Matrich

FIFA World Cup 2010 Experience

Matrich — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:31:36 +0000

Sanibona…!!! After a long time without posting, I am back with my greatest ~~adventure~~ ~~tour~~ experience ever. I think you can surely guess what itâ€™s about. Definitely, itâ€™s about the FIFA World Cup 2010, the first World Cup on African soil.

With just a few hours to the finals of this biggest sports event, I was among those who were so privileged, and indeed blessed, to be part of this event. I am now part of those who witnessed live the first world cup hosted on African soil in Sausi (South Africa). For my entire life, it was also my first time to watch a football match live in a stadium. Luckily enough, this wasn’t just a stadium but it was in one of the most artistic and awe-inspiring football venues on the African continent i.e. Soccer City Stadium which hosted the opening ceremony and will host the finals. Woow!! What a blessing!!!

Being sponsored by MTN itself, I and the team had an incredible, fantastic time and this World Cup will remain part of our memory lanes. It was surely a lifetime experience which is priceless and will remain to be remembered in our lives.

Having been to SA before, I couldn’t imagine what I would expect during the world cup. However, it was so cool to feel the World Cup environment live. I must commend the organizers and South Africa for the great work done over there.

We had a number of tours around the city and the hospitality in Sausi (SA) and around the stadium was so great and fabulous. In the stadium, I was seated a few rows away from the pitch and we enjoyed the match. The support in the stadium was very phenomena and it is worthy an experience for any football fan out there. Together as Africa United fans, we blew the vuvuzelas and cheered the players to the maximum we could though there was so much pressure. Seeing penalty shoot-outs was also great though we lost out.

I must say that this World Cup surely leaves a big legacy behind and we (Africans) are so much proud of hosting it. It was also full of surprises as winners of each game weren’t very obvious. Great thanks to the organizers of our trip especially MTN Uganda and MTN Group for the incredible work well done. It was so fantastic (ayoba) that words above are kind of understatement of the whole experience. Most importantly, I give thanks to God, The Almighty, for his continuous blessing as I was among the few who watched this historical World Cup live.

Ayoba, Ayoba…!!!

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Celebrating CSS Naked Day 2010

Matrich — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:17:08 +0000

Goosh!! I completely forgot about the CSS Naked Day and when I checked on my website, I realized that there was something wrong. I automatically remembered about being CSS naked and automatically googled to check if it was the day. Thankfully it was the D-day and thanks to the function I added to my site to automatically make my website css naked every year.

So for the second year in a row, I am joining the entire web community to celebrate this big day as a way of demonstrating my compliance to web standards i.e. proper semantic markup and a good hierarchy structure.

For more details, visit http://naked.dustindiaz.com/ and in case you got any running websites, you can join the celebration.

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Celebrating CSS Naked Day 2009 (0)

Plotting Graphs on Python for Series 60 (PyS60)

Matrich — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:42:59 +0000

While developing an application for one of my projects, I had a need to plot several graphs showing the trends of the inputted data. In the course of finding a solution for this, I came across a great PyS60 API called PySchart by Marcel Pinheiro Caraciolo which provides a standard to construct graphs on PyS60 platform.

However, PySchart couldn’t plot several line graphs on the same canvas yet this was very important in my application as I wanted the user to easily make comparison for the different item’s trends. Luckily, the project had been released under the GNU General Public License v2. I talked to the Caraciolo who was very kind enough to give me the necessary support to improve the line chart portion of the project.

Today, I have uploaded an improved version of the line chart API/library which allows support for different line graphs on the same canvas.

