This week I read about one interesting aspect of Energy Economics: Energy Poverty. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist and Head of Economic Analysis Division of the International Energy Agency, underlined this often disregarded threat [1]. The world is busy with 2 other aspects, namely energy supply disruptions and environmental impacts of energy use/production, that they completely forget about a large portion of world population that are deprived of modern forms of energy.

1.6 billion people, mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, have no access to electricity. 2.5 million people rely on biomass mainly in the form of wood for their daily cooking.  Each year 1.3 millions of people, mainly women and children die from inhaling fumes from in-house wood stoves.

It is estimated that unless substantial efforts are made to alleviate energy poverty the trend will continue and UN millennium development goals are not to be met.

[1] Birol Fatih (2007), Energy Economics: A place for energy poverty in the Agenda, Energy Journal, Volume 18, Number 3

Number of times did I expect change from people but that always lead to unhappiness.Because people rarely change. You can try to influence them, coerce them, do emotional blackmail and whatever. Its of no real use.

Accept people as they are. That is the golden rule. Never attempt to change them because you will remain unhappy. Change if any must be driven by the person himself.

Finally I am riding the rails! After investing the whole day trying to remember the steps and downloading-installing ruby, gems, rails, mongrel, rad rails etc.

I think that I have a reasonable working environment to get me started. I shall try to catch up from where I left a year ago, maybe I need to refresh myself. Recently I saw atleast 2 reports of developers switching back to the LAMP platform because they felt they have not been progressing well enough on RoR. But that was time well spent, they did bring RoR concepts in their bags and have applied in on their LAMP projects.

Let me gauge if the grass is greener there. I shall keep you readers posted! Its now 01:30 am and I need to sleep… yaawwn!

I would never ever thank god enough for bestowing upon us, one of the most precious abilities one would want to possess: Our imagination! Think about it, you can imagine things wherever and whenever you want to. You can imagine whatever you want to.  Ever since I was a child I would imagine crazy stuff and I would really enjoy that. I still do!

Imagination is limitless. There are no boundaries. Its true freedom.

I guess one of the reasons I want to blog around is that I would like to take a regular snapshot of whatever comes through my mind and later on be able to enjoy those again. I would also like to perceive the reader’s reaction. Most people do label me at the very best peculiar, weird  and at the very worst outright crazy. Hehe! But most of the time its truly amusing. Even me sometimes I do have doubts about my sanity.

But do I limit my imagination in an effort to be more sane? No way! That would mean limiting my freedom of thought. The very best I can do is to avoid communicating my thoughts to people who might frown upon what I think of. But I really hate doing that.

The best part of thinking about crazy stuff is to communicate it to other people. People who do not know me very well think am reserved, probably I am initially. But wait till I get to know someone better, thats where the real fun starts. I can blurt out loads of tons of bullshit at one go. Some are amused and some are not.  Others even participate!

But most people would frown upon what I say. Lack of sense of humor? Limited thinking ability? I do not think so. Its like people have build imaginary boundaries around them which their thoughts cannot permeate.  They want to appear as grown ups and of course grown-ups need to have serious thoughts. There is no time and place available for imagination. Thats a true pity!

Maybe I do not want to lose the childness in me. It guarantees limitless imagination and by extension my freedom.

Ok in order to avoid the dreaded advisor lag and the infamous deadline lag, and of course to be able to enjoy the preliminaries of a beer lag I need to take certain resolutions:

1. Thou shall wake up before 7 am.
2. Thou shall find and read at least one paper everyday.
3. Thou shall document your findings each time for easy reference.
4. Thou shall focus on your work.

 Let us see how much I can achieve with the above. Wish me luck. Waking at 7 am? Arg! Damned!

Have you ever done something without really knowing the rationale behind whatever you are doing?

Imagine you were an extraterrestrial being, called Muchakwenu. You have blue eyes, 3 pairs of em and you are wearing a pair of savate leponz. Why? Because savates leponzes are so convenient and comfortable, who wouldn’t wear em?

Ok lets get on with it. Imagine that somehow due to some unforeseen circumstances, involving your spoon and a packet of twisties stuck in  your super extraterrestrial latrine of your vehicle, you end up landing on earth. On an island called Mauritius, near a marchand boulettes.

You somehow crawl out of your space ship and you see a strange sight. You see a small crowd of bizarre creatures staring at you.

They look awful. They stand upright, with two disproportionate legs and a pair cute looking hands. They have strange hair on their heads. Spiky and all. They seem to have some cloth covering their bodies. You switch on your X-Ray supertronic vision glasses you bought last week from cash and carry. Arg! Jesus! They are wearing underwear!!!! but why??

Try to help Muchakwenu in finding the answer with your comments.. Why people wear underwear?

The ones I can think of:

1. So that they don’t get stuck with the zipper
2. To hide their genitals

Can you think of some answers?

Once upon a time there was an old man who loved to carry his raffia bag with him. Wherever he went, you would find his bag hanging on his frail shoulder. Tonton Soupaye was a man of character but always grumbling and shouting at people who would dare approach his bag. Most people in Mamzelle Jeanne Village would avoid him, except for little Tisipec.

Tisipec was a 14 years old boy, son of Bimbredes the mecanic. The former was close with Tonton Soupaye ever since he helped Tonton Soupaye convince his elephant to got to the dentist, but that my friends is a different story. Nevertheless Tisipec was the only person who was allowed to meddle with Tonton Soupaye’s bag and he was one of the few who were aware of the contents of the bag. Everyone else in the village was wondering what was in Tonton Soupaye’s mysterious bag and they liked to pester Tisipec about the contents of the old man’s rafia bag. Tisipec vowed never to tell Tonton Soupaye’s secret but that would not stop the village people to pester him.

