Happy Holiday

Democracy Day here in Nigeria, and Spring Bank Holiday in the UK. A public holiday. Yay! or probably not...

Of course I was still at work, since I live at work :-( , I've been making progress with the database. I've been analyising the properties in the pre existing database that don't appear to match records in our database. It's interesting because it's throwing light on the state of the existing data which I was not aware of before. Also I'm able to link up some of our new data with it's old pre existing record so that there's historical context for the new data.

So far I've analyised 13,234 properties by hand using the software tool I developed a week ago. This means I'm up to Isheri-Oke Zone which is the 9th in our priority list so there's only 5 Zones to go after this.

That's what I've been working on over the last few days since my last blog entry.

On the weekend I stayed home apart from going out for Dinner Sunday evening.

The Never Ending Story

I wrote one of the tools I needed today and, I'm a little dissapointed that there seems to be an awful lot to check. I only loaded up Lagos Island and found 2998 properties that are on the existing old customer database but don't match up with any codes in our new database. That's quite a lot to do considering! Now I've had it working since about 6pm and I've been plodding along with it and have managed to get it half done.

I did find a large cluster all in one street that all had the same basic problem and I managed to just pull together some SQL queries to do those faster.

I started work on TMA05 for my M150 course, I think the person who wrote it must share my sense of humour because there's a number of things that have made me laugh. First, the assignment is to develop a demonstration of an electronic voting system and the fictional constituency is called 'Dunny-on-the-Wold' which any Blackadder Fans may remember with a smile. Then the fictional company I'm supposed to work for is called 'Gerrymander and Riggit' who's slogan is 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy'. Finally, the Voters Card has the warning, 'Do Not Eat This Card'.

My Pc at home in the uk is crashing all the time. Dan has stopped responding to me when I ask him to go and reboot it. I need to download the new HHGTTG episode so I can listen to it tomorrow.

I think my Northbridge fan is playing up again... better order a replacement in time for my return.

All Units Calculated - Now for the rest.

I did it! I calculated all the Units for all 103,024 properties.

The difficulty I had is with properties that have multiple uses or uses not linked to the tariff codes such as government properties. Well today I managed to get the script to calculate a suitable amount of Units for these properties too. There's a small catch in that for instance one unit for a mixed use commercial property is N1000 but it could be made up of assessment units that could be measured in N100 or N500 units so that in order to give an adequate number of units to these properties I had to calculate how much their bill would be if they were charged separately for each use and then find the appropriate number of units to apply.

This would be a whole lot easier if a unit of was the same measure for all tariffs, but it's not. It seems that the more valuable the property or profitable the business, the higher the price of a unit. It's an awkward system, but that's how they do it, and making the logic work in a computer system is quite a headache.

The next stage is to compare the data we have with the existing data set, looking for problems like, properties that we have not linked to their old database record, or properties that are on the old database record but we don't have. Hopefully we should get through these in the next few days, I have to write the tools to enable it to be done first, but I can then delegate out some of the work to get it done quickly. I hope someone from our clients staff might be involved so that at least they can see the effort that has gone in to making things good.

Lets hope progress continues.

The return of Futurama?

I just heard that there is intelligent life out there. According to the slashdot article in the captioned link above and this original story that got slashdotted soon after, Futurama is due to return to DVD.

This would be very good news to me, I don't know about many other people but it's the best entertainment news I've heard in a L-O-N-G time.

Well today I've written a script that calculates units for 90% of the forms in the system, all that's required now is a bit of poking around to get properties with multiple uses assessed properly. Other than that today, I saw the Monaco Grand Prix, well some of it at least, I watched half of the Eastenders omnibus on prime and I did all my laundry.

I recently had a comment on this website from somebody outside my immediate circle of friends, and it kind of startled me. I took a look at the statistics on my site and discovered that traffic has jumped this month to highest ever levels. It's also interesting to see what people are searching for when they find this site, rather a lot of people seem to be searching for help with their open university courses, so I know I have to be very carefull about what I write about now as I don't want to be in hot water over giving people advice. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear from any of my fellow students but you guys should use the firstclass conference system to get answers that will be safer for all of us.

