Road Trips

Just out of university, we always envied the guys who would take a weekend off, or even a day off, get into the car and just drive, where to, no particular destination in mind.

Last weekend I got to enjoy this, and boy it was a trip to remember. Kenya is beautiful and no one should try and convince you otherwise. The green hills which turn blue as you look further into the horizon, the flora and fauna, the people, the food damn.

So we drove down to Masinga dam made some new friends with some jamaaz in the armed forces, took some hilarious photos




On our way to Nai, it was a night that we would like to forget as soon as possible. First somebody hit our right side mirror, and damn we were cruising at almost 120-130Km/h. That was a fucking close shave. Then after celebrating that we reached allsops ok, we rammed into a mat after it hit emergency brakes, thanks I was awake to hit the brakes early enuff only to 'dara' the mat kidogo. Just as expected a small tussle started on who was on the wrong and who should pay who, despite the damage being so minimal on both cars that it was hardly noticeable. At the end we parted ways and agreed kila mtu to take care of his own mess.

We fikad Emba, well dropped mama watoto na mtoto and then went out to pick Hawks mama from a bridal shower, which turned out that the bridal shower was turned to a sex lesson!!!! Dont gals nu that we think with our lower head most of the time and when we are not we are thinking on its behalf, hehehe.

A stopover at Carnival for the rock concert turned out to be a waste of money as we didnt spend even 30mins inside bt parted with 1200/= for the 4 of us as entrance fees...and then went back to Emba after dropping the 4th one and substituting the driver as he was dozing off.

All in all it turned out to be a fab weekend n looking forward to the next road trip.

let the shows begin

Is Africa(or South Africa to be precise) coming out of the shadow of its "bigger brothers" when it comes to tv?

This is a question that ran thru my mind, after realising that every Tuesday and Wednesday between 7.30pm and 8.30pm I am usually at home glued to the screen following two must see SA's tv shows, the lab and jacob's cross respectively.

These are two shows I wont miss for the world, and if ma chick is at home wanting to watch her who knows what, or wants some action, it will have to wait, or we just get a spare telly, though I am not so sure about the action bit. The point is these are two shows that keeps me glued to the screen the way Alexandro keeps a gal glued to the screen.

The fact that they are South African has little to do with me loving them, but am an ardent fan because they are mature, well shot, well thought out and captivating, just like CSI or NCSI or Jack Bauer or The Unit will interest me any time. This clearly shows that Africa, or South Africa is coming out to exploit its unique stories and make some doo while at it.

For once we have something African to watch. There is quite a growing list of SA shows worth looking out for. Watch this space!

Its quite sad that in Kenya, its only Dr Alfred Mutua who is ruling the waves with his jua kali productionz.

The intrigues of the banking sector in Kenya

A bank is a sensitive place. Its where some of us tend to keep our money and money being a sensitive, emotive and personal issue the way we know it we are usually careful when choosing which bank to keep our money etc

Me being this "smart ass" I am decided to take a loan with CBA. CBA is a respectable bank from its looks, the kind of customers who bank there and even its services all which come at a fee.



All this time I bore in mind, that since I am dealing with a big bank with big charges, the least I can get is good service, but alas, mediocrity knows no boundaries. I went to Wabera branch and after speaking with the advances department I get the requirements, which I fulfill obediently as you dont play with banks since they can screw you inside out. After which all is deemed ok and the application is forwarded to the next branch, Westlands, apparently because "my employer is bound to the Westlands branch", and the Westlands branch comes up with its own requirements, half of which I cant fulfil and had I known earlier about this 'hidden' half, I would not even had handed in my application, yet its the same bank that I am talking about. Talk about hidden charges and hidden requirements, totally blows!!! To cover for this they gave a very long explanation of how their interest is on a reducing balance, hallo, which bank isn't.

My 2 sense to you:

• Avoid CBA like a leper. I have heard so many guys complain about this bank until it happened to me!
• Take your money to the cheaper guys, such that when their service sucks, you ain't paying a leg and an arm for it.

Dear Blog

Dear blog,

I have been a bad boy and have forsaken you. I have been unfaithful to you and have been seeing someone else my wap blog She is good, at least, she gives me my freedom. I can see her anywhere I am and we do it wherever I might be. She is light, as you know me am obsessed by small. She fits in my pocket and no way is she demanding when it comes to her maintenance.

I am no way divorcing with you. You are my first love and you know as they say, '..the first cut is the deepest..'. You are stable and you will always support me, something I cant have with my number 2. You are strong, can multi-task and damn you can know how to dress up, especially when I facilitate it. You are my first love.

This is no way a divorce, its just alerting you that in case you will be looking for me, most likely you will find me in my second home, but always remember you are my first.

Yours lovingly

iHub

Nairobi skyline got a new addition not long ago, the new Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Road (directly opposite the Uchumi Hyper and was opened a few days ago. Although the buzz about new business parks are not so big, the buzz about the iHub needs all the attention it deserves.



The iHub is meant to be an innovation center for techies, developers and innovators. The aim of the organisers was a place that any developer could walk in with nothing on him and get provided with a workstation and internet, and all they got to do was develop or come up with stuff, all this absolutely free of charge, hey no surfers allowed.



This is the way to go, as there are a lot of smart guys out there with no means of putting ideas into action. This is just amazing. I attended the launch of iHub jana and it was good to see who is who in the IT field was there. The amazing thing was that almost all of the guys there were of age 40 and below, or 90% of the guys were 40 and below.

This is just what us developers need.

Jaw dropping inventions

This Prnav Mistry guy demos in simple language that sci-fi is no longer sci-fi but the inevitable reality.

Integrating MySQL with R, the statistical package

For the better part this morning I have been trying to get MySQL working with R. I was able to download and install RMySQL but getting it to load was a nightmare. Every time I ran library(RMySQL) it always gave me the error:

Loading required package: DBI
Error in if (utils::file_test("-d", MySQLhome)) break :
argument is of length zero
Error : .onLoad failed in 'loadNamespace' for 'RMySQL'
Error: package/namespace load failed for 'RMySQL'

I am running R on a WinXP SP2, MySQL v5.0.51 and R v2.10. The problem that I came to figure out was that R was trying to connect to the wrong version of MySQL. Typing

readRegistry("SOFTWARE\\MySQL AB", hive="HLM", maxdepth=2)

to see the versions of MySQL's in the registry gave:

QL Connector/ODBC 3.51`
$`MySQL Connector/ODBC 3.51`$Version
[1] "3.51.27"


$`MySQL Server 5.0`
$`MySQL Server 5.0`$Location
[1] "C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.0\\"

$`MySQL Server 5.0`$Version
[1] "5.0.51a"

This basically means that there are 2 instances of MySQL in the registry, ie MySQL v3.51 and v.5.0.51. Gotcha, this is the problem:

When connecting to MySQL R usually uses the first instance of MySQL found in the registry. In my case it was trying to connect to MySQL v3.51.

The problem is solved by removing this instance from the registry.
Go to

Start->Run

Type in regedit

Navigate to HKLM(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)->Software->MySQL Server 5.0.

Click on the folder with the unwanted MySQL and delete it.

Now try again to load RMySQL and BINGO you are done, or so I hope!!!