Fake Assistant Commissioner of Police

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So today I woke up to this fascinating news piece.

Fake assistant commisioner

 

I wasn’t even shocked. That a notorious highway robber could be indistinguishable from regular  senior police officers should be enough to be worried about let alone the fact that cops really do not know their bosses and anyone in an appropriate uniform could pass for the commissioner of police.

And then the case of the cops that were being fired by this fake commissioner. I find it impossibly hard to swallow how oblivious of the pecking order they were. And where is the real assistant commissioner anyway because I assume the post exists?

This is embarrassing an several levels least of which being the sheer amount of time this has been going on. A day or a week would be acceptable but 2 years? Are the junior cops that scared of their superiors that anyone with senior ranking uniform is unquestioned?

Wonder what Kimaiyo will do about this.

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Gay Awards

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So the Auspicious KHRC decided that they would hold an awards ceremony for all the supporters of the gay community and to all those that have contributed to this good fight.

 

I must say the way it was portrayed in most mainstream media was rather appalling.  What I understood from the news reports was that gay people were being awarded and I was obviously perturbed as to the rationale behind the whole affair.

Needless to say it appears mainstream media and by extension the general public is far from being tolerant to and accepting of the gay community if the reactions on twitter were anything to go by. Twitter for me is a very useful barometer of what the middle class intelligentsia /consuming class is harping on about, what the latest outrage by the ruling class is or the latest ignorance or ‘shagzmodo’ behavior emanating from the ‘ghettos’ . All in all it paints a rather accurate picture of what the public thinks of current affairs and it doesn’t get more current than having a gay awards gala.

I can understand why the Kenya  Human Rights Commission would want to award those who advocate for gay rights. Its a tough world out there for gays and  especially worse here in Africa. Ask the regular African pedestrian what he thinks of gay people and he/she will say its unafrican. I have always been stumped by this universal opinion. I mean, how far back in our history can we pinpoint and say “See. For thousands of years Africa has not had a single gay man or woman. There are the records’ you can pore through them and see being gay is very unafrican.”

I believe this notion was a cultural import by the puritan and prudish missionaries that landed in Mombasa and decided that worshiping a Caucasian featured Jew who supposedly died thousands of years ago was better for the community than the spiritual based religion they found. As John Lennon once asked, “Why do we hide when making love but glorify violence in the open?”

Its about time we stopped this fear based attacks on individuals freedoms on their sexual orientation. Its really none of your business what a man decides to do with another man.

 

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Mac OS X vs Windows 7 Usability

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I use a Macbook Pro running Mac OSX 10.7.5 and its safe to say its a tough sale for anyone with a linux and windows background. The OS is restrictive, very few customizations that I can use and though beautiful, wants you to buy all the apps. It also doesn’t help that the proprietary format of the apps and the immense cost of owning one of these machines greatly reduces its mass market appeal.

Screenshot

Screenshot

Recently the need for a windows environment necessitated the installation of windows on the macbook and nowadays the only way to go is 64 bit so as to utilize the full RAM. The process was painless enough what with the help from the mac based Boot Camp app that does the hard disk partitioning for you and downloads the latest windows drivers for the apple hardware.

I find the mac environment to be more stable(as compared to Windows 7), tends to consume less resources of the machine doing the same task and feels more fluid in carrying out transitions between windows, minimizing , maximizing and related actions on the interface. Application interactions with the OS are however much more restricted leading to some frustrations if you are a previous windows or linux user. For instance, I have not found a way to configure a bittorrent client to initiate a system shut down when it finishes    downloading a torrent. I do not like wasting resources and keeping the Macbook on all night with most of those hours spent doing nothing sounds unattractive to me. Also no USB tethering of your smartphone for internet access. I did not understand this one.

Also moving files back and forth between an external hard disk and the macbook is a pain for no particularly apparent reason. A multitude of other nuances that are taken for granted in the other environments are just not doable here. I suppose these are meant to make the OS very limited in terms of what an unknowing user can mistakenly change by installing a rogue app.

