Like a diamond streaked with earth
Whose beauty is concealed beneath
Like a tiny twinkling star
Whose greatness is above par
Like a ship that dots the sea
Loaded with treasures only few see
Such and more is Elebele
Having a history beyond a ballet
Though with a size that shrinks a town
Yet has a most humbling brawn
Like a city set on a hidden hill
And from within others look small
The hometown of many great men
Men whose lives make them a gem
A big heart, and to strangers well psyched
Playing host to strangers and companies alike
And like a dream waiting to be born
Is very peaceful with hardly a turn
Everyone knows everyone like a joint
Even an awkward description will hit the point
Here everyday is a new day
No one's got time for yesterday
Everyone lives in a fluid harmony
Whether you have too little or too much money
Even the clouds and rain do testify
Though at a rather alarming frequency
And through the heart of the town is a stream
That flows right through the back of every home
And unknown to the many that travel through the town
Who do not see beyond the structures and busy crowd
Nor beyond the Shell, Bayelsa Palm, AIT and plastic industry
Nor the numerous stores and small scale retail industry
Is that this is a land flowing with milk and honey
Though in ways unusual and yet lovely
The milk of friendliness and opportunities
And the honey of dreams and pleasant realities

Remember that post I made on modding your G1 and how I mentioned that I just recently modded mine. Well after flashing cyanogenmod 6.0.0-DS on my G1 and was stunned by the exquisite (Windows 7 – like) graphics, I was greatly disappointed to find my G1 so slow that navigating to the homescreen became a touch and travel activity. The camera app was greatly frustrating, after taking seconds to open it is only good for snapping still scenes because the pictures are taken seconds after the shutter button has been pressed. Not forgetting the gallery, that one became so useless I started searching the android market for any alternative app. When I try to view the pictures I took with the phone's camera, it takes forever to scroll to the next picture. The phone app wasn't left out, typing phone number has never been this hard, and after all the frustration and the tendency of you forgetting why you wanted to make the call, it takes about 5 seconds for the call to be terminated after you end it.

I must confess that I still preferred my modded G1 state to the unmodded (running android 1.6) state because I now run the latest android version, I can install apps on SD, I can install root (requiring) apps, and I can install apps meant for android 2.1 and above. So I convinced myself that all I have been reading about cyanogenmod, that it is way faster than the stock OS, is true and I am going to make that true fact a reality on my G1. Armed with Google, I searched the internet using various words combinations to locate any article that might address a similar issue. But I was disappointed to discover that as far as the internet is concerned I am the only one with such an issue. After giving up on finding any online assistance, I decided to fiddle with the settings on my modded G1 and one day I struck luck, after changing a couple of things mostly disabling a lot of CPU sucking tweaks, my modded G1 became really fast. So in the following paragraphs I am going to share with you the changes I made on my G1 that made it work real fast.

For a long time I have wanted to be able to check my bank account online. I have accounts in United Bank for Africa (UBA), Spring Bank (now Enterprise bank), Intercontinental Bank (now Access bank) and GTB. Despite the fact that the account I have in GTB is a current account and those in the other banks are savings accounts, I find GTB's current account less expensive to manage and GTB's customer service way better than all the others put together. So in few words, I actively use my GTB current account and in fact, I hold two Domiciliary accounts and a MasterCard account with GTB.

This past month I went to the GTB nearest to me and filled the Internet Banking form, but to my surprise I didn't receive the promised mail that will provide me my login details. But yesterday I was able in under 20 minutes to enable my accounts (the current, 2 dorms and a mastercard) for internet banking, and the details of how I did it is what I want to share with you.

As you'll most likely know (if you have read my previous posts) I am currently running my compulsory one year NYSC scheme in Bayelsa state as a Mathematics teacher in a community school, Elebele. Well, towards the end of the month of July, the school rounded up for the session we (both teachers and students) were given a two months holiday. Though, I spent the majority of the days in those two months in my lodge, I managed to summon enough courage to withdraw all my allowee for the month of August and go for a daring adventure across rivers and sea to Nembe and Brass Islands in Bayelsa state.

