Patrick Kitheka Blog Site

Lead My Flock

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Kitheka) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:39:00 +0000

hen we see a job advertised we are asked to submit our CV or resume. If we are called for interview we try to impress during the interview. What kind of CV would you need to have in order to be asked to be the first Pope? What type of questions would you be asked during the interview? Peter was interviewed by Jesus in the Gospel except we heard today, and asked three questions, “Do you love me?” His CV wasn’t good; he had denied Jesus three times by a charcoal fire on Holy Thursday night. Peter did not find it easy to accept himself after that. When the cock crew later that evening, Peter wept. He realized his failure. He could not cope with it, could not accept it and he wept. He hit rock bottom. You would not expect Jesus to even consider him for the position of looking after the flock. But Jesus could see his heart and knew he was the man of the job. Why? Because Peter was different to Judas. Peter grew through his mistake whereas Judas allowed his mistake to conquer him. Peter reformed himself after his mistake but Judas was not man enough to reform himself. Peter knew and moved on from his sinfulness but Judas did not. Three times Peter had denied Jesus by charcoal fire on Holy Thursday evening but now three times by a different charcoal fire on this Easter day Jesus asks Peter to look after the sheep. Jesus forgave Peter and had confidence in him to make him Pope. Despite our sinfulness Jesus forgives us and has confidence in us. In the second letter to Timothy we read, “we may be unfaithful, but he is always faithful, for he cannot deny his own self. ’Jesus does not lock us in by mistakes of the past or present. We are given room to outgrow the mistakes of the past. Paul wrote, “For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. ’’What happened to Peter can happen to us also if we have the faith to accept God’s love and acceptance of us. Jesus forgives us in the sacrament of Reconciliation and accepts us after we have denied him, after we have disbelieved, we have given up after we have sinned. It takes an act of faith to believe in God forgives us and accepts us and our repentance after sin. Sometimes faith is the courage to accept acceptance, the courage to accept God’s forgiveness and acceptance of ourselves. Peter recovered his faith after his despair; he was able to say “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” So let us not allow the past to overcome us like Judas. Instead let us be like Peter and repent and reform ourselves and allow the Lord to put us to work for him again.

Growing Cucumber

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Kitheka) — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:22:00 +0000

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a very popular vegetable, originates from India where it is cultivated for more than 3000 years. Many gardeners don’t grow this tasty veg, but if you can grow tomatoes, you can succeed with cucumbers too. They are delicious in summer salads and sandwiches and if you are a fan of juicing you must try lemon cucumber.
The right variety
As always growing starts with choosing the right variety for your growing conditions, and with cucumbers it is especially true.
Greenhouse cucumbers don’t grow well outside at all in most summers as they need lots of heat and humidity to grow successfully. Most F1 hybrid varieties are suitable for indoor growing only. These cucumbers produce all female flowers, where pollination is not necessary to produce the fruit, in fact if you plant non hybrid and hybrid cucumbers in the same greenhouse, the fruits can go bitter.
Outdoor or ridge cucumbers have the advantage of producing a good crop without any protection. These cucumbers are usually heirloom, well tested varieties producing male and female flowers and pollination does happen but will not make the fruits bitter. Marketmore, lemon cucumber and the Mohican are all grow well outdoors. Check out the varieties here.
Sowing
The cucumber seeds need a temperature of 15 Celsius and above to germinate successfully. Sow the seeds in small individual pots, or two seeds in a pot and keep the stronger seedling. I recommend sowing the seeds no sooner than late April; at that time of the year they should germinate fine in an unheated greenhouse, or if you don’t have one, on your windowsill.
Keep the compost slightly moist, cucumber seedlings don’t like too much water and in the spring the greenhouse is still cool and the compost will not dry out for days. I did overwater many times my cucumber seedlings and they did not appreciate it at all; who would like to sit in cold water for days after all?

