African Geeky Links
The new go-one. My science-fiction visions of a future when the world walks according to laws of nature includes technology from Germany. The carbon-fiber go-one should be the human-powered vehicle on the minds of an elder me and my children’s children. We need to drop that bug-eyed “Benz car” crap. How many more people have to die before we give up this fossil-fueled dinosaur shit?
Fela’s mother was the first Nigerian woman on record to drive a car. So another missionary movement imported into Africa is “the struggle” for “woman’s rights” recognizable by white women. We are not going to theorize about the possibility that the quality of African manhood was degraded by colonial influence dating back to Arab conquests. We are going to play along at the UN, wine-and-cheese party and mention an interesting Blog post, “Fela and The State” by Chippla Vandu. It is an interesting article—and Chippla is on my Blog roll.
IronPython Dies and Goes to Microsoft Beta. I wonder what Python maven Uche Ogbuji thinks of “Microsoft Forges Ahead With IronPython, Visual Basic 9.0.” My guess is that he would say something like, “Great for you when you are stuck with Windows—at least you have a decent language to grok with…” Then I would ask, ‘Ain’t “grok” some kind of caveman character in a Sunday news comic strip?’ Then he would get all silent and turn to someone else at the wine-and-cheese party and start a new conversation.
*Rapper DMX Horrified by Koboko/Whips in Concert in Nigeria. *“PerCeption V Reality from MTV to NTV” by CyBlug appeals to the African “geek” because we should first be fascinated that an African American “rap artist” like DMX performed in Nigeria. We are then are to be surprised about his reaction to the brutality the “security forces” inflicted on his concert audience.
Burner software. So you got all of those Nigerian films on VHS and CD-ROM sized disks. What about street-level DVD? CDBurnerXP Pro shows some promise but can’t recognize my Pioneer DVD writer and there’s a free version of DeepBurner. I have messed around with Padus DiscJuggler as well. Also there’s DVD Shrink that is available here.
*Getting small stones in your eyes during Harmattan. *The Harmattan is tan “winter” in Africa. What Adesua from Lagos writes in “Harmattan…Autumn, Fall…” reminds us who study Africa in books to get familiar with the intimate, real details of life there to protect ourselves from any rude awakenings when we take our first trip home. This first-person, primary source information is invaluable. The Blog can be truly wonderful.