I still find myself mostly booting into the Mac environment more when I want to have some fun be it writing this blog post, playing music or watching a movie. The windows side is for the boring stuff, project work, report writing, document editing etc.

The Mac is made for the wealthy as is evidenced by its price, content and usability quirks. That being said I do not find its interface advantages big enough to warrant investment by a regular laptop/computer user.

 

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Gtide E7 Vs Samsung Galaxy Pocket

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Am an Android Freak. And that’s only because windows phone is feeling sexy punda (Phrase borrowed from @machomoja) with East Africa and their definition of an entry level smartphone hops along with a Kshs 16,000  price tag. No thanks.

Seeing as we have established my cheapskate credentials, allow me to introduce the latest Chinese smart phone from the company locally known as G Tide (and internationally going by whatever you feel like calling it that morning) that has been rocking my world for the past 4 days.

I have a Samsung Galaxy pocket that has disappointed me severally with a plethora of problems that custom ROMS have not resolved yet. The teeny-weeny screen, plasticky feel, average battery life and pre-installed bloat crapware drove me nuts.

*side Rant-\

The galaxy pocket comes with the following pre-installed and nonremovable on the stock rom without rooting the device.

  • Accuweather.com app though there is an inbuilt android weather app.
  • Some Yahoo! finance nonsense
  • Samsung apps app plus it forces you to download some other Samsung ad things and push services
  • Operamini 6.5 that CANNOT be upgraded.
  • Some educational and music apps that I really did not care about.

Now the pocket comes with a GB of  phone memory and 2GB of user memory so storage and app installation even without a memory card is plenty. The thing however hangs for me every single day without fail like clockwork and goes to a crash upload mode that rarely ends and when it does, just for dramatic effect, the screen goes off, the phone becomes unresponsive and it proceeds to enter an epileptic vibration mode which only ends when the charge runs out.

The 3G is also extremely flaky and I am forced to restart the thing every few hours just to keep myself connected to the internet.

Not Impressed.

*End Side Rant-/

The Gtide E7 is an Android based smartphone running gingerbread on a 1GHZ ARMv7 based processor. No GPU as far as I can tell and sports a 3.5 inch capacitive HVGA screen, 2 mp back camera and a 0.3 mp front facing camera. And of course all the other usual suspects, GPS, HSDPA, 32GB memory card support, WiFi, Bluetooth, gyro sensor, gravity sensor, ambient light sensor etc

Now what sold me (refer to cheap skate inference above) was the price. You get all this for Kshs. 7,000 . Thats right just 7 Ndovus.

The galaxy pocket costs Kshs. 10,000, has fewer capabilities and is loaded with crapware. Granted the G-tide doesn’t come with the fancy e-warranties and support declarations from the parent company but solid performance is delivered nonetheless.

Below are some rudimentary  photos I took of the phone. I haven’t figured out how to take screenshots of the phone yet but will post as soon as I can.

 

Battleship the Movie

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If there was ever a disappointing flick after the hype that came before it has to be Battleship 

Horrible plot points, moronic logic and a waste of the hard disk space on my machine. Not to mention wasting 2hrs of my life. The thing is an attempt at displaying the bravado of the US military and somehow the inherent reformist nature  that the armed forces instills in you when faced with life and death situations.

*spoiler/

So the premise is that we sent a message into deep space at a planetary system we believe may harbor life and sure enough a bunch of alien craft decide to pay us a visit right in the middle of an international naval exercise. First of all their timing is perfect but their subsequent actions make little sense. They create a force field for miles around themselves and retaliate whenever attacked but for some reason do not finish off all the other military equipment within the force field and let them sail around strategizing how to destroy the new enemy.

-*Spoiler

The logic is moronic and making sense is a bit important for me. Or maybe I am just not the demographic that was targeted. Felt more like it was targeted at American high-school goers with the competitive sports, petty rivalry and attempts to impress the pretty girl.

Would NOT recommend for anyone.

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Are Shortcuts that bad?

