Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ll be the first to admit I know very little of her seeing as she ruled before my time. What I can glean from the media though gives me a good idea about what she was all about. She seems like Martha Karua on steroids without the affectionate dancing side.

She called Nelson Mandela a terrorist for crying out loud and thought the Apartheid regime was pretty rad. Now this was the 80′s so such sentiments were rather archaic & Jarring even in her

English: Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, Gauteng, on 13 May 1998 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

time. The backdrop many british lovers like to use is that she was protecting british interests and it is quite possible that she decided to be the fall guy(or girl in this case) to absorb all the bad press.

But years, nay, Decades later it is especially her countrymen that despise her. I gather that she devastated the mining communities and by extension the working class and precipitated lts of suffering for them. A documentary I watched a while ago insinuated that the whole global warming fiasco was started by her and others to popularize use of nuclear energy for power generation so as to reduce the influence of coal workers unions. This would make her a highly intelligent leader if true and the effects of her decisions are reverberating to this day. Now that is influence.

The reaction to those that are happy to see her go is however what is most amusing to me. We generally(Africans) avoid speaking ill of the dead but a line can be drawn somewhere right? I mean the Americans nearly called a national holiday when Obama murdered Osama and dumped him in the sea. This was blatant happiness over an individual’s death. Why should this be any different for those who suffered under the iron lady’s rule?

I am personally indifferent to her death or influence if it still exists seeing as she is no longer a shot caller and I doubt whether her policies to Kenya were to Kenya’s benefit. The right for people to be glad she is dead should be protected though same as an entire country can be proud of itself for murdering a supposed terrorist and celebrating it.

Related articles

• #napowrimo8 – A Tribute to Margaret Thatcher
• ‘Ding Dong!’: Margaret Thatcher’s foes celebrate death of former PM
• Margaret Thatcher Dead: Former PM’s ‘Ceremonial’ Funeral To Match Princess Diana’s
• Speaking ill of the dead: Margaret Thatcher and Hugo Chavez
• Margaret Thatcher: no fond farewells from Africa
• SAfricans: Did Thatcher help or hinder apartheid?

Dont get me wrong, I am not saying I regret my decision then. Far from it infact it may just be the best one I made.(These Sentiments are shared by one of my affable professors who in retrospect is happy he did not pursue Civil engineering in favour of the then Surveying degree.)

At the time I had never seen or heard the word Geospatial and it sounded sexy as hell.  A little digging revealed that it was good old surveying that was trying to get its sexy back. It was explained that calling the training or rather qualification surveying though correct was inaccurate due to the advancements in technology and broad areas that geospatial people find themselves working in.

US Navy Surveyor at work with a leveling instrument. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I bet you imagine I spend all day looking through some thing balanced on tripod legs in the middle of nowhere or on the shamba the neighbours have been squabbling about. These are still done geospatial engineers but thats just the opening of the rabbit hole. Its like assuming all people who go through med school wind up asking wheezing kids to cough as they listen through a stethoscope. Correct but inaccurate.

The best resource that I have found that attempts to do proper marketing justice to the profession comes from the Australians with their Life Without Limits Campaign . Our institutions as usual do very little . . ok they do nothing to promote surveying to the up-comers and explain why the name was changed in the first place to Geospatial Engineering.

Truth is I know of few other engineering careers that are as exciting, challenging and diverse as Geospatial engineering. sure coding a kernel for an OS is not a walk in the park and neither is designing and building a bridge that should last upwards of 30 years. Geospatial engineering will allow you to sit in the office if thats what you fancy or visit the remotest and most diverse locations mostly working on the same project.

Let me not even get started on the tech you get to work with. Recently I got to work with a pair of differential GPS units. These are basically GPS recievers like the ones in your phone only on several tonnes of crack and Nitrous. Your phone can at best in the best conditions imaginable get your position to within a 3 meter radius. These units after post processing the data can fix your position to within 3mm. Thats right 3 millimeters.

Accuracy achieved in post processing

I achieved an average 0.079m accuracy on all points. This is in a survey that was done in merely 6 hrs. Using conventional methods this could take you all day and brain numbing computations to get similar results.

There are many other examples of possibilities that and efficiencies that have been afforded with advances in technology and maturing of methodologies and science.

English: Differential GPS scheme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My Final year project is concerned with using satellite images to generate geographic data that is used by telecom companies to plan and predict their terrestrial radio networks. I hope to show that the siting of the base transceiver stations can be planned mostly in a digital virtual environment and minimize the field work aspect(though unavoidable) of the RF planning bit.

