Updated maps of Mauritius from Google Map

As I was going about to update some roads and buildings on Google Map maker, I noticed something awesome: the maps have been updated. As a proof, see below:

that bridge close to CEB in Rose-Hill wasn’t on the old maps! In addition to updated map, there are many more streets.

The roads appear a bit offset for now but I guess that will be fixed soon and the main missing thing now is to be able to get directions from one location to another. Once this is done, we will have a very very complete and useful system!

Thank you Google.

Contribute

Once again, as I’ve done before, I strongly urge everyone to create content like add roads where they are missing, specify the type of roads, if it’s one way, … and why not put 3D models of building as well! It would be great to have much more content. That will be a way to help your country (instead of always waiting for others to help us) and also being able to brag about getting an invite to Google Map Maker Conference!

ACIM, the Mauritian Government and the rest of us

Last update: The hunger strike is over after successful negotiation with the government. Great

ACIM and the Exams

For nearly one year the NGO ACIM (Association des Consomateurs de L’Ile Maurice – Consumer Association of Mauritius)  have not received any subsides from the government. In protest, Jayen Chullum, the secretary general of this assiciation is on a hunger strike.

The main reason behind that, at least this is what the government claims, is that ACIM organized a go-slow operation on the roads which coincided with the School Certificate Exams. As a result some students were late for their exams and were penalized.

Had I been one of the kids stuck in traffic, I would have been mad at ACIM. Who wouldn’t? But using that as a reason to cut the subsides is very cheap from the government.

Cheap Excuses

We Mauritians may not be the smartest nation on earth but come on we are not that stupid either. The government should know better and stop using so lame excuses! I wonder how many people believe them. Most people can see that this is just a way of ridding themselves of a thorn in the flesh.

Also, coming back to the go-slow. Why did that happen in the first place? Prices of petrol had plummeted all over the world except in Mauritius. Why? Some organisation, responsible for buying petrol for us, made a bad deal and again instead of saying that we will have to pay for that (at least one Minister was honest enough to admit that Mauritians will have to pay for this), they found all sorts of excuses which were ridiculous! Everyone knew we were paying the price of the bad deal!

The rest of us

Instead of being lied to and having to suffer the consequences of bad management, I’d rather just pay the price of the bad management. At least, I’ll know that I’m know being taken for a ride and our political leaders are somewhat brave chaps.

Anyway, hope that the subsides are restored soon with no string attached.

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The Barber of Seville

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a new barber in town and he’s working in front of the government’s house. He specializes in head shaving but unfortunately has no license to practice. I think the shavings are free though.

That arrest for illegally practicing as a barber was hilarious ( at least that was extremely creative) and deserves a special mention:

“10 out of 10 for style, and minus several millions for good thinking” -  The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy

The Banking system that shouldn’t work: Grameen Bank!

On Monday 25 January,  I had the chance to see one on the movies in the Sundance Film Festival: To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America.

If you’ve never heard about Muhammad Yunus, well you should definitely google him. He’s the founder of the Grameen Bank and was the Peace Nobel Prize laureate in 2006. The movie (or if you want documentary) follows Muhammad Yunus as he tries to raise awareness about the Grameen Bank and raise funds. I would very strongly recommend this movie.

Grameen Bank

It’s a bank for the poor. It lends small amounts of money to groups of 5 women that have a kindof business plan without any collateral. These women would probably never have been able to get money without such a bank except from loan sharks and we know the consequences of that.

The question that everyone asks is how can such a system work and everyone thinks that it won’t work in his country. Everyone thinks that it will fail but it’s at work in 43 countries!

So I wouldn’t say that it won’t work in Mauritius. I would just put it as “I don’t understand how it will work in Mauritius” but people all over the world are the same. If it has worked in so many countries why will it fail in Mauritius. So I just hope that they would set up a branch.

The ipad

Everyone seems to be talking about that these days – not to mention the jokes like iTampon, … . Being an Apple product, it looks great and I’m sure its usability is awesome but this time, I really can’t figure out what it’s for. Some personal comments:

It looks like a giant iPhone but you can’t use it as a phone. So I would say it’s like a giant iPod touch which is an iPhone without the phone functionality! But it’s not as easy to carry around as the iPod Touch.

I certainly think it will spell the end of the kindle though the latter is cheaper. Anyway, I don’t see myself buying either of these until these products have been tested to repeatedly fall down without breaking. I would appreciate something more flexible too.

Netbook. It certainly looks like one of those and has equivalent computing power I suppose. However it’s flat and will it appeal to people as a replacement of a netbook?

Macbook. No way!!!

So down the line, I still don’t understand what the iPad is for. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit. Up to now, most apple products have been a success: the ipod, the iphone, the macbooks. So maybe there’s something I’m not aware of but I suppose, being an Apple product, it will have its followers soon.

