When I went Pro.

I did not know anything about setting up a server.
FTP? no idea, just a buzz word.
I had tried my hands at PHP some time in the distant past (stone age actually).
My knowledge of CSS was less than zero.
Interactivity was limited to some Flash hacks (***hides face***)I did not know a thing about Javascript.

My only claim to geekry was a sparse knowledge of Python.

The only thing that was in my favour was a willingness to learn.

I did and got paid. Heavily……

#Rinse&Repeat

Pystar – February 2013

Dont go to school

 

[1] If you are a “creative”, you are going to find school extremely boring and restrictive. It would hurt more if you are an “outlier”, GOTO[5].
[2] Unless you plan on becoming a “professional”, examples of which include a doctor, an engineer, an academic, etc. it really makes no sense
going to school to waste 5 or more years to earn the rights to own a piece of parchment”. But who really wants to go to school to become a “boring old fart”? When the end game is to make money?
GOTO [4]
[3] You would be forced to cram and swot a lot of courses that have no relevance in the real world[iii]. GOTO[6]. Imagine being forced to
learn Fortran programming, and picture you using Fortran in the real world after graduation. That sucks ass right? BIGTIME!
[4] Self learning/development is the best. SECRET: for you to really LEARN something,
it has to have emotional impact (better +VE) on you, that way, you only learn what’s useful at a particular point in time and would likely never forget it.[i].
[5] An outlier here means “someone who can’t fit in because he just wont fit in and most likely wont even care to fit in because he is different”. An outlier is different, everything about him is, he wont fit into
the academic environment, probably wont even care about fitting in hence would be termed odd by his peers and socially ostracised [ii].
That way he probably will not be able to learn anything taught in school because he would come to hate school and his colleagues. GOTO[4].
[6] Its worse if you are in a Nigerian school. I wasn’t a comp science major, but I took some programming courses, hence my frequent reference to GOTO and Fortran. To say
that the educational curriculum in Nigeria needs a revamp is like overstating the obvious fact that the sun will rise tomorrow, baring the rapture occurring or the Malayan end of the world prophesy coming to pass.
Nigerian schools suck big time, understaffed with ill trained (corrupt and sometimes sex crazed) tutors, decayed learning facilities, outdated curriculum etc.[iii]
[7] If you plan on attaining any measure of financial independence, wealth or affluence, don’t look at school to show you the way. School trains you to follow the rules,
regurgitate all you are taught whether you understand it or not, not to think outside the box, be failure/risk averse[v] etc. And these are all of the things you need to do
in order to make it in the real world which school doesn’t prepare you for.
Was my going to school a waste of time? The answer I will keep to my chest. Would I have missed anything if I had not gone to school? the answer is a resounding wall of Jericho pulling down NO [iv].

NOTES
Whenever I mention school, I actually mean a higher institution, e.g. University, Polytechnic etc.
[i] I learn more flying blind and picking up stuff (I code for a partial living) than learning how to do stuff from a book, why? the mystique and wonder of discovery (that warm fuzzy feeling) is lost when I have my hand held all the way.
[ii] There is no intellectual product that wasn’t birthed in the cold damp corners of solitude, The feeling of being socially ostracised is one that any creative should sew into a cloak and wear with pride because out of it can spring forth greatness.
Most times you really need to be alone to spark and fan on the embers of genius to produce the white hot flames of greatness.(beginning to sound like some motivational speaker urrghhh!!).
[iii] I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat after having a nightmare about flunking Nuclear Physics (PHY 501). Although I didn’t, I am still scared shit less by the very thought. My brain has been 99.9% wiped clean of everything I learnt in the university, why? most of what I “learnt” wasn’t useful to me outside those 4 walls, in my opinion, if you
had a solid Montessori primary and secondary education, anything more, GOTO[1]&[2] would be a bloody waste of time.
[iv] I was a geek in school, so go figure.
[v] If you don’t fail, you wont succeed. If you don’t loose, you wont win. How many of lecturers or the old farts I warned against becoming in [2] have any measure of
affluence or wealth by just doing all that they were taught in school? ***And silence covers the earth*** In the tech sector, examples abound of successful people
who were anti [7], why? because that’s what it takes to succeed in the real world. Mostly.

Why the “noise makers” among us can’t code.