Miaoupoc, chubby girl in her teens was the most cunning and above all, the most curious of them all. She managed to convince Tisipec to tell her of the old man’s secret and that of course led to Tisipec’s downfall.

But WTF, who cares about the contents of an old man’s bag? Better get back to work damn it!

It seems that in each and everyone of us there is a designer that sleeps. At least thats what the majority of clients think. Many of them are convinced that they hold a hidden talent in website designing and good taste.

As a website designer you should take into account relevant factors that, of course, affect every decision you take when building a site. Some of them are accessibility, audience, authenticity, usability, simplicity, platform independence, seo etc. As a designer you do have to find an equilibrium to find the optimal design that fits in a given context and that is no small feat. You may take hours working on a concept that fits the bill.

Then comes the client, who can at one shot destroy the concept. Let me give a few examples:

I want a flash intro/logo/banner
Many clients like flash because multimedia creates an impact on the visitor. Maybe but it depends what type impact. Flash requires a plugin which is not accessible on some browsers. By using flash one can most certainly alienate a % of the audience.
Imagine someone not being able to view your logo because they have no flash plugin installed. Imagine a visitor having to wait several minutes for the intro to load each time they visit a site. Flash sometimes is too flashy and can distract the visitor from the actual content of the site. Moreover flash does break the natural navigation flow of a browser.
I want comic sans ms font
There was client who was in love with comic sans ms and insisted to use that font on their website. In the early days of the world wide web, you could see thousands of websites here and there choosing fancy fonts to display their content. Such fonts do have a major shortcoming, they are not available on all platforms. Professionals try hard to make the website being designed look the same whichever platform a visitor is using be it Linux, Windows or a Mac. It is common practice to use standard fonts that are known to be available on these platforms.
I want more and different colors on each page.
Rainbow websites! hehe… also very common in the early days of website design. The standard is to use at most 2-3 colors on a website and to keep that color scheme throughout the website. Why? The consistent look and feel of a website avoids the visitor to be confused and used as a navigation aid.
I want a video
Like flash it can alienate some users. Need to take care of the audience. Do they all have access to broadband connections? My best guess is no.
I want frames
Some clients saw nifty frames on a competitor’s website and want to emulate that. However little do they know about the issues with bookmarking, printing and being accessible to search engines.
Copy photos and content
Many clients are unaware of copyright issues and some are but ignore it. I am convinced about the principles of freedom and against restrictions but certainly that does not warrant going for illegality.
Some clients believe that a website can be built out of the blue. It is well know that the factor that truly determines the success of a website is the content. Repeat after me.. Content is king! … Again… Content is Kiiing! Its not the job of the designer to create the content but certainly designers can help structure the content to be accessible to the user.

Most people regard designers as simple implementers that build their designs. The client is the “designer”. To what extent is this acceptable? Need to ponder

In the meantime check these out:

Nightmare web design clients 

How to ruin a web design - the design curve

I like trees. I have always been fascinated by trees, dunno why…

I can say that I have spent most of my playtime as a child on a tree. I would mentally classify the different branches of the tree as different levels that I am to reach. Each time trying to climb higher and higher again, the view being the ultimate reward. Sometimes however I would be less adventurous, I would simply climb to a comfortable intermediate branch and laze around the whole day. Simply enjoying a light breeze caress my skin on a hot summer day.

Sometimes I would explore the ecosystem of the tree. I would watch an army of ants climbing up and down the main trunk, I would try to deviate their paths by laying obstacles here and there. Once or twice I would shamelessly cause genocides by flooding their homes. Arg!

Another interesting creature has been the chameleon. Nasty beasts, squatting my tree to get their daily share of sunshine. Sometimes I would shoo them off but most of the time they would shoo me off. However as I grew older, feeling the need for adrenaline like Steve Irwin, I was a the chameleon hunter. Trying to catch them by their tails..

That was the unforgettable moments of my childhood. Sigh!

Nowadays I admire trees, their intricate shapes, their sizes and colours. They provide good shade, they shelter birds and they give juicy fruits.. Miam! I need to visit Pamplemousses garden again!

Today the baril of oil reached $81. It seems that oil prices are deemed to increase ever more, amid increasing demand for energy from developing countries.

The world is witnessing continued improvement of standard of living of its increasing population. Developing countries rightfully aspire access to technology.

Gone are the days where people went to rivers to wash their clothing; gone are the days people would gather wood to cook their food; gone are the days people would light up their homes with candles. People rely on technology to improve their standard of living.

Emerging giants like India and China do require energy to run their industries, which indirectly increases domestic energy demand. Its the old game of supply and demand. Fossil energy is scarce and demand is ever increasing, price is set to soar. My personal view is that world leaders shall be defined by those who can solve the energy equation.

What are the alternatives? Renewables! Nature has bestowed upon us sustainable sources of energy. There is enormous potential for tropical islands like Mauritius. Solar, wind and tidal energy are the most obvious options given the island’s context. These forms of sustainable energy have been mostly untapped given their relative high cost of initial investments. However given the soaring prices of fossils, renewables are becoming viable. The island has successfully tapped bagasse to its full potential. Plans are set for ethanol to enter the nation’s energy mix.

Relying on renewables is not enough. There is a need to increase energy efficiency. Energy efficient technologies are to be favored in an attempt to curb the increase in energy consumption.

How successful Mauritius will be to solve the energy equation remains to be seen. My work aims to contribute in the same.