The past few days I've looked at various information on writing blogs. The advantage of mailing lists is that you can write out things quickly and move onto other subjects. Blogging is very interesting for writers. Though I've not written any blogs so far, I realized that content is different. You do things based on analysis which I find quite interesting, something we do many times here. I'll do some blogs over time for skunksWorks KE and if time further allows on my site. ( it'll depend on subject as I can only assume that skunks blog site will be moderated towards mostly tech info and discussions. I'd hate to rant about safcom or other things on official blog sites) My search also led me to blog aggregators and it seems we only have 2 in kenya. I think its KWB and Mashada. My view is that there should be more blog aggregators with more information and stats of blog sites etc. I feel we have let down @Saidimu who had started a very interesting project and went to a lot of effort to put down the threads that could have been a key development here, there has been no chat back and fourth on his threads since last week unless it went offlist. @Saidimu, kindly update please. Gentlemen, Ladies. Happy blogging on skunksworks KE. The site is here : http://blog.my.co.ke/ as pointed out by @Phares and if you look at the comment portion, it shows the kind of feedback kenyans are looking at out there. Hope to see you online at the blog or on email. Geographically we are ahead of the game in ICT and we should take the lead with content on technology and other things too. As usual, its me thots and corrections are welcome. :-) Rgds.
Ice Man, here's a little update on what's happening with PetrolTracker: The prototype is shaping up decently, I spend about an hour a day working on it. Right now it can parse a message, extract location, return cheapest price etc etc, and geocode the location (turn the location name, e.g. "Koinange Street" into a latitude-longitude like -1.284227, 36.818868) The hard part is getting it to return the cheapest price *closest* to you. This involves calculating the distances between the user's lat-lon and the stations' lat-lons. It isn't a trivial problem, but there are excellent libraries that make this a bit easier. I collected about 30 stations' worth of lat-lons, though I was surprised at how many petrol stations there are in Nairobi! This tiny list is for testing purposes, there are still too many stations missing. There's a central project status page for anyone wishing to get involved or to keep up with what's going on. The going is slow as I'm the only one working on it. If you feel inclined, check out the info on the site below and decide how to get involved. https://code.google.com/p/petroltracker/ Saidi On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 4:38 PM, The Ice Man <aki275@googlemail.com> wrote:
The past few days I've looked at various information on writing blogs. The advantage of mailing lists is that you can write out things quickly and move onto other subjects. Blogging is very interesting for writers. Though I've not written any blogs so far, I realized that content is different. You do things based on analysis which I find quite interesting, something we do many times here. I'll do some blogs over time for skunksWorks KE and if time further allows on my site. ( it'll depend on subject as I can only assume that skunks blog site will be moderated towards mostly tech info and discussions. I'd hate to rant about safcom or other things on official blog sites) My search also led me to blog aggregators and it seems we only have 2 in kenya. I think its KWB and Mashada. My view is that there should be more blog aggregators with more information and stats of blog sites etc.
I feel we have let down @Saidimu who had started a very interesting project and went to a lot of effort to put down the threads that could have been a key development here, there has been no chat back and fourth on his threads since last week unless it went offlist. @Saidimu, kindly update please.
Gentlemen, Ladies. Happy blogging on skunksworks KE. The site is here : http://blog.my.co.ke/ as pointed out by @Phares and if you look at the comment portion, it shows the kind of feedback kenyans are looking at out there. Hope to see you online at the blog or on email. Geographically we are ahead of the game in ICT and we should take the lead with content on technology and other things too.
As usual, its me thots and corrections are welcome. :-)
Rgds. _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------ Skunkworks Server donations spreadsheet
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On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:17 PM, saidimu apale <saidimu@gmail.com> wrote:
Ice Man, here's a little update on what's happening with PetrolTracker: The prototype is shaping up decently, I spend about an hour a day working on it.