CUDA on Ubuntu 9.10/Linux Mint Helena

If you check on the CUDA site, you will notice that there’s no download for the latest version of Ubuntu; Ubuntu 9.10 or Linux Mint Helena which is based on Ubuntu 9.10. Consequently, many webpages have popped up on the web saying how to go about with Ubuntu 9.10.

I tried my luck at those but I couldn’t get any of these to work – they all messed up my display – until I stumbled on Przemoc’s wiki (last article on the page). The solution proposed there is much more elegant and easier than any I’ve seen yet since it’s based on modifying the sources of aptitude to get the latter to download the CUDA drivers for you which is the hardest part of the installation.

Once this is done, installing the CUDA toolkit and SDK is childplay and it works flawlessly with my GTX 260 graphics card even with twinview. That was CUDA 2.3 by the way.

The cool link once again: Przemoc’s wiki (last article on the page)

Twinview on Ubuntu 9.10/Linux Mint Helena

Are you trying to set up a twinview display on your Linux Box and the Nvidia utility just won’t save the xorg.conf file. Well it’s most likely a permissions problem. The solution is instead of running the NVidia utility through the GUI, open up a console and run the following commands:

sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo nvidia-settings

it should work. It did for me anyway with two screens and an Nvidia GTX 260

Gamma Covanta in Mauritius (updated)

The debate has been going on for a while. Should we or should we not have the Gamma Covanta waste incinerator in Mauritius? I don’t know much about incinerators and the technology they use and so I’m definitely not in a position to comment on whether they are safe or not. So my analysis of the situation will be based on other points:

1. No free lunch

We’ve got a lot of waste and don’t know what to do: let’s burn it and we’ll get energy! Doesn’t that just too good to be true: turning a major problem (too much waste) into a source of revenue. There’s just got to be a catch somewhere. I might be mistaken but I’ve not heard anyone saying that we should classify the waste and selectively burn only some of them. This is just too too easy and definitely look fishy.

2. Why do they want to set it up so badly?

Gamma Covanta seems to be extremely keen on setting up this plant. There have been adverts everywhere on the island and recently there are even adverts on the radio saying that the incinerator is our only solution to deal with waste in Mauritius. Gamma and Covanta are not philanthropic organizations – they are businesses and the aim of a business is to make money – and if they are putting so much effort to convince everyone, there’s got to be a lot of money behind it.

Well this is just my personal opinion and there’s no scientific basis behind what I’m saying but common sense tells me that it just can’t be that good, that easy and generate some and have no side effects.

Panaceas like that just don’t exist.

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Update (23 July 2009) starts here: The myth of dioxins

I’ve assisted the talk at the university today (Thursday 23 July 2009) given by Prof Jean Francois Narbonne. It was a good talk followed by a very nice debate. In the light of this, I know a bit more about incinerators and the Mauritian context and I was wrong along several lines:

• the incinerators, if used properly operating at 850 degrees, with filters are basically safe: the level of dioxin the emit is well below the level recommended by the European union
• I was mistaken, the incinerator will separate the different kind of waste and selectively burn some
• incinerators are not a super way of becoming rich; dumping the waste like we currently do is.

Is it really the solution?

However, it’s not that great and I’m not too sure it’s the best for Mauritius. To operate the incinerator, we will need a lot of waste; if I got it right, an incinerator needs at least 150 tonnes of waste to be effective – will we have enough to burn? Moreover, we are not going to burn metal, glass and plastic (these can be recycled) and that leaves us with burning paper and organic waste (I suppose that will produce lots of Carbon dioxide). Out of these two, in Mauritius, we mainly have organic waste but it’s got lot of water and the amount of energy required to dehumidify these might be more than what the incinerator produces. In addition to that, if we burn all the organic waste and paper, there’ll be nothing left for composting as these need a minimal amount of waste as well to be cost effective notwithstanding the fact that even paper can be recycled. Finally, even incinerators produce waste which must be stored in class 1 landfills (landfills that are constructed with impervious material that will prevent fluids from leaking into the ground and polluting underground water for example).

What are the other options?

Landfills like we have in Mare Chicose seems to be worse than incinerators. In addition to being an eyesore, it’s very polluting.

Recycling paper, plastic, metal, glass, … basically everything that would seem ideal but do we have enough of these to make these recycling plants sustainable. I think we already have a plastic recycling plant (one of my friends take plastic bottles somewhere in Plaine Lauzan I think) and some people are so keen on recycling metal that they even steal them but I think these are exported. I don’t know if it’s cost-effective to export all that can be recycled though; again I know very little about waste disposal and all the mechanics involved there.

Given that we have mainly organic waste, composting could be a solution there. Professor Narbonne warned against producing compost of poor quality but since we mainly have organic waste, I suppose that wouldn’t happen here. But still not a complete solution: what happens to non-organic and non-recyclable waste?

Plasma arc waste disposal: this is what is used in Japan but it seems to require high technology.

Others exist but I don’t know enough and this post is getting too long anyway !

