gov.lk	Linux
2002/09/27	PaGgY	hinduministry.lk	Win 2000
2001/04/08	SadoR	erd.gov.lk	Windows
2001/04/04	Silver Lords	customs.gov.lk	Windows
2001/04/01	Silver Lords	erd.gov.lk	Windows
2001/04/01	PoizonB0x	customs.gov.lk	Windows
2001/03/31	PoizonB0x	erd.gov.lk	Windows
2001/03/18	LOUCOS.BR	erd.gov.lk	Windows
2001/02/26	Alien00	erd.gov.lk	Windows
2000/12/24	Silver Lords	erd.gov.lk	Windows
2000/12/23	Silver Lords	customs.gov.lk	Windows
2000/06/04	EhW	erd.gov.lk	Windows

Still most of the above sites are not back online or have not been repaired completely. Any way most of our government websites are ill designed & not maintained well. Almost all of them use tables rather than CSS for layouts & are very poor in design, compromising their usability.

Earthquake near Sri Lanka!!!

Earth tremors have been felt in some areas of Sri Lanka, including Colombo & Kandy. The images here are from USGS Earthquake Hazards Program.

According to USGS,
Magnitude: 5.2
Time: at 04:27:28 (UTC)
at 10:27:28 am local time at epicenter
at 09:57:28 am Colombo, Sri Lanka
Location: 6.548°N, 84.455°E (In bay of Bengal)
Distance: 510 km (315 miles) E of Colombo, Sri Lanka
More details visit here Magnitude 5.2 - BAY OF BENGAL

I couldn't find any details regarding any Tsunami Warnings at the time of posting.
The relevant links are:

• JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY
• Department of Meteorology - Sri Lanka
• Geological Survey & mines Bureau - Sri Lanka
  
• ITIC
  

Found & Lost, life...

I was in Colombo during the weekend. We went over there for the delivery of our sister-in-laws baby. It's a beautiful baby girl. All family members were happy to see that both mother & baby were doing well.
When I arrived at home today, I found that I have lost a long standing friend. Rover was born in 1993. Don't be fooled by it's innocent looks, it bites!




Rover Hope you will be a human in your next life!!!

Let down by a friend...

The first two things I do after returning form a busy days work are, check my email, then check site statistics of visitors to this blog. After doing these two today, I loaded up my blog in another tab just to check whether all is well after the changes I've made to layout during past few weeks.
Nothing was special, or is it? There is a message at the end of the web page from Firefox's NoScript Add-on. That was odd. I have enabled all the scripts from my blog. Still there is another new java script that has not been enabled, originating from my own blog!! See the screen capture below.
As it was not there yesterday when I loaded the blog, I just thought of doing a Google search to get to know more about it.
I was shocked to read the search results. I was shocked more than on that day that I had my blogger account switched (see Blogger busted... & Blogger busted - part II).
My trusted site statistics tracking service, sitemeter had deceived me. Please read this article SiteMeter Installing SpyWare In Your Website?. It seems they have sold the trust we kept on them to a third party. I am ashamed to be associated with them.
As bloggers, most of us rely on site statistics tracking services to keep track of the visitors to our blogs (and of course to other web pages). We check on statistics regularly to see just how many read our sites, what search quarries bring traffic to our sites etc..
But it seems sitemeter had been tracking all our blog readers' web browsing habits with the help from specificclick.net. Thats a bit unethical to say the least.
So please read Things you should know before using Sitemeter. At the end of it you can see how you can remove tracking cookies that have been installed from Sitemeter's partner specificclick.net. If you have visited this blog earlier or have visited another site that used their service, please try block their cookies, as they may have already placed their cookies in your browser.
Dear friends of the blogsphere, if you are using sitemeter, then you are exposing your site visitors to being spied upon. Take care of your valued site visitors!!! I have already...

Blogger busted - part II

The things are getting out of control.

If you haven't seen the earlier post Blogger busted, please read it first.
Today I got an email from the owner of the blog that I talked about in the previous post. It seems he had got stuck in my blogger dashboard. Please see the comments in that post or click here.
Today I could login to my blogger dashboard with out any problem. Well thats a relief...
But not for long... I clicked on my profile to edit some details. Alas, my profile name was different.
It is happeing again. It's somebody else's profile. See first image below. To see the blogs he had published, I just clicked on 'select blogs to display' link. Well the next screen was even worse (second image). It belonged to another person. So now I have access to parts of three other blogger accounts. All this seems to be from Sri Lanka or at least Sri Lanka & India.
Still by clicking link to dashboard from that profile, i could access my profile.
Why is this happening to me? Hope others will not change any settings , if they have access to my blogger dashboard.

