The dilema and rants of “Service Provider” quality of support and services is one we go through day by day. This morning I awoke to a rant by a Tweep on the costs of certain bank services, in this case US$2.5 (UGX 6,500) for an over the counter withdrawal. I smiled because I has been hit with a similar charge for a statement on my account at US$4.7 (UGX 12,000) per month (irrespective) of the number of transactions.
Ha ha ha, most would balk at the thought, have I gone over to the dark side? Have I lost my mind or has the evil empire taken control over me? Many would ask other would run scared to the hills, but well I have decided to make the switch mainly because of the battery life … My last laptop was a 17” HP Envy 3D - a beast of a machine not very field friendly I think I developed a hunchback lugging it around, and abysmal battery life (what do you expect from a desktop replacement), quad core, 8GB RAM, 17” screen, and hot as hell.
On March 5, 2012, Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) launched a simcard registration exercise see my coverage at http://wp.me/pXn3W-4H. On February 28, 2013, all un-registered simcards will be switched off by the telecom providers so there is a concerted push to register the simcards. Estimates put registration at about 50%, but that number is to be put to the test at the end of the month.
I have been having alot of trouble with my Orange Uganda (http: Modem (Model E173), since my laptop running Windows 7 would not see the modem despite installing Orange Internet Everywhere. I tried installing, un-installing, even had a terse exchange with their support staff via twitter (https://twitter.com/orangeugandaltd/status/290720191099310080) where the only option was for me to take it to their offices for troubleshooting.
Happy New Year, 2013, its finally here … Well in 2012, I should say I had Symfony 2 envy, almost akin to a high school crush, so after suffering in silence for so long I have finally decided to jump in with both feet.
This blog post has been inspired by events, not to me, but to a colleague of mine. Our discussion, was interesting, funny and insightful, but I thought hey why not share my experiences and what I use to teach others how to live a safer, “backup” driven life.
This is a typical problem which I also raised on Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11061929/php-extract-text-from-different-file-formats-word-excel-powerpoint-pdf-rtf#comment14475398_11061929), but there seemed no single resource around the web to solve this particular problem, so since I have solved it I thought it would make sense to provide an approach and a solution, it can be refined better with time
Not all software development projects are treated the same, some have access to modern tech Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Zend Server (http://www.zend.com/products/server/), Memcached, Gearman and all the other goodies I can only dream of. You have a box with LAMP, and you cannot install anything else.
Well it seems like I have been doing a rip and replace of most of the “homegrown” components that we are using in our environments as we gear up for the new year. The latest to fall to the axe is our HTML + CSS + widget collection that has been growing over the years which was a collection of code from different places:
