Facebook announced on its blog that soon (more exactly at 12:01 am EDT on June 13 2009) they will be allowing facebook usernames. Those usernames would be mainly used to replace the id=xxxxxxxxx normally found in the facebook URL. The reason behind this, according to facebook, is to make people to find and connect to you more easily; they will also have an easy-to-remember way to find you. You need to be aware that:
1. This will be on a first come first serve basis
2. Once you choose a facebook username, there is no way back. You cannot change or edit the name.

Do you people really need a facebook username? People have been able to find you on the facebook search and even on google by searching for your real name (you can give it a try, if you do not have a personal website, your facebook account normaly ranks first). I have more than 700 friends on facebook, and I don’t think that I am going to remember all those facebook usernames, so is the easy-to-remember scenario useless for me??

Facebook is also planning other way to use those usernames that will be revealed little by little. Until the 13 June, you can start to plan which facebook username you are going to choose to bind you account.

1. Great spirits have always been violently oppressed by mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
2. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison
3. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
4. You should prefer a good scientist without literary abilities than a literate one without scientific skills. - Leanardo da Vinci
5. Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another; it is the only means – Albert Einstein
6. I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn - Albert Einstein
7. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

Merry Christmas 2008 To you.

Mauritius Daylight patch

This concept of DST was introduced by William Willet in 1905. As he pointed out, DST does not change the length of the day but an opportunity to increase outdoor leisure activities during afternoon sunlight hours.

From a personal perspective, I can say that I am adapting to this situation. I wake up at 6.45 am (which would have been equivalent to 5.45 without DST), which is quite early for me. I just hope that it will remain like this through out the mauritius DST period. For a practical use, I did not change my clock at 2.00 am this morning. I did it just before going to sleep. I was planning to sleep from 23:00 till 07:00, so what was the use for me to wake up in the middle of my sleep only to chnage the time. Maybe that was what help me for the adaptation to that mauritian DST. As soon as I changed the clock by 1 hour, I started to feel sleepy.

There are some practical issues from this mauritius DST. Since mauritius was not using any DST in the past and as such there were no DST rules for mauritius. No rules simply mean no implementation into windows. So we need to manually change the timezone, until microsoft include an update for this, which will be in december 2008. Another issue is the use of satellites television. The programmation is normally delayed by exactly 24 hour or sometimes in live. This would normally be a slight shift in 1 hour, but until the 28 of october. After that they will apply their onw DST and there will be a lag of 2 hours.

This is a tranlated article that can be found at http://www.mauscouts.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=34.

The 51st Jamboree on the air (JOTA) and the 12th Jamboree on the internet (JOTI) will be held during the week-end of the 18th and 19th october 2008 through out the world. At mauritius, the jota joti will be at ‘l’Oratorio route nicolay, port louis’.

This event will be under the responsibility of the Mauritius Scout Association (MSA) through its national and international communication commusions and with the collaboration of the 24th Port Louis from Don Bosco Scout Group, who will host the JOTA JOTI in mauritius.

The coordinators of JOTA and JOTi are Malcolm Madelon and Didier Camalboudou respectively.

you can have more information on jota joti at www.jotajoti.org or you can have more information about how to participate on the official website of the mauritius scout association - www.mauscouts.org

I will try, yes I said I will try and not I promis, to post regularly. There are many things that can be used as witing materials for my blog. I have many hobby and they can be good subject. For example, I can give some cooking receipts as well as photos that I have taken when implementing those. For the month of october, I will attend the JOTA JOTI in mauritius, this is going to be a good experience as usual, and can also be a good subject. Also, I am planning to add a small video section, where I will upload the video that I have made.

(warning : you need some basic notion of physics to fully understand this article completely)

The car engine

This is the important part of your car. You normally switch it on by turning the ignition key. From a basic principle, you need to be in neutral position in order to switch on the engine. why? When you are in the neutral position, your engine is disconnected from your wheels. This means that the motor is simply made to rotate without any resistance, in other words freely. What I have learned from my machine classes at the university is that some engine, once started can generate enough electrical energy to sustain this rotation, but in order to be able to drive a load more energy need to be injected. This is the reason why we apply the accelerator, to inject more fuel into the system and therefore to create more energy.

The biting point

The biting point is the state in which a car is just about to move. This is achieve by finding the perfect equilibrium between the clutch and the accelerator. What really happen is that when the clutch pedal is raised, the engine is connected to the wheels transmission system. The accelerator shall be apply in order to give some energy to the system. Just remember what was said above, we must give enough energy in order to maintain the engine switched on. The amount of energy shall be such that It must not be too low, so that not to turn off the engine, neither too much so to overcome the rest position. Just think that we need an amount of force to move the car, and here we are just searching the least amount of energy for it just to move.