Below is a simple code snippet on how you can implement the graph in the image above.

from appuifw import *
import e32
from linechart import LineChart
 
def quit():
    print "Exit key pressed"
    app_lock.signal()
 
canvas = Canvas()
app.body = canvas
 
dataset = [[(0, 32.5),(1, 45.0), (2, 90.0)],[(0,32.7),(1,67.5),(2.0,67.3),(3,100),(4,65)]]
chart = LineChart(app.body.size,[0,5,1,0,125,25], dataset, [(255,140,0),(51,96,161),(114,171,242),(16,77,140),(250,210,125),(206,125,49)], legend=["Revenues", "Profits"], colorBack = (237,246,253), xaxislabels=["Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","June"]) 
 
app.exit_key_handler = quit
app_lock = e32.Ao_lock()
app_lock.wait()

Download The Line Graph Example Here and Download The Full PySchart API Here

Hope it will be useful to someone out there and feel free to contact me in case of help or anything.

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PyS60 Presentation at the Mobile Applications Programming Workshop

Matrich — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:27:14 +0000

Yesterday, I was privileged to give a presentation about Python for Series 60 in the Mobile Applications Programming Workshop. The workshop was attended by several third year Computer Science and Information Technology students of Faculty of Computing and Information Technology.

In my session, I talked about:

Operating Systems and Programming Languages used on Smart Phones
So why then Python?
Simple comparison between PyS60 and JavaME
Which PyS60 works for you?
How to test your PyS60 Scripts
A General quick look at Python
Some PyS60 Modules and their usage

Download the presentation and code samples at the following links:

Otherwise, it was very exciting to see such enthusiastic interesting students ready to take mobile applications to another level. Thanks a lot for the incredible compliments and feedback. Feel free to drop me an email.

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Merry Christmas 2009

Matrich — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:40:08 +0000

Again it is that exciting time of the year when we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord. To some, it is just normal KB and a holiday while to many of us, it is not just a child who is born BUT it is The Son of The Living God who is born.

While I moving in town and shopping malls, I couldn’t believe the incredible number of people moving up and down ~~oba upside down~~, doing lots of shopping, etc. to prepare for this day. Of course, this is a testimony that it’s not just a normal holiday BUT it is really the coming of special child, Jesus.

This festive season, our very own, Watoto Church, put together the Christmas message in the most simplistic way for many to understand. I must say that it was a great performance and I am certainly sure that it yielded so much fruit to the Kingdom of God and blessed a lot of us. For those who missed, you can hook yourself up with a DVD. A trailer and more details available at “The Journey“. Thanks a lot to my church leader for the great year well done and we continue to pray for more blessings and healing of the city.

As always, just like in 2007 and 2006, I pray that this Christmas brings a new aspect to your life and may Christ’s Birth make more meaning to you as He becomes or continues to be your personal Savior.

WISHING YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

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Matrich’s Experience at the MTN Marathon 2009

Matrich — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:23:54 +0000

As the clock kept ticking towards this year’s MTN Marathon, my friends at work challenged me to do my thing (i.e. winning the Marathon or at least winning most of them). Of course, to me, a person who has never run in my entire life, this seems much more than the challenges I face daily. At least in my life, whenever I tried running, after 1 or 2 laps of running the pitch, I would start heavily panting and I could eventually just give up or stop. The only time I could do some sorts of running was when I would be playing soccer, in that case, I would run since I would be active chasing a player, the ball or something but still my limitation was the persistence to maintain my breath.

Matrich finishing the MTN Marathon 2009

This year right a few weeks before the marathon, I decided to take on this BIG challenge or nightmare. I started by asking a friend of mine if I could run and finish the 10 km. This friend of mine advised me that I could actually make it and gave me a few tips.

Eventually, I decided to set a realistic target of being able to complete the 10 km in whatever time possible. So I laid a strategy of beginning small until when I realize my target. One Saturday, I decided to run near my neighborhood at home which I managed to complete. After a week or so, I decided to run half of the official marathon track, then after another week, I took three quarters of the route and the last time I finished off the whole route.

This was a great achievement to me and I encouraged other workmates of mine to take up the challenge. Despite the many hurdles I faced on the official day of the marathon, I still made my way through the route and finished off the Marathon.

The main lesson I learnt from this whole experience was that DETERMINATION is a very key to success.

