Happy 9th Birthday Google!

It's Google's 9th Birthday today. Happy Birthday Google!
I was very much moved by a comment left by a visitor to my blog post
Happy Birthday Google!, exactly one year ago..

prakashraju said...
YOU ARE MY GOD ALMIGHTY!!!!
EVERYTHING IS IN YOU!!!!

I LOVE YOU GOOGLE!!
WITHOUT YOU MY DAYS WON'T START!!
I WISH YOU MANY MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY!!!

I PRAY FOR YOUR SUCCESS!!!!
WITH LOVE & AFFECTION!

yours forever!!!!

I couldn't agree more.

Well this time I thought of bringing some facts about the Web search, the thing that Google does best...

• Choose your search term wisely. Multiple terms will narrow down your search.
• The order in which search terms are entered will effect the results.
  
• All letters are treated as lowercase even if you type in uppercase letters.
• and >> No need to have 'and' between words. By default all search terms entered are searched for.
  
• + >> common words & single digits & characters are ignored in Google searches. To include them, you need to have + sign in front it.
  
• Eg: Google birthday +9
• " " >> having quotes around search terms will search for exact phrase.
  
• Eg: "Google's 9th Birthday"
• - >> to exclude a term from the search, add a - sign in front of the term
  
• Eg: Google -9th birthday
• ~ >> to include synonyms in a search
  
• Eg: ~food research includes results with Food, Nutrition, Restaurant , etc.. as synonyms of food
  
• OR >> to include either of the terms, put uppercase 'OR' between two search terms.
  
• Eg: Google OR Yahoo birthday
  
• .. >> to include a number range, which can be years, $, v, kg etc.. as you specify.
  
• Eg: search wars 2005..2007, electric shaver 100..250 v, electric shaver $100..250
  
• * >> to include one or more keywords in it's place. Google will fill in the blanks.
  
• Eg: "google's * birthday logo" will return results with 9, seventh, goofy , etc.. in place of '*'
  
• site: >> to restrict a search to a particular web site.
  
• Eg: site:ranatunga.blogspot.com Google birthday
  
• allintitle: >> to restrict for search terms appearing only in the title of web pages.
• Eg: allintitle: google birthday 9th
  
• intitle: >> to find web pages with the search term appearing immediately after 'intitle:' in the title of a web page. Note: No space between 'intitle:' & search term.
• Eg: intitle:Google birthday 9th
  
• allinurl: >> to find web pages with all of the search terms occurring in their URL.
• Eg: allinurl: ranatunga Google birthday
  
• inurl: >> to find web pages with the term immediately after 'inurl:' occurring in the url. Note: No space between 'inurl:' & search term.
• Eg: inurl:ranatunga google
  
• link: >> to find web pages that link to a particular site.
• Eg: link:ranatunga.blogspot.com
  
• related: >> to find similar web pages to a specified web page.
• Eg: related:http://ranatunga.blogspot.com
  
• cache: >> to get last snapshot Google bot created
• Eg: cache:http://ranatunga.blogspot.com
  
• info: >> to get information Google has collected about a web page.
• Eg: info:http://ranatunga.blogspot.com
  
• definition: >> to get a definition of a word, as given in various web sites
• Eg: define:google
  
• filetype: or ext: >> to retrict search to a file type other than html. Supported types are,
• Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (ps)
• Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
• Lotus WordPro (lwp)
• MacWrite (mw)
• Microsoft Excel (xls)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
• Microsoft Word (doc)
• Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
• Microsoft Write (wri)
• Rich Text Format (rtf)
• Shockwave Flash (swf)
• Text (ans, txt)

Further readings at Google: Web Search Help Center :

• Basics of Search
• Advanced Search
• Is there a Web Search glossary?

Cricket Scores @ Google

Originally uploaded by zahidul islam

I was amazed to find that Google search box can be used to see the latest Cricket Scores in Twenty20 world championship matches being played.
You can just type Cricket for results of the latest match or Cricket Sri Lanka for your favorite team or Cricket Sri Lanka New Zealand for a specific match. A summery of the score card is shown with a link to the complete score card.
After all Google seems to have noticed the enthusiasm among Cricketing fans...

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
  

Typo?

Typo is an abbreviation used to denote a typographical error or an error in a typeset. But now it's commonly used to define all spelling mistakes. For bloggers like us, it's a common thing, though we try hard not to do such mistakes.