Let me tell you a true  story: I would rather spend time coding than going to a tech meetup https://twitter.com/pystar/status/227405814921568256, [1] I hate the very thought of marketing (I probably just  hate the fact that my sales pitch might get turned down). I guess that’s why my start-up hasn’t  ”blown” and that of “noise makers” [2] among us, is a tale in the opposite.  But the thing is this, I could probably code rings around these “noise makers”, who probably cant write a line of code at gunpoint, but their start ups actually make me feel inadequate in a perverse way.

Unless you are building a deep Comp.Sci based start up like Google, you probably don’t need to focus so much on your code but invest heavily on marketing. Most problems here in a 3rd world country like Nigeria that can become viable start ups actually don’t require deep science but heavy marketing and legwork to enlighten people and also give them a reason to actually use your product. [3]

Most good programmers I happen to know are introverted to a certain degree and prefer coding than actually going out and meeting people, so how do you then market your product if you don’t go out? Social media doesn’t count.

Doing a quick and dirty survey of the most “up in your face” start ups here in Nigeria will actually tell you that they are started by non coding techies (if I can safely call them that)[4]. These guys are “noise makers” and thats why their start ups do well. These guys can’t code and probably are not interested in learning how to code because coding is a long tedious and lonely task (unless you are pair programming) and the emotional make up of these “noise makers” wont just allow them to do this successfully.

I have discovered that even if you write the best code with the most bleeding edge frameworks and languages and do absolutely no marketing or “noise making”, no one will beat a path to your doorstop begging for the rare privilege to use your app.

After thinking alot about this “phenomenon”, I can actually say that I agree absolutely with MrBankole when he penned http://techloy.com/2012/07/10/im-ceo-bitch/ . How does some techie who probably has a name for his laptop [5] succeed in marketing his start up? The most successful route I can figure out is getting a “noise maker” as a co founder. That way you get the best of  both worlds.[6]

Notes

[1] Probably the reason why I have never been to any tech meetup (apart the 1st ever barcamp held in lagos “09″) and most probably wont in the nearest future is because of my hectic factory day job schedule and organizers of such meetups refusing to fix events on weekends.

[2] The phrase “Noise maker” as is used in this blog post is actually used in a positive context. A noise maker is someone who is a natural extrovert, a born marketer, with little or no technical chops, i.e. someone in the mould of Steve Jobs.

[3] Imagine a start up with a Seun Osewa and Jason Njoku combo? yeah I can, in my dreams.

[4] Bloovue, dealdey, IrokoTv, Jobberman, wakanow all have non coding founders. (Correct me if I am wrong)

[5] I am guilty as charged.

[6] Don’t do this alone, collaborate, collaborate. Get someone who can pick your slack and is strong where you are weak.

Steve Wozniak (awesome technical chops) + Steve Jobs (most prolific tech marketer ever) == Apple(World domination)

RE: Live in Nigeria? This is why your startup will fail.

“I think this guy is just plain wrong” [1], that was the first comment I got on my guest post @ Techloy.com. For the records, I never claimed to be right or a know all.  I only articulated a few thoughts of mine, which have been rattling around in my head for weeks now. So I wonder why the post elicited a lot of negative backlash from some highly “respected” Nigerian tech entrepreneurs. This response is  to put some facts straight but trust me, this is no retraction. Ok, let’s get down to business.

1. Starting a startup is HARD, very HARD: Not everyone has the opportunity to have a friend who has $160k to invest in his untested idea. A startup started in more advanced climes is most likely to fail, talk less of a place like Nigeria where nothing works. There is no place in my post where I claimed that “starting a music startup is a stupid idea” or “that you should not start a startup in Nigeria”, you only inferred it. This brings me to what is known as the “Law of Effection”  which states that “the more lives you affect in an entity you control, in scale and/or magnitude, the richer you would become”. In tech speak, the more people your startup provides a service to, the more likely you are to succeed. This is not the time to develop “me-too” or “I too can do it” website or application unless you have some safety net somewhere. Whenever you have a startup idea, which you feel has the likely hood of succeeding, ask yourself, “would the average person use my application?”. When I say average, I am talking about the market woman, the jobless youth, the stay at home mum, the middle class white-collar banker etc. If the answer to that question is yes, then take the plunge and run like hell with that idea.[2]

2. Clone Wars: I still stand with my dislike for clones, you know why? There are a million problems here in Nigeria that require bankable, innovative and profitable tech  solutions. So why in the name of anything you call holy should you clone? unless its a remix of something with a unique twist, see this [3]. Mention was made of Dealdey and how profitable is it, I might not be privy to their financial statements but I would really doubt that assertion (I stand to be corrected), you know why? I am yet to meet anyone who has consummated a transaction on Dealdey, that’s to tell you that it is not yet something the average person uses.  See my first point.

