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Africa

Muy muy muy Alta (en el norte)

We didn't leave Stockholm the time we expected. It happened a couple of days later. And even on that Sunday we were very late, I got stung by a bee in the last moment. We went to a hitch spot I found on Hitchbase, which was rather bad actually. We got a ride after a long while and ended up in Uppsala. But we didn't want to stay there, so we hitched out while it was getting dark.

200 articles in the Bambara Wikipedia

In 2005 I tried stimulating people in Mali to write for Wikipedia when I was in Bamako. Some articles were written, some more when I offered the equivalent of 1 US$ per article. With my limited knowledge of Bambara I added some more structure and I translated parts of the interface by asking if people understood the words I had found in a dictionary. For a long time almost nothing happened apart from inter-language bots and even spam bots and vandalism. Today the Bambara Wikipedia reached 200 articles.

Jimbo speaking at Long Now

Almost two years ago, but still interesting to hear Jimbo Wales talk about vision and Wikipedia for a public of the Long Now Foundation. (He mentions me and some work I did in Mali.) Thanks to Alex for the tip.

IDLELO3, Dakar, March 18-20, Wikipedia in West African languages

Today I received that my abstract that I submitted to the IDLELO3 conference that will be held in Dakar from the 18th till the 20th of March was accepted.  Here it is:
Wikipedia in West African languages Wikipedia is a project for the creation of free encyclopedias in many languages.

I'll be off to meet Ibou

Thanks to Callum I have a blog again that I want to use. Now I don't have any excuses any more not to blog every week. Ah well, that is unlikely to happen. Today I'm glad to read that some people enjoy their own dogfood. But I'm even happier that I'm vegetarian. There are also some events that I will not publicly disclose yet. Oh la la, all this secrecy. Maybe I could also be a Leader, one day. But not today.

Gangbare dag (in Bamako)

29 maart

Oh, normale gangbare dag? Opstaan tussen 9 en 10. Vandaag dichter bij 10 dan bij 9. Tandenpoetsen, gezicht wassen. Bubu aan, laptop mee naar beneden. Plekje zoeken, airco hoger zetten zodat ik geen kou vat (brrr, 26 graden celsius). Paar websites bekijken. Amadu helpen met .php3 probleempje. Kijken of de Kunnafonix 0.1 bittorrent het al doet. Helaas niet. Bedenken wat ik voor 0.1.1 ga doen. In de tussentijd al 2 keer naar de plee gerend omdat ik gisteren dacht dat die rooie fles de ketchup was (was dus sauce de piment). Gisteren was geen normale dag.

Crowd surfing in Bamako

It's the beginning of what people call spring in colder areas of the world, 2:30am and I'm crowd surfing in the streets of Bamako. About 6 men are trying to lift me into a black van. One of them tries to grab both of my arms, so I decide to give him my left arm and he attaches it to the van using handcuffs, leaving my right arm free to make a phone call. Off we go, on a ride that seemed to last for ages... It was the first time I felt cold in Bamako.
So, these men are policemen.

Two weeks (in Bamako)

A ni sogoma!

Well, two weeks of no blog writing. That means I’ve either been working hard, or I’ve been having a lot of fun... Or... it simply means both! I’ve been having a great time here in Bamako. And I’ve gotten some work done as well.

"There’s plenty of evidence that time is running backwards"

You know, I really love this place! It’s dusty all the time, the food is crap most of the time, mosquitos are having me for dinner, and I hate aircos in cars. They’ve made me sick before, and I just don’t get why people need to get this ice cold air into their face. I even prefer the leaded dust right into my eyes. But maybe that’s because it was my first time on a scooter, in Bamako today. Yesterday night we went out to the Blabla Club, at the other side of the Niger. Way too expensive.

Dust dust dust... and spaghetti with mayonnaise

Some morning last week, Slashdot: prostoalex wrote "MSNBC points to the court cases spawned by virtual worlds. Recently, Tom Loftus notes, a virtual island in one of the MMORPGs sold for $30,000, enough to attract commercial attention. Apparently, some businesses create third-world sweatshops, where low-wage laborers are being paid to play and accumulate enough virtual merchandise, so that an eBay sale of it makes the operation profitable. ’One such business, Blacksnow Interactive, actually sued a virtual world’s creator in 2002 for attempting to crack down on the practice.

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