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Monday, August 15, 2011

New Stuff Coming!

The last 2 months have been full of slow and painful events which I am quite grateful for.  The days have left me with many more plans, ideas that I am more than ever enthusiastic about bringing to fruition.

I will be hitting this website with updates on my creations, my education in my career path(and the many cyber attacks that I have faced) and my most recent side kick.

Below are some of the images I saw from a website called Back of  A Web Page. Really nice ish.

Back of a webpage

Category: Just Saying // // 1 Comment »

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Thursday, July 07, 2011

Top 2 ways to improve blog traffic now!

I have spent many months trying to find out how to drive traffic to various websites. In fact, I  have made it much of a study. Many of the online articles you see about driving traffic to your websites say the same things.

In fact, quite recently, I read an article on Incomediary titled The Missing Link To More Blog Traffic and I got a little pissed when after reading the whole post, he actually never talked about the missing link to more blog traffic and gave a further link to the WordPress SEO Blueprint.

I would just say: There are two key ways to get traffic to your site.

1. Content is Key!

Write good content. In fact write excellent content. This is why people will want to read more. Spend time reading and cross-checking your write-up. Ask yourself this question: If I came to this website without knowing about this topic, will I find this an interesting read?

Yes, content is key. Content is the foundation.  But then just like the above website said, the foundation is not enough. Build the house. That takes us to the next important thing:

 

2. How to select keywords or titles

So you have your content ready? What next? FIND A GOOD TITLE!

Here is how! Go to Google.com, type in a title you feel makes a good one for your article. See the auto-suggestions. See the ones that pop in your face.

For instance, if I wrote an article that featured how to write great content, I would go and type these words in Google.


 

The suggestions will help me rephrase my words as I would like to put myself in the minds of those searching.

Category: Just Saying // // 1 Comment »

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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Changing GRUB boot order in Ubuntu 11.04

I recently downloaded and installed a copy of the new Ubuntu 11.04. The new interface is truly awesome. I have slowly grown to love the idea of Linux. Yes and yes, Linux doesn’t have as much support as the other proprietary operating systems as of now. So once in a while I am still forced to go back to my Windows partition when I need to get some other work done.

The interesting thing about Ubuntu is that GRUB changes the boot sequence to Linux options first, leaving the Windows to be the last option.

I did quite a bit of search on the internet and most of the solutions did not work for me because they offered solutions for GRUB and not GRUB2 which is what’s loaded on Ubuntu 11.04. You can find a list of solutions for GRUB by clicking any of these links:

For the earlier version of GRUB, you would have to do this:

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst_backup

That has changed now. With GRUB 2 you can no longer edit /boot/grub folder. You now have to go to /etc/default/ folder.  To do that run this command in terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

That will bring out a list of configurations similar to this:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”"
# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console
# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo’
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640×480
# Uncomment if you don’t want GRUB to pass “root=UUID=xxx” parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true
# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entrys
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY=”true”

 

Where GRUB default = 0, you change it to your value. 0 means the first option in your list. UPDATE: If Windows is on the 5th option, then you change that to 4.

After changing that, its important for you to update by running:

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

Or your changes won’t be made.

Have fun!

Category: Other Experiments // // 6 Comments »

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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Understanding GIT. And Github

Part 1

You will most likely be reading this if you are a programmer, or if you work on medium to large projects. Or well, if you as enthusiastic about gaining knowledge.. like me. You may also be interested in this if you will be working remotely with other users, especially if you will be creating Open Source software.

For the past couple of months, I had been seeing the word ‘GIT’ thrown around the internet through forums, blogs and videos. At a point, I even got me a free download of the book, ‘Getting Good with GIT’ on Nettuts. I registered on the social coding website Github sometime three months ago, tried for hours to understand it, then dropped it. I have been quite familiar with using CVSs and Subversion because I have hosted a few plugins on WordPress(You will need to know a bit of those to host your plugins on WordPress’ servers). I just checked the website and the link to getting a free copy of Getting Good with GIT is not there. If you want a copy, just leave a comment and I will email it to you.

Through a bit of research and a bit of screwing and unscrewing things, I finally understand how to go about Git, and Github. I will be going through a bit of my own personal experiences but permit me to lift a few things from an article I read on an Harvard.edu document by Charles Duan.

Why GIT?

The purpose of Git is to manage a project, or a set of files, as they change over time. Git stores this information in a data structure called a repository.
A git repository contains, among other things, the following:

  • A set of commit objects.
  • A set of references to commit objects, called heads.

The Git repository is stored in the same directory as the project itself, in a subdirectory called .git. Note differences from central-repository systems like CVS or Subversion:

  • There is only one .git directory, in the root directory of the project.
  • The repository is stored in files alongside the project. There is no central server repository.

What is a Commit?