3. VC’s in Nigeria? as in really? Venture capital firms in Nigeria? If that is true, then that is awesome news. I just hope Angels are not now being mistaken for VC firms.

NOTES

1. I wonder why some people would allow their emotions to becloud their sense of reasoning.  My “random thoughts” are now being misconstrued as personal attacks at some imaginary startup founders? #AWESOME. Telling startup founders to ignore me actually sounds like a very personal attack to me, these are my opinions not the 10 commandments cast in stone from Mount Sinai. As you said, it is very easy to identify problems and since talk is cheap, lets see what “solution” I come out with.

2. Dangote group has a market capitalization of #2.28trillion as against the whole banking industry that has a capitalization of #1.8trillion. why? The group produces what the average Nigerian buys and finds useful. salt, sugar, cement, juice, etc. But not everyone has a bank account or would have the use for it.

3. I definitely won’t advice any would be startup founder to develop a 1-for-1 clone of Facebook, Twitter or even Nairaland for that matter. Anyone who does that just raised the odds of him failing to sky high levels.

Postscript: The original title to my blog post was “Live in Nigeria? (***Insert your 3rd world country here***). This is why your startup will fail”. If you marry the title to the body of my post, you would see that the attacks were unwarranted. The editors felt their title was better than mine I guess. Enough said.

Why?…….Questions about Nigeria’s Tech scene.

Why hasn’t the landing of both MainOne and Globacom’s undersea cables crashed prices and provided “real broadband” access in Nigeria?

Why have all the projects launched at Garage48 startup weekend gone under?

What are the tangible effects (apart from social networking) of all the tech meetups that have taken place in recent times?

Why do developers here in Nigeria complain about lack of funding for the failure of their projects to take off?

Why hasn’t any tech startup in Nigeria been able to harness the huge potential market of more than 150million people?

Why is it that up till now, there is really no example of a successful home grown, bootstraped tech startup?

Why are there 24 mobile money operators and 2 major epayment switching companies but no local epayment system for the web that really works?

And last of all, why I am blogging instead of working on my projects?

Swiftnetworks

If you happen to use windows 7 ultimate and want to use swiftnetworks you might run into some installation hitches. On windows 7 ultimate, swift’s single user modem can not do a plug and play installation i.e. even if you have autorun enabled as an option. Try as you may it will not work, at least on my system it never did. So what I did was just to plug in a usb dongle and copy all the installation files from the Internet modem, run the files from the usb dongle and whala!! it worked.
P.S: The tech reps in swift networks office couldnt solve this simple problem.

Rate this or tear apart!!!

This is a logo I designed for a project of mine, I would like some criticism about it, and what image it evokes in your mind. I need feedback.
P.S: I am/have always been a code writer, never a designer. Thanks

How to hack Twitter’s registration (using gmail)

I wanted to create another Twitter account for my new project (@forefont) but Twitter’s registration process doesn’t allow would be users to register using an email address already in their records. So this is how I did it using Gmail.
Gmail, allows catchall email addresses i.e. my email address is aitoehigie {at} gmail {dot}com, but if you send an email to me at aito.e.higie {at} gmail {dot} com or any other combination, Gmail still delivers the email to me. Since I had used my correct email address to register my main Twitter account, I just used the combination above, and it was successful.
Try it.

Why are Nigerian Hacker’s so Smart? (expanded version)

Disclosure: (I) Nigerian Hackers may be smart, but 2 things are sure, they are not innovative and definitely not original. (II) The word “HACKER” as used in the context of this blog post, is used to describe individuals who develop innovate solutions around software and hardware problems. And the word “HACKER” and “PROGRAMMER” will be used interchangeably in this blog post and actually mean the same thing.

Hackers in Nigeria are an endangered species, a group of people who despite their obvious talent have the whole system around them working together in concert to stop them dead in their tracks on the race to achieving their dreams. There are many factors which include:

1. Electricity supply: Constant electricity supply here in Nigeria is as rare to find as gold itself. This blog post is written on a laptop powered by an inverter which was charged by a generator. So if a hacker isnt buoyant enough to get a generator and also foot the cost of fueling it what then happens to his productivity? What can he develop? How does he use the power of software and hardware to develop innovative solutions to problems?