Photo: AP Photo by John Raoux

Photo: Ken Thornsley, NASA

Look at these images closely. They were taken when the Endeavour space shuttle was taken to it's launch pad today. Look carefully at the banner. Can you see a difference between the two photos? First one says 'Go Endeavor'. But the space shuttle is named 'Endeavour' after 18th century explorer James Coock's ship HM Bark Endeavour. The mistake was noticed & was corrected as seen in the second photo, where the banner reads 'Go Endeavour'.
So typos can happen even at that level? Please bare with me if I have done any...

Talents 2007

There were only two days remaining, when I got hold of the news about Talents 2007. I had to make some arrangements in a haste so I can attend the occasion.
During our University life, Talents was a major event where we looked forward to with much enthusiasm. During the period we got prepared for the variety show, the faculty start to overflow with life. Heads bent on books, start to wander around singing, dancing, acting & laughing. It's the time to dream, rather to make creative dreams & make them a reality. It's a welcome break from the tedious work at the faculty, but still managing to find time to run for lectures, tutorials, practicals, ward work, etc..
Committees elected from the students look after various aspects of logistics in this mega event, with help from experienced seniors & the ever so helpful staff members, ranging from the academic to non-academic.
It always brings back memories when I sat in front of the stage, of the time we were in the limelight. Ahh weeks, if not months, of preparations, sleepless nights... After all it lasts only for few moments on stage...
There were only very few I knew among the students. I only can remember them very faintly, even tough they could remember me very well. After all it was a grand show second to none, of it's predecessors...
Keep it up dear sisters & brothers, it's our signature... A unique blend of Arts & Medicine...


Please visit my previous post on Talents 2006

Also visit: Talents

Once in a Blue Moon

Once in a Blue Moon
Originally uploaded by Kalamakia

Well it seems my postings have become so rare lately, that I post 'Once In a Blue Moon'. Well today is a such day, that we are going to have a Blue Moon.
Blue Moon, has nothing to do with it's colour. It only means, a full moon that occurs for the second time in a month. Considering that the average interval between two full moons is about 29.5 days & a month has about 30.5 days, it's a rare occurrence to have two full moons in a month. But it occurs about 41 times in a century or only occurs once in about 32 months.
The term 'Once in a Blue Moon' has been in use in medieval England from old times & one such occasion was in a 'Treatyse of the Buryall of the Masse' by William Barlow, the Bishop of Chichester, in 1528.
But the usage of this phrase had had different meanings during these long years of use,

• in 16th century: obvious absurdities, where there could be no doubt.
• in 18th century: as equal to 'never'
• in mid 19th century: a fairly infrequent event

There had been times, where the moon really appeared to be blue. This occurs due to light reflected from moon being scattered by dust particles which are about a micron or so in diameter. In these occasions dust particles were ejected to upper atmosphere during large volcano eruptions such as that occurred in 1883 of Krakatoa volcano or large forest fires that occurred in 1953 in western Canada.
But this year Americans have seemed to have celebrated the Blue Moon on 31st of May, 2007. >>> Blue Moon over North America on Thursday. How can that be? How can they have a Blue Moon two month before New Zelander's had one?

Well it also has a logical explanation. This occurs due to the World Time Zones. When the time of the full moon changes with each time zone it falls to the next month. This is illustrated below.

Time Zone	City	Full Moon 1	Full Moon 2	Full Moon 3	Full Moon 4
GMT + 12hrs	Auckland	2 May @ 22:09	1 June @ 13:04	1 July @ 01:49	30 July @ 12:48
GMT + 04hrs	Moscow	2 May @ 14:09	1 June @ 05:04	30 June @ 17:49	30 July @ 04:48
GMT	Greenwich	2 May @ 10:09	1 June @ 01:04	30 June @ 13:49	30 July @ 00:48
GMT - 05hrs	Chicago	2 May @ 05:09	31 May @ 20:04	30 June @ 08:49	29 July @ 19:48

For more details go to The Blue Moon of 2007.

It seems the method used for calculating the blue moon astronomically also had not been the one used earlier. This new definition had come into use after it had been mistakenly interpreted by an amateur astronomer in an article in 1946 in Sky & Telescope magazine on Blue Moons (see What's a Blue Moon?). It had then been adopted by various other newspapers, radio & TV shows giving wide publicity to this misinterpretation.
The correct definition had been a complex one, that uses seasons rather than months to calculate the blue moon. The third full moon occurring in a season with 4 full moons had been considered to be the blue moon (Usually a season only had three full moons). But it had not been so simple either.
The year they used was 'tropical year' running from one winter solstice to the next. The seasons were defined using a method which gives seasons of equal duration (which uses dynamical mean Sun or fictitious mean Sun, which are imaginary bodies & this method is not used now to define seasons). Then also they used some rules which are laid down in Gregorian calendar reform in 1582.
To see a list of blue moons according to this old definition visit Blue Moon - four Full Moons in a season. According to this it seems there is no Blue Moon in 2007. Phew... after all I'm not doing blog posts Once in a Blue Moon.

references:

• The Phrase Finder: Once in a blue moon
• Science @ Nasa: Once in a Blue Moon
• Obliquity: Once in a Blue Moon
  

Boys, you are our Champions.

