Sunday, December 07, 2008

Universal Studios Orlando

Planning a vacation? I'll recommend Universal studios. Unfortunately words cannot express what I have witnessed. I did capture some moments in pictures here.
I re-lived Jurasic park and took a tour where the movie was made, the gate still opens beautifully with the same voice welcoming us to the un-civilization-before-man. The jeep that was attacked by the dinosaurs remain at a spot with one of those tyrex overlooking it, still ready to strike. The very interesting parts of the movie are still alive, the dinosaurs still tried to attack us :) and a final plunge down to safety got adrenaline pumping.
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At another spot, we were swept off into space by Dr. Doom and this remains our most intriguing experience because it was unexpected: we had strapped ourselves into seats and a slow ascent started, we were suddenly swept up into space and man, did I think death? It was worse when we were released from a height. I don't even want to talk about the incredible hulk crawler because I'm not looking forward to it ever again, ever ever.
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The coolest, imagine being loaded into an episode of spider man. You board a light aircraft and spider man suddenly lands on your craft with a thud and warns you to get back to the office but he gets attacked before he is done. You suffer attacks from a flame throwing being and the temperature in the cabin starts to heat up alarmingly. A blow from some monsters makes you duck and the cabin shudders terribly and spider man is back to the rescue. He attacks some sea monster and you get a spray of water. A monster with a megadrill lands on your cabin, tries to drill through and everything vibrates. The you start to ascend amidst the city's skyscrapers, the aircraft gets attacked by some really vicious offenders and start to plunge down with alarming speed and spider man rescues the whole craft by spinning a web.
It's indeed the best part.
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Before we left, we had the chance to watch a limited version of Shrek and Donkey where Lord Farquaad's ghost came back to steal Princess Fiona. "You died in the first part" donkey remind's Lord Farquaad. It's a 4-D version where you see flames and stuff coming in your direction and donkey sneezing in your face. I must mention Spider man felt more 4D than Shrek though.
We got to snap pictures with hell boy and Ope got a chance to slap him on the head. Chucky was in the house too.

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View all pictures here on picasa.

Chuck Berry

Apparently there have been "stars" way back before we were born. I watched this short clip on TV and the internet. Really got me inspired to see the way men have faced challenges in the past and set standards.

Here, Mos Def plays Chuck Berry, now I'm looking forward to the main movie "Cadillac Records". Awards up for grabs I guess. Movie also features Beyonce as Etta James.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Orlando, Florida

Thursday 27: 10-15am Lagos local - 10:30pm Thursday (Orlando local time)

Got into town Thursday night with Ope Adeoye. It was a very tiring ride on Delta, 12 hrs 42 mins, direct flight from Lagos to Atlanta. The ride however from Atlanta to Orlando International took 5mins (I slept for the 1.5hrs and that's how long it felt). I succumbed to the lure of duty free and got a Titinium plated Skagen and a new reading glass to replace the two broken items I carry around at the moment, damaging my "keep it low" resolve on this trip, we're really trying to manage our very low budget for 12 days.

Touchdown was great and we started feeling the Naira-meets-dollars saga immediately. We paid $50 for a ride to the Marriot villages Hotel in a long cab, the journey was less that 25 minutes! I can't forget that's N6, 000 Naija money, plus I got a N1,000 ride for a longer distance same day in Lagos.



At the hotel next, it's $140 (forget the .99cents that is ever present in UK and US) for the night and we're definitely shopping for something not 4.5 star in the morning.

The next set of issues to be breasted includes getting a SIM and adapters for the laptops. You won't dare roam or you'll accumulate bills in the range of N10k in 2 days. As for the adapters, remember the Yankee 120volts issues? luckily the HP machines nowadays support both voltages but the pins we have can't fit the walls, so we quickly use up the remaining battery life on my system, Naija NEPA don show Ope and I was lucky to have an inverter.

The rooms are however very cosy and sleep up for grabs.

Friday 3am - Friday 11pm

Got a smaller hotel today, just for the weekend and would probably be back at the Marriot Monday for the business of software :). Took a walk to Orlando premium outlets and only got a KODAK easyshare camera, now Naija police are going to get popular from my newly acquired Paparazzi skills. Black friday sales are slated for this weekend so we're taking our time not to overshop. Everybody is waiting for the weekend sales to get a great deal.


