epic fail: chrome black-listing google.com
Google.com and Google Chrome not playing nice. Click image for larger picture.
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Archive for 'Technology'
TEDx Kampala, with Sir Tim Berners Lee
If you’ve heard of TED, then you know it’s a big deal. A very big deal. It’s an annual event.
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.
On 23rd November 2009, Kampala will be hosting a local version of TED, called TEDx
TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.
At TEDx events, unique talks given by live speakers combine with TEDTalks videos to spark deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.
The TEDx Kampala event is being facilitated by the Linux Users’ Group and the main speaker will be Sir Tim Berners Lee. For those outside the techsphere, Sir Tim Berners Lee is widely known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.
Yep.
The inventor of the World Wide Web is going to be in Uganda, sharing his wisdom with us mere mortals.
Honestly, I’m excited beyond belief, a fact that is frightfully compounded by the realization that I have been asked to speak at the event as well.
So come show some love, will ya?
More information here.
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Rogue FM: Fernando Ortega – Lord of Eternity
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Offtopic:
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
- Louisa May Alcott
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Massive Geek-out! a.k.a this is how mad-scientists get started.
Howdy, world. Apologies for a massively neglected blog. I bring you tidings from the world of dastardly dangerous dragons and deadly delectable damsels in distress (more commonly known as business and life).
I have been doing a little too much running around for my own good, but hopefully, things have achieved a semblance of calm and the chaos has subsided somewhat.
Disclaimer: I think on some subliminal level, I’m trying to make up for the weeks without blogging. a.k.a this post is LONG. You’ve been warned.
Now, having thus dispensed with the niceties, I shall let you in on the single most momentous occasion in my extremely faceted life ( we’re talking about the geek-facet of me this time).
First, though, a little history. Okay, it’s not so little, but bear with me, aight?
As a kid, I loved taking things apart to see what made them tick, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering father. It didn’t matter if it was wooden, plastic, metallic, electronic… If I could reach it, it was going apart. And of course I’d try to put it back together, and most times, it would fail to work again.
As I grew older, I began experimenting more with making my own stuff. That made life a little easier for dear old dad, but the neighborhood suffered in turn. See, these things I was building needed parts, and the parts they needed most were wires. The kind of wires that chain-link fences and barbed wire are made of. So my cronies and I would traverse the neighborhood, roaming far and wide, armed with pliers, all sorts of metallic accessories, and most importantly, teeth. In our wake, we left countless homes defenseless and property owners seething with righteous indignation.
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Ugandan Riots – Citizen journalism comes of age
If there is one thing that we have learnt from the Buganda riots over the past weekend, it is this:
In a country where the mainstream media is at the mercy of its government, or is oblivious to what’s going on, or does not have the tools or facilities to report real-time, 24 hours a day, during a crisis, there is a serious need for unhindered, unfiltered, on-the-ground citizen journalism.
During the worst parts of the riots, there was a massive media blackout, and TV and radio stations were courting irrelevance. I could not believe that at a time when a country was burning itself to the ground, most TV stations were showing music videos, foreign news and Spanish soaps.
Some of us decided to fill in the gaps by tweeting and sharing what we were seeing and experience on the ground, and the steady Twitter stream [ #Kampala ] helped keep the world informed. Our simple and humble attempts did a much better job of providing realtime news updates than the mainstream media could. Tumwijuke [ Twitter - Blog ] and Uganda Talks [ Twitter - Blog ] especially did a fantastic job of verifying rumours and provide the in-depth journalistic expertise that citizen journalism often lacks. Rhino gave us some fantastic photos, and the Ugandan blogsphere shared their views and opinions as events unfolded. Tucked away in a tiny room at UTL, coding furiously, The 27th Comrade gave us the tools to tweet free of charge, via uganda telecom [ Twitter ].
It was scary, it was fun, it was deadly, it was beautiful.
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you. yes you. you’re a wuss.
Yes. You are.
Allow me to explain.
First, the general description of a wuss is; “a person who is physically weak and ineffectual”. It has been used more recently however, to derogatorily describe a man who is weak, ineffectual, effeminate and wishy-washy, especially when it comes to the ladies.
Some friends and I have a long running joke about wusses, sometimes even dissing ourselves in the process. Don’t sweat it, it’s a guy thing.
So, couple of days back, at the week-long peak of this joke, we’re in an informal meeting discussing a way forward on some project and because someone was being indecisive about a certain action, we jokingly called him a wuss. We laughed it off and eventually forged a way forward.
That night however, those same words came back to torment me during my quiet moment of self-reflection, and the reality hit me hard;
I realised that I was being a (business) wuss in so many ways.
