Mashada Blogs » November 6, 2008

tHiNkEr'S rOoM: Hello world!

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:51:12 -0500

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tHiNkEr'S rOoM: Hello world!

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:18:14 -0500

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Rants, Raves & Reviews: Kenyan 'business' reporting - Pathetic or Worse?

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:45:00 -0500

Kenyan newspapers need to hire reporters who have a better understanding of ECONOMICS, FINANCE & BUSINESS.

An article by Wshington Gikunju titled "Foreign currency reserves slip below minimum" makes little sense!

I quote "The worsening of import cover position means that Kenya, a net importer, may face commodity shortages as importers struggle to obtain dollars to clear outstanding import bills."

There is no 'struggle' to obtain dollars. It's simply a question of paying for KShs for the US$. Furthermore, Kenya also imports from other countries e.g. Japan, Korea & the UK which can be paid in their own currencies & may have depreciated vs the US$.

Kenya has been importing foodstuffs among other non-essentials. These imports will be pricier thus benefiting local producers. Why do we import cereal (Weetabix is pretty good), eggs (crazy!), milk products like butter & cheese?

Fewer bags of grapes, apples & lychees isn't going to cause Kenyans much harm!

Fewer bottles of imported liquor, wine and beer will be good for KWAL, EABL & Keroche.

I quote "CBK could also be forced to limit its supply of dollars to the priority sectors of the economy such as oil, food and medicine importers. "

Huh? Did the guy say food? Except for wheat... there are few 'essential' foods that Kenya needs to import! Anyway, we should be encouraging production of sorghum & millet. Yes, these are much better 'foods' than wheat or maize.

Furthermore, in the long-term Kenyan importers will only import what Kenyans can afford. After all... they are businessmen...

As much as I shake my head at the silliness of importing cereals & eggs... at some point these will be too expensive to import & Kenyans will turn to local products.

I think Nation needs to hire someone with some sense of economics to review what these 'journalists' put out... Some of these comments/opinions create a sense of panic even though there is no need to be overly concerned!

BTW... in typical Kenyan style... when someone becomes 'powerful' the sycophancy starts! So Kogelo, a back water village will soon have electricity, piped water & adequate security!

You Missed This: A Year Quickly Gone By

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:19:00 -0500

Well, the past 12 months have no doubt etched themselves in the minds of many and will remain permanent bitter/sweet memories.

At a glance and not necessarily mentioning all worthy events

Political Leadership

From the recent historic election of Barrack Obama as the first African-American President of USA, voted for by over 64.6 million against McCain's 56.9 million in a record turnout, winning 349 electoral votes against McCain's 163 and major wins generally for all Americans who want change and believe that "yes they can" have change.

On our own home front, in reverse chronology we have seen politicians and leaders flip flop over the Waki report and the dispensation of justice for victims of political violence.

Then there is still the issue or glaring absence of a clear statement on the hijacked ship and its cargo

Prior to that we had a Kriegler report that tried very hard to tell us in legal or official terms what we already knew and further on went to recommend and tabulate what we had all asked for many times before since 2000. Side note: I remember once being told that a consultant is the best job one can hope for. Step 1 client approaches consultant (of course with prodding from consultant) and explains problem, consultant writes it down, client approves and pays for the information. Step 2, client lists possible solutions to problem, consultant writes report, client visibly impressed approves and pays for it. Step 3, client recommends workable implementation schedule, consultant documents as before and client pays. finally step 4 client implements solutions to problems under the "watchful eye" of consultant and yet again pays for the services. step 5 consultant identifies some flaws in the process and we begin at step 1. Now please note I have nothing but respect for consultants adn the vast experience and knowledge that can be tapped into to arrive speedily at workable solutions, but there are times when we need to look internally for the consultant.

We have also seen the 10th parliament exercise muscle and "discipline" an "errant" Min. of Finance. Needless to mention that another commission with a "strict timeline of 1 month" is still yet to table the results of its findings 5 months down and still counting. I have no idea what this commission will learn, and the impact of its findings considering that parliament more or less impeached the former minister.

