Brand New Eyes

Hello my good people. You’re good? Well I hope so. It just dawned on me that this is going to be my last post of the month! Yeah, time flies so fast. Don’t you think? It is almost unbelievable that I started writing this blog towards the beginning of August, it feels like just yesterday! But I have been having so much fun doing it already. I hope you have been having just as much fun reading it. Or is it too soon to judge?

My bff Wanjiru Wainaina :)

Hehe, anyway onwards onwards. I had a very interesting experience this week so allow me to share it with you. My best friend, +wanjiru wainaina and I decided to try something new. Ok, brief history time. We have been friends for close to 9 years now! I know, so long right? We met as juniors on the very first day of high school and we have been besties (damn autocorrect almost made me write beasties) since then! 

The Window Shopper

There comes a time in every person’s life when the things you currently own don’t work as they should. This therefore calls for some sort of replacement. I think I have reached such a point and I am talking of nothing other than my phone! Oh boy, if you saw what I am currently working with, your heart would just prompt you to either give me yours or organize a harambee (mass gathering of money for a good cause) for me! Yeah, it’s that bad!

I have had this phone for a couple of years now and I’m proud to say I bought it myself. Go #teamIndependent yeey! It was the in thing when I bought it. Yo, i mean it had the Bluetooth, the Camera and the memory card thing going on hehe. Ok, right now I know you can probably send phones to the market to buy stuff for you and they can even raise your kids but hey, just the Bluetooth was a big thing at that time! LOL

When my phone fell down for the first time

My phone right now is the true definition of started from the bottom and still being there. But nevertheless I got mad love for it. The first time it fell down, I almost cried! (Read…I cried) and it was my friend who did it. Tsk tsk, friends! 

As Easy As Tapping!

I was out on one of my regular trips to one of the tech hubs here in Nairobi about some two weeks ago. So as usual I wait for the bus at the bus stop right. When the right one came, I boarded it and got me a good cozy seat. A good cozy seat for me usually entails where I can get fresh air and be able to look out to ensure I don’t miss my stop.

My BebaPay Card :)

A couple of minutes into my journey, the conductor came over to me to collect my fare. But after looking through my purse for some coins to no avail, I just decided to hand him a clean, crisp, solid note. Those who know me know that I never like using my crisp notes or coins. I mean, they are so new and fresh and shiny! I think they should be framed or something. Anyway, back to the story. So because I had no choice, I just had to use it. From the looks of things, the conductor didn’t have loose change for my money so he gave me that look which implied he would get to me after he finished collecting money from all the other passengers. *I'll be back…like Arnold Schwarzenegger LOL*

LOL mum, ILY too

Just the other day, my cousin who is home for the holidays, texted me to inquire about whether she could come for a visit before schools reopened. And after reading her text, I couldn’t help but burst into laughter. I passed the phone over to the rest of my family as they were more than curious to know why I was laughing so loudly. And before long the whole house was in stitches.

Ok, right now i think you are thinking we are a mean bunch. But point of correction, we weren’t laughing at my cousin, we were laughing at ourselves! This is because we were just realizing that we were either getting too old or it’s the times that were changing and moving too fast for us to catch up with it. The text that she sent me was basically utilizing less than 20 characters but the amount of information that it carried was 200 characters worth!! Every word she wrote in that text was abbreviated into an acronym of some sort.

Just Scratch It

Howdy guys,

Whenever I come across something inspiring and thoughtful, I like to share it. In this way it can reach as many people as possible and maybe, just maybe it can also inspire someone else. You know how the chain works, smile at a stranger and they smile to another stranger and boom!! The whole place is smiling…

The YouTube video from the talk.

I recently came across a certain TED Talk. I love watching these talks and it’s amazing how much you can take from someone’s 15 or so minute lecture. So this particular talk that I am talking about is by one Mitch Resnick of MIT media. He was talking about how coding isn't just for computer whizzes but it’s for everyone. And so, in a fun filled demo talk, he demonstrated and outlined the benefits of teaching kids to code. This will enable them to do more than just “read” new technologies – but also create them. Below is the YouTube video from the talk.

Suited Up

Hey people, how's the weekend going? Good, i hope :) 

What are you up to this Sunday? I have decided to relax today and catch up on a few series, before the start of another long week. However, i am still not settled on what to watch. Read on to understand why then help me out....

I don’t know if I am alone in this but whenever I start watching a series and it comes to its season finale, I usually feel like my life is coming to a season finale of its own. This is because I chose a specific family or set of people and I follow their lives through an entire 12 to 24 episodes. Then I get attached and start seeing myself as part of the whole thing.

The feeling is a little bit bearable when you know they are going to come back with a new season later on, so you just keep the faith and wait to hear the announcement of a season premiere. However, it’s more heart wrenching when they say goodbye for good! This happened to me with Prison Break (But that was understandable. Because just how many times will people escape from jail. It would have become too monotonous) 

Grace Hopper Travel Sponsorship

Hey everyone! I trust you have been well and are super excited for the weekend as much as I am! Thank you for all the positive feedback you have been giving me. I am more than grateful to have you stopping by this blog.

If you are female university student or a female excelling in an information technology profession, then you should definitely continue reading this post. As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to increase the number of women in engineering, they are offering travel sponsorships to the 2013 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. It is slotted to take place in Minneapolis from October 2^nd -5^th 2013.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Think Big. Drive Forward” and it will offer incredible opportunities for mentoring, networking, and technical and career development. Google will pay for successful applicants’ conference registration, airfare to and from the conference and hotel accommodation whilst attending the conference.

#gsummit2013

The Google Student Ambassador Summit is an event that took place here in Nairobi during the first week of July. As much as I was glad to be a part of the host country I must say I really wanted it to be in another country! This could have given me a chance to experience a different setting and environment, but anyway, it was all good though. 

The main purpose of this summit was to introduce the new class of Google Student Ambassadors (GSAs) in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA).  This class constituted of about 150 students from over 80 universities around Africa. I was part of them representing team Kenya. Apart from the GSAs, in attendance were also the GBGs and GDGs, Google Business Groups and Google Developer Groups respectively. 

User Interface Anonymous

I love pretty things. I mean, who doesn't? From the clothes you chose to wear in the morning, the way you arrange your personal space and let us be honest here…to the person who draws your attention when they walk down the street (ahem ahem, if you know what I mean). We are all drawn to things that look good!

So I am just like everyone else and I love to make my work look nice and inviting. Be it an android project or a website that I am developing. I take a lot of time to design the user interface and create a flawless user experience. And this right here people, is the beginning of my problems!

Why am I saying this? You see I have been working on something for the past couple of days and instead of concentrating on the actual functioning of the project I find myself spending hours on end trying to tweak and re-design widgets and logos. I can’t seem to settle on a color, a background or even a layout. I keep redoing the same thing over and over like a broken record! And quite frankly, I want to stop obsessing so much. I am almost yanking my hair out   :(

Hello World!

Hey people, it’s really nice that you found yourself here…reading this. Welcome to my first blog post…Yeey! I have been debating on whether to start one for the longest time now. You can guess how that debate ended.

Well, most of you may ask why the title ‘hello world’? Some of you may already be familiar with the world of programming so you don’t really need much of an explanation. But for those who aren’t, ‘Hello World’ is usually the first program you write when you are being introduced to any language for the first time. The first time I saw it was when we were introduced to programming in C when I was in first year (LOL, remind me to tell you that story later on). And after that I saw it in a bunch of other languages I have previewed. So I thought that seeing this is my first blog post, the title would be well fitting. Don’t you agree? Ps. I found this pic online and it cracked me up. Plus it is so relevant!!