Let me break my blogging break to wish all those who start with month when writing their dates, a wonderful Pi Day as March 14 or rather 3 14 represent the first three digits of the mathematical constant Π (pronounced Pi).
The British and the rest of us, however, will have our Pi day on 22nd July (22/7) which is apparently a Pi Approximation Day since 22/7 is not the precise value of Pi
So, if you're celebrating your Π day today, have precise fun. Looking forward to approximate celebration of Π celebration in July! :)
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Africa Cup of Nations 2008 website hacked
Some angry 'Moroccan' has hacked the Africa Cup of Nations website after Morocco got beaten by Ghana, the hosts, 2-0 on Monday 28th January 2008.
The website, www.ghanacan2008.com and below is the screenshot in case they've fixed it now
Update: Fixed the url. Thanks Jeff. The website has been restored now. I've also changed the tooltip text on the photo from "ghanacan2008.com hacked by soyapi, on Flickr" to "ghanacan2008.com hacked. Photo by soyapi, on Flickr" :)
With that loss, Morocco is now out of the competition.
The website, www.ghanacan2008.com and below is the screenshot in case they've fixed it now
Update: Fixed the url. Thanks Jeff. The website has been restored now. I've also changed the tooltip text on the photo from "ghanacan2008.com hacked by soyapi, on Flickr" to "ghanacan2008.com hacked. Photo by soyapi, on Flickr" :)
With that loss, Morocco is now out of the competition.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Exercise your Brain with XNumber Puzzle
We all know how physical exercises are good for your body. That is equally true with your brain. Regular brain exercises make your brain healthier.
That's why newspapers usually include puzzles to help your brain as you relax during a short break at work or after work. I remember playing the cross-number puzzle which features regularly in The Daily Times of Malawi, when I was young. To win the puzzle game, you fill empty boxes with with one digit numbers (1-9) such that vertical, horizontal and diagonal numbers in the inner 4x4 boxes add up to the sums in the bottom and right-most cells - similar to a cross-word puzzle.
Every time I saw a copy of the paper, I would write down the puzzle on a piece of paper solve to it later. I spent my childhood days in Chikwawa, south of Blantyre, and I would look forward to reading The Daily Times and solving a new puzzle whenever my father returned from a trip to Blantyre.
But when I started using computers, I slowly found myself without pencils or pens and started shifting my reading medium from printed papers to electronic files. That also meant playing less and less of my favourite puzzle game. I'm sure there are lots of you out there who used to solve this or similar puzzle games but no longer do so these days. Maybe you've started playing Freecell or other computer games and puzzles.
When I was learning computer programming back in 1998, one thing I really wanted develop was a program to help me play and solve that puzzle game. The program would also be intelligent enough to solve a puzzle for me. I remember starting to code it in dBase IV :) but got distracted and went on to code other things during my free time.
If you're one of those who enjoy solving puzzles that involve numbers, I have some good news for you. You can now play that cross number puzzle game, this time online. I have finally developed a web application that will let you play a game or solve one from The Daily Times, or another source, for you at http://soyapi.com/puzzle
New button gives you another Puzzle to Solve.
Create lets you upload a new game from the Daily Times or any other source.
Solve will give give a solution for the puzzle either created or generated using New
You can use keyboard arrow keys to navigate through the cells or click on the white cells to enter the numbers.
But that's not all.
What happens when you see a Puzzle in The Daily Times and want XNumber Puzzle to solve it for you but you're not on a computer with internet access? What if you want a new game to solve on paper but can't find a copy of The Daily Times around? Well, you can go to http://soyapi.com/puzzle/m via your GPRS enabled mobile phone. Since most mobile phones don't support JavaScript, you'll have to play it on paper.
And if you care about the technical details, it's not written in dBase IV. Times have changed since '98. I used Ruby on Rails and little bit of good old C.
After almost 10 years, I've finally canceled the Cross Number Puzzle Player and Solver on my To Program list. Now get your daily brain exercise. Prescription: 2 puzzles, 3 times a day!
That's why newspapers usually include puzzles to help your brain as you relax during a short break at work or after work. I remember playing the cross-number puzzle which features regularly in The Daily Times of Malawi, when I was young. To win the puzzle game, you fill empty boxes with with one digit numbers (1-9) such that vertical, horizontal and diagonal numbers in the inner 4x4 boxes add up to the sums in the bottom and right-most cells - similar to a cross-word puzzle.
