Thank You iLab Liberia

I chose not to look at this article about iLab Liberia with a Liberian perspective, after reading some of the comments.

First thing, we have talked very much about fiber-optic Internet connectivity...in Liberia -an ultra fast access to the Internet. What use is it when not many people (Liberians) would be able to utilize the facility which would in return pay for the maintenance of the said? The more the users, the cheaper the access... Even some of us who consider ourselves techies, got more insight from this great initiative by getting actively involved in some of those things someone mentioned above. They might just seem irrelevant (depending on who's looking at the importance), but in this Information Age, they are more important. 

Have you taken a look at these Google pages?
http://www.google.com.sl/
http://www.google.ci/ 
That's for Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. I guess we Liberians would love to see www.google.lr  or www.google.com.lr with the inscription 'Liberia' and somewhere below, 'offered in Koloqua'. If this is what we want, then that thousand-mile must begin with these few steps.

Twitting: During the 2011 elections, I twitted information to the world that media at the time had no access to. We must not forget that important decisions are made based on timely and accurate information.

Facebook: If I can't see how relevant this is, it doesn't mean it isn't. I am just not seeing it from others' perspective.

Google mapping: If you take a look at Google map of Liberia (especially Monrovia) it looks a lot better now than years back. Thanks to Google and iLab for helping out on this. At least I, with many others, have become Liberian Google Mappers... and every other time, iLab is having a mapping party to make Liberia's map more informative and not just a blank space.

Blogging: hmmm...there are more bloggers in Liberia now as compared to before. Thanks to iLab.

Coding: I wouldn't say it is a waste of time and resource. We (Computer and Internet users) owe our entirety to the great programmers out there. But I think we are not trying to encourage our own Liberian programmers. iLab is helping us with that and we should be appreciative.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): since many are unable to buy software, iLab is doing good by encouraging alternatives to people could are eager to do more but have less finance. FOSS training at iLab provides them the same (or better) facilities paid software (system and application) would. And the world is even getting better with Open-source.

Panoramio: Some time ago, something tragic happened somewhere in Monrovia, but weeks before the tragic accident, I started an awareness about the situation but no one paid heed until the accident. And many Liberians away wanted to see and know what happened where. With Panoramio, the location of the accident was accessible via Internet.

Wikipedia: We source out information there most time but the strange thing is that those information are put there by us. I had this color photo of the One Liberian Dollar note and after I saw the Two Liberian Dollars note on wikipedia, I felt the urge to make other Liberians know what the other bill looked like. So I edited wikipedia and made the change. iLab has helped in many ways to make sure that people are able to make better the information they seek and at the same time, have a presence on cyber-community.

Google docs and other useful Internet tools allowing people use the Internet more efficiently are taught at iLab. The world (WWW) is filled with information, but the most difficult thing is sourcing out which information is the right or true one. And this seems to be easier with the help of iLab in Liberia. Consider it just Monrovia, but who can blame them when the country itself seems to be just Monrovia,

Some times back, I did hear one of the co-founders say that that building was given to iLab for use (gratis)...dunno if they are paying for it by now (since I last heard that). We don't need to jump into quick conclusions, but assessing the Internet connectivity at iLab, one could easily conclude that more money goes towards that. Considering electricity cost, salaries, travel and hotel expense for volunteers coming from away to help Liberians for free...what more can I say?

My fervent wish is that iLab find donors (which I'm sure they will) interested in supporting eTechnology for experience eSharing, and the continuation of other goodies our government is (for the time being) unable to afford us. After looking at the list of iLab's donors and collaborators, one can have no doubt about accountability.

What is being done with $500,000.00US at iLab is far more than what we see they normally do with said amount in Liberia.

Kudos iLab!

HP Color LaserJet CM2320 MFP 'PCL XL error'

CM2320 PCL XL error

Of late, my office HP Color LaserJet CM2320 started an error:

PCL XL error
     Subsystem:  TEXT
     Error:      InternalError 0x50
     Operator:   BeginChar
     Position:   32

I was, from the beginning, able to solve the problem by resetting the printer. I power off the printer. Press and held down the right button and X (cancel) until 'permanent storage init' displayed. This resets all the setting to original settings, and if you had it configured to manual network setting, you might consider reconfiguring the printer manually again.

It was ok for a day or two, and then restarted again. But this time the above solution did not even last for an hour. I had to keep repeating same procedure.

I then visited the HP website (my OS is Windows 7 64-bit) and downloaded the firmware...after a successful update of the firmware, all was kicking as new.

Hope this helps....

C++ Assignment

This is a C++ program that invokes a function calc(), intakes two integers and an arithmetic operator, and prints the corresponding result. 

 

#include <cstdlib>   /* the program works fine without this header but I'm sure it's cool since the library uses a namespace*/   

#include <iostream>    /* input and output stream header*/

#include <conio.h>   /* input and output console header. used for clrscr(), getch() functions.*/

#include <process.h> /*threads and processes function declarations and macros header */

using namespace std; /*instructing compiler to use everything in the std namespace.*/

int main () /* declaration of main function: program execution starts here */ 
{ 
          system("CLS"); //command that clears the screen

          void calc(int, int, char); //declaring calc function with variables 
          int a, b;  // declaring variables as integer 
          cout<<"Please enter first number: "; //Sends out what is between the " " to the monitor, and expects a input from keyboard 
          cin>>a /*retrieves numeric inputs from keyboard and pass to variable 'a' /

          char ch; //retrieves character string from keyboard 
          cout<<"\nPlease enter an arithmetic operator (+,-,*,/,%) : "; 
          cin>>ch; 

          cout<< "\nPlease enter second number: "; 
          cin>>b; 
          calc(a, b, ch); // calling of function 

          calc getch(); /* the function prompts the user to press a character but the character is not printed on screen */
} 

int calc(int x, int y, char ch)/*initializing calc function byreferencing 'a' and 'b' value with 'x' and 'y' */
 {
          switch(ch) /*evaluates the result to each of the case expressions in relation to the 'ch' values (+,-,*,/,%) */
          { 
               /*calculating each case based on inputted values and by operators selected */

        case '+' :cout<<"\nThe sum of "<<x<<" plus "<<y<< " is "<<(x+y);
        break;

        case '-' :cout<<"\nThe difference of "<<x<<" minus "<<y<< " is "<<(x-y);

        break;

        case '*' :cout<<"\nThe product of "<<x<<" multiplied by "<<y<< " is "<<(x*y);

        break;

        case '/' :cout<<"\nThe quotient of "<<x<<" divided by "<<y<< " is "<<(x/y);

        break;

case '%' :cout<<"\nThe reminder of "<<x<<" divided by "<<y<< " is "<<(x%y);

        break;

    }

   

    return 0; /* returns 0 at end of program to show normalcy since the main function 'int main()' demands a value of an integer type be returned */

   

}