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.

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

Postcard from Lagos: The 7 Wonders of Nigeria - Part 1 - Okada

Postcard from Lagos: The 7 Wonders of Nigeria - Part 1 - Okada

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!

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.

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.

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


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 :)

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.

 

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).

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

Vmobile-Celtel-Zain

Yes, Celtel is changing name for the upteenth time. This time its going to be Zain. Here we trying to break it to the public gradually so the impact is reduced. Many Celtel operations in other countries already bear Zain and I figure they are going gently on Nigeria just because peope may question the stability of the company.

If your question is "So, will it change?", the answer is YES, soon, very soon.

I mean when you marry a wife, the name always change albeit with a few exceptions. In Africa, marrying a wife is like owning the wife. Yes, I hear the women activists are already on my tail.
I heard Stella when she said her uncle compared Celtel to Nigerian cops, you never know what surprise is up next.
Celtel has evolved from Econet Wireless to Vnetworks to Vodacom to Vmobile to Celtel and now Zain. This is status quo.

Doing business the Nigerian way

12 million litres per month! 12mn!.

Thats the kind of figure the likes of Celtel Nigeria will be consuming by the end of the year due to network expansion.

12, 000, 000 X 12 = 144mn litres per annum, man the world must have a huge reserve of those things.

The pepper (money) part of things now...
144 000 000 X 66 = crazy figure per annum. People in Naija have learnt to transact in dollars now but this figure is still massive.

Now to this interesting piece alluded to Bayo Ligali,

"Today, we operate four networks instead of one: GSM Network (which is indeed our core line of business); a security network; a power (electricity) network and a transmission network. "

The security network, Celtel has about 5000 security operatives guiding installations nationwide, rightly described as more than 8 batallions. Crime rate had been on the rise in the last 8 months and mostly attributed to the lions and termites who were armed and cashed during the last elections and now still have the arms and need to maintain the cash.

I simply can't help but feel we've been wondering purbling for the last 8 years in Nigeria.

Sudan: The good in the evil?

Yesterday I found out that Celtel Sudan has a hundred developers, phew!
Staggering figure if you consider the meager five we have in Nigeria. In fact, I do not know of any full software house that can boast of more than 30 developers on this side of town.

Genesis:
Ordinarily, Celtel would not hire a 100 into IT systems development and the only unit that enjoy numbers in the hundreds is customer care, makes sense huh? Celtel Nigeria is approaching 30million in subscriber base.

I understand there are sanctions by the United States government on Sudan as a result of the crisis in that region. I usually look up most of the info I pick up so I would not be spreading what could culminate in an urban legend. I googled the info and came up with a few links:

In accordance with US export controls and economic sanctions regulations, we are unable to permit the download of Google Earth in Sudan. More information about these controls and sanctions can be found here and here.
http://www.ogleearth.com/2007/04/oh_the_irony_go.html

Interesting article on difficulties being experienced by users of google earth in Sudan.

I could not get too many relevant info but for someone as naive (haha) and geeky as me, I'm willing to overlook my fears of the Dafur crisis and go work at Celtel Sudan for a little while. Sounds like a developer heaven. I could imagine interesting tools like Microsoft VSTS and I envisage lots of gusto! I wish they have a team blog I can look up and see what those guys are up to. I can't imagine the kind of co-ordination it will take to manage 100 fiercely independent humans and what it would take to harness such but it sure feels good.

My dying wish at Celtel is to visit Celtel Sudan, in fact I won't mind paying my way. I also remember my Ghanian friend Francois Bonin (MVP) did mention girls in that region are exotic, real live Cleopatras.

Bring it on guys, can't wait for that suggested exchange program to happen!

The love of men shall wax cold

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, ... [Iniquity shall abound ... the love of many shall wax cold] ...
Endtime News: Discerning the Signs of the Times

Today in the News in Nigeria:

• Girl arraigned for murder, kills 2 through food poisoning, original target was her boyfriend
• Man stabs girlfriend to death at Ijeshatedo, Surulere,
• Nurse injects baby with substance suspected to be Novalgin, baby dies

Last month in Nigeria, enough horrible crimes as robbers take on banks, killing several in Ketu areas of Lagos state, another bank robbery in Kwara state and Oyo state. Principal witness killed in the North, a muslim cleric who was supposed to testify at an election tribunal. Let me not even go into the killings in the Niger-Delta. Truly Nigeria has changed, these kind of crimes were alien a few years ago.

Well, I attribute a lot of the gun crimes to the politicians in Nigeria who armed the guys to rig elections and gave them money. Now there is no money but they still have the guns. The other crimes I won't claim to have answers to.

Federal Road Safety Commision

These guys have not been doing terribly. They make sure people wear seat belts and carry fire estinguishers. Believe me this is good if you think of the average family owning a 10 - 20 year old car that have seen many "re-wires and mechanics".
well I can't resist putting up these pictures because it appears they live by a different rule.

People put out FRSC car fire with sand.