@Saidi, roger that! :-)) Thanks for the update, thought we had lost you. Have a suggestion for you, hear me out. I think your apps and the process will do an excellent presence on the skunks blog site. Though it is not an online forum, it's much better. These days most younger generations are all smart devices, facebook, twitter etc. To have a technical forum just for technologists is to restrict ourselvers to a few people. Telling the younger generations to join a tech forum would be like the most boring thing to do. With the blog site, our image is much more friendlier and easy going. Let us write for kenyans and those in the region. Let us establish the blog as the face between technology and everyone else out there. Overtime, we may just generate enough interest to start getting more and more members. And the benefit will be to the skunks cloud. The skunks blog is new ground. I'm one of the first to be there and making it my next presence. I'm asking other pioneers to join up and create a newer and better presence on the net. Market yourselves as technologists, specialists, hobbyists etc on the skunks blog site, there is no harm in this. There are so many kenyans who are doing it on face book, twitter and other social media and making new contacts, making new business, making themselves known so as to grow in their fields or careers, get funding etc what is stopping anyone from this list? You are all good at what you do. With all that said, my focus now is the blog site and am already working on my first article to post next weekend. I hope others will become pioneers and join the race to make the site one of the top resources not only in kenya but the region. This remains our in-direct responsibilty and commitment to lay the framework and build upon. Everything starts small, the growth is what we make it. Too much said from me, I'll save the words for the blog site. Me thots and catcup up soon. :-) Best.
IceMan, I'm sold on the idea of posting to the skunks-ke blog. The main PetrolTracker site (https://code.google.com/p/petroltracker/) is more than just a blog/wiki, its main purpose is as a source-code repository and issue-tracker/project-mgmt tool so people can keep-up with the project without requiring updates directly from me. It is also a central place to see/track/review everyone's involvement. Here's what I suggest: if whoever posts content to skunks-ke sees content that they would like to re-post, I would be more than happy to oblige. I will also strive to cross-blog when it makes sense to, e.g. some posts may be too technical for the general skunks-ke population (I'm not sure how many are interested in language parsers etc). I haven't had time to post much on https://code.google.com/p/petroltracker/, there's only 1 very brief wiki on a basic grammar implementation using a language parser (ANTLR) https://code.google.com/p/petroltracker/wiki/PetrolTrackerGrammar. I would like to post more on that, and other issues, but time is money and I'm not (yet) a billionaire. To reiterate, I'm game with regards to posting on the skunks-ke blog. I'd rather not have (yet another) set of passwords to remember, I hope I can send whatever material I have (or whatever anyone requests) to someone who can then post them. Would this work? Saidi On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 1:01 AM, The Ice Man <aki275@googlemail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:17 PM, saidimu apale <saidimu@gmail.com> wrote:
Ice Man, here's a little update on what's happening with PetrolTracker: The prototype is shaping up decently, I spend about an hour a day working on it.
@Saidi, roger that! :-))
Thanks for the update, thought we had lost you. Have a suggestion for you, hear me out.
I think your apps and the process will do an excellent presence on the skunks blog site. Though it is not an online forum, it's much better. These days most younger generations are all smart devices, facebook, twitter etc. To have a technical forum just for technologists is to restrict ourselvers to a few people. Telling the younger generations to join a tech forum would be like the most boring thing to do.
With the blog site, our image is much more friendlier and easy going. Let us write for kenyans and those in the region. Let us establish the blog as the face between technology and everyone else out there. Overtime, we may just generate enough interest to start getting more and more members. And the benefit will be to the skunks cloud.
The skunks blog is new ground. I'm one of the first to be there and making it my next presence. I'm asking other pioneers to join up and create a newer and better presence on the net. Market yourselves as technologists, specialists, hobbyists etc on the skunks blog site, there is no harm in this. There are so many kenyans who are doing it on face book, twitter and other social media and making new contacts, making new business, making themselves known so as to grow in their fields or careers, get funding etc what is stopping anyone from this list? You are all good at what you do.
With all that said, my focus now is the blog site and am already working on my first article to post next weekend. I hope others will become pioneers and join the race to make the site one of the top resources not only in kenya but the region. This remains our in-direct responsibilty and commitment to lay the framework and build upon. Everything starts small, the growth is what we make it.
Too much said from me, I'll save the words for the blog site.
Me thots and catcup up soon. :-)
Best. _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------ Skunkworks Server donations spreadsheet
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AopdHkqSqKL-dHlQVTMxU1VBdU1BSWJxdy1f... ------------ Skunkworks Rules http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94 ------------ Other services @ http://my.co.ke
participants (2)
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saidimu apale -
The Ice Man