Every time I saw a copy of the paper, I would write down the puzzle on a piece of paper solve to it later. I spent my childhood days in Chikwawa, south of Blantyre, and I would look forward to reading The Daily Times and solving a new puzzle whenever my father returned from a trip to Blantyre.
But when I started using computers, I slowly found myself without pencils or pens and started shifting my reading medium from printed papers to electronic files. That also meant playing less and less of my favourite puzzle game. I'm sure there are lots of you out there who used to solve this or similar puzzle games but no longer do so these days. Maybe you've started playing Freecell or other computer games and puzzles.
When I was learning computer programming back in 1998, one thing I really wanted develop was a program to help me play and solve that puzzle game. The program would also be intelligent enough to solve a puzzle for me. I remember starting to code it in dBase IV :) but got distracted and went on to code other things during my free time.
If you're one of those who enjoy solving puzzles that involve numbers, I have some good news for you. You can now play that cross number puzzle game, this time online. I have finally developed a web application that will let you play a game or solve one from The Daily Times, or another source, for you at http://soyapi.com/puzzle
New button gives you another Puzzle to Solve.
Create lets you upload a new game from the Daily Times or any other source.
Solve will give give a solution for the puzzle either created or generated using New
You can use keyboard arrow keys to navigate through the cells or click on the white cells to enter the numbers.
But that's not all.
What happens when you see a Puzzle in The Daily Times and want XNumber Puzzle to solve it for you but you're not on a computer with internet access? What if you want a new game to solve on paper but can't find a copy of The Daily Times around? Well, you can go to http://soyapi.com/puzzle/m via your GPRS enabled mobile phone. Since most mobile phones don't support JavaScript, you'll have to play it on paper.
And if you care about the technical details, it's not written in dBase IV. Times have changed since '98. I used Ruby on Rails and little bit of good old C.
After almost 10 years, I've finally canceled the Cross Number Puzzle Player and Solver on my To Program list. Now get your daily brain exercise. Prescription: 2 puzzles, 3 times a day!
Friday, December 07, 2007
SearchWith extension version 0.4 is out!
One reason I haven't blogged in the last 2 months is because of my other personal software projects. As Dare Obasanjo once put it on his blog description, "Writing Code Will Always Be More Important Than Writing About Code".
I'm therefore pleased to announce that SearchWith version 0.4 has been released and is available at Mozilla Addons SearchWith site: (addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2194).
SearchWith is search extension for Firefox, Thunderbird and Flock. It allows you group search engines by service (content type) and search from the context (right-click) menu.
Apart from big fixes, this version includes improvements to the Addressbar option especially in Thunderbird. Addressbar option now integrates well with Google's Feeling lucky feature.
Another enhancement in this version is that when you search with all engines for a particular service, SearchWith will automatically remember to pre-select all engines under that service, by default.
To select all engines or change this back, use the Advanced Search dialog which pops up when you hold down the SHIFT key while selecting a search service on the context menu or when you right-click without selecting any text.
Thanks to all those who sent comments, suggestions and bugs.
Monday, September 17, 2007
What You See is What You Touch (WYSWYT) on iPhone
I recently had the privilege of holding and playing with Apple's iPhone. Wow, What an experience it was! It was wonderful to play with the device's on-screen keyboard, iTunes' Cover Flow, shifting photo slides, turning the little animal 90 degrees and the like.What I realised after playing with the iPhone is that there is new paradigm of User Interfaces from What You See is What You Get (WYSWYG) to What You See is What You Touch (WYSWYT).
Since Graphical User Interfaces came up with Windows Icons Mouse and Pointers (WIMP), it has been fun moving a mouse beside a keyboard and watching something move accordingly on the screen. Although it becomes a simple and wonderful user experience dragging and dropping stuff this way, it requires a lot of getting used to initially. Novice users have to learn some principles of the mouse e.g. it doesn't work if you lift the mouse in the air.
To be honest, we can all agree that this is not a perfect user experience because in the real world, if you want to open a door, you don't move around and click some weirdly named device on one side while watching its effects on another. You push or pull the door open. If you want to poke or slap someone, you poke or slap them. As simple as that!
At Baobab Health, we have seen how touchscreen systems are so intuitive to users. No one needs a class to learn how to touch a button on the screen; not even in developing countries.