Anyway, as for the American who left a comment, Thanks for letting me know you're reading, Lagos has no doubt changed a great deal since you were here. People here look back on Lagos in the 60's and 70's with fond memories. People may forget the kind place it was, it's hard to imagine now that Paul McCartney and Wings Recorded 'Band on The Run' in Lagos! They managed to put up with Lagos long enough to record most of the album in the three weeks or so they were here despite muggings, health scares and other nightmares.

Bored of Eurovision voting...

Well, the 'delights' of Eurovision has reached BBC prime here tonight so It's on for Wogan.

I finished my Assignment for T224 by thursday night, I have a good feeling about it so I think I should do well. The Last assignment for M150 is coming up and I'll have to start thinking about that seriously this week.

I FINISHED the units problems and I have started working on calculating the units for each of the properties. Some of them are complicated so I hope to get most calculated by monday, but I'm a little doubtful. Over the next two weeks I want to start comparing the data we have for the properties with the existing data from our clients current database to see how things match up. I'm expecting some differences, but we'll have to see just how much things have changed.

Lets see. I went out thursday to celebrate finishing my assignment, and then friday was spent finishing up the last few 'problems with units'.

Today, I've been working on calculating the units and I also watched the FA cup final but it just confirmed my opinion that Football is BORING!

N... is extatic though since she's a 'Gunner 4 life'.

74% for TMA04

I got the marks for the Assignment I handed in on the 10th and I got 74% which isn't bad, but reading through my tutors comments, I kinda wish I'd had another read through of some of the materials. cos it seems I made some mistakes when talking about Human-Computer interfaces. I was kinda hoping for 80% so I guess that's why I feel bad about it. The course is Pass or Fail, no grades are given, and I think now my total marks means I've already passed the course provided I get 40% for the final test.

In other news, I completed all of the Ikeja 2 problems which means I am dead on track to complete this pig by friday.

I also have my next assignment to complete by Friday, and that's coming along nicely, should be writing up the final question tomorrow, ready for review on Friday before sending off.

26 years and one day

So, thanks everybody for the birthday messages.

Yes I turned 26 yesterday. It was quite a normal day really. I got on with some OU assignenments as soon as I'd had breakfast, and I got a call from my Mum which was nice, although she thought I was sounding low. I guess that was because I was still recovering from my cold. But all's better now.

Went to our project office around 2 and managed to complete Epe zone of Units Problems which means that I've now got all of Lagos East under control from that problem. N... managed to print reports for all 117 properties in the Ikeja 1 zone so that they would be found tuesday.

After work I went home to find we were having fish for dinner. and not just any fish, some kind of giant monster fish Dad and mike bought on the beach. They had to cut it in half to fit it in the cool box. Well I didn't fancy celebrating with that so I went out with Timi and N... to Pats Bar. I had half a bottle of wine behind the counter from a few days ago so I was keen to go and drink that before it went to vinegar. I decided to go for Chicken and Mushroom Pie with Chips and gravy. Very nice but I did feel bloated after.

The evening sort of carried on from there and we had quite a fun time, but I didn't get Totally blotto because I need to work on my OU assignment in the morning.

So Today, Tuesday, I got up fairly late and managed to complete the 4th part of my assignment, and now only the last question remains and I think I should be able to achieve that over the next two days, leaving me friday to polish up.

Around 3 I went over to the project office and got half of Ikeja 1 complete. N... started work on the Ikeja 2 forms but when Kehinde, one of our data entry staff showed up she soon roped her in to helping out. So all 220 odd Ikeja 2 zone problem reports were printed so that somebody can go and find the paper forms tomorrow so that I can make the corrections.