So in this essay of mine, I am only going to focus on the 10 days out of the two months that I spent on this adventure. I am not going to bore you with lots of words but with pictures.

I have been hearing about a “Wireless Tether” app for months now and even tried installing it, but to my disappointment it requires me to have rooted my phone so I couldn't use it. Then last week I finally rooted my phone and was amazed by the quality of connectivity I got between my phone and my laptop. And another amazing thing about this wireless tethering than makes it far desirable than the USB tethering (that comes along with the android OS 2.2) is that it allows multiple computers to connect and even phones that have wifi. And you can also create an access list to allow internet access for only selected devices (computers, phones and maybe, printers).

So in this post, I am going to explain extensively to you how to use the wireless tether app to share internet access on your android phone with other phones and computers.

Remember that post I made on changing the google account of HTC Dream? Then you will remember me saying “I bought a fairly new G1...”

Well, there was this day I posted a tweet on twitter saying I had issues with data usage of my G1, and a friend (@kenniy) responded and told me to mod my G1 for optimum performance and recommended Cyanogen Mod. Since that day (which should be 6 months ago), after reading about the benefits, I decided in my mind that I was definitely gonna mod my G1. Then after reading about doing it on several websites and discovered that most of them had very different ways of doing it with a common recurrent warning that my phone might get bricked, I finally gave it a trial 5 months ago. I choose a website that explained very well with detailed snapshots of the process, then I discovered that I couldn't go past the first stage because my G1 has android 1.6 (donut) and the steps will only work for 1.5 (cupcake). I searched for ways of modding my G1 running donut, and the only site I found that seems to explain it well didn't have a single snapshot and had too much warnings. So I suspended my desire to mod the G1 till when I have used the phone for a considerable time, when I won't be too bothered if the phone bricks.

Well that time came yesterday, I just couldn't put up any longer with the restrictions of the small internal memory and the fact that some applications are now being built for OS 2.1 (eclair) and above. So I braced up and faced my fear, and believe me I'm glad I did. I now have the latest android OS (froyo) running on my G1, can now send files via Bluetooth and even operate a swap partition on my phone.

So in case someone might need a more recent post by a more current user, I decided to share my experience, step by step and with snapshots. So let's go!

I know that I am a bunch of surprises
Surprises that leave my friends dazed for days
I know that I am quite unpredictable
Though majorly in ways quite desirable
I know very well that I'm a change freak
With a mind that flutters with each clock tick
I'm convinced my mind has its own mind
Though now I do not seem to mind
As long has it stays within its bounds
And is quick to perceive the outer sounds
I know I think way to much
Though with efforts not much

My life is fraught with dreams
Collections of well coordinated stray thoughts
Aspirations made more fluid than streams
Wishes in the fjord of reality caught
Desires seeking expression in my future
Dreams I daily run through in my mind
Constituting my second most valued treasure
And to the world have they made me blind
But surprisingly, I discovered today
During my daily meditation routine
After thinking back several days
Analyzing my life and looking within
That one of my dreams, a weird one
A really funny self-aggrandizing dream
That makes me feel nobler than King John
But has a chance of fulfillment that's slim
And now it has come true
Even truer than in the dream
Giving me hope of seeing more dreams come true

I received this mail with the name of the mailer as Dr. Farida Waziri. It is definitely a fraud, so please do not use the contact email or phone numbers. I posted it because I frequently receive similar scam mails and I am amazed when people fall for such low level fraud.


                                                       ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION.
                                                      {SECURITY WATCH}
                                                      #782 SECRETARIAT ROAD,GOVT HOUSE. ABUJA                                                                      NIGERIA.
                                                      Motto: No body is above the LAW!
                                                      {WEBSITE: http://www.efccnigeria.org
                                                      DATED: 31TH OF MAY 2010.