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The universal knowledge that is spewed by all that are around the young and those aspiring for greatness is the importance of working hard and avoiding shortcuts, no exceptions. This I imagine is to breed discipline, perseverance and can do attitude that will harbor well for their future. It is mostly universally ignored however if the state of our society is anything to go by.

The universal truth of this preaching is unquestioned. . .until now by me anyway. Judging from the extensive university exposure I have had the pleasure of having, Shortcuts save your life and if you can’t cheat then you are doomed to be used, unappreciated and generally miserable of your surroundings. Granted those who study copious volumes of the recommended text and understand all the taught concepts relevant or not will  may wind up more knowledgable and better off than their coasting colleagues. This is assuming that the guy not very interested in the  class some how done under the surveying degree programme did nothing better with his time. He/she probably got wasted, figured out what women really wanted(or rather what they respond best to) and the complex yet predictable world of liars, drunkards, junkies and con men. All invaluable skills in navigating the actual world outside the campus halls. So who actually leaves better prepared for life?

Ofcourse it is possible to juggle the two lifestyles and come out on top both academically and street smart wise but jack of all trades is a master f none. And besides being street smart will ensure your academics are tip-top seeing as University is just another jungle. Different animals and rules but a jungle none the less.

The thing with rules, laws and regulations is that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. They are slaves to detail, precedent and tradition. A very detailed law has many restrictions but just as many loopholes and interpretations. Copious laws and regulations are not a deterrent to a determined wrong-doer but an invitation because wherever there is complexity, there is reduced understanding , different interpretation and opportunity o manipulate. Look at the Bible. Everyone has their own version of what every verse of every chapter of every book means.Crazy is an understatement.

The likes of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook guy, support the idea of making things that work however crude they are and working on improving them later. basically he is talking about prototyping but essentially on a production scale. Code hard and fast, get something working, ship, improve and iterate.

In my opinion this glorifies and validates shortcut taking. Make the product in the fastest cheapest way possible, improve and iterate till you have the best possible. Come to think of it this is what the most valuable company on the planet (Apple Inc) does. Launch a product with most features missing, launch sequels as you slowly improve design, fix flaws and add better features to the older chassis. As Seth Godin preaches, refining a product till you are satisfied with it before launching it is a recipe for disaster. At your first launch, you should be ashamed by what you are calling your product.

Engineering is all about looking for, refining and making shortcuts. Want to move goods thousands of miles? Build a thing that rolls on rails to carry them and fit an engine at the front to pull it. Efficient, useful and that’s right a shortcut. I think we should glorify the guys who find shortcuts to doing things because more often than not it is the most efficient way of carrying out the said tasks.

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

University Education in Kenya

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Wikipedia defines Universities as autonomous bodies of academia that determine internally the qualification of its graduates and teaching staff. It is basically a fiefdom with the vice chancellor being the  top honcho. Basically the degree you have(if you have one some of us are still on the hustle) is only accredited/verified by the university you went to. The reputation of  the university you go to is everything. There is no central body that issues exams for assessment. If your university is considered dodgy then you are in for problems.

There are more universities than I can bother to count in Nairobi alone and getting a degree has become the equivalent of finishing high school a few years back Not xactly something to brag about. Getting an education that does not involve bachelors somewhere in the nomenclature of its documentation relegates you to failurehood. The bit of the social fabric that was  the education system has all but decayed now atleast in the public sector anyway. The rich have never had a problem getting an education and they are thus not in the scope of this post.

I have recently enrolled on codecademy.com, coursera.org to try get rid of my ignorance And I must say it has been a very rewarding experience seeing as you choose the class you want to go to and your desired pace. Many Ivy league universities have hopped on to the bandwagon that is online delivered lecturing. I think for most of these lecturers, teaching is something they love doing not necessarily to pay the bills. The attraction of teaching potentially millions of students who are genuinely as opposed to a sleepy class of 40 – 50 students may just be too much to resist. In the meantime our University dons are pretty comfortable to tell us to burn software/reports on CD-ROMs for marking.

Now let me research about who Prof. Yajnik was that he got the most famous monument on campus named after him (or her?).