Obligated Opera (browswer) Fanboi

Well I use the Opera browser and have been for years and have consistently found it to be the best of the best (though FireFox with its extensions does give Opera a run for its money). On their site they asked users to post this video to help show people what the new Opera 9.5 is capable of:

Opera Mini 4
Uploaded by operasoftware

Buddhas of Bamiyan

Buddhas of Bamiyan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I was in the Bamiyan province again recently and stayed overnight in Bamiyan city so I went to see the buddhas again. This picture is just a distance panoramic showing the mountain they are (were?) carved into and both of the statue remains (far left and far right).

Panoramic of Kabul

Panoramic of Kabul
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is hands down the largest panoramic photo I have ever taken, it consists of over 60 separate photos stitched together (ok, so I have seen gigapixel panos but for me this is big) and the original .psb file was over 600megs, my little laptop just about choked on it. To get under the flickr 10meg requirement I shrank the photo to about 1/3rd of its original size (the original is a bit over 50,000 pixels wide), converted it to jpeg, and used a quality setting of ~70… whew. But hey, I got just about exactly what I wanted, the mountains with the homes built on them. In Kabul what I think of the most is these homes that are built on the sides of the mountains, apparently where Kabul’s poorer citizens live. I had tried to take a photo to capture what I see before but it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I had some Afghan’s in my organization ask the construction crew working on a 5 story tall building not far from my office and they said sure so I went armed with my dinky little SD700 IS cannon camera a tripod and spent like 10 minutes taking pictures for this panoramic.

Car hits person...

I was on my way to the hospital to try and get some meds for a bad cough I have and not 5 minutes after we pulled out of the driveway we hit a person.

 

I am still getting over this incident, I wasn’t driving (between the insane drivers and the insane pedestrians you couldn’t pay me to drive in this town) but I still remember it in slow motion starting with the driver slamming on the brakes and honking. A young guy was crossing the road and was standing in the middle waiting for a chance to go across I guess but all I remember was hearing the brakes and seeing us careening towards him, he smacking our windshield, and then his being thrown down onto the pavement. This is a first for me, and in truth I don’t feel as bothered by it as I think I should be (certain dehumanizing aspect of humanitarian work are troubling at best).

 

I have to admit though that the heartening part was how our driver ran out of the car, scooped the guy up, a witness jumped into the car with us and we raced to the hospital but the irony was that the person who could have easily drove off (my driver) was the one with a lot to loose (another person with my organization was jailed for hitting a pedestrian just recently) was the one who risked quite a bit, we raced to the hospital and the doctors actually made the guy wait and made my driver go get a ticket then they spent all of 5 minutes looking over him and then said he was “hoobas” (fine/good) no x-rays, not checking for internal bleeding etc just hoobas; I was miffed and ready to shell out the money if anyone asked “who will pay” (or more likely to pay a bribe to expedite the process)  but honestly everyone seemed satisfied with the diagnosis including the victim.

 

The victim wasn’t mad, yelling or anything (though he could very well have at least been partially at fault but in Afghanistan that is a moot point, the driver is always at fault and the victims can quite often make quite a bit off the drivers in bribes). We then went by a pharmacy and my driver dropped me off and then took the guy home…

 

It’s still rather surreal.

 

 

 

The eeepc as a portable server?

I have been trying to follow uber cheap laptops for awhile  mainly because I want a server and I am abroad alot, I’ve been following a bunch of them but it has pretty much come down to the EEEPC and the OLPC

 

My needs for a server are kinda minimal, I guess because assuming it has enough USB ports I can plug in most of the extra functionality I need.

 

My criteria are as follows:

 

1. Extra Small (can pack up and be take to the next place without needing to rent a shipping container)
2. WiFi enabled (preferably Wireless N)
3. Minimum of two USB ports, four would be better (of course this could be remedied with a USB dongle but I hate those things)
4. Low power usage / Long battery life
5. Cheap
6. Doesn’t have too much funky hardware (i.e. can install Linux on it ok)
7. And a few other things I can’t think of now

 

It seems like the EEEPC would probably be the best choice in this situation while the OLPC would be better for individual users/schools as a primary laptop. I would be interested in seeing if the EEEPC could be saddled with a larger/cheaper non-solid-state hard drive but that is not critical.

