Why the Breathalyzer in Trinidad will Fail

So recently I heard on the news that our lovely government of Trinidad and Tobago is in the process of implementing the Breathalyzer on our nation's roads in an attempt to curb the carnage. This to me is a waste of money...much like the rented $US300,000/mth blimp that did what??...absolutely nothing.

First off for the breathalyzer to work we need police on the road to stop driver and test them. Then again, if we DID have police on the road stopping drivers you're telling me they can't tell if a guy is drunk or not??

My predictions as to what will happen are as follows :

1. Breathalyzer introduced - public praises government for trying to do something to curb road fatalities
2. For the next couple months lot's of police on the road stopping every man jack and harry.
3. Police presence starts to disappear from the roads.
4. Road fatalities pick back up.
5. Governemnt decides to spend some US$ n million (where n tends to infinity) to implement something else to curb road fatalities
6. Repeat Steps 1-5 with new product/measure
   

Installing Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu Linux

These are the steps I took to get Ruby on Rails up and Running on Ubuntu.
Go to the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and run the following apt-get commands.

1) Install ruby and ruby on rails

sudo apt-get install ruby rails

2) Download and Extract Ruby Gems

Ruby Gems .tgz file

3) After extracting the Ruby Gems file, navigate to it in your terminal and type :

sudo ruby setup.rb

4) Next we need to install all of Rails. To do this just type at the terminal

sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

5) After that is finshed you have rails up and running. To create an application first navigate to the folder you want your app to be stored and type:

rails "Application Name"

where "Application Name" is the name of your application. eg (rails Demo).

6) Now just run

ruby script/server

and your're up and running. Open your trusty browser and navigate to http://0.0.0.0:3000 and you should see your application.

Ruby on Rails

Last year some time when the Ruby on Rails hype was picking up I decided to download and give it a try, following the tutorials I got online. Now, I've been a fan of Ruby for a while now (ever since one of my lecturers told me about it). Ruby to me is simplistic, and comes close to what a modern day OOP language should be. Although people might say that dynamic type checking is a security concern, from my experience, I beg to differ. Python has been around for a while and its dynamic typing has never been a bother to the people I know who uses it.

Although Ruby by itself is a nice language, for Web programming purposes, it takes a little bit more effort that one would be willing to to get a website up and running.

Enter Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails is a nice Web Framework for developing database-backed web applications according to the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern. With Rails I was able to get a prototype of a site up and running in under an hour, complete with add, delete and edit forms, to edit data in my tables. To me rails shines with the modeling of table associations (1-1, 1-many, many-many). It's just so simple to create your site, you'll find that you'll be spending less time on the nitty gritty code, and more time on modeling your data/site to the way it should be.
Another plus to mention is that Rails is 100% ruby code and your web files are in the .rhtml format. Ruby like python is nice in that you could get much more done with much much less code than other commercial languagues on the market today (Java, C#...).

Along with all of this there are many
Plugins you can download for your application. Actually it's so easy that I got a Login Generator up and running with my application (using SaltedHashLoginGenerator) in under 5 minutes. Now this is with role based authentication, e-mail verification on signup etc. basically the whole works you would want from a Login Module. Uploading and resizing Images to your site is also as easy as that with RMagick and FileColumn. For those of you who are afraid to try rails, don't be. First off, Ruby is an extremely easy language to learn, and if you're coming from Java or any other OOP language, it will be a breeze.

Ill post up some helper tutorials later on. But for now, head on over to Ruby on Rails and give it a try. If you're feeling it's not for you, download the videos and see a little bit of the power you get. And I do mean a little bit, because it is much more powerful than what you will see in those videos.

Odeo - Audio Blogging

Over the past few years blogging has become somewhat of a worldwide obsession. With the second phase of the internet under way, web 2.0 websites and web 2.0 terminology has become somewhat of a buzz word on the internet today.

Enter Odeo - A simple yet very useful way to creating audio blogs/clips, which can be emailed to your friends or embedded in your website(s). Audio blogging although no new concept has taken a new form in this web 2.0 ajaxified setting. Bear in mind Odeo comes to us from one of the former co-founders of Blogger... and was also recently working at google. Who knows, maybe some day in the not to distant future Odeo, just as Blogger was, may be another Google acquisition.

Ubuntufied!!!

