Monthly Archives: August 2008

Attack on this blog revealed

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Over the last two months or so, some of you reported that my blog could not be accessed due to blacklisting by Google. Most of you read my blog through Fire Fox 3 browser. When this first happened, even I was unable to access my blog, so my trusty hosting provider, Chris Haslam of Ixis IT dully updated the wordpress to the latest version and removed some offending code. I updated the password and so for a time, the problem disappeared. Whilst I was on holiday, the blog seems to have had another attack and Google and FF3 continue to warn visitors of the danger present.

I received the following report from StopBadware Team today reporting that they continue to blacklist my blog until malicious code is removed.

Report from The StopBadware Team on manojranaweera.com

As a consequence, I removed the code snippets on Header and Footer files and changed the password. I am hoping this would be the end of it.

php Code from www.manojranaweera.com

I took the initiative to publish the letter and code, hoping that someone else in this situation may find this as a reference. Of course, their situation may be completely different.

On the other hand, if you see any further malicious code in this, do let me know.

2008 Summer Break – Ranaweera Family in Sri Lanka

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I do not normally speak about personal life here, but as I already published the holiday video in YouTube, I must as well publish it here. So here goes,

I had a great three weeks in Sri Lanka whilst my family was there for five weeks. Met lot of relatives and few friends. My brother and sister also came from New York and London respectively, so it was a long awaited reunion. We visited Colombo (I am 16 miles from Colombo), Kandy (wife’s from there), Anuradapura (Sri Lanka had a highly developed civilisation thousands of years ago when Western world was just waking up – see the stone bridge I was walking on, massive religious master pieces, one of the oldest trees in the world – over 2000 years, and so on), Nuwara Eliya, Kataragama and Negambo.

Music is by Iraj who my brother introduced me to whilst in Sri Lanka, a young hip hop artist who mixes in Sinhalese, Tamil and English breaking ethnic barriers.

We may also get involved in my wife’s family business, jewellery. Starting with Sterling Silver rings with real gems. Authenticity, Quality, Design and Service. Registered lankanjewels.com whilst in transit at Doha airport

Sun StartUp Essentials & Stewart Townsend

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Many of you know that I am a keen advocate of Sun Microsystems’ Sun StartUp Essentials Programme. I am fortunate to work with Stewart Townsend (a brilliant easy-to-get-alone individual) from the beginning of the programme, and continue to do so with sharing ideas and initiatives. Stewart has geared the initiative to become a true friend to digital startups in the UK. He has filled the gap that other competitors (HP, Microsoft, etc) have not seen. Initiatives he supports or supported include Northern StartUp 2.0, Mashup Events, Webmission08 and Digital Mission.

No company is too small for Sun. Stewart engages with any company by understanding their pain and then providing or recommending solutions to ease the pain and set the company forward for growth. It is not always about selling hardware or services. The engagement model has started to work well for Sun. And Stewart’s commitment to programme is well recognised externally as well as within the company when Sun recently presented him with an award for commitment.

Here is a snap shot of recent discussion on Sun’s startup blog

OpenSolaris Vending Machine

Free Hosting for Facebook and Open Social Applications

Sun and Joyent have teamed up to bring free hosting for Facebook and Open Social Applications.

Thanks to Stewart, Sun Microsystems now has a permanent office at Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre. Stewart, keep up the good work. The community needs true champions such as you to make a change.