Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Education

Facebook and the Web 2.0 GetMoBlog group

By 9 Comments

Like many many people all over the world, I’ve finally discovered Facebook! It’s (obviously) one social networking site but with a twist: it has a 100% public and open API which enable anyone to enhance the site. And guess what… Facebook features more than 1000 user contributed “applications”…

Consequently, it seems that everyone who is someone on the web is moving to Facebook.

For example, I’ve set up my own Facebook profile and we can be friends :-)

GetMoBlog aka Xchange Platform

Last week, I met Marc Israel and Patrick Beeharry both from Microsoft and we talked about the lack of general awareness of Web 2.0 among Mauritian individuals and companies (Of course, I’m not referring to young people here as we all know that they are fully aware of those things :-) )

What we realized is that we should organize a kind of workshop by the end of the year where anyone willing to talk about Web 2.0 could do so. The fact that those two are from Microsoft is only a coincidence. They are interested in Web 2.0 as I am (i.e. out of curiosity and passion and not because they are being paid to be interested if you understand what I mean).

In order to start identifying those willing to help and participate in the workshop (and in order to start some preliminary (i.e. cool) discussion on Web 2.0 in Mauritius), a group has been setup on Facebook called GetMoBlog (that name was chosen by Marc Isreal and refers to the fact that most people interested in Web 2.0 have a blog…)

Linux User Group of Mauritius

I’ve also created the LUGM group on Facebook to complement the website.

Come in and let’s start the cool discussions! Everyone can participate!

The budget speech and the University

By 16 Comments

Yesterday, like most Mauritians, I listened to the Budget Speech 2007-2008 while attending to my usual chores.

Personally, I like that duty is being removed on microphones, speakers, MP3 players like the iPod Nano, etc. I also like that duty is being removed on kitchen appliances etc. but I understand that those measures are somewhat trivial…

Another nice measure is the fact that there is now only one flat rate of 15% for (taxable) income tax. If my brain works correctly, this means that I will pay less tax compared to previous years and this is a good thing.

I was surprised to see that there is no measures announced for increasing the penetration of computers and Internet in households. As I’ve said so many times, we are missing the boat here…

There are a number of measures directly related to the University of Mauritius. I quote:

p9 – 53. we are amending legislation to give the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) full authority to allow foreign training and educational establishments in all fields to set up in Mauritius.

p38 – 228. Our vision is to transform Mauritius into a knowledge-based economy. We have, therefore, opened the country to international institutions of learning. Ramachandra Medical School and Eastern are part of the first wave that we plan to attract. Several institutions of high repute have expressed a keen interest to develop a campus in Mauritius. In addition to becoming a hub and attracting foreign students, the entry of tertiary institutions will broaden the opportunities for our children to have access to Tertiary Education.

Personally, I welcome the arrival of other tertiary institutions. Of course, this might be detrimental to the UoM as far as the number of students enrolled every year is concerned but I sincerely think that the best students will continue to choose the University of Mauritius if we, academics, can focus on quality teaching and research.

Having fewer students might be the best thing ever to happen to the University of Mauritius… given our limited budget and limited infrastructure.

Another interesting measure concerning the University and us, academics, is:

p24 – 140. Seventh, as we develop the knowledge hub, and with more tertiary education institutions being set up in Mauritius, Government will encourage the setting up of University-SME Partnership Programme. The universities can establish consultancy arms to provide managerial, financial and technical advice to SMEs on demand.

Consultancy is an activity which can prove to be highly beneficial both in the financial and the intellectual senses to all parties: academics, SMEs and the country as a whole. Many of my colleagues and, of course, myself are willing to participate in consultancy activities.

My opinion on the budget

I’ve read the Budget Speech this morning and there are not a lot of extravagant measures in it. My feeling is that the Minister of Finance is trying to strengthen the economy of the country without being irresponsible. I believe that economic growth (croissance) is needed if Mauritius wants to succeed.

I don’t know whether this will work or not but I am somewhat positive.

Three great technical books

By 3 Comments

I’ve just discovered ProgrammingBooks.org and I find it great. I’m impatient to start contributing to it as soon as they solve their user signup problem as it is not working well presently.

In the meantime, here are three books I bought relatively recently and which I find excellent:

The second edition of Programming Ruby is extremely interesting to read (the first version is available freely online). It describes the Ruby programming language of course as well as its standard library. Ruby is an extremely expressive programming language as it allows the programmer to solve complex problems very easily. I’ve already written about my fascination with that programming language. The metaprogramming aspects of Ruby will blow your mind away!

Linux Kernel Development fully describes (and explains the rationale behind) the various subsystems found in the Linux 2.6 kernel. It’s one extremely complex and specialized subject that has been made simple thanks to the pedagogical talent of the author. Incidentally, my students have indirectly benefited from that book in the sense that I know a lot more about the kernel than before. Consequently I regularly ask them to investigate sections of the Linux kernel (e.g. the scheduler or the process creation mechanism) and write reports for me…

The third book is also another book that I’ve read cover to cover. The Inmates are Running the Asylum has an obscure title (at first) and it’s only when the author explains its meaning that you realize that this book is a gem. The Inmates are us, programmers. And the Asylum is the software that we are always trying to write. The point is that we, programmers, design the user interface of a software in order to please us and not the real end-user. Consequently, the software becomes difficult to use for the majority and therefore is not successful. The author argues that one should always use a goal-directed design approach. Incidentally, the author is the creator of Visual Basic but he does not like to use it to design user interfaces… I’ve already written on that.