ATTENTION,
Hope this mail meets you in good state of mind, As you are aware, through the help of our investigation team here in Nigeria and abroad, we found out that your name was among the list of people Compensated with the amount of $2.5Million USD last Year from The Compensation Office.
Therefore so many people have been parading them selves to be the Payment Officers or false Courier Company affiliated to FEDEX and so many offices used in caring out their fraud. First of all is to bring to your notice that FBI,CIA and the EFCC they are work to get those fraudulent and criminals who cliam to be what they are not. We gathered that you have sent more than $12,500 to fraudulent official of Bank of America and FedEx Courier Company and Compensation office and also many of those scam offices.
We are an Affiliate to The FBI and CIA we will get you arrested and charge you to Court for if you send money to them or have anything to do with them again because our investigation eye are on you now and also you have to stop every conversation stating they are from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THIS COUNTRY including any ATM PAYMENT CENTRE and also BANK DREFT and also BANK OF AMERICA all this people are fraudulent people disturbing this country and we are highly in search of them and you can also help us in their arrest by providing their contact numbers and address so we can find them.
We have also investigated the circumstances that has brought about this winning and found out that it is real and legit your name was found among the list of successful winners, do you know that until this moment that am writing to you the Compensation Office Board has no idea that you have not received your winning of $2.5MDollars which is your legitimate and rightful money.
It became imperative that your matter was brought to the lime Light when one of the representative here happened to stubble through your file and found out that your payment was still pending by Mr. John Eddy and who have been demanding money from you for payment of Certificates of all sorts such as ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATES,TAX CLEARANCE CERTIFICATES, etc., Also we found out that you have been promised severally that your money would be delivered by Fedex or Bank Transfer or diplomats  and Atm.
Today we happily inform you that your fund will get to you via Wired Transfer which the total amount of $2.5M will be wired into your terminal account once you provide us with the information of the Criminals mentioned above and also meet up with our Inquiries within the next 24 Hours from this notification.
KINDLY FURNISH US WITH THE FOLLOWING
DETAILS FOR PROPER CLEARIFICATIONS:
FULL NAMES:
ADDRESS:
CELL NUMBER:
DATE OF BIRTH:
MARITAL STATUS:
RELIGION:
OCCUPATION:
POSITION HELD:
BANK NAME:
ADDRESS:
BANK PHONE NUMBER:
ACCOUNT NUMBER:
ROOT NUMBER:
SWIFT NUMBER:
They will keep demanding money from you until they will make sure that your account is frozen and you will be broke for life. Please for more stories of this log on to our website and see what we do to rescue people in this kind of dilema just like you. You will have to get back to us with telephone numbers and full address. That's all we need.
PLEASE NOTE: YOUR BANK DRAFT WORTH OF $2.5MILLION IS NOW WITH US AND IT WILL BE SENT TO YOU VIA THE BANK TRANSFER INTO YOUR CORRESPONDING BANK.IMMEDIATELY YOU GET BACK TO US.
logon to our website now and see our duties (http://www.efccnigeria.org we are an affiliate to The FBI CIA and other government agencies
Abroad.


Contact Person Mr. Hoek Ali
Email: ( efcccrimescommission@pross.org.uk )
Secretary of the EFCC
+234-808-480-0866 or
011-234-808-480-0866


You are hereby advised to keep this transaction confidential from this criminals until you get your fund.
Presently we are notified that you are still having some transactions with another fraudulent office claiming to be from Bank of America you are highly warned to stop communicating with this Frauds and face the reality with us to make sure you get your fund which you have been suffering from since Last year.
We are giving you our full support and word that we are trying to protect you but if you feel you are brave then you dare and see what the outcome will be when we come and get you arrested for claiming Drug money in resident over there in USA


BE WARNED! BE WARNED!! BE WARNED!!!
For security purpose make sure you keep it secret until you get your fund
and never you contact this bad York's of eggs anymore again , they are
fraudulent.


Dr. Farida Waziri
Executive Chairman, EFCC. And FBI

Note that the mail is full of grammatical errors, the claim is unreasonable and the email address of the contact person is not under EFCC's website domain.