Recently I got my hands on Ubuntu 5.10 from the office. That evening I rushed home to install it, and wow, I was impressed, this was the first Linux distro that I've tried where everything was configured for me. Even my wireless was working straight from the install.. all that was need to configure this was to set up the SSID and the WEP key (basically the same thing you would do under windows). And, being the bleeding edge software geek that I am, I realised that Ubuntu Dapper 6.05 was out for download. Although this is still an unstable released, I had to get it.

The next day in the office I put Dapper to download, 2hrs later I had it, 8 hours later at home it was installed. And my oh my do I love this debian based distro. The only other distro that can claim my love would have to be gentoo. Once you use gentoo, you seem to never want to go back to any other, the only reason I'm using ubuntu is that I find it's easier and faster to get things installed and done.

Last week when boredom struck in the office, I decided to give SuSE 10 Eval DVD a crack. So yet again, set up the download, and by the next day, SuSE 10 was installed. Now, I've always liked SuSE since I first tried SuSE 9.0, when those kind guys shipped me the Eval DVD's for free. However at that time, my only dislike with SuSE was that I found it was too much of a resource hog and a little bit...actually a good bit bloated. And, up to today when I removed SuSE from my machine, it still is very bloated. So back to Dapper I went, actually as I speak I'm doing a dist-upgrade. For those of you who would say that Ubuntu is also bloated, I would HAVE to agree with you, however, from my experiences, I don't think it is as bloated as SuSE...it just feels lighter.

I think Ubuntu would be my main distro for a while. Having said goodbye to Windows, I must say, I really don't miss it...well other that for my Visual Studio Development and the Games...ahh the games. Hopefully Cedega or Wine will solve my gaming problem, otherwise ubuntu may find windows as its new best friend on my harddrive.

For those of you setting up your ubuntu boxes I must recommend this article
http://www.elijahlofgren.com/ubuntu/
- it's a nice guide to get all your usual windows stuff up and running under ubuntu.

BTW. Hats off to the creator/s of XGL. I recenty installed and ran it, and my oh my was it impressive. I think its even more impressive due to the fact that at the moment I use only 1 monitor. Since I usually have to use more that 1 desktop, 1 for work, 1 for chat etc... it just looks nice switching between them now. I feel like I'm using a mac. And for some reason I actually find my destop move and respond's faster with XGL enabled.

Hat's off to those guys at Ubuntu and XGL.

The Birds, The Bees and the......

I'm back..

It's been a busy couple of months but I'm finally back into the blogging scenes. Started work at Illuminat some time back, doing alot of Oracle stuff. It's amazing the kinda stuff you could do with SQL, even more with PL/SQL.

Work has started on some of my side projects..I'll keep you guys updated on that sooner or later.

BTW... look out for the new and improved version 2.0 of my blog to be out soon. I promise I won't disappoint. I'll be moving away from blogger and publishing from my very own ruby-based blog engine.

expect more soon....

Just checking in

I know its been a while since i last blogged buy i found these 2 sites, well actually from one of my former lecturers (gardler), thats a must look.

the first...
Googlezon is a look in the future about the past, which would be todate, kinds freaky when you think about if this would happen, and from they way of things, it just may.

the 2nd, for all you IT ppl - IT Conversations are podcasts (mp3 format to DL available), about some very very very interestering IT/future related topics.

Be sure to check them out.

Anyhow, Ill be back soon..

Now or Never

So I'm home now having just finsihed my 2 courses I was doing this semster. Moday was my last exam. That should be enough to finally get me out of UWI. Yesterday being the first day I was officially home left me in a state of boredom. I've come to realise that I cannot stay put or at least stay idle in my house for very long... boredom starts to kick in, and I must find something to keep my mind occupied or leave the house and go take in some scenery.

Finishing UWI is all nice and good, now comes the "what do I do next" part of my life. My Options are:
1) get employed and EARN money.
2) start capitalizing on my Ideas and MAKE money.
3) stay home and scratch (which doesn't last too long, cause idleness gets to me)

For the past few months I've hav several Ideas of business I could start-up, from e-commerce, to application servers. Now, here comes the point where I could go get a job, or take some time off to build my company. The only thing I fear, is if i do decide to get a job, and develop my stuff in my free time (lol - like you have much of that when working in north and living in south), I may get addicted to a montly salary, which could have a negative effect, especially since eventually I know it would be harder to quit and start my own company. The addiction of a company giving you money every month is a hard one to fight if one get's too accustom to it.