A commit object contains three things:

  • A set of files, reflecting the state of a project at a given point in time.
  • References to parent commit objects.
  • An SHA1 name, a 40-character string that uniquely identifies the commit object. The name is composed of a hash of relevant aspects of the commit, so identical commits will always have the same name.The parent commit objects are those commits that were edited to produce the subsequent state of the project. Generally a commit object will have one parent commit, because one generally takes a project in a given state, makes a few changes, and saves the new state of the project. The section below on merges explains how a commit object could have two or more parents.

A project always has one commit object with no parents. This is the first commit made to the project repository.
Based on the above, you can visualize a repository as a directed acyclic graph of commit objects, with pointers to parent commits always pointing backwards in time, ultimately to the first commit. Starting from any commit, you can walk along the tree by parent commits to see the history of changes that led to that commit.
The idea behind Git is that version control is all about manipulating this graph of commits. Whenever you want to perform some operation to query or manipulate the repository, you should be thinking, “how do I want to query or manipulate the graph of commits?”

What is a Head?

A head is simply a reference to a commit object. Each head has a name. By default, there is a head in every repository called master. A repository can contain any number of heads. At any given time, one head is selected as the “current head.” This head is aliased to HEAD, always in capitals.
Note this difference: a “head” (lowercase) refers to any one of the named heads in the repository; “HEAD” (uppercase) refers exclusively to the currently active head. This distinction is used frequently in Git documentation. I also use the convention that names of heads, including HEAD, are set in italics.

Creating a repository

To create a repository, create a directory for the project if it doesn’t exist, enter it, and run the command git init. The directory does not need to be empty.(For the benefit of this write up, I will be using my own illustrations. Download the Github bash client from github.com. That’s where you can control your GIT. When you download it, you also get a GUI. In my opinion, it’s better to get familiar with the shell.


This will create a .git directory in the [project] directory.

To create a commit, you need to do two things:

  • Tell Git which files to include in the commit, with git add. If a file has not changed since the previous commit (the “parent” commit), Git will automatically include it in the commit you are about to perform. Thus, you only need to add files that you have added or modified. Note that it adds directories recursively, so git add . will add everything that has changed.
  • Call git commit to create the commit object. The new commit object will have the current HEAD as its parent (and then, after the commit is complete, HEAD will point to the new commit object).

As a shortcut, git commit -a will automatically add all modified files (but not new ones).

Note that if you modify a file but do not add it, then Git will include the previous version (before modifications) to the commit. The modified file will remain in place.

 

In the next articles on GIT, I will be talking about:

  • Branching
  • Merging and
  • Collaborating

Category: Other Experiments // // 1 Comment »

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Friday, May 20, 2011

May 21st, End of the World. End of the Words.

So she told me how they said it was 21st

 

How that those who are good disappear first

And how that many were selling their things

Their furniture, their clothes and their blings

We laughed,”oh people, not right now would the world end”

So there I was at the other end calling friends.

Telling them how tomorrow, the world will be history

“Oh George, what a joke. How do fools unravel mystery”

So we waited for the hours of  twenty first of May

Like broke labourers waiting for the month’s pay.

 

A coke in hand, pop corn between the laps,

We watched the television for news on the earth’s collapse,

Constantly laughing our butts off when some carried placards,

many confessing sins; from prostitutes to beggars, robbers to hackers.

Then it started. I heard the thunder first, skies darkening,

A storm now brewing. “Oh God, this just couldn’t be happening”.

I called for her, got no response. “Honey, stop the damn trick”.

No response.  Called her cell, she just won’t pick.

Checked every room, and got nothing but echoes.

Nothing moved. Only curtains and those annoying geckos.

I called my friends but calls wouldn’t go through.

Will they or will they not have any clue?

 

Pandemonium in my head, armpit goshing with sweat,

Lips randomly moving like those of a well versed flirt.

Just then I heard it, the phone rang out. I wasn’t alone.

“Dude, heard the soccer scores today”, the voice from the phone.

It was George calling from Ghana.”Get a grip , gutless!

The world won’t end. Everyone here is out, talk less.

Just then, Jane jolts opens the bathroom door.

“Honey, what’s all the noise? Why are you on the floor?

 

Don’t tell me you fell for it! Darling, don’t tell me you did”.

Harold Camping! Harold Camping! What did you read?

 

 

 

Category: Poetry // // No Comments »

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Words of Jakob Böhme

I came across some of the works of Jakob Böhme. I have not fully read up about him but some of his statements are deep and true.

Termed mystic, I feel he has a point in some of his theology. You can read up more about him here.

Here are his most striking words:

 

“For he that will say, I have a Will, and would willingly do Good, but the earthly Flesh which I carry about me, keepeth me back, so that I cannot; yet I shall be saved by Grace, for the Merits of Christ. I comfort myself with his Merit and Sufferings; who will receive me of mere Grace, without any Merits of my own, and forgive me my Sins. Such a one, I say, is like a Man that knoweth what Food is good for his Health, yet will not eat of it, but eateth Poison instead thereof, from whence Sickness and Death, will certainly follow.”

And this also makes me think:

“It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.”

 

Category: Just Saying // // No Comments »

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Shinichi Maruyama: High speed water photo shooting

I am a lover of the arts. I am an artist myself, practising my artistry mostly in my head. But then just when you think you have seen it all, then comes just another one. I recently came across some of the works of the artist, Shinichi Maruyama. This is what is said of him:

Click to view a snippet.

each bucket of water + black ink ‘stroke’ is unique and ephemeral.shinichi maruyama can never copy or recreate these images.’ I know something fantastic is happening, a decisive moment,but I can’t fully understand the event until I look at these images.’maruyama has been involved in many worldwide advertising campaigns,utilizing his expertise in ice, liquid/splash, and specializing in movement in his works.years of lighting research and the advancement of retouching have made it easier tohave a strong idea of exactly how a photo will look even before the shoot begins.however in photographing liquid and subjects in movement, it is impossible to foreseewhat the end result will be, and it is this spontaneity that enables maruyama to havemore fun creating his work.

 

You can check out his website for some cool stuff: http://www.shinichimaruyama.com/

Category: Just Saying // // No Comments »

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Friday, April 15, 2011

Video Evidence Of Election Fraud In South-South Nigeria

I have not been much of a political watchdog till recent years. Nigerian politics sometimes makes me so irritated. I sit down watching the news, listening to the outright absurd things that are happening around the world in different areas of government.  Nothing strikes it more than the politics that goes on in Nigeria. A book really needs to be written about these things.

I just saw  a video of how Saturday 9th April, 2011 elections were being rigged somewhere in Port Harcourt. Disgust just fills my face. The video below shows without any doubt that PDP paid people to help rig the election at that particular zone.

Doesn’t all this make you wonder who you are even going to vote for in the first place.

I read an Kunle Durojaiye whose article I will reblog and trackback.

 

For those who are still wondering and analysing in their minds, the following thoughts are highlighted to stimulate discussion and an eventual decision. The current tussle for the presidency seems to be between Dr Goodluck Jonathan (PDP), Mallam Nuhu RIbadu (ACN), Mallam Shekarau (ANPP) and Gen Buhari (CPC). Who will you vote for on Saturday?

Dr Goodluck Jonathan is by all means a noble man, who has ascended the various levels of executive governance in Nigeria. He has risen through the ranks from Deputy Governor to Governor, from Vice President to President.  However, there are concerns and challenges to the possibility of him continuing in office for the next 4 years – As the flag bearer for PDP, Nigeria’s ruling party and possibly the largest political party in Africa, Jonathan may be limited in whatever may be his noble aims and desires for the country by a number of factors. Most striking of these is his underlying association with ‘god fathers’ in the PDP framework. Like it or not, he who pays the piper, dictates the tune. Despite the fact that the party seems to be somewhat fragmented currently, it will be folly to undermine the potential influence of ex generals like Obasanjo and IBB, in the face of a PDP presidential win. These associations may easily become clogs in the wheel of Dr Jonathan’s good intentions. Unresolved issues including the alleged case of money laundering reportedly filed by the EFCC against his wife, Mrs Patience Jonathan, have been swept under the carpet. There is also a continued allegation of tacit facilitation of the release of former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, who is wanted by both Interpol and EFCC for money laundering charges and stealing funds worth $290m. Ibori is a strong member of the PDP, and it is believed that he played a key role in bankrolling the political campaign of the Yar’Adua-Jonathan ticket in 2007. Whether proven or not, these issues portend potential risks to Jonathan’s rule. How easy will it be for Dr Jonathan to call the bluff of his party stalwarts and ‘god fathers’? Charity begins at home! How believable is his anti-corruption plan, in the face of the allegations against his wife? Will he be free to implement positive development policies for the nation? Or will his intentions be choked and truncated by the many PDP stakeholders? Will he spend the next 4 possible years politicking and managing issues?

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu remains the well respected anti graft czar. However, his political strategy apparently did not have sufficient foresight considering the implications of him running on the ACN platform. Now, he seems to be positioned between a rock and a hard place. In responses to questions at debates and interviews, Ribadu made statements practically contradicting his anti graft war in the EFCC. It is recalled that he once described the corruption charge against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as being of international dimensions. He also stated then that there was a petition of complicity in money laundering charged against Mrs Jonathan. Recently, his statements imply that all such charges have been cleared. He probably did not envisage political challenges of this proportion. The other concern about his renowned performance at EFCC is that it was highly leveraged on executive support and empowerment by the presidency. This causes one to wonder whether he will be able to deliver even better performance if placed at the helm of national affairs, without such leverage. If there truly is a case against Tinubu, will he have the nerve to pursue it if voted into power? Will he function as a free president? Will his hands be tied?