Recall also revisiting the Mau forest saga and the long term socio-economic and environmental impact vis a vis the short term gratification of some dubious leadership attempting to capitalise largely on community ignorance for political mileage

Then there was the song and dance of protocol, with grown men behaving like elementary school children trying to be first on the queue, complete with bands of supporters.

This of course was brought on by the historic Peace Accord that created the position of a Prime Minister in a brokered negotiation pitting the three or is it four intransigent musketeers from each "aggrieved" camp disputing or supporting the 2007 elections outcome.

And of course the unresolved but finally accepted "as is" 2007 elections fiasco

Financial

On the money scene so far we have to contend with the true dealings of the Grand Regency saga

And earlier on the Safaricom IPO and the fate of those whose deposits are yet to be refunded and those whose investment has perhaps not gone as expected so far.

More details on financial matters are best found at bankelele blogspot which does an excellent round up of the local financial scene

Social Scene

The most significant issues on the social scene are first of all the continued anguish and double or even triple tragedy of IDPs i.e.

i) the inability for IDPs to re-integrate. even todate there are reports that all is not going well with the resettlement of IDPs, notwithstanding the fact that a few unscrupulous individuals have tried to make capital of true IDPs plight, many IDPs are not safe to return and be re-assimilated back into the communities that they have lived in for a long time.

ii) dealing with and living with the trauma of atrocities visited on them every cycle of violence that peaks during elections and the unresolved underlying issues and causes.

iii) the inability or impotence of leadership to firmly and decisively deal with the criminals sponsoring, supporting and organizing ethnic and political violence and discrimination both past and current

the second social issue is the exponentially increasing recalcitrance by irresponsible persons in positions of authority as well as their influence/stranglehold on institutions resulting in rampant culture of impunity that has now overtaken the already entrenched and deeply rooted culture of corruption .

the third issue is the re-emergence of a deadly ethnic bigotry and intolerance that is both unbelievable in its stupidity and outrageous in how far, deep and fast its spreading unabated.

other issue is such as the inability of leaders to reach out to communities so as to mutually develop and map out solutions to long standing issues such as destruction of eco-systems in the case of Mau forest or bridge ethnic tensions and animosity/intolerance or foster working relationships. And even more distressing is that our leadership todate still spends enormous amounts of time dealing with historical issues and only a nominal effort on today and the future. Its very well to talk of a Vision 2030, but other projects such as Water for all by 2000, Electricity for all 200? etc have come and gone, where are the reports/commissions of inquiry seeking to find what went wrong and what should be done better even as we look into V2030. Was thrilled to read the report that last night suddenly Kenya Power was in a frenzy installing electricity at Kogelo, what a fraud, but hey its still a good sign.

No doubt you can find other high and low points to ponder about in your own environment similar to the samples listed above

But even as its easy to blame leadership, lets also look inwards at ourselves and reflect on what we as individuals or in small groups can do to hack away at some of these problems. We need to assume at some point that leadership has failed but we cannot (afford to) fail

==

Finding some mutually acceptable high points on the Kenyan public scene is comically tragic because its been a bit of a see-saw (or teeter-totter) effect, i.e what pleases one side will almost certainly offend another party & vice-versa. We can see this effect replayed almost daily in some of the near juvenile comments as contributors try to outshine or taunt each other. Sadly some of that attitude is what exploded early this year and is therefore an indicator of the social maturity of us all as Kenyans

So the purpose of this post dear friends is not to lament on the misfortune or gloat over some minor or major victory, but to see if at all its possible to find a path out of this circuitous maze or mess.

First is the success story of Obama

But am also drawn to this amazing story of courage and a willingness to forgive but even above that, the commitment and selflessness of this young man through all his pain to come up with a project that honours that memory that he holds very dear. Oh yes indeed, there are many who can relate to the pain, but how many have turned their circumstances around?

Warrick Dunn is an NFL football player whose mother was gunned down in a fatal robbery incidence. But through his grief he was able to instead give back to society by setting up a foundation that works with single mothers to provide them an opportunity (that would otherwise never exist) for their first home ownership. You can follow Warrick's story in this MSNBC article

Oh yes people, out there amongst us some real heroes and heroines who are reaching out and touching people in different ways in their communities. We all know some amazing Kenyan stories out there and it would be a new dawn if we could start exposing some of these efforts and initiatives so that we can identify and support or complement the noteworthy efforts, and hopefully in the coming years move away from all this incessant rolling around in the murk of yesterday and embrace a new dawn for Kenya.