As you probably know, I'm serving (NYSC) as a Teacher in Basic Junior Secondary School, Elebele, Bayelsa state.
Well, I gave my (year 1 or JSS1) students an assignment, to write an essay on how they spent their mid-term break.
Here is one of my favorite -

How I spent my mid Term break First. In the morning when I was asleep my mom wake me up and told me to go and take my baet and I woke up and took my baet and I woke up and took my baet dress up and my father and mom tuok me and go to yenegia. First thing I sour is Children dancing. Not only that I sour my friends. So day told me to dance. So I danced and win a prise. called Clock I was so happy I have fun and I see more than that my mom also took me to misstabiss I eat and drink with my friends many many fun that I have I sweem in sweeming pull God I so much love my perence because day give The best thing in life I have much fun. I sour father Crissmass two mony things. that is How I spend my MID TERM BREAK,
God buy

I gave my JSS1 students an assignment - How did you spend your mid term break?
Here is one of the funniest essays -

My name is eluina Afuga I am in J.S.S.1B I am writing on How I SPENT my MID-TERM Break. I went to Church on Sunday on Saturday I went to the market to buy somethings and on Thursday I went to Lagos and sent my children day on Thursday 27 of may we went to misser Beans in lagos and in paperoni I eat Chicking and fieaded rice and we dance in lagos we sa
w ninienia in lagos she sing a song I like are vioce and we went home on firday we eat rice and beans I went to visit my friend her name is mary she like me we play to gether and eat together in lagos I Like lagos because I have many of my momin friend they buy me a doll too. the childre play and dance I saw my friend Ruth Naomi and franka Joselin I se sailas I went to the Zoo I saw a elephat, horses, chimpaze and lions monkeys and griffe

I recently bought a fairly new HTC G1 after a long tiring search for android phones at Computer village, Ikeja (Lagos, Nigeria). Most of the phone dealers had only windows mobile phones, iPhone and Blackberry, but no android phone. Just when I was about giving up, I came across a dealer that had a fairly new HTC G1 (he called it London-used but it's obviously from USA). Anyway, I bought the phone and if not for the Motorola charger that came with it I could have easily passed as new.

Since the phone isn't new and the former owner did not do a factory reset and had the phone registered with his gmail account. I had to change the gmail account to mine to be able to access the android market (the phone requires me to enter his account password to access the market). I didn't want to do a factory reset so as not lose any application installed by the former owner. Actually, I have an aversion for factory resets because of the painful data loss they often cause.

After searching the internet for another way of changing the gmail account that will not involve any multiple system settings change. I came across a method that worked fine and is probably the only alternative method.

So outlined in a detailed manner below is this method of changing the gmail account -

Goto Settings, Applications, Manage applications, and browse to Gmail storage, select Clear Data. Also goto Gmail and select Clear Data. Finally goto Google Apps and select Clear Data.

Now go back to Settings, and select Data Synchronization. You will be prompted to setup a new account. Enter your gmail account and password. So now, you will be able to synch your gmail on your phone and also access the android market. You will also receive a mail from the android team welcoming you.

Jealousy, it is best described as a cancer
It starts small and grows over time
It is simply the bad side of envy
That seeks to destroy what it does not have
Jealousy is as old as mankind
It made Abel kill his brother Cain
It destroys nations, families, friends and all in its path
The cause of the bloodiest war in heaven among the angels
The cause of Hitler's hatred for the prosperous jews
The reason for France, Portugal and Britain's colonizations
The driving force of Napoleons's mission
The foundation of Nigeria's recurrent internal crisis
That nearly cost us our nationhood in 1967
Leaving a big crack in our wall of unity
It is the cause of many political assassinations
Robbing us of the brightest and most willing minds
It is the source of man's most cruel hatred
Leaving families and friendships irreparably damaged
Ruining lives and unborn generations in ways untold
Though nothing is immune to its corrosive touch
It relies heavily on lack of understanding
And cannot exist where there is love and hope
So as our nation's hope and future leaders
We must avoid the mistakes of our predecessors
We must deny Jealousy the environment it seeks
We must develop healthy interpersonal relationships
And in all ways eschew this evil called Jealousy
GOD BLESS NIGERIA!

