It was reported by the radio and news earlier today. After today's heavy rainfall, 4 deaths were reported.
A 14-year old schoolgirl perished and her brother is reported missing. They were carried away during a sudden flooding of the road where they were. The body of the brother is still missing apparently.
I don't know about the other 2 deaths yet, and I will update this post as soon as I find anything. Maybe today afternoon after the newspapers write about it.
There is also a report that a 4x4 was carried away by the water, together with its occupants. Again, not much here.
This is what happens when Meteo services do not issue warnings early. Considering the rainfall of this morning, schools should have been closed, but no they were not. The result? The death of a student. As you might expect, the Minister of Education came under direct fire from the public, but as with most of our political people, he diverted the blame to the "Crisis Committee" and "Meteo Services" and "That Meteo Guy" and whatnot. People never shoulder their responsabilities here.
Anyways, there is no school or university today on this 27th of march. Classes are apparently flooded and require cleaning. For now, there is no rain and the weather is very calm. Eerily calm... I suspect rain in the morning though.
The tests scheduled for yesterday and today have been postponed to an ulterior date, and this date has not been communicated yet.
Guess what the Minister said on the radio! Man! That guy needs to learn when to shut up!
"We are concerned about the security of 350,000 students. If one of them dies, we cannot do anything about it."
The expression "STFU man" goes well in here. So? One life is not worth it? One life of a 14-year old? What if 350,000 were votes? And he needed that 1 vote to get elected? Wouldn't he do everything he can to save that 1 vote? Why didn't he save that one life then? Votes are more important than life for our politicians?? Why does he say such things about human life?
That would be all for now. RIP to the people who lost their lives today because of the carelessness of our decision-makers. May they find peace.
Edit: The girl's brother was found alive after a search. He survived the flood's raging waters.
Well, after some serious thoughts, Neelesh and myself are opening a collab-blog to write about tech stuff mostly, and general randomness which you usually find around my blog.
So feel free to check it out at http://www.geekscribes.net.
But this DOES NOT mean that I'm closing down this place! It'll still be open, and I'll still post. And I still need to reach my 100th! But as from now, you will mostly find out about my personal stuff here, while most the tech stuff will be at GeekScribes.
I dunno but maybe I'll post snippets of articles here, and link-back to there, so that you can use both sites. I appreciate suggestions, if you have any, dear readers! :D
For now, I'll leave you and go check what is there.
Arghhh! They do deserve their moniker, these guys! About always making the wrong predictions at the wrong time!!
WTF! I believe it's been raining the volume of water of a lake over my place since this morning. Meteo France says that the tropical cyclone Lola approaches Mauritius, according to the chart below.
And guess what? It's still Class 0, ie. No cyclone warning! WTF are they waiting for? Offices have given their employees early leave today. University of Mauritius is closed tomorrow, thereby saving my sorry soul from a violent FCS test. There are floods reported around Mauritius.
Still, in all their good judgement, Meteo services still haven't issued any warning, or set any class? I think it's high time they review their policies, or just go out of business.
Who knows? Maybe it's time to privatize Meteo services now?
I advise all of you who want better predictions to check Meteo France's site regarding Reunion Island. It's here.
Clicky Clicky on the Pic! :D
Yes. Apparently it is out of beta, as you can see from this Microsoft site.
For now, I do not have any details about what it does, or how stable it is, or even what's new about it. I'll research a bit when I have time, and post the results here. For now, check it out if you are curious.
Edit: I've found a Change Log for SP1. It's quite extensive, and has a number of improvements but not many new features introduced. It also seems that the anti-piracy measures implemented in Vista have been relaxed a bit according to this Washington Post article.
1) DownThem ALL!
Do not confuse with the FlashGet download manager. FlashGot allows you to transfer downloads to your favorite download manager. Say you like using an external download manager. You can have FlashGot transfer the download to it, and you will be prompted by its "Add new Download" window. It also works with .torrent files. Basically, it allows you to use many external download managers with firefox without having them capture each and every download link. You can selectively send links to them for downloading.
DownloadHelper allows you to download embedded content from websites, but is most useful for downloading videos off Youtube and many of its clones. It will search the page you are browsing to look for embedded files, namely video files. If it finds something, its icon will colourize (it's black and white when nothing is found). You just need to click on it, and you will have a list of downloadable content. I've not been able to make it work with DTA though. That would have been great. You can still download normally, copy the link, then put it in DTA.