Ope got a phone, a net 10 for $30 and we bought a call card for $10. Now you can't call Naija directly from an At&T Net 10 without a call card, but beware of those cards. The one we got lasted less than 4minutes, approx 2 minutes talking to family, approx 2 minutes phone ringing without response burned out the credits. Horrible. Now we've given friends the line and we only get in-bound calls, unless it's a life threatening situation.



Saturday 4am

Notice I've been getting up really early, either my system is still running Naija time or I'm renewed by the scenery. Orlando is beautiful, day and night. We missed the opening of the weekend sales, slept off early but maybe it's not such a bad thing. The news have it that a Walmart attendant was trampled to death because of the teaming crowd waiting to start the sales weekend and the outlet (in New York) had to be closed for hours. A woman reported she was injured in the rush but waited till she finished shopping before going to the police!

So much for the yanks, we're getting ready for breakfast now.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

FW: Is this democracy? Harry Arogundade

To: Kehinde Adewusi
Subject: [Mi Mantra] FW: Is this democracy?

Let him be remembered as the "Rear Admiral" who ordered his "Men" to beat up a lady on the streets of Lagos.
May his barbaric acts linger in our memories.


View Video here


From: Ope Adeoye
Sent: 06 November 2008 10:20 AM
To: IT Application Development
Subject: Is this democracy?

Let us immortalise the name 'Harry Arogundade' such that when anyone googles for him they'd only get results that show him for who he is even when we have all passed on.

Simply contribute to the 'noise' on the internet... Facebook, Digg, Nairaland, Blogs, Nigeria Village Square, Punch...

Please pass this on...

Monday, November 03, 2008

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Zain Search Trends

Google has enough good stuff for web entrepreneurs really, I did a quick comparison of search volumes for Zain, MTN, Glo, Etisalat and got the chart above, not good for Zain really (they put bread on the table now). Zain is in marine blue and the blue topping that chart is actually MTN. It's not because Zain changed name too, the red line is Celtel so I figure the company's web presence is kind of low.
Glo is in yellow so I wonder what's going on here, anyway you got the gist, here is the live link.
Enjoy the trends you can, I compare my old name "kehinde adewusi" to "keni adewusi", google to yahoo and fried eggs to scrambled eggs.
You bring it on and let's see what's going on out there, remember to separate you keys with commas.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Dubai's very best

There!, my little nieces dancing away in the middle east. These little girls dance at the slightest sound of music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMIAJJbv-Ko

Friday, September 05, 2008

2 Much Jo

Indeed google has changed the face of the internet. I cannot but comment on google translation service.
I stumbled on a site that did some comparison between ajax.net and jquery (if you know what I mean). The interesting part is that I noticed the site is french, I don't speak french.
The solution? I copied the url and pasted into http://translate.google.com and got a great English version.
Supports enough major language to take your worries away!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Still no .ng domain name

I thought I would register a sexy domain name today, something l could extend to in.comi.ng because I have fallen in love with sites like del.icio.us and script.aculo.us. I even thought re.veali.ng would be cool. Imagine the possibilities you get from something as cool as a top level domain .ng. because of continous tenses ing, going, coming, beginning etc, it's just cool to have .ng at the end of everything (every.thi.ng).

My searches reveal all I get is .com.ng or one of it's variants. Why can't I just get .ng?
I keep searching though, and notice that you have to go through some bureaucracy of the Nigerian Computer Society to register a name too.

For now, I'll stick to .com.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Dreams are forever

Today, I slept on my feet, I fell asleep behind my computer. When I woke, it marked the end of a dream.
It's not the first time I'll have a dream like this: some things happened, not necessarily bad and then I was pulling stuff from my mouth that didn't seem to want to end. I think I was sucking or feeding on something that I considered not too healthy after some time. The pulling stuff from my mouth and throat is not the first time.
Crazily, I decided to google it and the 2 topmost results from Yahoo! answers and experience projects sounded like it's me they're talking about.
One mentioned I was probably overworked; overworked is an understatement for my situation currently, and my output is about 25% now, somewhat close to the output of Nigerian oil refineries I guess :).
The other interpretation suggested I had something in me I wasn't letting out, I think I speak my mind too much already though or do I? Maybe not to everyone. Another variant said maybe there was something God would have me say that I'm not saying. Maybe, not been too much of a good church person for some time now.
Anyway, both calls for checks and balances that truly apply to me, it seems dreams do make sense afterall.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

The Naija Police

Earlier today I was in church, one of those good days you'll say. I saw a printout for a program, the venue read, "Egunje Bustop". This busstop is the church busstop.