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Celebrating CSS Naked Day 2009

Matrich — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:59:53 +0000

Today, I am joining the entire web community to celebrate the CSS Naked Day 2009. The qualification of celebrating the day is having your site has proper semantic markup and since my blog qualifies, then why not. Even with the css disabled, my site is well usable and understandable and that’s what the celebration is about.

The idea behind this event is to promote web standards (like proper semantic markup and a good hierarchy structure). On April 9th, many blogs and sites will strip all CSS during 24 hours (effectively 48 hours for international compliance) and show the content â€œunstyledâ€ as if no CSS existed.

For more details, visit http://naked.dustindiaz.com/ and in case you got any running websites, you can follow join the celebration.

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Multiple IE Browser Testing – Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview

Matrich — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:16:58 +0000

In all the web developments I do apart from sites based on SharePoint, I always develop using Firefox as a yardstick and after then, I try write a few IE tweaks especially for IE 6 to ensure that it displays the work well. Of course, you may ask yourself why I do this yet IE comes as the default browser of all Microsoft operating systems which definitely I am using. The reasons for this can be found in my post, Multiple IE-Single PC solution – IE Tester, I wrote sometime back and gave a solution of IE Tester.

Most web developers or designers when debugging use either virtual, multiple machines running different versions of IE. Recently, I found out that Microsoft had released a stand-alone tool, Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview, to help in the debugging process by incorporating IE6, IE7 and IE8 into this tool.

Expression Web SuperPreview for Windows Internet Explorer is a stand-alone visual debugging tool that makes it faster and easier to migrate your sites from IE6 to IE7 or IE8. With SuperPreview, you can ensure that your Web sites work correctly in IE8 while also maintaining compatibility with earlier versions of IE.

SuperPreview shows your web pages rendered in IE6 and either IE7 or IE8, depending on which version you have installed on your machine. You can view the pages side by side or as an onion-skin overlay and use rulers, guides and zoom/pan tools to precisely identify differences in layout. You can even compare your page comp to how the targeted browsers render the page.

The tool also contains several other interesting things including pointer modes, image viewing, dom highlighting, positioning guides/rulers, layout views, zoom, thumbnail display. The free downloadable tool will only support Internet Explorer and in case you would like other browsers incorporated, you would need to part off with some fee.

For the web developers and designers, this is a great tool for you to test out and use.

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Operating Systems GUI Evolution

Matrich — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:19:45 +0000

As I was traversing the Internet, I found a great post about Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009 showing a range of GUIâ€™s that have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh (Mac), Windows, Linux, Symbian OS, over the years.

To me, the most amazing evolution is the one for the famous Macintosh. Mac has been known for great user interfaces and great products like iPhone, iPods, etc. and therefore great to see how their GUIs have evolved.

Check out the details at Webdesigner Depot.

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Free ASP.NET MVC Book Chapter

Matrich — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:12:03 +0000

ASP.NET MVC is a new approach for Microsoft developers to use to create dynamic data-driven web sites and follows in the same mold as other platforms such as Rails and Django. Model View Controller (MVC) is relatively a new phenomenon in ASP.NET and it is taking shape though it is kinda difficult for programmers used to the usual WebForms get into the MVC style. I am kinda luck that before I got into ASP.NET programming, I was already using the MVC in some of my web applications using mainly CodeIgniter, a great PHP framework.

Luckily, ScottGu, the Corporate Vice President f Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division has been kind enough and released, free of charge, the first chapter of a new book Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 which is still under production.

The chapter walks you through how to build a small but complete application “NerdDinner” using ASP.NET MVC and introduces some of the core concepts behind it. NerdDinner is an Open Source ASP.NET MVC Project that helps nerds and computer people plan, find or organize get-togethers online.

The free chapter download is available at http://tinyurl.com/aspnetmvc and the site live at http://www.nerddinner.com. The whole application code is available at CodeProject.

Great thanks to ScottGu and I must say that the application really looks cool which isn’t a common thing with most of the free applications built out there. I have looked at many of them including developer’s blog and I wonder whether these don’t require nice looking interfaces to their applications and interfaces.