Let me be the first to state that my methods are already outdated. LiDAR tech can do this at a much higher accuracy than with using the satellite images and with far less acrobatics such as the control point collection with the GPS for corrections. Using the satellite images could however be cheaper for institutions or individuals who find the accuracy levels satisfactory or simply dont have the money to commission a flight to cover their area of interest.

Its actually possible to generate nice looking and informative 3d models of an area by manipulating a stereo pair of photographs of the same area. The conditions in which the images are collected have to be super accurate though inorder to extract info from them.

All in all I hope to employ some of the knowledge bashed into my brain by well meaning lecturers to solve a real world problem. Gathering, manipulting and interpreting spatial info. Here is to not wasting 5 years!

English: International Criminal Court (ICC) logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The hearing of the cases against Uhuru Kenyatta and Francis Muthaura have been postponed to July on the requests of the two suspects.

This has been happening parallel to the ominous statements issued by the United Kingdom and the United States about the consequences of making bad decisions a.k.a voting in the UhuRuto duo.

With the dreaded candidates poised to win, the movements from the two powers will be interesting in the immediate future what with the views that China doesn’t really mind who runs a country so long as they are ready to do business. The paltry bargaining power that the west and Europe are increasingly finding themselves wielding must be disconcerting and may explain why armed responses seem to be the only card they have left.

The relaxation of the terms and conditions of the cases against the suspects emphasizes the fact that legal and economic decisions are not independent from the political situation in the particular time frame. Obamas decisions must be timed and weighted by the mood on the ground in kenya lest the rejection winds up causing more harm than good by way of govt cooperation and having a regional ally.

It is instructive that the US is not a signatory to the rome statute on which the ICC is based so the moral authority to actually make other nations adhere to it is not exactly intact. But what do we expect from the largest exporter of weaponry and by extension war.

My basic premise is that court processes that are meant to be impartial and use the law as their holy text are undetachable from the prevailing political climate.  The ICC being an international independent body should be the least to be concerned by the nuances of a national election in which the suspects are top contenders but we see a very measured approach to how the cases are handled and the media briefings issued by the prosecutor.

This is also illustrated by the happenings in the southern states of the US at the prime of and decline of slavery in the United States of America. It seems preposterous that what is considered the land of the free or the brave just a couple of years ago felt that counting niggers like cattle and considering them to be assets was perfectly legal. This was considered lawful within the context of the political climate and I dare say it was legal as a consequence of the political climate as opposed to existing next to it in a symbiotic relationship.

Related articles

• Uhuru’s ICC case pushed to July 9
• Kenya: Uhuru’s ICC Case Pushed to July 9
• Uhuru Kenyatta poised for victory in Kenyan election – The Guardian

As of last night, based on the provisional results that were on all TV screens, the no. of rejected votes were upward of 300,000.  This is a disturbingly huge amount and if it was attributed to a candidate, he/she would be the 3rd highest in the presidential running. The debate is on what to do with this category of votes. Both of the front runners are nervous that it will erode their percentages in the total pool and thus ruin their shots at winning in the first round. Not including them in the final tally for cast votes would make the chances that a first round win is possible.

Here is a post I found by a good friend on Facebook breaking down what the legal situation is like.

50 +1 OF THE CAST VOTES MYSTERY

The constitution provides that that a candidate shall be declared elected as president if the candidate receives more than half of all the votes cast in the election and at least twenty five per cent of the votes cast in each of more than half of the counties. Either Uhuru or Raila requires 50 + 1 and at least 25% of all votes cast in 24 counties. Whereas there is no contention as to whether both have met the county votes requirements, there is an emerging debate as to whether the requirement on the 50+1 of the votes cast includes the spoilt votes and/or the rejected votes. 

A ballot box is defined as a transparent container with a slot on the top sufficient to accept a ballot paper in an election or in a referendum but which prevents access to the votes cast until the closing of the voting period. The law further stipulates that the ballot boxes should be fairly transparent or translucent and be colour coded prominently and distinctively to identify the respective elective post and shall correspond with the colour of the ballot paper for that elective post. 