On the way back from the office we passed through Adeola Odeku street and were amazed to see that the street lights were on! I was planning to take a picture but I think it'll be more amazing to take a picture of them working tomorrow. Adeola Odeku is the main street of victoria Island where we live, it's where our old office used to be in 2002 days. The road has been completely relaid as a dual carriageway since 2003 and today they got the lights working. We are guessing somebody 'Big' is coming down to see it soon so I was wondering if we should picket the end of our street which is off Adeola Odeku street and is perhaps the worst road surface on Victoria Island. My picket sign would say. "try and drive down this one at 50Kph!" cos if you did you'd kill your cars shocks in 100m and your teeth would fall out in 200m.

I finished the Ikeja 1 forms this evening, which means we now have only 465 problems remaining. nearly half of those are ikeja 2 so I know it won't take long now.

May 16th 2005 13:27 WAT

May 16th 2005 13:27 WAT
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Anybody up for this in June?

see captioned link

Le Weekend

Skipped two days, again, but I have had a bad cold since thursday morning and I'm only starting to feel better today.

Thursday, I spent the day feeling bad with runny nose and sore throat, and friday was the same although I did get to our project office on friday and do quite a lot of work on the problems. I've now reached the last zone of Lagos East which is probably about 40% of the total areas we covered but about 60% of the problems.

Today, I spent the day working on my T224 Assignment, the simulated processor software from OU is working fine on my laptop with the VMWare Virtual Machine running windows 2000. Tom asked if it runs everything and so far it does, although it did crash yesterday with a wierd error when I ran windows update. (38 critical security patches to install!). It creates a fake computer in software running on your operating system and that fake computer can see your host computers components like network card or cdrom. I'm using version 4.5.2 but version 5 is out now and it is apparently even better. so I may get that when I get back to the UK since it's a heavy download.

The assignment is progressing nicely, I hope to get the first couple of questions complete by Sunday evening.

Had a curry tonight as usual and did my laundry after joseph left.

Wed 11th May 2005

Got 2nd Hitch Hikers Episode from Series 4. Great fun, I can't remember if Arthur worked for the BBC in the Books but I thought it was pretty funny having him work for Geoffery Perkins. I'm very pleased that the Beeb now let you pinch the episode off the website just after the first broadcast instead of having to wait till after the repeat as we did in the last series.

I've been trying to get a virtual windows installation working on my laptop for a while now, and having tried the free options, wine and Qemu, which both work amazingly but not on the OU applications I need to use, I tried VMWare. Apart from a glitch in the installation where my kernel was apparently too up to date I managed to install windows 2000 as a virtual system on my linux laptop. It works Great! Here's a screenshot.

windows-on-linux
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

So I can now do all my work on my laptop instead of fighting with a wheezing old P3 Celeron 900 I can now run a simulated version of my own laptop and all the OU apps seem to work perfectly.

Today I also managed to get over to our project office and do a large amount of work on the problems with units. We're now down to 750 odd problems and now I've got a system going it shouldn't take too long to get through that and on to the next issue to be sorted.

TMA04 Done!

Submitted my Assignment TMA04 earlier, Glad it's finished, this one was quite a bit harder than previous ones, there were lots of questions that required a fixed number of words and sometimes expressing myself in so few words meant having to keep editing what I wanted to say until it worked.

Only one more TMA and a final exam on that course (m150) to go and I'll be through with my first OU course. T224 is about half way through now, I've got 10 more days to finish TMA02 for that, But it's looking good.

Didn't get to the office as it took longer than I thought to finish the assignment but I don't think it really matters in the long run as i intend to put a full day in tomorrow.

1 week left of being 25

Sunday, I did my laundry as usual, it was raining so I didn't feel like going to the beach. In the afternoon I got my Hair cut and went to at the Eko Hotel for a coffee. I did a bit of work for my OU assignment and then in the evening we went to The Thistle for dinner where I had a steak and cheese dish. Got back from Dinner and the server PC at home that I'd spent so much time sorting out wouldn't boot. Looks like another power supply problem. I'm very frustrated about it.

