“දණගහපිය!”
මං දණගැහුවෙ නෑ.
ඒ හින්දා උන් මාව දණගැස්සුවා. දණගස්සපු වේගෙට මගේ දණිස් පොල්කටු එච්චරම සීතල නැති සිමෙන්ති පොළවේ වැදිලා කෑලි කෑලි වලට කුඩුවුණා. ලේ හැමතැනම.
“මං එයත් එක්ක කතාකරේ නෑ අයියෙ”
ප්රිෆෙක්ට්ස්ල කිසිම හිතක් පපුවක් නැති මහා නරුමයො.
A Laptop
I remember the first time I saw a proper laptop. It was at an IT exhibition at my school in Kandy. I walked into the main hall and the floor was filled with various tech related exhibition stalls. I walked over to one of the stalls and there they had a few laptops on display. As I remember, they were running Windows XP. (I was using 98 at that time.) I was fascinated with the thing. The screen looked bright and dreamy and I touched the touchpad and saw the cursor move. It felt warm and I was happy. I pressed a few keys and then walked away.
Dentists and drills.
Did you know that jewelers use dental drills for high precision drilling work? No? Okay. I just read it on Wikipedia.
Why the sudden fascination with drills? Probably because I went under a dental drill last week. I wish that was that. But oh no. I have to go back. Probably twice. How fun is that?
All this began with a shooting pain in my mouth. Cold water, hot water, normal water. Everything was contributing to this pain and it was not pleasant. At all.
Being the self-diagnostician I am, I assumed that this was an ordinary case of ol’ sensitive tooth. Mad brushing, swimming in mouthwash and various other ‘patches’ did not help the situation. It kept getting worse.
It was time to see the dentist. Believe you me, I was very reluctant. But my gut was telling me to “stfu and go”. So I did.
After a decade. Here I was. The dentist. The clean, shiny room. The modern dental engine and chair in the middle of it. How exciting! Wait. Exciting is not the right word. Terrifying. That’s it.
After being judged by the dentist, there I was on the chair. The dude examined everything and claimed that I was wrong. (Surprising? Hell no.)
It wasn’t a simple case of sensitive teeth. Nor was it the tooth I thought it was! A damn cavity. Then, everything started making sense. Old phantom toothaches, inability of biting stuff. They weren’t caused by that tooth I blamed! It was this bastard premolar. I’m sorry, wrongfully accused molar. I really am.
The last time I had a drill in my mouth was at the school dental clinic 7.6 million years ago and when the dentist dude turned it on, memories came rushing in. The sensation of the drill cutting through you teeth, the awful taste, the noise. Oh god, the noise. Then the cleaning up. Shooting water. The pain. Regret. Hate. A cocktail of feelings and emotions.
After I got a temporary filling (to calm the nerve? That’s what I read) I went home 5x happier. Mixed with the taste of clove oil, there was no pain! Not even a bit. I had some water after a few hours and I beaming like a crazy kid! What a feeling, man!
All this followed by a generous amount of time Googling on dental procedures and I’m already freaking out about the next appointment. Wish me luck!
Before I leave: don’t forget your dentist appointments and keep your teeth nice and clean! Good luck to you all.
P.S.: I still think that human teeth are one of the worse designed elements in the human body. I mean seriously, it’s not even funny!
Do you know that feeling?
You’re 8. It’s almost midnight. You’re watching a movie on an old 14″ color TV. The movie you’re watching is not critically acclaimed. Heck, it even might be one of lowest rated movies ever. Why else would they show it on a national television channel? They never show you good movies do they? But you don’t care. You don’t even know if it has bad ratings. You don’t even know what ratings are. IMDB probably doesn’t even exist. Rotten Tomatoes? Pfft.
But you’re having fun. You’re excited. Your eyes are glued to the that miniscule screen. All the sounds pour into the room by two tiny speakers enclosed in the TV. Music, dialogues, gunshots, explosions! The floor doesn’t rattle. Your chest doesn’t rumble with bass. You’re on the edge of your bed, because you don’t know that you have vision problems. Your heart rate is high, adrenaline courses through your veins. You feel cold. The movie is at it’s climax. The hero shoots. The criminal is dead. The world is saved. You turn off the TV. You go to bed, smiling. You fall asleep. Happy. Content.
I miss that feeling.
It’s gone. Probably forever.
4th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors are here!
So Intel officially launched 4th Gen Processors in Sri Lanka. Haswell! A lot of devices with the new processor are already available in SL so you don’t really have to wait now. Which is cool.
As expected, the new processors have better performance and provides better battery life for mobile devices. You might have seen the new MacBook Air which runs on Haswell which has an insane battery life.
They also talked about graphics performance with the new procs. The new graphics (Iris and Iris Pro) seem to be very very good. They were talking about how Iris Pro can handle newest games without additional discreet graphic cards, which I thought was a big claim. I had check out some videos on YouTube to see that it was actually true! Unbelievable, since I remember failing to run HD videos on old Intel 3000 graphics on my prehistoric laptop. Be warned though, Iris Pro isn’t available on all the processors. (Eg: The new MacBook air doesn’t have Iris)
Intel seems to be talking a lot about ultrabooks, all-in-one’s and mobile devices.
All in all, standard Intel fare. They just seem to be getting better and better. Some person asked why they even have to do marketing since they don’t have a proper competitor now. How’s AMD doing these days anyway? I wonder.