IEBC is required to ensure that that the voting method/ system is simple, accurate, verifiable, secure, accountable and transparent. IEBC is also required under the constitution to ensure that the votes cast are counted, tabulated and the results announced promptly by the presiding officer at each polling station and that the results from the polling stations are openly and accurately collated(emphasis mine) and promptly announced by the returning officer and to ensure that appropriate structures and mechanisms to eliminate electoral malpractice are put in place, including the safe keeping of election materials. The word collate means to compare critically, sort, analyse. I do not think that IEBC has exhausted its mandate on collation of cast votes in relation to the rejected votes.

Votes cast

The phrase votes cast has not been defined in the Kenyan law. However, to cast one’s vote means to place one’s ballot paper in the ballot box. A ballot paper means a paper used to record the choice made by a vote and shall include an electronic version of a ballot paper or its equivalent for purposes of electronic voting.

Is a rejected vote a cast vote?

We did not vote electronically, so the votes or choices were expressed in the ballot papers and voting was completed the moment the papers were placed in the ballot boxes. If the rejected votes were cast in ballot boxes, then they form part of the votes cast. Noting that to cast a vote means to place a ballot paper in a ballot box by a voter as an expression of choice, my view is that rejected votes are votes cast and should be factored in the 50+1 requirement.

Rejected votes and valid votes

Under the elections regulations, at the counting of votes at an elections, a ballot paper or a vote can only be rejected for the following reasons:-
a) For the reason that it does not bear the security features determined by IEBC e.g serial number or stamp, or size, or marks etc;
b) Where a person has voted for more than one person in the same ballot paper;
c) Where something is written or so marked in the ballot paper which makes it uncertain for whom the vote has been cast;
d) A vote which bears a serial number different from the serial number of the respective polling station and which cannot be verified from the counterfoil of ballot papers used at that polling station; or
e) A ballot paper which is unmarked.

There is no requirement that these ballots should be put in the right ballot box for them to count. Further, IEBC is given the power to interpret the intention of voters. A ballot paper which is not marked in the right place but clearly expresses the intention of the voter should not be rejected. For example which someone puts a mark which runs out of the box in the paper but does not run to another person’s name is valid. Even if a person puts a tick and X and even writes a name that does not necessarily identify the voter against one person only, that vote is valid. Accordingly, out of the cast votes, a valid vote is one which bears a clear intention of expression of choice in favour of only one candidate.

Unsolicited advice to IEBC

In my view, the votes placed in the wrong ballot papers should not be rejected. They were validly cast votes. My advice is that IEBC should sort all the rejected votes under all categories to ensure that the valid votes placed in any ballot paper is sorted, placed in the right category and counted. If 350,000ballots were erroneously placed in the presidential ballot box, if this is multiplied by the 6 categories for argument’s sake, we end up with an alarming 2,100,000 ballots or choices which were cast in the wrong ballot box. I think IEBC should take the responsibility of sorting out all the rejected votes and include them in the final tallies. This could change the fortunes of many candidates. IEBC should exhaust its mandate in law and sort out the good votes in the wrong ballots and add them to the provisional results. 

Josephine Kogweno
Nairobi based Lawyer

Ahmednasir Abdullahi of the Nairobi Law Monthly fame is breathing fire and brimstone  as a result of this debacle. I fail to understand though why he is quoting American laws, we ain’t American and any precedent set would not necessarily apply here right?

I am watching this closely and the outcome or precedent set here should be history making.

Related articles

• IEBC clerk arrested over poll mischief
• Kenyans await election results
• ‘Rejected’ votes will be taken into account in Kenyan election – Irish Times

The Coat of arms of Kenya (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here we were with an expensive electronic system that was supposed to guard against rigging, gerrymandering and all sorts of irregularities that are the staple of Kenyan elections. All that is until the whole damn thing collapsed with so many issues that it was fully abandoned and now we are back to the 19th century with manual counting. Atleast we have calculators. That should help.

Some say, the issue was the server running out of harddisk space, others that Safaricom collapsed under the traffic (which was pitifully little, only hashed text was being sent from the Returning officers.) Others speculate that the server (vulnerable like anything else connected to the internet) was hacked to bits and a permanent 400,000 lead in favour of Uhuru Kenyatta was coded in.

The conspiracy theory in me tells me this is more a human problem than a technical one. Someone/some people are trying to rig themselves in and the ripple effects of these actions are the visible events at Bomas of Kenya. I say this at the risk of being branded a warmonger or unpatriotic kenyan ad nauseam but I stand by it. There is nothing normal about the Chairman of the IEBC insisting on the fact that the law gives him a week to announce the presidential results. That signals a big problem that has required a recount or in depth audit of the results filed by the Returning officers. The slow rate at which the results are bing announced is also disheartening. & constituencies since morning. What possible issue could justify such a rate?