Regardless of what I decide I realised it's about time I started acting on my Ideas, especially those which are new to the market, I dont think waiting for competition to hit and then start is the way, MONOPLIZE from the start!!. So I guess, from now till the end of the year, it's writing up propsals, brain storming, and developing, hopefully with a prototype up and running I could show investors a product, and look for VC's.

I've realised that trying to organize a commited team in a start-up is very difficult. But nevertheless I need people who couuld finish. I'm gussing all capital-strained entrepreneurs encounter this.

So I guess as the title states it's now or never to act on my ideas and capitalize, and try to make money from them. After all, the only thing that could make me stick... is if I tell myself, I can't do it...what's the point in saying that if we don't at least try...

Trapped in Vax's House

It's late and I'm still awake. As I speak, I'm watching cricket on TV, India vs Australia. Australia is 65-1 in the 2nd innings leading by 278 runs and batting like rell shit. Ravi's(a.k.a Vax) father as we speak just walked thru the front door, see a stranger in the house... takes off his jersey and went in the room. Lawd.. these people too trusting. Anyhow, so let me tell you the story of how I became to be here.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.. i was hungry and about to order some KFC when Lawrence showed up in from my apt, abducted me and went galavanting about the place. Ended up buying $10 chinese food, getting kidnapped to help Vax out for his Stats exam tom, which btw, I starting to realised why i liked stats so much in A-levels. Actually i need to go thru the work, eventually gonna get tested on that in UWI.

If this blog dosent make much sense... look at the freaking time.

Saw a blood red moon tonight during the eclipse.

Febreeze smells very good. And it does fight odours... As stayfree girl.. it cured hers.

Oh vax lives in a house with his sister... she has a friend over, possible set up material for jeremy.

Java 5.0 (Tiger) is very cool goonna start doing some game programming in it because i need more games to play on my cell phone.

Naps playing rell shit and still making finals, so quality of football must be going down.

Waithing for sun to raise so I could walk home(right down the stree 5 mins away). didnt want to walk this hour... could be raped... or worst yet... be engaged in an intellectual conversation with the vagrant walking down the road 30mins ago saying "anybody see where jah gone?". If he did m20a he would know, it doest matter where jah went... cause the universe doesnt exist... just ask Prof. Farrell.

There is no porn on cinemax at 4:33am (none on showtime either). Cable going down the drain. I gonna so. Australia batting like shit. If i mentioned before.. iz because cricket going booooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg.

Just waked up shazara. I realise waking her up at 4am makes good conversation. Hrm.. aye speaking of that i have free calls who could i harass... oh wait i still have shanna,bailey,cindy,kristal and kavir to pay back for waking me up at 4:32am some freaking morning.

Lawrence and vax sleeping in the same room. One half-naked, the other is in a precarious position. I'm afraid to go in the room to get the mouse for this laptop.

Beach on sunday, surfing competition in sans souci. For those of you who never went, iz trini surfers against brazil, australia (who batting like shit), france, UK, US, barbados. AND >>> SURFER DUDES WALK WITH HOT HOT HOT GIRLS. Must go to check out them girls. Tey does be HOTTTT.

Austraila are now 87-1.

The babty next door is weezing. Australia batting like shit.

Need something to eat for breakfast. Wonder what vax's fridge has. Oh well everybody sleeping, i sure they'd appriciate if i helped myself instead of waking them up.

Honey is a shitflick. but jessica alba orn like boil corn that yuh does buy on the way back from mayaro.

Need to do some programming, i getting the programming itch again. Havent bathe in a while, wonder where the febreeze is.

Axe effect doesnt work. Wore it on numerous occasions, waited by an elevator and never got jumped by any old lady.

Austraila batting like shit.

Several random cocks are crowing as we speak, with a mean of 5, and a standard deviation of 1. However if the probabilty of any cock corwing at any one time is an independant event, so by the therom of total proababilty we could out them as a collection of indpendant subsets with total the total set. For any random cock choosen pobabilty of it crowing could be done by using Baye's therom.

I am bored, sleepy, and apparently, at 5am on various radio channels you hear the national anthem being played.
- This was brought to you by your friendly insomniac.