4) Tabmix Plus
This plug-in is very famous, and adds many new and innovative features to Firefox's already powerful tabbing features. You will get such features as protecting tabs from accidental closing, re-open closed tabs, size your tabs, colourize them, put a progress bar on them, and define what happens when you click, right-click and middle-click on the tabs or tab bar. It's difficult to explain the extent of its features, so go check it out. In short, it allows you to fully customize the way tabbing works in Firefox. Another useful function: It allows you to drag text links from the main window to the tab-bar for opening.
5) Session Saver
If ever you have wanted to save a number of opened windows or tabs for later viewing, or even to load them at every starting of Firefox, this plug-in is for you. Sometimes, I need to save a group of tabs which I find interesting, and want to open them later. Session Saver allows you to save your session and re-open it later on. You can also define a session consisting of tabs and windows, and you can have that session restored every time you start Firefox. Eg. You can have Firefox load your favourite blogs at start up.
6) Brief
Brief is very useful if you like to read RSS and other kinds of news feeds. It's an all-in-one reader that manages your feeds, refreshes them and displays notifications when there are updates. You can have it open in a new tab, and it's all built in. The left part shows your feeds, while the right part shows the contents. It has many options such as the useful "mark as read on viewing" feature. I like Brief over other Feed readers because its features are grouped in one tab, and clicking on a feed opens it in Brief's tab, not other new tabs so it doesn't interfere with my browsing.
7) Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is quite an innovative plug-in that allows you to add scripts that in turn add new functions to sites. For example, there are numerous scripts that allows you to "clean-up" a site to remove content such as ads and animations, making the site more user-friendly and easy to use. It may also add other functions such as direct links to parts of the site. Basically, it allows you to execute custom script/codes to give you new functions for your sites. You can find many scripts at UserScripts.org ready for use.
8) Bookmark Duplicate Detector (Bookmark DD)
As its name suggests, Bookmark DD warns you about adding bookmarks as duplicate. It checks your existing bookmarks, and if the one you are currently adding already exists, it warns you and give you its existing location. This plug-in has allowed me to regain considerable order in my bookmarks. You can also have it scan your existing bookmarks to check for duplicates. It warns you on adding new bookmarks automatically, if ever it finds an existing match. It can also help you backup your Bookmarks file.
9) FEBE
A very useful plug-in that allows you to backup Firefox almost as a whole. It backups your plug-ins, themes, bookmarks, settings and other stuff, and puts them in a folder of your choice. Then, if ever you have to re-install Firefox on a new PC, you can just bring that folder with you, install FEBE there first, then have it restore the backup. After a restart of Firefox, you will have your old settings, bookmarks and everything else. It can also automatically backup your stuff, and you can choose what you want to backup, and where you want the backup to be stored, and how it should be named.
10) Linkification
Linkification has a simple use. It makes text links clickable. For example: http://www.google.com. If you had Linkification installed, that google link would be clickable. You'd no longer have to use copy-paste to address bar to go there.
11) Snap Links
Initially, this article would have contained only 10 plug-ins, but while finding links, I came across this one. Snap Links allows you to draw a rectangle around multiple links, and open them in new tabs, new windows, bookmark them, download them and a number of other operations. Very useful when you come up with a site with multiple links and you want to open all of them without clicking on each of them. Eg. Here itself, you could have opened links to all of the 11 plug-ins at once if you had Snap Links installed.
That's all for now folks. Try checking out these plug-ins. They are very useful. But remember, abuse of Firefox plug-ins will slow-down your browser and greatly increase its memory usage. So use plug-ins moderately! :P
Ubuntu 8.10, or Intrepid Ibex, has been announced and is due out October 2008.
Ubuntu follows a 6-months release cycle, and Intrepid Ibex was the name choosen to be the next release after Hardy Heron.
Hardy Heron itself is due to be released in April 2008, to replace Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). Note that Hardy Heron will be a Long Term Support release, meaning that it will be supported for at least 3 years. It also seems to be packing quite a lot of new features and mainly visual improvements. Do not miss out on this one if you like Ubuntu.
Intrepid Ibex will apparently put much emphasis on mobile computing, and as the Ubuntu developers put it, you must always be connected to the Internet, say when you move from your house to your office.
More information about Intrepid Ibex can be found here: Ubuntu Lists.
And for those who are wondering what an Ibex is, it's simply this:
Ps: Check out those horns! :|
