Reflections 2.10

Originally written on Tuesday 20/07/2010

Today, I had my first direct experience with the term virtualisation – note my choice of words.
I am certain I have had many indirect ones and in most cases the term virtual/virtualization did not count or I was not aware of my interactions with virtual machines.

I equipped my Windows machine with Oracle’s Virtual Box (free to download and use on several platforms, including windows, Mac OS, and Linux distributions)  – which runs open source hypervisors and allows me create as many virtual machines (VM) as I chose on my single processor Toshiba PC.  Another good thing is: I never have to shut down and reboot to use any of the VMs. Read the rest of this entry »

Nelson Mandela

This Sunday, 18 July 2010 the world will gather to celebrate a man who has come to define resilence, conviction, persevrance and brute determination.

Nelson Mandela, turns 92 and celebrates 67 years of service to humanity(and his fatherland/mother land if you will).

Without pretending to know the history of South Africa or the full details of the struggles that make Mandela what he has come o be known for, or attempting to recreate information that already exists and can be easily gleaned from many sources, I’d like to state Nelson Mandela is a model of conviction and determination.

As part of celebrations, may civil society actors/groups have teamed up and are campaigning that we contribute 67 minutes of ur time on Sunday 18, July 2010 doing service to humanity.

Read about the 67 minutes campaign on the Every Human Has Rights website.

Image courtesy of: loyapower.files.wordpress.com

I grew up around stories that the earth can no longer support man and we have to look for a new abode.

Where? Where will man make his new home?

I asked these and many other related questions many times and the usual and confusing answer – coming from mostly my pre-teen peers as confused as I am – is space.

My appropriation of space then was something in the clouds – today, many, ok not so many years after, it still is. And dateline for our ultimate transition to the cloud, man’s new abode was the magic year 2000.

Today, grown – yes, if I go by counting the number of hairs on my chin- and a lot more appreciative of the challenges that face man’s continued habitation of the earth, I smile when I think about those years.

Indeed man has not relocated to the clouds, but his data has – or more appropriately is doing so.
Increasingly, the cloud is housing our data – whether or not we like it. And going the way of the cloud seem the most sustainable approach to data management and storage.

Nerds and those who pay them, believe so much in the concept of cloud computing – which in its most literal interpretation stands for computing suspended or housed in the skies/clouds, but in its real  and most basic sense stands for shared computing  resources accross boundaries of geography (and if you will time and spac) - that entirely new technologies have been and are being developed to manage what exists and create new avenues for  enabling and entrenching the concept.

Infact, there are such things as privately owned cloud – yes a piece of the sky – and public clouds and a lot of in betweens. This concept promises a lot of benefits and a lot of reasons to be (or not to be) concerned. Benefits largely includes:

• lower/low costs of ownerships and;
• in some cases no ownership as hardware  and software can be/are now provisioned as services and on demand service too meaning you use and pay for what you have used
• universal remote access – you can reach and manage your assets in the cloud from wherever you are –yes even from space if you happen to be on a Virgin Galactic’s tour of space in 2017
• little or no dedicated expertise – yes, most cloud computing features at the moment downplays the need for a huge IT staff

The many reasons for worry and for which many people are working without sleep to remove include:

• Cloud unfriendly government regulations – OMG! Yes, I don’t know of many, but the Canadian government forbids the storage of data generated in Canada anywhere outside its borders. True I do not know the depth of this regulation and also the exceptions should there be any.
• Security! Yes, good old security! How in the world am I certain that my data is not been stolen, corrupted or…?
• Bandwidth – or what I have come to regard as the cost of reaching your/the cloud(s), but with the recent finish example embargoing telcos in the ISP business to provide nothing less than 1MBPS data to all citizens (whether or not they need it I guess) there may be hope of fast and optimal access to the clouds, but whetehre that will be affordable or not we are yet to see.

Well, no matter your reservation(s) for the cloud – I hate going to live on the cloud myself, valuing the safety and reassurance of the solid ground beaneath my feet – we have all been involved one way or the other with the cloud, except of course you are not reading this online (yes, a copy of it will be in my collection of essays and that well, offcourse will be printed online only ) , or you do not use email, social network or  have an hosted website. And for those of us who already benefit from the battle for supremacy between the giants Microsoft and Google and the smaller giants, we already enjoy free storge, Software as a service and some who are extrememly perfect at milking situations, already own our own private cloud and guess what it is free of charge.

Oluwakorede Asuni, was a 2008/2009 Microsoft Anti-Cyber Crime (MISSPIN) Ambassador in Nigeria , founded and managed the technology consulting outfit ‘Korede Asuni Consulting which provided IT services to small enterprises and non-profits in Nigeria. He currently works with CIVICUS an international non-profit based in Johannesburg South Africa, where he happily lives with his MacBook:) !

Yesterday, I visited the Lion’s Park in the outskirts of Johannesburg. Approximately 30 minutes drive (most of it on a road called Malinbongwe Drive).

Upclose: The King of the Jungle (one of the Lions manning each of four lion camps).

The experience was both eye popping and exhilarating.

It was closest I have seen and been with wild beasts in their natural habitat – and except I decide a PhD in the science of wild mammals that may the closest I will ever be to wild beasts in their natural habitat.

Hanging out with a cub

At the lion’s park the environment was as close to the wild as possible – the animals were set up in camps with gates and wire fencing around each camp and free roaming as would have been possible in a jungle is restricted to the camps. Also restricted or totally impossible is the usual territorial wars amongst lions and the subsequent mass murder of the losers offsprings (the new lord usually does not want to have anything to do with the defeated lion except for his wives (lioness) which are the only spoils besides the jungle that the new lord takes on as part of the benefits of war- something about the Lion’s pride)  thus the life expectancy of the Lions in the park is higher than that of a typical lion in the Jungle – I was introduced to a 19 year old Lion (forgive me, I have forgotten his name).

Many things came to live for me.

Feeding a Giraffe-after much contemplation and convincing!

• The ‘regalness’ of the King of the Jungle;
• The stupidity of the Ostrich (whose eyeballs are bigger than its brain) and;
• Role reversal of conception and delivery of offsprings in some birds and mammals – forgive again if I should have learnt those in my biology classes amongst others!

The lion’s park strikes me as some tourist attraction like many others like it around (Rhino and Lion Park, Craddle of Humanity, Kruger National Park etc) contributing in many ways to the economy of south Africa.

Even if some of those sites were naturally occurring, like our Olumo rock, the Ikogosi Springs and it is clear that their preservation were deliberate.

The King of the Jungle attending his harem

My home country does not lack natural occuring sites (the Olumo Rock,Ikogosi spring), heritage sites (Osun groove) and jungles that can be set up as parks – (until the churches came, the Lagos Ibadan express road was fenced on both sides by jungle). But we perhaps are not interested in the multiple soci-economic opportunities deliberately developing these can bring to us, we are too blinded by our love of the liquid gold.

For me yesterday was another eye opener!

Foot note

I was at the University Ibadan Zoo in 2005 – mention the word zoo in Nigeria and those of us born n the 80s think about the UI zoo, that is the only thing we know as Zoo – and most of the animals were either dead or have absolutely lost hope in life. There were more plaques in memory of great animals that once made the zoo thick and in some cases stuffed remains of such animals than were real animals.

As the fire laden balls of water hit my back, I feel the tired muscles in my back untense. And the the ladder laden water wash down my face, away with it the tension of the day going past, giving me another opportunity to start again refreshed in another 24 hour cycle.

I am grateful for the invention of the shower!