At the same time in the little time remaining before the next election, we need to maintain pressure on leaders and not take our eyes off the ball or away from the main causes of our current tribulations largely due to an obsolete constitution, coupled with current lethargic leadership evidently playing to shadowy corrupt entities and at the same time start addressing the past and recent injustices, and this song has been played over and over.

==

So in a nutshell am asking, have you come across or heard a great story of a Kenyan or maybe someone else in Kenya who has really made or is trying their best to make a difference or making the best of a bad situation? If yes, it would really be refreshing to hear about it, if not, how about yourself, what are you doing in your small way to make a difference, or perhaps even better, is there a way we can all work towards (perhaps a non or less political or more precisely circumvent where possible some of these political warlords) approach to addressing our burning issues and come up with solutions and means to push through some of these items?

Oh well, thought I might just throw that out there.

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Kikuyumoja's realm: Nokia Multiscanner

jke — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:00:46 -0500

While testing Nokia’s E71 two months ago, I couldn’t find the following application on the phone I’d read about somewhere else: Nokia Multiscanner. I know that it apparently comes pre-installed on both the E71 and the E66, but on my trial device, it was just missing. Since I already LOVE Nokia’s BarCode reader and think it is a very smart application, I didn’t hesitate for a second upon seeing it as an item on my feedreader today and installed it right away. Unfortunately, the original source of that blog post is currently offline, but Google still provides other interesting resources about Nokia Multiscanner.

[all screenshots are in German as my phone is set to German language]

Nokia Multiscanner is an application for S60V3 Nokia phones that provides Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for scanned texts. Currently, both business cards and document texts are supported - it even “reads” German texts and displays them on the screen for further usage.

available options: save image, adjust layout, binary image (?), language, image size

You can even zoom in and do the usual auto-focus to get your selected text in focus (doesn’t appear on these screenshots though as I had to simultaneously press two buttons at the same time to get the screenshot).

It will then display the scanned text and even ask you if you want to further save it as a note, a short message, mms or e-mail. Neat!

The beautiful part is that this application really works to an extend where it is somehow usable. Scanning business cards is even easier, as it will already group different parts of an address to different fields (the user may then still edit). See this forum contribution on Nokiaapps.org for more details on the procedure (also includes lots of interesting screenshots).

Nokia Multiscanner currently runs on my Nokia N95-1 and from what I’ve understood so far, Multiscanner was initially designed as a pocket translator tool - so the pure OCR functionality is a nice add-on.

As for scanning business cards, I will always recommend using Nokia’s Mobile BarCode Reader instead and sticking your very own personal barcode to the back of your phone.

tHiNkEr'S rOoM: About

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:58:44 -0500

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tHiNkEr'S rOoM: About

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:29:57 -0500

My Life is...Mochalicious!: ALWAYS DREAM BIG….

Mocha! — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:37:57 -0500

…..and always make them happen. Obama did…..what makes you any different? Posted in News and Politics, Of Kenya, special events Tagged: dreams are made of this, obama 2008

What An African Woman Thinks: Take a Look...

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:34:00 -0500

I've just bumped into a website about Nairobi that is some kind of awesome, just had to share.

Take a look at the different shapes and shades of this place I have the privilege of calling home: 24NairobiIt's my window, but I don't own the view.

Kenya Imagine: My Obamamania fear

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:45:00 -0500

t's everywhere! You can't escape it, even in the unlikely event that you might want to, but after about 48 hours of hearing Obama ringtones everywhere, seing Obama T-shirts, badges, American flags on Kenyans' cars and everyone suddenly becoming an expert on Obama, I could only take so much without the temptation of wanting to pull out one of my locks in protest! I mean, what happened to the other events going on in Kenya, like the operation in Mandera that has left a whole community without any abled men (not that anyone will do anything about it), the demolitions on Thika Rd (ok, so I heard James Smart on news say they will not be compensated) and everything else!

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