Growing on
After germination, which takes 7-10 days, the seedlings grow quite fast even in the unheated greenhouse. And they are ready to plant out when have 2 pairs of true leaves. If you planted the seeds into seed cells or very small pots, you have to replant the seedlings into individual pots. You can keep them in their pots until the fine roots appear on the bottom of the pots through the drainage holes. The young plants are prone to scorching so make sure you don’t place them too close to the glass and shade the greenhouse from late spring if necessary.
The seedlings will need some support from quite an early stage as cucumbers are climbers.
Plant out the seedlings in the greenhouse about 40 cm apart, supporting them with a cane or strong wire. Keep the main stem and few sideshoots as well. I found that cucumber plants can be vigorous in the greenhouse and the sideshoots can grow strong too and bear many fruits. I always leave 3 sideshoots in the greenhouse and make sure I feed the plants plenty of homemade liquid fertilizer. Pinch out the growing tips when they reached the top of the greenhouse or if you have the space you can train the main stem along the wall of the greenhouse. It is great fun and can squeeze out a late October crop from the plants.
Outdoors the cucumber plants can be left alone to grow as they wish on the ground or trained up on canes or on pea netting.

Diseases
Powdery mildew can be a problem especially in the greenhouse. It is a fungal disease which appears as a fine white powdery fungi mycelium on the surface of the leaves, between the veins. It weakens the plants and later the leaves become dry and drop off. To prevent the plants make sure that there is enough air circulation by removing the lower yellowing leaves throughout the growing season, and by leaving lots of room between the plants. Two cucumber plants per growbag is recommended.
Cucumber mosaic virus spreads by aphids. If it attacks the leaves start yellowing in a mosaic pattern and if the disease gets serious the whole plant can get deformed not only the leaves and fruits.
Whitefly can be a problem also in the greenhouse. Make your own useful garlic spray, which strengthens the tissue of the plants and repels the insects, I use it regularly to prevent my crop from pests and diseases.

Google Launches Voter Information Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Kitheka) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 13:54:00 +0000

The US Presidential Election is less than a week away and voters are searching for last-minute information. Google and its Politics & Elections team have launched a tool to help voters get the important information they need ahead of November 6.

The tool allows you to locate polling stations, find information with links to candidates’ web and social media sites. You can embed on any website and Google is working with partners Foursquare and AT&T to build apps using the same API.

A screen shot of what Americans are expected to see when they launch the tool.

Writing Own History on Social Media?

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Kitheka) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:49:00 +0000

Today’s Blogs, Tomorrow’s History

Barring any unforeseen disaster or crazy Skynet takeover, the internet is pretty much forever. You’re already aware that nearly every tweet in existence is going into a huge government database and that many deceased people still have Facebook accounts. The documents and journals that people around my age (mid to late 20s) wrote in our angst-filled years are probably still there.
Our search histories are being saved

Patrick posting perhaps what will be his history tomorrow in social media.

by search engines and ISPs. If a Geocities site we made in our middle school years isn’t around on the live web anymore, any intrepid stalker might be able to find at least some of its content using the Wayback Machine.

The point of writing all of this is not to make you blush with embarrassment, but rather to say that we’re at a unique point in history. Things that normal people are writing are actually being committed to history. Skynet might not care about your opinion on hot dog crust pizza from Pizza Hut, but someday those thoughts might be included in a history book—or whatever passes for a history book in the year 2062.

My question to both you and myself is “how do you want to be remembered?”