Mallam Shekarau’s political campaign has been heavily hinged on the supposed successes achieved during his tenure as Governor of Kano state. There have been numerous questions to these claims especially from a number of Kano indigenes that do not share the same view with him. Asides this, his only other obvious leverage is his oratory skill. How many Nigerians really see him as president?

General Buhari’s major antecedent is the inflexible, autocratic style of his military rule in the early 80’s. Asides this and other questionable policies that characterised his tenure as military head of state, his leadership is widely acclaimed to be honest and without corruption. Buhari, it is said, owes no man! In a complex political state like ours, dominated by ex-military men turned politicians, who have so infiltrated the coffers of government to an inconceivable level, a Buhari presidency may be an effective checkmate to their nefarious activities. Nigeria probably needs an honest man of such integrity and calibre to be able to take on such stalwarts and put them in their place once and for all, similar to the Jerry Rawlings story in Ghana. Does he have the potential to do this? Probably yes. Will he? Is he truly the changed man he claims to be? Or is the country in line for a rude shock? One wonders. Still, the strength of his candidacy is likely to guarantee a period of stability, accountability, and integrity in governance, thus establishing a bridge between the current despicable state and the immediate future of vibrant development and youth empowerment. His age guarantees nothing more than 4 years in government. If there’s anyone that can tackle corruption, he probably is. His lack of economic and innovative prowess also suggests that Nigeria may see a repeat of the recruitment of skilled technocrats to create a formidable economic team similar to the Obasanjo type. Buhari may not be the final definition of change….he may be the beginning of change relative to the current Nigerian context.

I was asked a question today by a renowned Professor as we concluded discussions relating to Nigeria and politics. He asked “So, will you also be corrupt?” Having given him my response, I have since forwarded the same question to friends and colleagues. This same question becomes an acid test for these presidential aspirants – a possible tool to select by elimination. Based on what is currently known of them, Which can you say will not be corrupt? Which is likely to be successful at waging a war against corruption at all levels of government? Putting them on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), how would you rate each candidate’s corruption potential index (CPI)? Another acid test question may be – “Which of them is most likely to create an enabling environment for leap frog development in Nigeria within 4 years?” The last acid test will be – “Which of them is most able to break Nigerian governance free from the clutches of the PDP behemoth?”

Think. Think. Think Again. Eliminate. Decide. Who will you vote for?

 

 

 

Category: The Political Side of Things // // No Comments »

Saturday, April 09, 2011

How to e-mail to yourself an automatic backup of your MySQL database


// Put in your variable values here.
$dbhost = "yourhost"; // usually localhost
$dbuser = "yourusername";
$dbpass = "yourpassword";
$dbname = "yourdb";
$sendto = "You ";
$sendfrom = "Automated Backup ";
$sendsubject = "Daily Mysql Backup";
$bodyofemail = "Here is the daily backup.";

// don't need to edit below this section
$backupfile = $dbname . date("Y-m-d") . '.sql';
system("mysqldump -h $dbhost -u $dbuser -p$dbpass $dbname > $backupfile");

// Mail the file
//the includes here are for your PEAR extensions. Confirm PEAR is installed in your PHP.

    include('Mail.php');
    include('Mail/mime.php');

	$message = new Mail_mime();
	$text = "$bodyofemail";
	$message->setTXTBody($text);
	$message->AddAttachment($backupfile);
    	$body = $message->get();
        $extraheaders = array("From"=>"$sendfrom", "Subject"=>"$sendsubject");
        $headers = $message->headers($extraheaders);
    $mail = Mail::factory("mail");
    $mail->send("$sendto", $headers, $body);

// Delete the file from your server
unlink($backupfile);

Category: PHP // // 2 Comments »

Thursday, March 31, 2011

What happens if/when PDP wins the Presidential elections

Yesterday I missed the Presidential debate now getting known as the Goodluck Jonathan Bedate. I heard it was a well strategized initiative to make Goodluck Jonathan debate with himself to a larger audience than even the NN24 debate. For a general opinion of things, I usually go to Twitter to search for what is and has been said.

So last night, after searching for ‘GEJ’ and ‘PDP’ on Twitter and getting a few hilarious statement. I saw this particular comment:

My next line of thought is this: Many of us have shaken our heads vigorously, said so many things about how unserious PDP is, many broadcasts have gone around the youth about voting right and being careful about voting PDP. But then, what happens if Goodluck Jonathan comes in as president?

What would happen?

Category: The Political Side of Things // // No Comments »

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This article was written by Seye Kuyinu. My name is Seye Kuyinu. My daily job is to write and draw with languages that translate to 1010101010s. By so doing I give people a better image on the web, and also make life easier for them. You can click here for more about me.

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