How brightly you light my world
How boldly you speak to me without a word
My whole world revolves around you
The sky above you is always blue
I struggle to catch my breath in your presence
I become as numb and still as a fence
Your voice never ceases to ring in my head
My thoughts of our future makes heavy my head
I am cold with worries of being unworthy
In tears drawn to consider myself an ill company
But I know that no matter how I stammer
Beyond the words I utter you will get what I mutter

The past three months were unusual
I was very bothered about my NYSC
About where my posting will be
Where my state of deployment will be
I knew what I did not want
But was confused about what I wanted
I got a plum job offer at NSN
A job worth maneuvering for
I felt like lobbying for Lagos state
That was the beginning of my confusion
“Is it right or wrong to influence my posting?”
Though I felt it's not very very right
But I concluded that it's not wrong
As long has I do not bribe anyone for it
Well that was easy to force myself to accept
But will my desperate parents know that limit
“What does God think about all these?”
Have faith and do only the right thing
Now this led to the peak of my confusion
I believe influencing is not wrong
And so must be right
And doing the right thing is not being faithless
Not influencing is more right
But folding my arms is very hard
Having faith is of many levels
One is to abandon everything to God
Another is to submit everything to God
But both involves God taking control
Not influencing will be abandoning
That I won't even bother about the posting
Influencing will be submitting
That regardless of my efforts only God's will be done
And in my opinion both are alright
But I prefer the later
The later will involve my parents and other people
Whom I have little control over their actions
And they all have high tendency to bribe on my behalf
This makes the option I prefer
Most likely not what God will desire me to choose
And now I am most confused about everything

My laptop's 160GB hard disk is partitioned into more than six logical partitions and I multi-boot Windows 7, Windows XP, Kubuntu, Mandriva and Fedora. So you can imagine how I must have butchered the 160GB. I have managed to logically organize my files on the system, I put my iso image files in Kubuntu and Mandriva, my documents are in Windows XP and Windows 7. This makes it possible for me to frequently access documents on the Windows partitions and also copy documents to them. Occasionally, while working in Linux commandline I need to mount images on the Kubuntu partition or read a file I saved in the Windows partition. Unfortunately, Fedora has a terrible way of naming my partitions that are not part of its filesystem, for example the full path to my Windows XP partition is /media/8E9C64209C640555 and the one for my Windows 7 partition is /media/925C181C5C17F9A5. After getting sick of having to copy and paste the path, I decided to do something permanent that will help me get round the problem.
Well what I eventually did was to add four aliases to automatically change to any partition without bothering about its full path. I edited the /home/freeman/.bashrc file, I appended the following --
# User specific aliases and functions
alias kubuntu='cd /media/0f83fb7e-7810-489d-ad1d-1cfeb50e1ff2'
alias mandriva='cd /media/d06a0246-9501-4e55-8162-146e500cd2a0'
alias windowsxp='cd /media/8E9C64209C640555'
alias windows7='cd /media/925C181C5C17F9A5'

Voila!
Now everytime I enter windowsxp on my command prompt, I am automatically switched to the Windows XP partition.

I have this folder I named "Download", It is one of the largest folder in my Windows partition because it is where I stuff all my software and other downloads. I have always wished that I could right click on any software on a flash drive or CD and see Downloads folder as one of the destination I could Send To.

Well this wish did come true, so I will show you how I did it.
I navigated to where my Downloads folder is located on my windows explorer and left the window open.
I then navigated to my user account's home folder (mine was C:\Documents and Settings\freeman) on another explorer window. If you are using Vista or Windows 7, the path will be similar to this C:\Users\freeman. Goto the menu bar (in Vista and Windows 7, you will have to press the Alt button first before you will see the menu bar), click on Tools, Folder Options, choose the View tab and under the Advanced settings make sure that Show hidden files and folders is dotted. Apply and Ok the selection, then you should be able to see the Send To folder (it will appear faded).

Enter the folder. Now position the first explorer window that contains the folder you want to add as a Send To destination beside the Send To explorer window, as shown above.
Right click on the desired folder and drag it to the Send To folder, and choose Create Shortcut here.

Well that's all, you will now be able to send files and folders directly to this folder from anywhere.

