Author: Peter Kakoma
The magical security wand
Many people have scoffed at the mundane-looking hand-held security gadget used to search them as they enter a building. “This rugged device doesn’t do anything. It just beeps for nothing “, they say. I shared the same sentiments till I had a chance meeting with a top security official who used a promise of grievous […]
Why admin assistants can’t be black
A job ad run in a leading daily sometime last week for an administrative assistant in what, on the surface, seemed like a blue chip company. The company though required that before you apply, you “must be a foreigner (Indian, Phillipino, White)”. All those reading the ad and considering applying stopped at that part and […]
Adding screen options to a WordPress plugin
In WordPress, adding screen options during plugin development is not one of those things with a lot of documentation. There’s a great tutorial on this by Chris Marslender. There’s one here too by someone I’m a fan of, Pippin Williamson. Both went a long way to get me started. I differ from these approaches in […]
On making an honest shilling
Some men were arrested last week for making money. It would not have been a crime if they’d chosen to go about it the way you and I do – waking up every morning and beating the odds to get to work, with the odds getting creative everyday-one day it’s rain, the other it’s an […]
Interview with cloud architect Bas Moussa
Bas Moussa is the Chief Architect at Nuvole Computing LLC, a cloud consulting firm in San Francisco. He designed the firm’s reference architecture that implements cloud architecture in a way that fulfills the promises of cloud computing with maximum portability of components. He has been programming since he was 8 and has worked in Internet […]
A movement in the right direction
The grapevine, after quite a number of pleasantries, lengthy small talk and a lot of prodding, mentioned that there are rival camps in the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). “I tell you Kakoma, there are shakes in the Movement,” as though thinking it could sneak that pun past me. Reacting to my unsure […]
Here’s today’s pig story
One of the challenges of writing a weekly column on serious social issues is that many times, the “social” has moved on by the time the loud gong that signals that newspapers should be printed is sounded. When Sunday shows up, all chirpy and smartly-dressed, she finds that the hottest news isn’t so hot anymore. […]
Kidnapped computer’s location revealed
In the work I do away from this column, I work very closely with computers. I’m that bespectacled guy with heavy eyebrows who sits so close to the PC, you’d think it’s whispering something to him. Through this close relationship, I’ve learnt a thing or two about this electronic beast. We get along quite well, […]
How to update your local yum repo
There are a number of  great resources on how to set-up a local yum repo. This one from Digital Ocean is particularly good: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-and-use-yum-repositories-on-a-centos-6-vps How though do you update the said yum repo? I needed to upgrade bash on some hosts to protect them against being ShellShock-ed. This required an upgrade to the local repo from which all these […]
How to court an ex-Prime Minister
I’m publishing this a day late; Mondays lately are pretty heavy. I hope you enjoy the read nonetheless In a rather curt fashion, we got a new Prime Minister last week. If the letter announcing the change were a tweet, it’d have said, “It’s been real. No offense, it’s not you.” If it were a […]