Is any of you blogger users out there having the same problem?
I had no problem with this blogger account for years & it seems all these blogger accounts that I have access to are newer ones.
I don't know to whom I should report this to. We have already reported this to blogger support.

Why me? Why is this thing happening to me?
I am posting this in a hurry, because I may not be able to log into Blogger next time.
Hope this will be resolved soon by Google engineers!

Blogger busted...

Today I had the shock of my life when I tried to log into Blogger to put up a new post. When I typed in my user name & password to blogger login page, the blogger dashboard looked bit weird. To my shock there was only one blog (rather than the 3, of which 2 are for testing purposes), & it's name also appeared to be so long Adventures of Scotty White. Then only I saw that the user's email address is different from my one. It was some c*****.s**********@gmail.com (see images below). In this account, I could do some things like put up a new post, change blogger layout, etc, etc. But it asked for user name & password again, when I tried to change important settings like changeling profile info, etc.
Well first I was bit excited to get to somebody else's account by chance, but when I got to know that repeated attempts at logging in to my account took me to this same account, which belonged to somebody else, I was bit shocked.
Well may be it's my destiny to start writing this Scotty's adventure...
Finally I managed to log into my blogger account, but when I typed in the URL to see the Scotty's blog (the other blog I was logged into by mistake), it still appeared as if the author of that other blog has logged in (see 3^rd image below), rather than showing my email address.
I wonder how much our accounts at Google are secure. For it being a free service we can not expect more. And also I wonder whether any body else went through this same experience.

Tsunami remembrance...

I was busy carrying out my usual duties, when suddenly it seemed that all the noise had died out, except for the cardiac monitor, which beeped with every beat of my patients heart. Then I suddenly noticed that all the staff members in the operating theater were standing still. I looked at my watch & it read 9.25am. The whole of country stood still for two minutes to remember the unfortunate catastrophe that reached our shores two years ago at this very moment.
Immediately after this great catastrophe in 2004, most of the staff members (including specialist consultants) from all government hospitals were mobilized to conduct health camps in the affected areas.
Below are some of the photos I took at Sainthamaruthu Hospital in Ampara District after it was destroyed by Tsunami waves.

The last photo is of an intravenous infusion bottle & infusion set with the needle & adhesive plaster (circled) which was used to connect it to the patient. It got entangled in this tree, what happened to the poor patient to which it was connected?

Tragedy...

The fallen Bulbul birdling. The only survivor...

I was watching a cricket match when I heard the screams of the Bulbuls. I thought it was a cat who had attacked their nest & I went quickly to see whats happening. I saw a large bird fly away & it dropped something & it was one from the nest. I was there in time to save only one bulbul birdling.I returned it to the nest.

Other two birdlings were not to be seen. May be the predator bird had had them. I could not see the predator bird as it flew away. But it is sure to return. So I placed two tar-sheets over the nest & Bulbul parent could get into the nest from the side.

The Bulbul parents were watching from a distance. They did not return to the nest even at that nite. But next day morning it flew away as I came near the nest. During past few weeks the bulbul parents were so acoustemed to us, we could go near them without alarming them. But now because of this incidence they even seem to suspect us.

Birdling alone in nest (seen from below)

The only survived birdling in the nest, alone at night

Tar coat on top of the nest. Bulbul parent also seen coming out of the nest

Tsunami, never come again!!!

Tsunami Photos Tsunami027_jpg Originally uploaded by
Tsunami Photo/News Archive link to over 20,000 pho.
^ These girls were caught in the giant Tsunami waves when they had come to Galle bus stand to go for their Tution classes. Some survived the ordeal to tell the tale...

It has been one year since the Tsunami hit shores of ours & few other neighbouring countries. It was so massive & sudden catastrophe, all who were not affected, rushed to the help of those poor victims. The boundaries of race, religion, cast & others were so easily forgotten, that all of the Sri Lankans united in one voice to rebuild the nation.
So many lives were lost.
So much property destroyed.
One year has passed, still so much to be done.
The unity of the different races is fading...
The glow of war looming around in the air...
So many affected people still live in temporary shelters.
Still so much to be done....
...can we spend time wasting fighting, when we have so much to do???

May those who died in the tragedy attain nibbana or absolute goals according to their respective religions!!!