2. Venture Capital/Funding: I do not know of any venture capital firms or “Angels” here in Nigeria, neither do I know if any startup incubators whether private or owned by the government exist. Nigeria is a country that has a high corruption index, and most people buoyant enough to become “Angels” would rather stash their cash in foreign banks, stock their harems with new wives and pay for irrelevant chieftancy titles than invest their money in startups. Also companies and corporate entities will rather sponsor reality shows like “Gulder Ultimate Seach”, “Big Brother Africa/Nigeria”, singing competitions like “Naija sings”, “idols West Africa” etc. I have a simple question to ask: do these events/competitions add any value to this country called Nigeria? Apart from acting as poverty alleviation programs for the winners of such competitions? Do they lead us down the part of the fabled 20:2020 goal of the federal government? The answer is no!!! No intellectual value is added to citizens of this country, rather is makes the youths of this country intellectually and morally lazy and takes away the respect that comes with the reward of hard work, as they now believe that these competitions is the sure and quickest way out of the pit of joblessness, idleness, poverty and despondency that their country Nigeria and her leaders has thrown them into. Now the average youth in Nigeria wants to be either a singer, dancer, musician or actor. Just imagine if there were companies/individuals willing and ready to sponsor hackertons, codejams and programming Olympiads in this country. Imagine what the products of such events would foretell for the future of the IT industry in particular and the country in general. What impact it would have on the GDP of this country if such products grew to the scale of the Google’s, Facebook’s and Microsoft’s of this world. India earns more from outsourcing and IT related activities than Nigeria earns from her so called “black gold”, why can’t Nigeria do same? Imagine the number of “yahoo boys” i.e. fraudsters that would become reformed if they knew that redirecting that skills to productive and positive ventures in IT would earn them more than their “pie in the sky maga paying”? Just imagine!!!

3. A decent and enabling environment: Nigeria can be described in a few words as “Hell on Earth” or “A graveyard, where dreams go to die”. A place where the average citizen has to provide his own light, water, security, transportation and even roads. With so many things to think and worry about, how do you expect hackers to engage in productive intellectual activities which require a clear mind and deep concentration?

There are a myriad of problems facing the average “joe” hacker in Nigeria and it is kind of painful and frustrating to see these same hackers overcome these problems and at the end produce 1:1 clones of Twitter, Facebook and SMF powered forums when there are a million and one problems that innovative solutions from them will solve, thereby leading them to their fabled pot of gold. This is a wakeup call to all hackers in Nigeria, this is a new year 2011, a fresh start for all of us. Lets get innovative, let’s think outside the box, lets show them that we can do it and let’s make the IT industry as vibrant and if not more than the music industry in Nigeria.

Let me leave with this parting note:

May you come to the attention of those in authority,

May you find what you are looking for,

May you live in interesting times.

Chinese saying.

-Ehigie (Pystar) Aito.

Malicious Voting patterns on Social sites and the LIKE button.

         Any social news site or forum administrator will tell you that malicious voting, spam, censoring by a group of forum members is a huge problem and is the cause of most of the headaches incured from administering a forum or consumer generated content site.

In most social news sites like Hacker news, Reddit, Digg, members of these sites are allowed to submit links, comments and posts and to also vote up or down any post/comments that are interesting, intellectually stimulating and are in the context of the post. Taking a site like Hacker news (of which I am an active member), an anomalous voting pattern has been noticed, i.e. once a comment/post gets downvoted by an individual, other members who view that post tend to blindly downvote that post/comment without analyzing the reason why that post/comment was downvoted in the first place (this I call the HERD INSTINCT). Also, members tend to vote on a post/comment maliciously i.e. down voting a post/comment just because the post/comment represents an opposing view to the voters world view or way of reasoning. Also, a clique of forum members can constitute a illegal cencoring group (e.g The Wikipedia Mafia) just because they want to controll the news items that are displayed on the front page of the site to their own selfish ends (gaming digg).

The solution? Remove the up and down vote button, and in its place just have a single button, the LIKE button, just like the FaceBook “like” button. HOW IT WORKS: If I see any post/comment I like, I can “LIKE” the post/comment, which is in essence upvoting that post/comment thereby increasing its tally, but if I see something I disagree with, I cant downvote it, the best I can do is to flag it as inappropriate but this doesn’t affect the score and neither is it shown so as not to influence other users into doing same. Hence the best posts/comments/articles tend to bubble up to the top based on the number of votes garnered and the bad ones tend to sink to the buttom, filtered according to the time it was posted i.e. chronologically.

In restrospect, this solution will only work to checkmate malicious voting patterns and might not stem the practice of people LIKING or upvoting comments/posts just because they want those posts/comments to bubble to the top. Any thoughts on how this can be solved? Please share.