Gourmet Graffiti

Almost all ISPs give regular POP email to their subsribers and customers as this is the cheapest system. However, there may be some of them which actually have IMAP, although quite rare. If they do, they are likely to say that they acrually have it as it is a plus point for them. I know of an ISP which does offer IMAP but simply does not admitt or state that they do and provide no instructions or server names. This ISP is Fiji International Telecoms LTD subsidary, Kidanet. It’s a shame that they don’t openly state this, I would think of it as a great advantage as it at least makes the service usable. I suppose it’s the prerogative of the ISP to advertise this.

Just for your information the server will be just mail.kidanet.com.fj just like the POP and SMTP ones. However, you must select that you wish to use an IMAP email service in the email client to use it. IMAP is better than POP because it allows syncronisation of folders with the server so when acessing web mail, the mail repositiory is current.

The Spray Can

A long post here.

I had to think heavily about this. I come from a country where most schools would not usually have computers, let alone a good library. Many of the schools which do have computers are in urban centres, rural schools would likely only have one, the one in their office. Schools often seek funding from parents, sponsor companies or simply attempt to fund raise for any projects. Unlike many developed countries computing is offered as a subject in schools and mainly aims to fulfil the basic training to own and operate a computer up till senior high school, around sixth form when basic programming is taught. Only schools who have computers (mainly urban schools) usually offer the subject, rural schools who don’t have any or just have a few may offer but usually teach directly from textbooks, little practice would be given to the students.

The main issue here is that the curriculum is based around Microsoft office and off course Microsoft Windows. This I reckon is totally unfair, many kids probably can’t afford the software let alone what it takes to own hardware to run it properly. Piracy in the country with regards to MS are high, and students are almost certainly  using it. The unethical part is that the government is indirectly supporting it my making the curriculum based on MS software.

Really, I think that the schools and the government should switch to open source software as an alternative, a good example would be Ubuntu, or better yet Edubuntu seeing as some schools probably have some old PCs which they can turn into dumb terminals and for those who don’t, cheap pentium 2s ans 1s are available as well. All they need is a good server. This also means easy management of the network, they can give internet access as well. The library can finally have a system for book management seeing as most schools don’t have that either. Filtering sites would be easier and Linux is also pretty much immune to viruses so that solves that problem too.

Only problem is training, and I suppose a little convincing.

The Spray Can

You know something. When a person tries to show off too much, things do get ugly. No, no, I am telling the truth, I’ve seen it happen.

When it rains, things get wet, when things get wet, they get slippery, when stuff gets slippery, unimaginable stuff happens. No kidding.

I was sitting down in the bus, thinking to myself, what I’d do when I get to school. The bus stops to pick up passengers, on comes a lovely young chap. He pays his fare (he’s the good part), he tries to walk down the passage in an extremely cool way, slips (whoa) and nearly whacks his nuts on a support bar along the passage.

He clambers to his seat while I try to hold my laughter. If only I had a camera on me, you could see exactly what I mean. Could have won some prize or something I reckon.

The Spray Can

Recently after the coup in Fiji took place, the government decided to block certain blogs that were against it. Fair enough, some of the blogs were certainly beyond their limits legally both U.S laws and Fiji law. Some described how a bomb could be made. I obviously do not encourage any such activity. There are, however some people who are needlessly blocked out of some internet services.

One of the ways to gain entry to some services would be to use a proxy that is not located in your country or a better one would be an anonymous web proxy. This will at least bypass some of the restrictions. Another solution is to change DNS providers to a free and public one, an example is OpenDNS. This helps people in certain countries like China to possibly gain entry to sites which are filtered. It could even work for Fiji I guess.

Just another tip for maintaining privacy. Try to spread your emails, IM, blogging email addresses over different providers so that it becomes hard for companies to build a complete profile of you. Make sure you can quickly switch providers in case of increased spam or other problems.

The Spray Can

*Amendment: It’s funny really, in less time it would take me to go to my local supermarket and back (less than an hour), this post makes it onto an anti military website news page. Just to clear things up here. I am pro military not anti. I support them all the way. They have really help bring the country back from the slums. This post was mainly just to show others, not necessarily Fijians about circumvention. Fiji was just used as an example, mainly cause I live there and have seen it happen. So think again about what the article is implying, don’t be mistaken.

It was an ordinary shopping night one would think. Except for when we checked out that is. A very fishy amount of over $300 said so. We were not as shocked since we had not done the shopping the prior weak and were down in supplies but this was exceptional still. We had never in our lives had had a bill of over $300.

Coming home and having had put the groceries in the kitchen I examined the receipt carefully; scanning the amount column carefully. I came to realize that the bill included over 3 kilos of parsley that we certainly had not bought. I made my parents aware of the situation immediately. After having spent a few moments to think, the thought of either potatoes or onions being incorrectly classified came to mind. I quickly got my brother to check the onion and potato bag for their weight. Guess what. The potato had been entered as parley@ $30 a kilo vs potato at dollar thirty, I think.

Well I hope that doesn’t happen again. We were refunded the $90 or so that was overpaid. We now check our bills thoroughly for correctness. I guess no one is perfect

The Spray Can

Very funny stuff I heard recently. If you live in Fiji like I do then you will certainly know of the village six and four cinemas. The story as such is of the local shareholders. They would be deemed fairly wealthy people, it doesn’t look it from where I see it. Their family members or even visitors to their homes are not allowed to eat more than 2 pieces of bread. Tea leaves are recycled and used more than once, who knows how many times they would be using them.

I have also heard of this one incident where the daughter-in-law accidentally ate a prawn to taste the meal and since there were only 3 prawns per person, they fell short of a prawn. Some people in the house were quite furious that night, I hear.

Since then the daughter-in-law had to seek a divorce. Just goes to show you how some wealthy people are just so “mamagi” and can’t spend money on even feeding themselves. I found the fact that they use the same tea leaves twice quite humorous really. What about you guys? Post your comments.

Ciao