Now "Egunje" is the word for bribery in yoruba. and guess what, it's so named because of the police check point nearby. I have fallen there victim once too. They (the police now) harass people with their guns and make motorists and bikers pay for going about their normal activities. Recently they just beg, albeit forcefully for money.

An interesting consideration about the Naija police, they are the law enforcement agency of the executive and in their spare time, double as the judiciary. They slap and harass people if they think they can get away with it. They lie against you to buttress points, and they are especially brilliant when it comes to dictating count charges. Once a new law is promulgated, they start enforcing (the good part) and cash in by quickly sentencing the public to certain amount, usually a percentage of what the law stipulates for offences, which naturally goes into their wallets. That you may consider welcome, depending on your orientation.

I'm so motivated to buy a camera now so I can take shots of the Naija police in action, and the other traffic law enforcement agencies in their dubious everyday acts. It's so easy to capture an incidence anyway because they are always at it. Today, they stopped the pitiable bus I was in for taking an overhead bridge; apparently the government recently announced busses should stop taking the overhead brigdes for some reasons. The guy parted with N700 (about $7) in settlement.

Dictionary.com has an entry about them too! Interesting...


There Justice Minister Bola Ige, confronted with the general incivility of local police, placed a malediction on the cads. Said the Hon. Bola Ige, "I pray that God will make big holes in their pockets."
-- "Sic Semper Tyrannis! Oppressors Face People's Justice", American Spectator, May 1, 2001

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Zen of Python: By Tim Peters

Beatiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit
Simple is better than complex
Complex is better than complicated
Flat is better than nested
Sparse is better than dense
Readability counts
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules
Although practicality beats purity
Errors should never pass silently
Unless explicitly silenced
In the face of ambiguity, resist the temptation to guess.
There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you are Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

www.python.org
Don't click that link except you love programming :)

Thursday, May 29, 2008

5MB Hard Disk!


I stumbled on this picture of an IBM 5 MB hard disk drive, made back in 1956! In September 1956, IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored a whopping 5MB.

 

Monday, May 26, 2008

Ticket Reservation in Nigeria

I chose to visit PH this weekend, PH (Port Harcourt) is one of Nigeria's oil rich region. Its a coding weekend, lots of Python code for those who know what I'm talking about.
I made a reservation, luckily I decided to call customer care of Arik air after the online booking.

Point No 1: There is no way to make a payment online, there is an option to confirm though, so I confirmed.

Then I called customer care, truly I was not too shocked to hear that all bookings will be discarded that night, at least for those of us who made online booking.

Lesson 1: Online reservation is a waste of valuable time.

I got the cue though, so I made one friend of mine (poor guy) get the ticket very early the next morning. booked me on the last flight for the day. I got to the airport late, or just on time for the flight, which is still late because there is no room for check-in.
I was told the flight was fully booked!

Lesson 2: Paying for the ticket does not guarantee you will make the flight.

I think they usually sell more tickets than there are seats. So if you don't show up you are advised to re-schedule for the next flight.
That was the last flight of the day I just missed, so no Friday night in PH for me, I did try to re-schedule though, and was asked to just "re-present" ticket the following day, and that would be all. Hmm, how sweet of Arik air, after all, the seats were fully occupied, so I don't get to pay extra, just rescheduled, fair enough.

I got there early enough the following morning, got to the front of the queue to get a boarding pass, and someone raises an alarm that it was yesterday's ticket. "Sir", she yelled, "you have to go pay N3, 000 extra".

Lesson 3: Nothing is free man, nothing! and don't trust the airlines.

And I had to wait to get to the front to know. I thought I would just add a knowlegde base article here for them, so I wrote this. And luckily, I managed to get N3k from my pockets, what if I didn't have enough money, wow. And I was running late, and the guys were rude at the payment, warned me severely too to wait for the next flight, because, he reasons correctly, I will have to pay another N3k if I miss this flight. He added something like, "And don't come back crying to me".