Conclusion

1. Wrong debate!

Down the line, it would seem that dioxin is not the main concern for the incinerator. Why the hell are so many people talking about that? Two possibilities:

• The ecologists are totally clueless about what is happening!

• Gamma is trying to focus the debate on that so that it appears as the major hurdle. Since, it seems, that it can be easily proved that the dioxin levels are very low with incinerators, there’s no reason to stop the project and Gamma wins easily.

2. We need a solution … soon

Landfills for everything is not an option and an alternative needs to be found soon. Like I said before, panaceas do not exist and I believe the ideal (or less evil) solution will be an array of techniques and I’m not too sure incinerators are the best choice (again, not because of dioxins) – even Professor Narbonne prefers other alternatives to incinerators. We need a Mauritian solution to the problem as the Mauritius context is very specific.

Who’d believe that waste would be such an interesting topic!

La Vallee de Ferney

The valley of Ferney is a nature park situated on the South East coast of Mauritius quite close to the small village of “Riviere des Creoles”. It had previously been earmarked for a highway that would have linked the airport to the east of Mauritius but was luckily saved thanks to Nature Watch, George Ah Yan of the Mahebourg Citizens Welfare Organisation among others. Anyway it’s one of the rare places in Mauritius where you won’t see any buildings, have noise pollution. It’s just fresh air, trees and mountains: ideal for a break.

You first start the journey at the Tourist information area where the chauffeur will drive you to the restaurant which is where the trip really starts. The guide starts by explaining the terms “endemique”, “indigene” and “exotique” which qualifies the plant of the reserve and off we go. The trip starts with a part where we have some exotic plants before we step in the reserve where we have the endemic species – note all the trees which are marked in red, they would have been erased by now. Your guide will most probably show you the “Bois Coulou” which saved this reserve; at that time, it was the only one know of its specie to exist in the whole world.

Currently, five are known to exist round the island.

Finally, special mention to the our driver, Raj, and the guide (can’t remember her name): they were both extremely nice and helpful. It’s a treat for the price you pay and I badly needed a break from computers I guess!

Google and Mauritius – time to contribute!

I don’t know if it’s the result of the visit of people from Google in 2008 (or was it 2007) in Mauritius but Google seems to have taken an interest in Mauritius!

For some time now, Google Maps has most of our roads (more below), we have google.mu in ‘Kreol Morisien’ – that is sure to put a dent in those who still claim that Creole is not a language but a slang! -  Google map has most of the roads and I’ve recently heard that Google will put some of its servers in Mauritius!

While Google Moris is more fun now than useful (we must still be able to understand french or creole to read the answers), the cache servers can really help to boost our miserable internet speed and Google Map with all the roads is a fantastic tool. Just think of all the possibilities; we can show traffic, buildings, … and I’m even considering sending my address to people as a tag on the map!

Mapmaker - time to contribute

Yet, the maps are incomplete: some roads are missing, name are missing or inaccurate. This can be changed and this is where Mapmaker helps. It allows you to edit current maps and these can eventually be incorporated by Google. If everyone would just correct/add information about the road he lives on and if possible the roads that he knows, that would make a massive change!

The road section in blue is being updated – the power is in our hands. Let’s help make things better.

Alice 3 – how to trick someone into learning programming

I’ve recently assisted a few talks about learning (namely the one given by Stefan Brandle at the University of Mauritius on the 28th of May 2009) and I’ve grown to like the contructivist approach to learning. But at the end of the day, the most important is: no matter how the teaching has been done, it’s what has been learnt that’s important! A new fancy name is needed for that; something like “pragmatism”.

Has anyone considered the possibility that it’s just not fun any more? — Don Knuth, October 2006

The decline in the number of students interested in Computer Science seems to be a worldwide trend. It’s not the lack of prospects that is a problem here, on the contrary, some companies in Mauritius seem desperate for fresh graduate in Computer Science. It’s mostly (at least in Mauritius) that there is the general belief that you’ll be working very hard and that you will need to write programs which is very difficult.

Alice in Wonderland: Chapter 1 – Down the Rabbit Hole

This is where Alice can make a difference. As it was rightly stated by some of the people working on Alice, the goal is not to replace C++ or Java or Python as the first language that is used to teach first year university students programming. The aim is rather to show that programming can be something fun and interesting and it can thus be used prior to the first programming course to teach students the basic concepts of programming like what is a loop? What is recursion? What is a selection statement?Sequence, Selection and Iteration are the three very basic concepts of procedural programming and once completely mastered, there’s just the syntax to learn.

A small Object Oriented movie

Furthermore, Alice allows students to better understand the Object Oriented approach. Right from the start, the student will be working with objects without knowing it.

Suppose I want to create a cow. I need to access the package Animal and draw an instance of the cow from the class Cow and the cow will have some attributes and methods. But to the student, it will only be a movie that he is making. The above screen shot shows the Object Oriented program which uses sequence and loop and below is the movie generated.