It was a very painful blow to the gut.
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The Advent of True Broadband in Uganda? No, Not yet.
On Thursday, 23rd July 2009, Seacom went “live”.
For Ugandans, that was a momentous occasion in more ways than one. As one of the speakers put it, it heralded the beginning of “new beginnings”. I’ve been priviledged to be involved in the excitement to an extent, and I will do my best to recap.
The Seacom Launch Event
The event was more of a media launch, a demonstration of the capabilities of the Seacom fibre optic cable. I was invited to the event by Lowe Scanad’s PR department, through Mr Collin Asiimwe.
My verdict? Honestly, I was blown away! For the first time ever, in Uganda, I was able view online video tutorials real time. We’re talking tutorials that are close to 700MB. Typically, I leave them downloading overnight(s) and watch them the next day, but this time, there was almost zero buffering of the videos. Mr Godfrey Ivudria of Business Week was seated next to me and he was watching CNN Live… well, live. Realtime.
I was also getting simultaneous download speeds of close to 180KB/s (about 1.4mbps) while watching the video tutorial. To put that in context, my normal internet connection gives me download speeds of about 10 KB/s (about 81kpbs) at night, when the rest of the users are asleep! I wasn’t able to run some more stress tests due to time constraints, but needless to say, I was very impressed. I should have planned more and brought a whole batch of files to download!
The highlight of the day though, was the live broadcast of the continental Seacom launch. It was held in Tanzania and presided over by the Tanzanian President, Jakaya Kikwete. Picture quality was excellent and the video stream was seamless, apart from one or two brief glitches. I was witnessing broadband at its truest.
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misc
Yes, I know I promised you a post, still working on it.
Tomorrow, Thursday July 30th is Blogger’s Happy Hour (the Ugandan version). Mateo’s 6pm.
Just found out Google search is now in Luganda – http://www.google.co.ug click “Luganda” below the box. I was amused beyond belief. Now waiting for the Norden Connexion version.
You might find this interesting – http://www.wolframalpha.com It’s a “mathematical search engine”. Watched its live launch a few months back with fascination. (try typing in “Kampala” or “Kampala London”, minus the quotes).
Design Kingdom is taking up tonnes of my blogging time, so bear with me.
For those who know my other blog, I’ll be shifting “The Dark Side” and “1001 Tales” here. I decided the other blog needs to remain pure in its original purpose, which is just plain daftness.
I think I have run out of things to say…
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Rogue FM: Phil Collins – I Can’t Dance
Memoirs: Her voice sounded so beautiful yesterday, thanks Abba!
Offtopic:
Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln
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Design Kingdom v2 is finally here!
Help us spread the good news! http:/www.designkingdom.ug
And now, I need to head over to Sanyu FM. I’m appearing on the Breakfast Show today at 7am. Tune in give some moral support, will ya?
Peace.
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on making mistakes
The year is 2003. Month, June. Day, 6th. Time, 9:01.
I’m sitting at my desk. Staring at the computer.
I log on to True African, and send myself the following SMS. Yes, I sent myself an SMS. No, I wasn’t mad.
No, I wasn’t.
The SMS says:
“Over six months I have called this place home.
And so it ends.
The future beckons.
Shall we proceed?
After all, it is only Destiny“
I still have the SMS to this day.
That day was the last day of formal employment for me. I was stepping out into the brave new world of being self-employed. You know, doing my own thing.
I was 20. I had fulfilled my dream of of owning my own company by 21. And I had beaten it by a solid year.
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of latent hobbies and hybrid vehicles
Disclaimer, this is a very technical post.
I got hit by my all time favorite bug sometime last year. Gadgets and geekery. I think it was the combination of Iron Man and the new Knight Rider series that sparked off the blazing inferno, until I discovered I my knowledge of electronics has severely reduced and to make matters worse, I faced the same issue I’ve always faced, the lack of microcontrollers in Uganda.
For the less savvy, microncontrollers are little microchips that you can program to do specific tasks. Unfortunately, they are very niche electronics pieces and targeted towards a market that hasn’t yet developed in Uganda, that is robotics, automation and embedded electronics.
Well, couple of months back, I began looking into importing some microcontrollers (for personal use, of course). I found an awesome site that could ship all the way to Uganda, and the prices were decent. Also, they stocked ridiculously cheap transistors, capacitors and nice little 74XXX family chips that are very handy for BEAM Robots. So now I’m looking for the dimes. It is a fairly expensive hobby, seeing as you can very easily fry one component and have to wait weeks to get a replacement.
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