I'm therefore excited to see Apple bringing this user experience to the masses with their iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Of course there have been others who developed Touchscreen systems way before Apple. But Apple's design genius and hype production behind their touch devices have opened doors to more simple intuitive and exciting user experiences. Just hope Facebook's touchscreen slap feature won't be as painful.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Where is the Sourceforge for Web 2.0 Apps?
Tim O'Reilly has written a post suggesting a source code version control web service for Google Gears applications.
While reading the post, I was reminded of my what I've been asking myself lately when I started porting one of my open source projects from the Desktop platform to the Web.
You see, for desktop apps, SourceForge provides open source projects with download services so that users can download and then install your application. But web applications don't need downloading, rather, support for various server-side scripting languages, server side database access, monitoring tools and bandwidth. The requirements are different.
For the non-commercials users, the "Sourceforge for Web2.0" can run mandatory ads on every application and impose bandwidth restrictions. You can then allow developers to run their own ads and provide them with monitoring tools so they see for themselves when it's time to go "pro". That should be workable, right?
So far, I haven't heard of any service like this. It looks like Amazon is the only well-known company doing something similar with their web services division where they are providing storage and CPU services. But as far as I know, that's only paid for services that don't include hosting various types of databases and scripting languages, or does it?
'cause that would be super cool!
While reading the post, I was reminded of my what I've been asking myself lately when I started porting one of my open source projects from the Desktop platform to the Web.
You see, for desktop apps, SourceForge provides open source projects with download services so that users can download and then install your application. But web applications don't need downloading, rather, support for various server-side scripting languages, server side database access, monitoring tools and bandwidth. The requirements are different.
For the non-commercials users, the "Sourceforge for Web2.0" can run mandatory ads on every application and impose bandwidth restrictions. You can then allow developers to run their own ads and provide them with monitoring tools so they see for themselves when it's time to go "pro". That should be workable, right?
So far, I haven't heard of any service like this. It looks like Amazon is the only well-known company doing something similar with their web services division where they are providing storage and CPU services. But as far as I know, that's only paid for services that don't include hosting various types of databases and scripting languages, or does it?
'cause that would be super cool!
Thursday, July 05, 2007
WhiteAfrican covers African Web2.0 startups
WhiteAfrican has been playing African TechCrunch recently covering creative Africans working on cool startups right here in Africa.
Some of the interesting innovators covered that I really liked include:
Adventures of Nyangi
A 3D Adventure game created by a Kenyan game developer who also created the engine that powers the game. (via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=675)
Peupe
A made-in-africa blogging platform by Kenyan-based Multiple Choices (still in beta)
via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=658
iblog.co.za
Another blogging platform targeting South Africa (via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=404) I hope you'll find it :)
bwanji.com
A Zambian social networking site
Akopo
A blogging, chat and games platform by Nino
Afrikeo
An AJAXy homepage creation tool
(via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=673)
In Malawi, the windmill kid William Kamkwamba is still making headlines even at Digg and BoingBoing. Malawi's The Nation Newspaper of 2nd July 2007 also carried a feature article titled Behold, the scientist from Malawi.
The same paper carried a programme by ESCOM, Malawi's electricity company, detailing scheduled power outages running the whole week in various areas. Some outages were scheduled from 05:00 to 13:30 and others from 17:45 to 21:00.
Innovators like William have huge opportunities in Africa!
Some of the interesting innovators covered that I really liked include:
Adventures of Nyangi
A 3D Adventure game created by a Kenyan game developer who also created the engine that powers the game. (via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=675)
Peupe
A made-in-africa blogging platform by Kenyan-based Multiple Choices (still in beta)
via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=658
iblog.co.za
Another blogging platform targeting South Africa (via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=404) I hope you'll find it :)
bwanji.com
A Zambian social networking site
Akopo
A blogging, chat and games platform by Nino
Afrikeo
An AJAXy homepage creation tool
(via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=673)
In Malawi, the windmill kid William Kamkwamba is still making headlines even at Digg and BoingBoing. Malawi's The Nation Newspaper of 2nd July 2007 also carried a feature article titled Behold, the scientist from Malawi.
The same paper carried a programme by ESCOM, Malawi's electricity company, detailing scheduled power outages running the whole week in various areas. Some outages were scheduled from 05:00 to 13:30 and others from 17:45 to 21:00.
Innovators like William have huge opportunities in Africa!
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