Today Karl Rove, the man largely responsible to thank for GW’s second term, announced his retirement (good riddance). He said the first thing he’ll do after leaving the White House is “go dove hunting in West Texas.”
Strikes me as a bit ironic.
Well it’s been 9 months since my last post. It’s not that I haven’t intended too share my life. I guess I’ve just been busy living it. I am in Mali still and there is a lot to share. I am feeling drawn again to the blog so let’s see how it goes…
Since I’ve been gone
Stuff that interests me
The Economist just published an interesting article on the phone of the future besides Nokia claiming that in ten years we’ll be able to store the world’s music collection on a single chip, it touched on how we consume data. According to “studies” on average we read 10MB of material a day; hear 400MB, and see one MB of information a second. Wonder what kind of megapixels we are talking about?
I am day three into being a father of a 4 month old, half malian, half harrier pup called Gizmo after the Gremlin (look at the size of those ears!) Despite a couple of sleepness nights, she’s been a good pup and I think has been treated well from the family I got her from. She’s already house broken so I can’t complain about that! I’ve also noticed that for the first time, I haven’t felt the urgle to check my email BEFORE going to work at 8AM. I think this responsibility thing is going to be good for me. If you have any advice on how to raise a pup please send it my way!
The Hamatan is a northern wind which blows dust down from the Sahara marking the beginning of the dry aka “hot” season. We have been very fortunate actually in that this has been the first Hamatan. Normally, in Bamako we would have already have had several between January and now. Regardless, it is quite a spectacal and the pictures really don’t capture how thick the dust is. It is hard to breathe, you feel congested, everything you touch is caked with microfine dust. It’s a reminder that even though we live in a city like Bamako we are not far from the fringe of an ever advancing desert.
Biz 2.0 Article Update
I managed to get an actual scan of the article.
In the past couple of days, Geekcorps has been featured in a number of national news publications including Business 2.0 and C-Net.
While full of some factual errors, it’s still pretty cool to have our work recognized. If you pick up the March Business 2.0 issue you may even get to see my ugly mug. 
While perhaps not AS exciting, USAID has also featured the work of Geekcorps Mali to give you a better understanding of what we are here doing.
Served this at my recent MaliGras party and went over really well. Figured, I’d share the family secrets.
This will make enough marinade for about 1KG (2.2 lbs) of meat. Use beef filet for best results and marinade overnight. Enjoy!
Note: If you are muslim and afraid of the alchohol, all of it gets burned off in the cooking process.
Me with a famous Geekcorps Bottle Wifi Antenna
Top 5 Reasons to Spend Christmas in Bamako (Africa)
Special Holiday Wishes
Mom, please don’t be too mad you were the one told me this is where I was meant to be. Don’t worry though you got Ryan who I’m sure is gonna be happy to help decorate the Christmas tree.Trip to Timbouctou
Recently, I just got back from a wonderful weeklong trip across Mali for work. I will try and devote a posting to it in the future. For now, here are some pics from the trip.
Where are the cars?!?
Mopeds
After spending three weeks in Bamako, I would like to postulate that a countries wealth is inversely proportional to its number of mopeds. I have both lived in and visited a number of developing countries (Zimbabwe, Senegal, Mexico, Ecuador) but I have never in my life, check, never fathomed that so many mopeds could exist. All is made possible by the Chinese who have made new 100cc mopeds available for under $500. Given their price and “quality” it is no shock that one of Mali’s fastest growing industries has become moped repair.
Everyone rides
Needless to say driving in Bamako has definetly been an adjustment especially at night when it feels like you are driving into a swarm of fireflies. Mopeds in Mali give a whole new meaning to checking your blindspot but I have already found myself reverting to the “blind gradual lane change” I mastered in Chicago traffic.
Google Analytics
Week 1 GeoMap
Google just disrupted another entire web industry with the release of another free service Google Analytics. A while ago, Google purchased Urchin a leading webstat service with a license fee that ranged from the hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. Google has made it free meaning it’ll soon get an even greater understanding (if that’s possible) of the webs usage and it also happens to tie in brilliantly with their adwords service.
Colored bubbles
Here is a wonderful article from Popular Science about an inventor’s 11 year quest to create color bubbles. Not only is in inspiring to read how the quest to create a toy has resulted in a breakthrough in how we can use dye, when reading this, I couldn’t help but remember the feeling I got as a kid watching the Absent Minded Professor invent flubber.
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