Last November when I saw MTN advert of their 3.5G F@stlink modem going for the price of NGN8,500, I could not keep my mind of it till I finally bought it in December. The NGN10,000 3GB bundle for 30 days is too expensive for me (now) and the NGN500 50MB bundle for a day is simply out of the options, so I started with the NGN2,500 3GB bundle with access time between 10:00pm to 5:00am for 30 days. Unfortunately for me, there is no 3G in my area (in Lagos for that matter, I was over-shocked knowing that there is 3G in Akure, my friends say I should quit claiming I live in Lagos). I had to arrange a week in Akure to use up my remaining 2.7GB after struggling to exhaust 300MB for about 3 weeks. Anyway, now I am using Zain's 1GB bundle over 30 days (NGN5,000) on the MTN F@stlink modem. And I have also used Etisalat and Glo on it.

Now to the main content: How to configure MTN Fastlink for the other networks.
Once you have installed the MTN F@stlink software which comes with your modem, you can configure the modem to connect through any network of your choice as long as you have their network connection settings and data enabled SIM (most SIMs are by default data enabled).

My laptop's DVD drive is bad, so I prefer copying images of CD/DVDs through a friend's computer DVD drive and pasting it in my cd_image folder (a special folder I created for just iso images).
The command I use for copying CD/DVD images is

dd if=/dev/sr0 of=/home/freeman/cd_image/cdname.iso

This command is pretty straight forward,  the dd stands for disk dump, if stands for input file and of stands for output file. So I do not have problem with remembering the command.

The issue I have is remembering how to mount iso files on Linux, the mount options.
So I decided to write a shell script for interactively mounting any iso image in any mount point (which is often an empty folder).
The following is a step-wise description of the shell creation

STEP 1
I created a special folder in my home folder and named it shell, using the following command

[freeman@freeman ~]$ mkdir shell

I changed directory to the shell subdirectory I just created

[freeman@freeman ~]$ cd shell

STEP 2
I created a new file (named it mountiso) and entered the script in in using vi editor

[freeman@freeman shell]$ vi mountiso

#!/bin/bash

#This shell is for mounting cd images from anywhere to any empty folder

echo -n "Enter the full path of the iso image: "

read image

echo -n "Enter the full path of the mount point, an empty folder: "

read folder

mount -t iso9660 -o loop $image $folder

exit 0

STEP 3
I made the mountiso file executable by changing it's file permissions

[freeman@freeman shell]$ chmod a+x mountiso

I also included the /home/freeman/shell path in the PATH environment variable

[freeman@freeman shell]$ PATH=$PATH:/home/freeman/shell

To make is global, I exported the new PATH

[freeman@freeman shell]$ export PATH

So that was all, to run the new script I just enter mountiso (regardless of my current working directory) and enter both the image location and mount point without bothering about the mount options.

There is one thing I treasure greatly

Far more than all other things

The only thing I cling to closely

Its joy in my heart daily rings

My life without it is unimaginable

It is the essence of my life

Its importance is simply indescribable

The source of innumerable repreive

The hope I daily walk in

The comfort I never lack

The fortress I live in

The strength beyond my back

In it lies my aspirations

The dreams of who I ought to be

The reward for my perspirations

The assurance of who I will be

My light in every tunnel

My map in every wilderness

Though in it we quarrel

We are quick to seek redress

It might not be the best it can be

But its the best I've ever had

To be so dear in another's plan

The closeness that makes me glad

And it is my relationship with God

These last eight months have been change filled for me
I've been experiencing changes at a rate that dazes me
My entire belief system has been almost totally restructured
My perception of what is right and wrong has been altered
I seem detached from my world in a rather more intimate way
A little happy and a little sad are the extremes of my mood sway
I am more concerned with what happens around me than within me
The me I see in my dreams of the future is sometimes uneviable to me
I try to bridge the gap between who I am and who I want to be
I am more moved by what I read and hear than what I see
I constantly neglect the promptings of my emotions
To always enable me make sound and reasonable decisions
Though I know I cannot keep neglecting them forever
I just don't know if it will be the same me or another
Even my mind seems to have a mind of its own
Stealing me away with its unique thoughts and tone
The world seems larger and larger each day
And I become more insignificant in its way
Though I like the man I am growing into
But I do not like the world I am moving into