The gears stuff

This one really fascinated me since a kid. My father as well as his 3 brothers have the abilities to drives since I was a little kid. So when I used to travel with them, I was always thinking why are they changing those gears. Through out the years, I had some friends and cousins that tried to answer this question, but was never satisfied with the answers. The answer came from a university lecturer, who asked this question. Since no one had the answer, he simply answered that this was to protect the car’s engine, nothing more nothing less.  It was all a question of torque couple with inertia (somehow my physic classes have served for the understanding of this concept). When a car is stationary, it required a large amount of energy to move it from rest. This mean that the engine should work harder in order to overcome this inertia. Once the engine has achieved this changed in velocity, this hard work is no more required. So there should be a way to take out the stress on the motor. This is why we change the gears in order to give less works to it. Once a car is running at a constant speed, it take less energy to maintain this state. Just remember that we need force to change a velocity, but it is not required to maintain a constant velocity. This can help for the understanding, I got it from another website

• 1ST GEAR: Think of this gear as. “When I first move”. The engine has to work hard to move the car, you and your passengers from a stationary position
• 2ND GEAR: OK, 1ST gear got you going, so does the engine need to work quite so hard now that it’s got you moving? That’s 2ND gear
• 3RD GEAR: As your speed increases and the car picks up even more momentum, the car doesn’t need to work quite so hard as it did in 2ND gear. That’s 3RD gear
• 4TH GEAR: Now you’ve got your speed up to a suitable level, let’s say 30mph. Your engine doesn’t need to work quite so hard to maintain this chosen speed. That’s 4TH gear
• 5TH GEAR: This one causes confusion. Some engines run happily in 5TH gear at 30mph, others struggle
• 5TH gear is best used when you have a constant speed that your engine is happy with

Turn Signals

This are the signals that shall be given when turning to the right or the left. This one is a little easier to understand. But proper mastering of it is a must. The first question that shall come into your mind is why to give signal? This is simply because you are not alone on the road. There must be a way to communicate with the other drivers on the road. As long as we are going straight, there is no problem, but when we are turning, we surely need to reduce the speed. Things get complicated when some drivers need to do the same thing. Just said that 2 cars need to overtake a car. Doing it at the same time is risky, since each one need to step a little bit to the right, and accelerate in order to overtake the car in the front. By giving the signal , each driver can see that their intention is to overtake a car and they can now anticipate with this information in mind. The more information we have before performing a manoeuvre, the best it is. So everytime you are turning or overtaking, do not forget to use your turn signals.

That’s all for today. I hope that this pieces of information was helpful.

The Mauritius Barcamp finally took place on the 20th and 21st of June 2008 at le hochet. Unfortunately I’ve missed the session of Friday but was able to attend the Saturday session. There were about 10 participant for this first session of the barcamp mauritius:

- Jean-François : Developer at Vinivi. Tags : Geek, hobbyist, web 2.0

- Malcom : Technician at Air Mauritius. Tags : hobbyist, bater-bis, Linux

- Julien : Student in marketing. Tags : commercial, web 2.0, game

- Antony : Developer dotnet. Tags : electro, gamer, dotnet

- Vincent : PHP Developer and Blogger. Tags : blogueur, passionne, humoriste

- Annabel :’ secretaire-receptioniste-standardiste’ at TopFM.

- Pascaline from Radio 1.

- Ashesh :Freelance Developer and Graphic designer .

- Georges our host : Director at BM. Tags : expressionweb, retraité, 33 ans

- Pierre : manager of HappyWebAgency. Tags : passionné, amoureux, curieux

We were able to have 3 presentations:

Ubuntu by Malcolm Madelon
Malcolm gave an overview of Ubuntu as well as some applications that came with that version of ubuntu.

Wordpress by Vincent L’Ecluse
I did a presentation on wordpress which was in 2 parts. The first part was with a brief history and features of wordpress. The second part was a live demonstration of installation and configuration on a local server.

OpenID by Pierre Bernard
Pierre did an introduction to OpenID and gave some advantages of using and implementing such systems on various websites.

In this photo: George, Pierre, Jean-François, Me, Malcolm

There was also a short presentation on the association in which Malcolm and I are members, SUD. The journey was rich with discussion and debates about various subjects related or not to the internet and open sources. During the Barcamp, we also had the chance to be involved in a flashmeeting with the Barcamp of Dijon. I was amazed by the video quality of the transmission.

For all those people that have missed the Mauritius Barcamp, you can have a chance to join for the BracampEarth in August (17 - 19). This would be an international event for the commemoration of the first Barcamp. This just remind me of the JOTA - JOTI events in october from all the scouts around the globe.

You can have more info on Bernard’s Blog with video’s and photos but the article is in french

What is a BarCamp ?

A BarCamp has nothing to do with any activities related to Bars nor alcoholic drinks. A BarCamp is simply an international network of user generated conferences. This mean that all the participants are free to provide a presentation on a topic related to informatics. Most of the topics are normally focused on one or a mixture of those things: web applications, open sources, social protocols and open data formats.

BarCamp in Mauritius

Mauritius network is organizing the first BarCamp hosted in Mauritius. The BarCamp Mauritius will start on Friday 20th of June 2008 at 10.00 am and will end on the Saturday 21st of June 2008 at 5.00pm. This activity will take place at the Domingue building, Le Hochet - Terre Rouge. There is going to have presentations of 30 to 45 minutes on different subjects in informatics and internet, brainstorming sessions, video conferencing and lot more. This is a free activity and there is no fee to pay for participation.

This experience is going to be unique and it is a must not to miss out. You will have the chance not only to share your knowledge in a rapidly evolving technology but to create potential contacts with other people in related fields as well. There are already many users of open sources in Mauritius, from a program such as notepad++ to operating systems such as Linux, but they do it in an isolated way. I think that is would be very important for the Mauritian community to build up and strengthen a network of open source users in order to be able to move with the informatics technology.

If you want to have further informations on the BarCamp or if you want to register, visit the official website:

BarCamp Mauritius

Don’t forget to also invite your friends. You can help by talking about this events over the internet in chats, forums, by posting on your blog or by using social bookmarking. The more people we have, the more knowledge we are going to share.