Every Word Preserved

Make no mistake, scholars and historians are going to be reading what we’ve written. Maybe they’re not going to ponder every blog post I’ve written or every good cucumber salad you’ve tweeted about, but the words and data are going to be analyzed.
Everything’s going to be aggregated, and the implications are bigger than your boss reading about how drunk you got at the beer garden from a Facebook post. The fact that you did get drunk at a beer garden in the year 2012 is significant because it tells real people in the future exactly what we, the normal people, actually did for fun at this point in history.
Jed Brubaker is a leading thinker and writer on this subject, and he sums it up quite nicely,

“Temporality concerns the notion of “lifecycles” as it has been applied in system development—the circumstances under which digital systems come into being, are put to use, and are taken out of service. The life of a user and the life of that user’s data are frequently not the same…”

Whether it’s intentional or not, history is not being written by the conquerors, it’s being written by us—and it’s in our blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, Youtube videos, Yelp reviews and search engine queries.
These things will outlive us all, and they are the ghosts of our lives and thoughts, preserved on hard drives.

Authenticity vs. Alienation

Let’s get back to the question of how you want to be remembered.
How do you conduct yourself in the online world? Do you troll different blogs and image boards using an anonymous or fake name? Do you leave constructive blog comments? Do you leave some real part of yourself behind on the internet?
I’d argue that it’s important, in order to contribute to a healthy and meaningful internet, to conduct yourself with dignity while still remaining true to yourself. A few curse words here and there won’t vilify us in the eyes of future generations, but if every video or blog post that bears your name is full of coarse language and jokes about bodily functions, what will that say to scholars, historians and school kids?
We all know the dangers of posting something damning to us on Facebook or Twitter, but the implications are much greater than that. You do run the risk of alienating family, coworkers and peers with brusque or offensive content, but you also run the risk of misrepresenting yourself.
As we discussed before, there is not much chance of escaping history at this point—do you want to be remembered as “swear word and fart joke guy” or “good dad, IT professional and auto restorer with an occasionally racy sense of humor?” Your blog, Youtube account and anything else that you post content to is the impression that you’re leaving on the future.
I think it’s our responsibility, as part of this pioneering generation, to stop being idiots and start leaving something worthwhile. There’s a place for funny comments and subversive content, but they need to have some sort of real merit.
All of these social media outlets offer us an amazing opportunity to contribute something positive to the world—not just the internet—while expressing ourselves as artists, writers and individuals.

Time and a Place

We already touched on this, but all of this online activity we’re participating in is documenting a particular time and place in history, but I think it’s worth looking into a little bit further. In the distant past, history was recorded by the few people that could write, read or interpret historical artifacts. Transparency, accuracy and diversity in historical information has come a long way in the past 200 years, but it’s never been like it is today. Your blog reflects exactly what is going on in a real person’s life—it talks about what you’re interested in, what your problems are and what your daily life is actually like.
I’d personally pay a lot of money to read a blog written by a kid living in New York during 1977 when punk exploded, but there was no such thing as a blog in the 70s.
Sure, there were journals and diaries, but those are rarely accessible and many of them are meant to remain private. There are plenty of great documentaries, but is anything really as revealing as someone’s personal, emotional Youtube video? Or is there anything as raw and poetic as a great blog post?
Before blogging, not everyone could appear on video or get their words published, but with these new forms of media we have a much better picture of how people actually live.

More than Sales and Marketing

Like many of you, I’m slightly uneasy about my information being collected and aggregated. I feel uncomfortable with the concept of a company, either benevolent or malevolent, painting an accurate picture of me with words and data they’ve acquired from the internet.
Our information will probably always be used for sales and advertising, but I think there’s some real value here as well. I want my future children and grandchildren to know exactly what was going on during my lifetime, through my words and the words of my peers. I don’t want the history they learn to be restricted to the political needs and opinions of the rich, powerful and well-connected.
I want historians, scholars and teachers to remember us for using social media to fight oppression, using our blogs to host incredible writing and using our Flickr accounts to contain our breathtaking photographs.
I want an elementary school child to laugh when she hears about our ridiculous Google searches in 2012. I want future generations to be inspired by our art blogs and motivated by our citizen journalism. I want them to know that people were talking about blogging, talking about web communities and helping to forge ahead in both of those areas. Above everything else, I want them to look back at real people and understand who we were and where we were going.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that our blogs and the content we produce will represent a snapshot in time. I don’t question that we have a responsibility to represent ourselves with authenticity and strong ethics.
Our tweets, Facebook posts, Youtube videos and everything else we commit our thoughts and hard work to are, to a great degree, being preserved for the future. I think our data will be used not just for marketing, but by historians and other great minds.
Keeping all of these things in mind, I want our grandchildren to look back at this intersection of history and technology and be inspired not by the inflated, exaggerated figures in text books—but by real people.

