Did some browser button organizing, thought I'd share.
Share your browser button bar, lets see if there are anymore important buttons to add.
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After leaving Twitter some time ago I have come back. I think I understand it a bit more now. Its all about the people behind the websites or something like that.
I took Chamara's advice and installed Twitter tools to post my new post links to twitter.
I have noticed some traffic coming from twitter, but mostly new visitors. I got a nice spike a few weeks ago when I submitted this blog to StumbleUpon. Same effect of new users came and left.
I have to find a way to keep people for longer and keep them coming back. Any ideas?
April 22 is Earth Day so I thought of spending my lazy Sunday morning looking at how to save the world! Here is what I came up with.
Lighting
Change to CFL bulbs for long running locations. I've noticed they bust sooner for short running lights like in the store room and bathroom. I've switched to 90% CFL. The units are down but the bill keeps going up (only in Sri Lanka).
Buy CFL's at an electrical shop rather than a supermarket. They will advise you better on which ones are better and where they will fit.
Consider motion sensors and timing units for lighting where appropriate. I have a motion sensor spot light at a dark corner of the garden and an automatic water pump system. I'm waiting for LED home lighting but I guess it'll be a while more till we get them down here.
Make use of daylight as much as possible. Move desks around knock down walls if needed. 
Heating and cooling
That last point helps with ventilation and cuts down on running fans all day.
Look at overall air flow in the house, use an exhaust fan where needed. Consider running the exhaust fan on a solar panel directly. When the heat is up the sun is up, use the free energy falling from the sky.
If you need heated water consider solar heating. If you have a electric water heater turn it down to the bare minimum you need.
Water
If you have space and a garden look at rain water harvesting. At least to water the garden. You can also filter it and use it to flush the toilet.
In the bathroom change to a low-flow shower head and a dual flush toilet. Use faucet aerators for kitchen and bathroom taps.
Electronics
We love our gadgets, but do they have to be on all the time? Stand by power still uses some power. Turn it off from the wall if you are not using it.
According to this a LCD TV is better than a Plasma. My aging CRT is close to a LCD so it'll do for the time being.
Reality
The cost of solar even CFL's are not cheap. Living in a third world country some of these things are not available to buy even if you have money. But press on, do what you can. Influence local government, inspire business to notice these things.
Links
Went to a supermarket in the morning. There was a 3 kg rice purchase limit on each brand. My guess is its due to the distribution gap because of the new year holidays. Nothing is panic about.
Then again are we going to hit a rice shortage? I still have no idea but its a good time to look back at how we got here.
I'm no historian but I've heard my parents talk about bread queues and rice restrictions due to social and economic experiments conducted my previous administrations. Is this a result of another experiment gone wrong?
I know many guys around here that would rather drive a tuk than get down into a paddy field and grow rice.
I overheard an army guy in the early days of the ceasefire who had come home to help out on the fields. He is probably back on duty now.
Most of my family now are professionals or trying to be white collar workers. There are only 2 people in my family that farm. Should we go back to basics and start growing again?
Cause it doesn't matter what you do or how much you make if there isn't any food to buy.
Update: there seems to be a stand-off between a price fix by the gov and some traders. Don't know more details yet. That means I have to check local news... yuk.
Google App Engine - Google Code looks cool, waiting for an account.
Here is a list of WordPress plugins and run and why.
- Akismet keeps spam to a minimum.
- Audio Player just added to embed the Koha sound clip.
- Contact Form ][ for my contact page. Then again gmail does such a good job of blocking spam I don't really need a contact form anymore.
- Feedburner Feed Replacement directs the default RSS feeds to FeedBurner. You can track feed stats etc with it. Haven't found it too useful. Mostly bots no people.
- Get Recent Comments shows recent comments on the home page. Gives a sense of an ongoing conversation.
- Google XML Sitemaps adds a sitemap that I can submit to search engines.
- Gravatar just added today. Displays your global avatar beside your comments.
- Improved Meta Description Snippets helped me with duplicate or short meta data. Google web masters tools was complaining about this.
- ShareThis added a few days ago lets you share a post on social bookmark sites.
- Top Commentators Widget is a good way to link back to people who took the time give you some feedback.
- Twitter Tools is a gem. It posts a link to your latest blog post on Twitter. I tried posting tweets back on the blog but it was messy so I dropped it.
- WP tags to Technorati adds WordPress tags as technorati tags.
Right on the eve of Sri Lankan new year celebrations we loose power. Gee thanks LECO and CEB, thanks for nothing.
We never fixed our power issues. We just pushed it around and now looks like we'll be importing power from India. We should look at alternative power more seriously. Solar, wind, mini hydro etc.
We have not considered the oil-less, food-less future we are going to hit. Take your holiday; light more crackers; be with family and talk to them about this future. When you come back fuel and food will hit new highs and you'll have lots more to worry about.
Here is a small sound clip I recorded of the Koha bird. This time the bird was on time. The last few years it was a bit late.
If you don't understand what is going on, the Koha is a bird that sings around the time of the Sri Lankan new year.
[audio:koha.mp3]
koha - cuckoo Bird...(National Zoological Gardens of Sri Lanka -Dehiwala)
Download the mp3 or ogg file, set it as your ring tone or send it in a new year MMS greeting.
My Nokia N80 is proving quite resourceful previously capturing the Manga Tuk and being able to record this bird. I think custom software and being able to extend a phone's software is going to play a big role in future phones.
Being the cutting edge type. I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 almost the next day it was released. It was too easy. I have this site on Dreamhost 1 click install and upgrade.
I paid the price. My old theme (a slightly modified version of K2) broke the WordPress admin dashboard.
I should have tested it locally but I thought I'd be daring. Only today I found the time to test things locally and deploy a decent working theme. By the way the search was broken before, I hope no one noticed 
Here is what happend. K2 is a highly advanced theme with support for a lot of plugins and has its own sidebar manager. WordPess has its own sidebar manager. (Not as sleek as K2's)
When I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 my old theme (K2 Release Candidate 4) broke the WordPress dashboard. I looked around quickly and found that K2 had fixed this in the main development branch. So now I moved to the last nightly snapshot of K2. K2 RC5 will be compatible with WordPress 2.5. Waiting for that.
There is never a dull day in Sri Lanka. In the middle of pre new year traffic I saw this guy.
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