Today, I was feeling motivated and managed to complete V.I. Lekki, V.I. Annex and start Ikoyi for the zones with Units problems, I also got the last zone of duplicates, Shomolu complete. Not bad at all. I borrowed a PC from the office for us to use temporarily while I try to figure out what's wrong. The office PC is under warranty so we should be ok if it suffers the same fate. I don't understand what's wrong though as I bought a good Antec power supply for it in the belief that it would stabilize the system yet it's just done the same thing as the original power supply. I suspect there's a problem with the UPS.

I just finished the last question on my OU assignment and I've got a bit of tidying up to do tomorrow then I'll be ready for submission before I leave for the office.

The Quandary Phase

Just got hold of the first episode of 'The Quandary Phase' of The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy Radio series. Terrific, I have to quote it here.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy, lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 92 million miles was once an utterly insignificant little blue/green planet whose ape descended life forms were so amazingly primitive that they thought novelty ring tones were a pretty neat idea. The planet had a problem which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time, a lot of them were mean and the majority of them were miserable. Even the ones who's cell phones were set to vibrate.

I'm so happy that these new episodes are good, it really doesn't matter to me if the movie is terrible or not. If it's bad, let's hope Disney make enough money from the movie it to sponsor a 'Restaurant at the end of the Universe' movie where hopefully they can really tell the story, rather than character building, which is what is likely to be the downfall of this movie.

Thursday, I didn't go to pats which is unusual, instead I stayed home and watched the telly. The e election was on and that was reasonably entertaining until about 1am and I gave up and went to bed,

Yesterday, Friday, I went out at night to Pat's Bar, which is much quieter than Thursday or Saturday as people are generally out at Bob's Bar where there's a live rock band. Afterwards N... took me to a bar I'd never been to before called De Grotto. It was very full because of a Live Nigerian Band and I sat outside and drank my wine, wondering how the TV mounted on an outside wall, survived the frequent heavy rainstorms.

Today, I've done little, I finished downloading the new episode of Hitch Hikers and listened to that on my iRiver H320. Just ordered an indian Take Away and the driver should be bringing it soon. Yum...

Oscar's back, and this time he's BAD.

Hope you're enjoying the pictures, I don't know how much of my monthly flickr bandwidth this will use up if I continue but It'll be interesting to find out. it's about $2 a month to sign up so if I do make more use of it I probably will.

So Dad got a new Parrot, Apparently the last one died because we gave it peanuts, so Oscar 2 won't get any at all. He's also got a small cage to shelter in if he's scared of us.

While I was getting my camera out to take these photo's Mike spotted the nice Moth outside the office door.

Other than that excitement, I got a fair bit done on the problems with the Units data and I also wrote an essay for my OU assignment. The essay only has to be 300 words but it's VERY hard to fit all I want to say in. It's supposed to be for a non-technical audience so I'll try and get some people to read it before I include it.

Oscar 2.0 Caged

Oscar 2.0 Caged
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Oscar in his new cage, he'll be allowed out of here and we are hoping he'll use it when he wants to get away from us. He'll have his food left in there.

Oscar 2.0

Oscar 2.0
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Oscars house

Oscar 2.0

Oscar 2.0
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

A new Parrot to replace Oscar who died shortly after he was bought.

Moth

Moth
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

A Moth spotted by Mike outside the office door of the house.

Mike's Back Again

So as I reported yesterday Mike will be back soon, he did infact arrive this evening safe and sound. And he brought the new Power supply I ordered so I can put our server in the house back together tonight.

I took the three photo's below this morning when I saw the rain, I was just inspired to put a bit of colour into this blog after it'd been text only for a while. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get my Per Diem for May, I've been promising myself a new Sim Card that is GPRS enabled so I may be able to send quick snaps direct from my phone once in a while.

Went to the office today, once the flooding had receded a bit after the rain and found that the work I'd left one of the guys to do on friday was still there untouched. Aaargh! Luckily for him he'd gone for lunch at the time and I managed to calm down before he came back.