Makenna Passaris - New Artiste.....

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Kitheka) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0000

If you still haven't heard, there is a new girl in town, and she means business. Her name is Makenna and she's a daughter to the famous Esther Passaris. For the past few days, Makenna has been hitting headlines for all the musical reasons.

The lady is still a teenager, 16 yrs to be exact, and she's already doing it big, never mind that she launched her music career on Monday last week. Not many artistes get good coverage a few days into their careers, but Makenna is not any other artiste.

Based in the UK, Makenna discovered her passion for music in October last year and has since recorded several songs and videos. She wants to be the first Kenyan to win a Grammy.

Her entry into the music scene was well choreographed, and this may be partly attributed to her mum's influence. On Sunday, she was among the artistes lined up to perform during Akon's family concert. According to her, Akon asked her to perform and she said yes. On her Facebook fan page, she wrote, "Just met Akon, he's so cool! He asked me to perform tomorrow during the family show and I said YES!!! :)".

That was followed by, "This week has been nothing but spectacular, and I thank each and everyone of my family, friends and fans for all the support and words of encouragement. My biggest highlight was meeting one of my favortie artist, Akon, yesterday.I also met Akon's Tour Manager (a really nice gentleman ) who understood my desire to work with and be signed by Konvict Musik. He suggested I perform three songs at the Akon Family Concert today at 3pm, at the Carnivore Grounds. If you can, please come and watch as I make my stage debut. Wish me luck. Cheers!"

Not sure if Akon knew that it would be the first time Makenna stepped on a stage to perform. On Sunday, she posted this on her account, "About to go on stage for my first live performance at the Akon family concert. The crowd looks anxious with anticipation.I hope I survive this and learn from the experience :-) Wish me luck! Cheers."

Esther Passaris was in the meantime dishing out Akon's Sh 2500 concert tickets to random Facebook fans of Makenna. She gave out 10 for the Saturday concert and another 10 for the Sunday one. On her Facebook page, she wrote,"I shall give 10 random fans who like her page tickets to the Akon concert tonight and 10 for the family show on tomorrow. These 20 fans will also receive an autographed copy of her Album CD in January, 2013."

Children of Single Moms: A Society's Menace

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Kitheka) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:05:00 +0000

To ladies who do not want to get married: leave everything to do with marriage alone (for example sex, or giving birth). To men who don’t value marriage: I say, keep away from sex and other marriage related issues.

I almost fainted yesterday. I lost my appetite and went to sleep completely berserk. At my age this is the least I expected from this lost generation. How can a man burry alive his own ailing and aged mother? (read ‘wanugu’ from kirinyaga) I am lost for words. God help us.

Having said that, I have come to the following deductions:- children of single ladies make the worst criminals in any society. You would ask why ……because the son grows up fearing no authority at all. His mother cant compensate for the fathers role. (most MPigs fall in this category)

Girls brought up by single mothers make the worst wives. They have never had a full time man in their lives. They want to be free, they cannot obey authority. They want to live like their mother.

So there you have it. Bottom-line, by all means get married and stay married for sake of the children.

SINGLE MOTHERS MUST FIND A 'FATHER FIGURE'(eg. uncle, grandfather) OR BE STRICT DISCIPLINARIANS TO AVERT THE ABOVE PROBLEM.

MY APOLOGIES TO SINGLE MOTHERS:(You have work to do) CHILDREN FROM SINGLE MOTHERS ...discipline...discipline...discipline......Have a blessed day all.