A useful site has been put up by Eric Hersman  to investigate the internals of the system and the flow of the electoral information from the polling centers to the National     Tallying center. Here is the site (http://iebctechkenya.tumblr.com/). This should be the start of the investigation into how a Ksh. 10 Billion plus election that has spent extremely heavily on tech has proceeded to dump the tech.

As is the Kenyan style, the biggest problem that the public has is with the PR department of the IEBC. Everything was fine 5 hrs after tallying began until the incrments slowed down to a painful trickle. All through the communication style of the commission was unsatisfactory with all manner of quotations of the law with less and less of what the public actually wanted. Actual results!

Speculation without evidence is generally shunned in my circles so I avoid it. But with scanty information coming from the authorities, throwing stones in the dark tends to get a response.

Related articles

• Kenya election results delayed by ‘technical difficulties’
• Returning Officers troop to Bomas tallying centre
• Peaceful 2013 Kenyan Elections

I have no problem with this. Preferring a tribe-mate is just as natural as being loyal to your family members accepting all their flaws and warts. No-one is perfect anyway and being pretentious and judgmental is rather goody two shoes.

As was infamously intimated by the prime minister a while back, the Kenya elections are a two horse race and the rest just stretching their legs. This is of-course largely true and the most the others can expect to gain from this escapade is to gain exposure, reputation, and some clout back home being a potential presidential contender.

The potential benefit of having a couple of parliamentarians and being the defacto leader (or party owner) of the group helps with post election negotiations for appointments and power share. In the event that there is a runoff, the swing vote is controlled by the lesser candidates who have the loyalty of the voters that would not have voted for the two horses anyway. This is a good position to be in if you know you have no chance of making it to statehouse but want some power nonetheless.

As it stands Mudavadi has the most conspicuous swing vote and yes this is based mostly on tribal numbers. We may lie to ourselves all we want but tribe is king when it comes to politics in this part of the world.

Lets see how things go on the 4th.

The standard user interface of Mac OS X (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am not known for my exemplary patience and if anything I am quit horrible at bidding my time for just about anything.

I was thus not about to not update Vivian (My Macbook Pro) from OSX Lion to OSX Mountain lion. For starters, I was not aware that there are lions that live on mountains. Doesn’t sound very liony.

Cougar / Puma / Mountain Lion / Panther (Puma concolor) closeup. Philadelphia Zoo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyhoo I should have known from my previous experiences in updating a plethora of iOS based devices for pals that the hype behind the update is hot air.

Apple fanboys/loyalists/paid goons will tell me am tasteless, dont understand technology ad nauseam but notification centers and facebook integrations are not features in my book. These are stickers on a car not additional airbags for the toddler in the back seat.

All the same I try remain current and not disappoint my geek gods lest I get excommunicated. Kickass torrents quickly availed a usable copy of the mountain lion installer and I got on my way. Now before you start shouting yourself hoarse about piracy, I qualified for a free copy but due to technical issues I could not redeem it from the cupertino buggers. Its their fault.

Upgrade went on without a hickup , I think seeing as I left it happening overnight, and absolutely nothing of note changed on my desktop experience. Well that was a 4.5 GB dissapointment. Little did I know this was the beginning of my problems. After a while   the laptop started acting all slow at times even hanging and other times geting all hot and bothered.

Now I have bootcamp installed on half my harddrive because for technical folk in my field Windows applications are bread and butter. This has worked flawlwessly for the past 7 months but on one random day last week the laptop took 15 mis to boot. I forced a reboot and this chewed up another 10 mins. Here my problems began with the damn thing refusing to boot into Mac OS and only running Windows 7 when the startup disk is changed.

Long story short, the 500 GB drive developed S.M.A.R.T errors specifically a 2047 value on the Reallocated sector count. Trawling the forums turns out this is a common error upon the upgrade with the only solution being provided is replacement of the drive. I think I will do this when My warranty is close to its end or when the damn thing just dies on me but I think this is utter bullcrap. That the error is not random should be telling no?

For a system that “just works” there is a lot of tinkering to get simple things done without regularly turning you into a pauper.

Most badass data crunchers are monstrosities called supercomputers which occupy entire rooms. They are basically your laptop on crack laced with speed with all the power of one of those decommissioned space shuttles.