Got our Tektronix Phaser 850 printer back today after about 6 months in the repair shop. Everything's back to normal but problem with it is it needs a constant power supply or it wastes loads of it's solid ink which is expensive. Our 6kVA UPS that normally would be perfectly adequate for it is playing up when on the generator so It's a case of only when absolutely necessary will we switch it on.

I've been asked about my birthday presents, and just want to say my Amazon Wish list still exists. Although some of the prices may be much better in other stores. Also Bond DVD's are double the christmas price at the moment so they aren't really worth going for right now. I may ammend it over the next week or so with anything that catches my eye, in the mean time it's here.

On a humorous note, next time you see a Blue Screen of Death on a Windows Computer remember this. Microsoft is working with Ford Motor Co towards car that can't crash.

Rainy Day in Lagos (3/3)

p0002535
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Rainy Day in Lagos (2/3)

p0002534
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Rainy Day in Lagos (1/3)

p0002533
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

Thought I'd cheer people up with some lovely pictures I took in a storm this morning.

Another Scam?

I got this info forwarded to me through email the other day, it looks like a cut and paste from this day newspaper, but I'm not certain because it seems to be written from a UK perspective.

Phoney revenue forms con ex-pats

A tax expert says the bogus form looks 'plausible'

Bogus tax forms, claiming to be from the taxman, are being sent out to unsuspecting staff working abroad in a bid to gain bank details from them.

British citizens overseas are receiving what professes to be a P86, for staff "Not Ordinarily Resident in the UK".

The taxpayer is asked to return the completed form, to Kensington House, 33, Imperial Square, Cheltenham.

But it is a "brass plate" address and the letters were being forwarded to Lagos in Nigeria.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs' deputy director Shirley Davies has written to six of the UK's largest accountancy firms and several multinational companies, warning them of the scam.

In her letter, she says the logo, phone and fax numbers and address on the letterhead are all false.

Well I think I'd have made some queries before paying that but I feel sorry for anybody fooled by it.

I enjoyed a holiday today, Ok I did do a little work, and I read up on my OU stuff but I did stay home. Also I finally got the soil pipe fixed for my bathroom, so hopefully we won't see any more well-fertilized tomato plants coming up outside my home office window! The plumber arranged for our 'soak-away' to be 'dislodged' or de-sludged as we think he means.

Back to work tomorrow so I'm planning an earlier night to tackle it head on.

May is here

Well April's over, and May should be a fairly significant month for me, I'm due to complete the Phase one data and get some money in my account again!!! I've also got two Open University Assignments due. I'm half way through one but only glanced at the other. And also I turn 26. Twenty Six! It seems older written long hand.

I've spent the last few days doing the same old stuff. Dad came back from Abuja on Friday afternoon with good feelings about progress with an upcoming project there. It's similar to the project we're working on here in Lagos so we should be able to take our developments from Lagos and drop them into place there.

I've never been to Abuja. It's been the capital city of Nigeria since 1991, but was only created in 1976 when, one assumes, then military dictators Murtala Mohammed and shortly after he was shot (possibly by the british), his successor Olusegun Obasanjo (now 'democratically' elected president) decided they'd messed up Lagos so badly they'd start again and build a city somewhere near the middle of Nigeria. In the desert, near a rock. And in 1991 it became the capital.The obvious thing about deserts that makes them not a good place to build a city is there's not enough water, so that was well thought out.

Enough of the history lesson, I know very little about Abuja as I've never been there but all I can say is from what I've heard it sounds dull.

Tomorrow is a public holiday, May day but I'll most likely go to work anyway. We're expecting Mike back soon, I don't think he'd appreciate me declaring his flight details, but that will be good. Perhaps we can finally go sailing next weekend.

Oh and the fuel shortage seems to have disappeared, The tanker drivers are back on the road, but I still don't know what they were striking about.