God Took His Angel Away

On September 28, 2009, my dad quietly left me behind to be with the Lord. I took comfort in my mum. An angel in flesh.

No one ever had a bad word to say about her. Stern and born a headmistress, but she had love thoroughly coursing through her veins, dishing help left, right, and center.

She ate through books like a proper bookworm. Always working. Super inquisitive.

God felt we have had it too good. Maybe we were getting too comfortable to think she was mortal like us. He suddenly and forcibly reminded us that she’s more of His than of us.

So on March 15, 2012, God took my mother away. Never for me to see her again.

Never to share a moment with her again.

I’m sad. Cranky. But yet grateful for the life she led.

When I grow up, I want to be like her.

Sleep well. DT Olowe.

From 6, then 5. And all the other numbers you can think of.

Genome on demand

The human genome was cracked some years ago by some mad hat scientists. That adventure took about 10 years although the completed map took another 3 years to show up. Guess what, same hack would take just a week if we are doing it today.

That was in 2000. Using the same extrapolation, your genome could be hacked and analyzed (and probably backed up on a USB drive, Lord helps you if it gets virus infected) in 19 minutes by year 2022 and 2 seconds in 2032.

Actually, those figures are wrong. I think at the rate at which we are going, our genomes could be analyzed online real time in 7 years. And with human models being simulated by some smart folks, vaccine and drug development would leave the realm of the lab into pure algorithms.

Maybe we would finally conquer cancer, engineer immortality, figure out teleportation and  finally do away with work. My vacation ends in 24 hours and I wonder why anyone hasn’t figured this out. Sad.

Back to blogging

Two things got me off blogging over the last 2months+.
First I divorced my previous web host because they got too cranky, nagging and wanted things I couldn’t give (more money!) despite the fact that their performance was just marginally better than a Russian Lada car raising a dust storm on a back road in Western Sahara. Along the line my bro hooked me up with another host but didn’t kind of fancy her (or it?). It lacked the pizzazz to make my blood sizzle. So like what boys do, I went searching for that fancy host. Found one, paid top dollars and guess what, absolutely rubbish! Too bad, premium wine down the basket, so back to the host I spurned – the one from my bro. maybe elders do know what is good for us after all.
Then I got into another function at work that practically sucked all the time I have. In fact, the few minutes I could eke out each day are spent thinking of how I could invent a time expander. Since Einstein said that time is relative, maybe I could find a way to get more minutes per hour, especially between 12 midnight and 5AM in the morn.
On a serious note, I’m actively considering my interest in ColdFusion. I have stick this for so long but I think Adobe is too greedy and too shortsighted that in 5 years, only dinosaurs would know how to write CF. Getting a decent hosting for a CF site is like asking for a pink elephant with wings. I could search forever.
Time to start punishing my friends with those crazy posts!

Power supply so good; and then so bad

I don’t know if it’s just my end alone but of recent the electricity supply from PHCN has been pretty good. In fact too good to be true. But who can satisfy Nigerians? Trust that I still need to gripe about it. Why? Well, it is a bit complicated. I use a prepaid meter and the non-stop electricity supply is zapping my “credit” so fast you could think that the utility meter is a stop watch. To get me even more annoyed, government announced that they are upgrading the prices to N25/KwH soon. Why do we always benchmark cost to other countries but we never do same for minimum wage or roads or rails or [*insert your gripe here*].

The following table shows the price of electricity per Kilowatt Hour across different countries. This should serve as a quick reference to what other guys pay in these countries.

Country$/KwHN/KwH
Kingdom of Tonga0.457073.12
Denmark0.428968.62
Italy0.372359.57
Netherlands0.347055.52
Germany0.306649.06
Philippines0.288046.08
Sweden0.273443.74
Ireland0.238938.22
Spain0.195031.20
France0.192530.80
UK0.185929.74
Croatia0.175528.08
Singapore0.173427.74
Portugal0.163926.22
Nigeria (Proposed)0.156325.00
Hong Kong0.123019.68
Iceland0.116118.58
Belgium0.114318.29
Perú0.104416.70
South Africa0.101516.24
USA0.092814.85
Malaysia0.074211.87
Australia0.071111.38
Finland0.069511.12
Nigeria (Currently)0.062510.00
Canada0.0618  9.89

Prevent message read status on Blackberry Messenger

That Blackberry share market is having a free fall faster than a rollercoaster is not news. That Blackberry is eating Nokia’s lunch in some markets, such as in Nigeria, is no news either.
It is also no secret that the number one feature that makes the Blackberry sticky is the Blackberry Messenger; quite a lot of good and as many evils can be done on it. One feature that I love most is that I could see when my message has been delivered and read. The one feature I hate most on BBM is that others could see when I have read their messages.
Isn’t that a contradiction? Well, I’m human and it is contradictions that make us Homo Sapiens.
You see, once in a while, I need to read messages while I decide if a response is required or not. But when a message you have seen shows as read at the other end, it could have unforeseen consequences. Proving that you are not ignoring the sender (which in this case, is what I want to do) could be a tight spot to wriggle out of.
I searched online for a way to defeat this feature but couldn’t find one until out of sheer serendipity, I discovered a solution.
You can keep those short-tempered and pesky folks out of your hair if you do the following:

  1. Make sure your BBM is configured to Save Chat History. To configure, open BBM, select options and scroll down to the Save Chat History; select Media Card
  2. When you get a chat from someone who you want to hide from, delete the chat without opening to read it.
  3. Now select the sender’s profile and using the Blackberry menu button, select View Chat History.

You will be able to read all the messages without the sender’s status changing to Read at the other end.
Now, configuring your BBM to Save Chat History is really dangerous and could land you in serious trouble. But since I’m exposed to the same risk, I would probably never talk about it.