The data intensive operations like climate prediction, cancer research etc as well as computationally heavy operations such as image analysis and graphics rendering require a hefty amount of data crunching capacity that is terribly expensive to firms whose owners do not own yachts.

Enter BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) An initiative of the University of California Berkley on exploring distributed computing of task. It started off as a project in support of the search for extraterrestrial life (Aliens basically) but now its used in climate research, protein synthesis, malaria control and a plethora of other applications. 

Basically you get a desktop client which downloads some data to be crunched and your pc crunches the data in place of the screensaver and once done sends back the results/ a report to the server which issues more work if available. You can see how the millions of computers worldwide connected to the internet just sitting there running Microsoft Word and Outlook can be used for scientific betterment of humanity.

This is a purely volunteer affair where you specify how much of your processor is used, when to download and all manner of metrics to adhere to.

Intel has been pushing for its own brand of the same platform (seeing as they make the most processors) calling it progress thru processors.

I run this app though at minimal settings and I have done quite a sizeable amount of computing calculated in Ghrs.

Try it out.

Related articles

• Crowdsourcing HPC: Kickstarter Project to Build GPU Nodes to Advance Science
• Process Partitioning in Distributed Systems
• Open Compute: Momentum Builds for Open Hardware
• The Million-Core Problem

It is thus not unusual to hear characters aspiring to occupy the highest office in the land throwing juicy opinions on their opponents ability at conducting their daily business. This is not like the customary insulting that goes on in Mali. This is seedy, sleazy and downright childish insulting that should only be attributed to bad upbringing.

The president thinks as much too and regularly joins in the fun, only his insults are usually targeted at regular folk who enjoy their tipple more often than not and retire and rest before working. Such upsetting of capitalistic norms are what warrant insults by the commander in chief. Insults are things that are dragged out when nothing else of note can be generated by the concerned parties. How else do you explain how a man aspiring to lead 40 million kenyans in military,economic and political conquests wasting precious time at a rally insulting opponents while he could be trying to convince the populace why his policies are superior to his opponents. Taking swipes at their age and soccer skills is guaranteed to generate better response from the crowd and thus more media coverage and hence more publicity.

But I gotta admit some of the swipes are hilarious and really bring home the reality about some of our political contestants. The recent comments by Ruto about how he used to read about and sing for William ole Ntimama when he was still in class 3 were really hilarious. I dug around for old photos of Ntimama and he looked old back then like older than the members of the UhuRuto brigade. Of Course the constitution affords protection from discrimination agains age, sex etc but come on. Ancient is ancient. A 40 year old able bodied man is not expected to be living with his mother and getting a weekly allowance however rich the folks may be. Same with an octogenarian claiming he wants to revolutionise anything.  Its just common sense and little todo with hiding behind rights.

I am a proponent of the idea that time should be respected. The insistence of perpetuity in holding offices is detrimental to the entire fabric of the ecosystem. The stubborn office holders ironically also limit themselves in the opportunities they can take advantage of and the growth in stature, influence and the all to enigmatic legacy. Who doesn’t want to go down in history as being awesome? Look at what Mandela did for himself with only one term in office. Imagine if he had been rigging himself into power for the 5th time. Would he still be a global icon? Do your time and leave. If you cant find something else to do then your lack of creativity is a case in itself as to why you are unfit to hold the office.

Old guys should stick to what they are best at doing. Guiding and giving advise. Even biology thinks so.

The idea of the documentary (As I understood it anyway) is to show or explore the connections made possible by technology and how these can be used or are helping the betterment of society. We live in a society that is hyper connected now even in the so called 3rd world and it has led to the proliferation of ideas, tastes, traditions and essentially the crafting of a global culture. Thousands of miles over land,sea, mountains and a plethora of other obstacles are reduced to nothing and people are connected in an instant.

The premise of the documentary will be to follow 5 young guys/guyettes from around the globe as they show their life and embarking on a transition be it graduating, moving to a new town/city etc and showing how this affects their outlook,the influence of their culture, dreams aspirations and their world view.

Clearly I wasn’t going to say no to that and consequently dived in faster than I could say frozen yoghurt!

Over the following months copious emails were exchanged between yours truly and Melissa culminating in a terribly amateur self interview that after extensive editing and videoshopping (I hope there is such a term) wound up on the trailer for the Sanskriti Documentary below. Oh and by the way Sanskriti is a Sanskrit word for “Culture”

More info about the Documentary can be found here.