We are proud of our cricket team even though they couldn't beat the Australians. Still they are our champions. You did your best guys. What could we ask for more?
The Sri Lankan team returned home from Caribbeans today. Amidst torrential rains many gathered by the sides of the roads just to greet them.
I'm very much relived to see & hear, that Sri Lankan media has all the praises for them, unlike the attitude the Indian & Pakistani media had towards their teams. (ehh, Indian & Pakistani friends don't get crossed with me, but that's the truth.)
I found something very interesting that will keep our heroes right on our desktop. A screen saver from Cricinfo.com (Cricinfo home), which has each player in action & some statistics about their performance. You can down load the screen saver from here>> teamsrilanka.
Also visit here for other screen savers from cricinfo.com. They have some pretty screen savers on other major cricket teams & also some on legends of cricket.
Below are some screen captures of the screen saver. First one is the startup image. Next one is a composite of four screens.

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...

Migration complete!

Well it was sometime back that I upgraded to new blogger. But I was stuck with my classic 3-column-template (provide free by Thur's tempates), because I thought it's a waste of browser space to have only one sidebar rather than having two of them.
After migrating to new blogger, I started working on the new template. A List Apart & TJKDesign were of great help. But I couldn't do it alone.
So I started looking for a new 3 column blog template, which supported the new blogger. Well it was too early & all blog hackers were busy creating hacks. I couldn't find a template that suited my needs (like fluid middle column, first loading the main section rather than sidebars, etc.).
Finally I found the template I was looking for, at Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta. I did the necessary changes so it looked the way I want.
Please use comments below if you find any bugs when loading in your browser෴

Woodpecker's headache!

These are a couple of Red backed Woodpeckers or Black-Rumped Flamebacks (Dinopium benghalense) I saw in my backyard. I got their attention because of the characteristic hammering sound they generate while searching for insects in tree barks.
When I did a web search, I found some amazing evolutionary adaptations they have for their niche.
They hammer 10 times a second up to 5 hours & creates a force of 30G (30 times the force of gravity) when the beak hits the tree bark.

• beak is stronger than steel with a chisel like tip
• neck muscles highly developed for hammering
• skull is relatively thick with relatively spongy bone to cushion the brain
  
• bones between skull & beak are joined by flexible cartilage, which cushions the shock
• relatively less cerebrospinal fluid around brain & relatively small brain, less prone to concussion
  
• contracts mandibular muscles just before impact, transmitting the shock to whole body passing the brain

Read more,

• Cure for a headache, Ivan R Schwab, British Journal of Ophthalmology 2002;86:843
• Evolution: Library: How the Woodpecker Avoids a Headache
• West Virginia DNR - Woodpecker Adaptations
• Wikipedia: Woodpecker

Are you over weight? Check it for yourself...

Are you over weight?
Are you putting up more fat?
Is your new year's resolution is to loose some weight?
Wondering how much weight you should loose?

For this purpose, Body Mass Index (BMI) is used. It checks whether an individual has appropriate weight for height.

The formula is; BMI = Weight in kg/ Height in meteres²

I have done the hard part & wrote the below JavaScript calculator to do it. Before proceeding any further, shall we do some calculations? Use the below BMI calculator to calculate your BMI.

BMI value is independent of age & sex. So all age groups & both males & females can use it to assess their health risks & it indicates body fatness. Health risks increase at both ends of the spectrum, especially at higher end. The WHO classification is used in this calculator. There is an ongoing debate, whether to have different cut-off points for different ethnic groups, specially Asians, but still the results are inconclusive.
BMI itself is not a diagnostic tool. If your BMI is higher than 24.99, you have a higher tendency to have health risks associated with obesity. So in that case a doctor needs to check up whether you really have any health risks & to check whether you should lose weight.

Read further on BMI:
Wikipedia: Body mass index
CDC: About BMI for Adults

Read further on, Controlling Your Weight


Notice:

Above BMI calculator was written by me. I'm not a pro in Javascript. If you find any bugs, please fell free to bring it to my notice. This have been tweaked to run on Firefox 2. It had been tested on IE 6. both on MS Windows. If you find any problems in using it on any other browser or platform, please put a comment with the problem you have noticed, and a method to contact you, to get further details if I need to. Thank you.

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!