Finally I'm on board the first flight to PH, and got a good view of gas flaring, 2 really tall pillars of fire where two wells were being flared. It looked so cool from the sky for something that is just not good for the environment.

I will link this to postcard from Lagos, as one of the intrigues of settling down in Nigeria, after years in the Yankees (US) or Jand (UK).

Saturday, May 03, 2008

The Google-Like Workplace

I pondered on what would be the kind of workplace that would be ideal for a developer growing old and getting tired of doing chore-like, so called "Enterprise scale" development for a company whose primary business is not software development.

Let's play with the metrics first.

Majority in-house are driven by money and the next big job. True, I'm motivated by money too but the next big job for me would not be another telecoms firm. At most telcos, the dba is king. They mine and manage tons of call history data all day long, which is alright, I mean that's where the money come from. Luckily we get a lot of respect as developers and surprisingly all the liberty I need too. I don't even mind that a lot of people in senior management are less techie and earn more, but that's normal too!
So, the only painful part is that there is too much segregation and they remind me all the time that I'm a "mere specialist". Only managers can park close to the office among other little annoying things. It took me 20minutes deliberating if I should come in this night cos I wander if I would be made to park at a building a few meters off at this hour. I don't even drive to work because of this.
So, when I own a business, I will play down positions and all that, developers have pride the size of everest.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Reflections

I took a moment to review my first quarter performance on new year resolutions. I noticed I have not done too badly, somewhere I feel I'm at a better %completed than Nigeria but Yar'Adua and Fashola seems to be really trying :)

The were the originals:
  1. Complete all uncompleted projects, mostly software, 60% done, started some 2 new ones now.
  2. Fix my eye glasses and stop punishing my eyes, see a doctor for checkup: Glasses fixed,
  3. Not leave a project midway: Hehe, not doing well here, say 20%
  4. Better accountability, I somehow manage to spend, not loosely but undocumented: Documentation has improved some.
  5. Document and manage my gently growing assets, thank God! Trying sha, trying...
  6. Blog more: 60% improvement.
  7. Settle down more, go for several breaks, visit at least 5 interesting places: London for the past 2 weeks was really good, concluded Nigeria is more than 20 years behind civilization like I always thought, more like 50 years and growing. I'll save that for another day.
  8. Start a blog of "My success story". Something I will hopefully make into a book in the future if the good Lord spares my soul. Now that my account has left red and is gently rising. I will not like to be like the torrents of Naija millionaires without success stories. Well, money stalling, will let you know when things start to yappen!

Monday, April 28, 2008

VerveEarth

http://www.verveearth.com/ is pretty cool. You find blogs by drilling down into regions on a google maps arrangement. The finer details at some points then display blogs in the region.
With verveearth, I quickly found Lola's blog and Omosewa's. You get to write on people's walls, something like facebook, and their is that link on the notes you leave behind that takes those same people to your own blog.
Oh, and you can view their blogs directly in the popup, and there is rss too, how cool.
I still haven't found a way to add more than one blog, I can't find my own blog but I want to presume its because I'm logged on.
Kind of cool, and how else would I have found this new song Olomma, by Nkem Owoh!

Friday, January 11, 2008

Another level to customer care

www.webfaction.com is true to its motto: agile hosting by helpful humans.
I tried to make a payment online for a python web hosting today and had some generic errors on payment. I was getting red again, another hateful company who will not accept master cards from IPs originating from Nigeria. After complaining to customer care, a dude called David Sissitka got in touch and offered to set up my hosting and I can pay later, wow! When I did not respond on time he sent me another "hello" prompt.
Wonderful, I was registering the site for Bayo and now I'm a customer waiting to happen.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

New Year Resolutions

  • Complete all uncompleted projects, mostly software.
  • Fix my eye glasses and stop punishing my eyes, see a doctor for checkup.
  • Not leave a project midway.
  • Better accountability, I somehow manage to spend, not loosely but undocumented.
  • Document and manage my gently growing assets, thank God!
  • Blog more.
  • Settle down more, go for several breaks, visit at least 5 interesting places.
  • Start a blog of "My success story". Something I will hopefully make into a book in the future if the good Lord spares my soul. Now that my account has left red and is gently rising. I will not like to be like the torrents of Naija millionaires without success stories.