Hacktivate

I have been looking for this for ages. It used to be that if I didn't
have my mouse plugged into my laptop I couldn't paste to a cygwin
terminal (where I spend most of my time). By middle clicking the mouse I
got a paste - but on laptop, there are only two buttons on the trackpad.
But I found the solution - shift + left-click pastes! Hooray!
Shift-insert seems to work as well. Discovered it here:

Cygwin Tips

Wow this looks like just what I have been looking for. Every other day
someone in Malawi asks me about getting a VSAT internet connection. Now
I have a resource to point them towards (and hopefully a resource to
help me find an affordable VSAT!)

The VSAT Buyer's Guide

What steps do organisations and individuals take when faced with the
prospect of buying a VSAT- a parabolic dish and associated electronic
equipment used to send and receive information via a satellite? How do
they select VSAT equipment and service options and arrive at the final
choice? What factors should be considered in buying VSAT equipment and
services and what should be avoided? What should one do after
installation and when the VSAT system is not performing as anticipated?

There are many books on satellite communications, VSAT systems and
procurement strategies, but none that specifically address how to
efficiently acquire VSAT systems and the issues to consider in the
complex decision making process leading to the acquisition in a
non-technical way.

Having experienced this unsettling situation first hand, as a direct
result, and with the support of IDRC’s Connectivity Africa Program
staff, this Guide was developed.

Thanks to the ITMalawi
mailing list (which I have been trolling quite a bit lately)
I came across this excellent website that is capturing all of the
information and advocating for getting a fiber connection to Africa:

Fibre for Africa


Africa currently has to pay for some of the most expensive bandwidth in the
world. The region currently only has one major international fibre
cable (SAT3) that connects countries in West and Southern Africa but
East Africa has no fibre connection. Fibre connections usually mean
cheaper prices than satellite for volume traffic but because of the
monopoly structure of the SAT3 consortium, its operators have kept
prices high.

All this will change if the proposed East African Submarine Cable
System (EASSy) cable is built as it will connect countries on the
eastern side of the continent and if this new capacity is offered in a
way that maximises use and lowers price.

To help make this possible, APC is launching a new website
“Fibre-for-Africa” and on March 10 will hold a consultation with more
than 80 key stakeholders from all over Eastern and Southern Africa to
ensure that access to EASSy -which will serve eight coastal and eleven
land-locked countries- is ‘easy’, affordable and open.


link

From People
magazine:

A Village of Hope In the African nation of Malawi, families toil in
fields as malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases go untreated. But
hope is within reach: The Millennium Promise, a philanthropy run by Dr.
Jeffrey Sachs and supported by Angelina Jolie, is working with 60
villages (so far) to make them healthily self-sufficient through such
simple tools as schools, seeds and clean drinking water. Here is what
PEOPLE reporter Mary Green saw in the village of Mwandana.


Click on this link
to see some of the pictures. Apparently the hardcopy has even better
pictures - maybe someone could pick this up for me and set it aside?

Thanks to Geeta for the
discovery.

Robin Mayfield, aka BlogDog and I
used to work together at href="http://www.decisionsoft.com">DecisionSoft (DerisionSoft for
disgruntled ex-employees of which I am not) in Oxford. We both
commiserated and then wept in joyous rapture as we were forced to learn
vim and fully embrace using Linux for everything. At any rate, I enjoyed
Robin's post today and as a google shareholder look forward to owning a
small piece of everyone:
href="http://www.blogdog.gr/blogging/googles-new-ah-who-cares/">Googles
New Ah Who Cares

I am taking a hard look at Ruby, since I think we are going to standardize around Ruby for future versions of the Baobab system. So far I am very impressed. I think it will be powerful, fun, and easy to learn. I have read two different presentations on Ruby for Perlers - and they have been fine. But then I started reading Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby. I have been involved in two different software programming books thanks to Jeff Rafter (Beginning XML and Practical XML for the Web). Jeff's chapters were great of course (what do you expect from a brilliant computer programmer training to be a professional poet?). The poignant guide is something completely different. It is absolutely crazy crazy crazy.



It is the most absurd programming book I have ever read. It is full of (what can only be drug induced) stories and comics, and I thought they would be annoying, but they keep drawing me further into the book. In fact I can't wait to finish the book (I am more than halfway through after a couple of hours
here and there).