For God, For Country, and For Humanity
Now you have no excuse for sticking with Windows and Microsoft!
10. Total cost of ownership ranges very low to nothing for Linux.
9. Linux and BSD distributions give you more complete, usable operating environments out of the box.
8. Viruses and Spyware are basically nonexistant for Linux and BSD.
7. Linux and BSD systems are more stable than Windows.
6. Linux and BSD supports more hardware out-of-the-box.
5. It’s easy and fun to develop high-quality software for Linux and BSD.
By Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat
So, your crush on the bass player from Vibrating Sandbox has finally died a whimpering death and you’re wondering where to go from here. All the sinister dudes are either dating a series of interchangeable high-school riot girls in baby doll dresses and an overdose of manic panic, or permanently shacked up with some bitter old lady who pays all the bills. Which will it be, a wifely prison or a humiliating one night stand? Into this void of potential mates comes a man you may not have considered before, a man of substance, quietude and stability, a cerebral creature with a culture all his own. In short, a geek.
Geek dudes thrive on mystery and love challenges and intellectual puzzles. Don’t you consider yourself one? Wouldn’t you
like a little intellectual stimulation or your own? We thought so.
Is it not interestingly queer that you sometimes find yourself whistling to some silly tune
from an advertisement that you cannot remember hearing yet you often forget important stuff?
Human memory has always fascinated me and after some research well, not really, just prolonged
thought I can table my findings.
If any memory happens to invoke joy, fear and sorrow significantly, then that particular memory
is likely to be vivid.
Joyous incidents are hardly forgotten – a bride never forgets the events of her wedding day.
Incidents causing fear will almost certainly never really leave your mind, and this is from
first hand experience. One chilly night (it was actually quite warm but I remember it chilly)
while in my bottom bunk bed, the top bunk came tumbling down right after I had scratched on to
it the first 20 elements of the periodic table of elements. Since then, I have never had a
problem remembering these elements.
Similarly, sorrowful events are etched onto our minds. It still surprises me that my mother
can describe, in detail, the killing and eating of her beloved pet sheep, Joginder, yet he
passed on when she was just six years old.
Indeed joy, fear and sorrow create vivid memories. What happens when they are all present in
one single memory? The result is what I call an E.V.M extremely vivid memory.
One particular Sunday at Nyahururu Elite Senior School, whilst playing soccer match for a
300-piece carton of short-cake biscuits which were quite valuable in a school where both
money and foodstuff are outlawed amongst students I suffered a serious knock to the head
while defending a particularly lovely aerial ball that was goal-bound. That was the beginning
of my EVM
At that moment, it seemed like nothing. The excitement, constant encouragement to continue,
cheering fans and the desire for the biscuits kept me going. It was one of those moments in
team sports where you can hear and see nothing else but your team-mates, and you all play like
gods.
Two days later, that knock came back to haunt me in a recurrent nose-bleed. Having overwhelmed
the school nurse, I spent that night in a dingy hospital, sharing a room with a patient in for
excessive intake of (possibly illicit) alcohol, who kept murmuring incorrigible nonsense.
Never ending drowsiness, bad food, nurses bearing syringes and a large-fingered doctor trying
to stuff my nose with a cloth soaked in a sweet tasting, disgusting oily substance added to my
misery.
I had not slept a wink by 4 am. Unfortunately, the sorrow I was in invoked a recollection of
the days up-to-the-minute happenings. What had I done to deserve this? My sorrow brought fear.
What if I dont make it? I asked myself. A song with the chorus: I wonder will I ever see
tomorrow? played in my mind. My fear was now apparent. Not fear of death but fear of not
achieving my goals.
The next day, my parents arrived to take me home just as I was about to eat under the watchful
eyes of two burly nurses trying to wrestle my awakening room-mate. This, coupled with the
extremely simple treatment of my condition in Nairobi, brought me unparalleled joy.
Strangely, when I look back at this E.V.M, as I am doing now, I enjoy the memories. I might
regret this one day, but I would gladly welcome another E.V.M just so that I can live long
through it learn from it and be able to remember and laugh about it.
What’s your EVM?
1. Phone Book– type a person’s name, city and state into the search box and google will deliver phone and address listings.
2.Calculate– type a math problem and google will calculate it.
3.Dictionary– type define followed by any English word and google will give you a quick definition.
4.Maps, driving directions and satelite views– enter a city and state (or just a zip code) into the search box.
5.I’m feeling lucky– enter a search item and click this button on the google home page to go directly to the top matching web page for your query.
6.Forecast Weather– Type weather followed by a zip code or name of a city and google will give you the current conditions and a four day forecast.
7.Use the ~ character– put it before a word, with no space in-between to have google look for pages with both that term and its synonyms.
8.Use quotation marks when precision matters. Adding quoation marks around a query tells google to look for ocurences of the exact phrase as it was typed. Helpful when looking for lyrics, people’s names or famous expressions.
I know most of you who, like me, went through Kenya’s 8.4.4. school system upto secondary school know nothing of complex or imaginary numbers.
My own first encounter with them was in a SAT exam and it was a rude shock.
Just so that none of you get any rude shocks,
Imaginary numbers
The solution to x^2 ( x squared)= 1 is +1 or -1
What about x^2= -1 ?
By defintion, the imaginary number i is the solution to this equation.
i.e. i = square root of -1
Complex Numbers
A complex number is a number that contains both real (normal numbers like 22, 56) and imaginary (i) components. They are usually written as
z = a + ib
Where a and b are real and i is imaginary.