Welcome to iWitness -- in Ghana

A couple of months ago, I struck an acquaintance with Daixy, the Social Media coordinator of GhanaDecides -- a BloggingGhana project that seeks to cover issues pertaining to the forthcoming elections in Ghana. I was fascinated after she introduced me to the project as it presented an opportunity for individuals to broadcast the news of Ghana's forthcoming elections to the world.
I thought to myself, "If we are tired of having our country and continent given a negative image in the media by both foreign and local media, who better to set the record straight, than ourselves?"
GhanaDecides became a fixture in my lectures (during breaks) where I educated and advised students to make their voices heard in the campaign known as iRegistered. The iRegistered campaign covered Ghana's first ever biometric voter registration.
Personally, I believe all has gone according to the expectations of the project team based on the responses got. Or maybe not?
That being said, I stumbled upon a project being undertaken by Adaptive Path (a User Experience design company in the USA) that seeks to take social media to another dimension -- iWitness. The free tool iWitness went live a couple od days ago!
iWitness is a pretty cool tool I think would further enhance the GhanaDecides project. It reads tweets (and even Flickr and instagram updates) in real time, based on location and time. It works solely in a browser. All you do is enter a location and a time, and voila, news becomes readily available to you.

Screenshot of the iWitness app. Location: Accra

The downsides of the tool I think has to do mainly with the fact that it's mostly for desktop browsers that are Webkit-based, such as Chrome and Safari. But hey, it's an evolving open source project. It shouldn't be long before we have it being supported on mobile browsers and all other browser as well. Developers can hack at the source code on Github.
iWitness is also advantageous to the GhanaDecides cause as it doesn't require a hashtag (which the campaign so far has depended mainly on) for any particular news.
Just go ahead and try the tool.
I will like to have your thoughts on it via your comments on this post. ;-)
You can read more on iWitness on this blog post by the creators.

Finding the square root of an integer using Calculus

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to find the square root of an integer (especially imperfect squares), but had no calculator close by? I have. I however remember learning a Calculus trick (in senior high) that has always come to my aid in such situations. Grab a piece of paper and a pen, and come along as I share this trick. The trick requires that you identify some things:

• The integer (Obviously!)
• A perfect square that can be got from the integer
• The remainder in subtracting the perfect square from the integer

The steps involved in deriving the formula for finding the square root of an integer is shown below:

 

As an example, let's find the square root of the integer 7:

PS: You will notice (after a number of practices) that the values got using this method differ slightly from the ones got from the calculator. Do not be alarmed, the values are still correct nonetheless.

I do hope this is helpful and would come in handy when we need it.
Please let me know what your thoughts on any other trick you know. Waiting for your comments. ;-)

What is behind your name?

The teller looked at me suspiciously and said, "Excuse me Sir, this is not your account. It belongs to another." I calmly smiled and responded, "It's mine" -- and handed her an ID. She bashfully looked into my eyes and said sorry. I told her not to worry and that I get that all the time.
I guess you are wondering why I should undergo such embarrassment because I wanted to withdraw cash from my own account? Simple. My name Mary! Don't blink, it is M-A-R-Y.
I have therefore decided to clear the air once and for all, regarding where my name Mary comes from, and the meaning of my other names. No, it wasn't given to me by my parents during my christening.
My parents gave me the names Dominic Kofi Kafui Mawuli Kornu. These all have a reason. You see, my mum's family didn't think it was possible for her to have me safely at her age. When I was delivered and found healthy as well as my mum, I was given the names Kafui and Mawuli which literally translates to 'Praise Him' and 'God exists' respectively in the Ewe language. Dominic, meaning 'Of the Lord' was given to me by my uncle, Rev. Msgr. Anthony Kornu. Kofi as most of you know is the name given to boys born on a Friday in the Ghanaian culture. Kornu -- my family name -- was explained to me by my paternal grandmother, as doing something that is praiseworthy, something that is beneficial to others and that is cherished. It's almost like dong something famous.
So where from the Mary? Well, I took it on my confirmation day as a form of reverence and appreciation to Mary on whose feast day I was born. Crazy.
So there you have it. I know most of us have very interseting facts surrounding the origin of the names we bear. I would love to hear them.