 

The things I would use my server for are:

 

1. Printing from other gizmos
2. Scanning (I hate connecting/disconnecting stuff from my primary notebook when I want to carry it around so the less stuff the better)
3. Super customizable firewall
4. Always on VoIP &/or Asterisk/PBX
5. Network handling (that is, give my primary computer & VoIP priority over everything else, QoS/balancing)
6. Running long processes (like panoramic stitching, video rendering etc [yes, on the EEEPC I would be *really* slow but I don’t care so long as my primary device isn’t slowed down])
7. P2P downloading (so I can have emule and bittorrent running on it instead of my primary computer)
8. File server (not sure about this one, I’ve been drooling over the thought of getting the D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay NAS and loading it up with two terabyte drives)
9. DVR (I haven’t investigated this too much yet but I am positive there is some USB gizmo that would allow me to connect to a satellite or cable box)

 

Yeah, that’s about it for now. I am betting some people would say “just get an old desktop” and indeed I know rich expats who toss most of their stuff

 

 

Medical Care and Knowledge in Afghanistan

It is amazing how far a little education can go. I work for an NGO in Afghanistan and most of our staff is Afghan with varying degrees of education (mostly just high school graduates, which in Afghanistan is better than average). Our janitor Sayed is fairly typical, very nice to me and most of the staff, hates cats (drowns them), and doesn’t let his daughter go to school… and almost no education. For some reason, in my whole organization, there is no first aid kits so my personal kits has been used for everyone except me (ok, not true, for 2 staff and one day worker). One day Sayed was limping around and I asked why (he speaks no english and I barely speak Dari) and he pointed to a festering cut on his foot that he had wrapped up with a dirty rag. I sighed, fetched my first aid kit cleaned the wound, gave him some antibacterial ointment and some sterile gauze and got our translator to help. Turns out the doctor had said putting a rag on it and washing it (with water) would suffice, it hadn’t.

 

Well a few weeks later he came with his son whose sibling had apparently taken a large swath of skin off his heel (with a stone or something) so I busted out my med kits again and went through the paces (this time it hadn’t been long enough to get infected). I actually had run out of some things and sent my translator to go to a pharmacy to get supplies (I had used up all the antibacterial ointment on the father, guard, and a guy installing a generator). Amazingly enough, the pharmacy didn’t have any hydrogen peroxide and no medical tape, but what they did have was some of the hardest/scratchiest bandages I have ever seen/felt so I made do with those. I also had to tell the father to use boiled hot water (not straight from the well) with soap, then wash the wound, then put bandages on it and I had to re-stress that no dirt can get on the wound… and he took it all in saying it sounded like good advice (advice he hadn’t heard before).

 

 

 

NPR : Wal-Mart Expanding Discount Drug Program

The title was enough to get me to listen to this report about Wal-Mart and generic drugs but what struck me was what the commentator said at the end of the report, something about this possibly being Wal-Mart taking aim at the American healthcare system as a whole.

I am not a fan of Wal-Mart by *any* stretch of the imagination, not at all (I have not been to a Wal-Mart to shop for myself for over 10 years, though i have tagged along with friends) but for the first time in a long time i am rooting for Wal-Mart to take that first shot across the bow of the healthcare industry. I also am not a fan of government run institutions since they are quite often chronically bureaucratic, and i have heard of nightmares in European countries about not being able to get appointments for months at a time so i guess i fall somewhere in between. Despite my being (somewhere) in the middle i am wholly convinced that the American healthcare system is deeply flawed and just as entrenched so having someone like Wal-Mart shake things up can't be a bad thing.

How can you tell if a Politician is lying?

If their mouth moves, or so the joke goes.

At first it seemed like Obama might have a chance in the election but lately it seems that Hillary has a strong lead again (she has always had a lead but not always a strong one). Hillary would not necessarily be my first choice just because I don’t feel she is entirely trustable, or more actually she is a dyed in the wool politician.

My point of writing this though is my wish of an vote aggregation/statistic site that can list a bunch of topics and then show statistics on how the person voted in each of those areas. Example, during her tenure Hillary voted for 10 measures providing more environmental protections out of 13 so I would know that despite what she says (remember the moving mouth) she tends towards environmental issues. Showing something like this in a bunch of graphs etc would be great, and their might be such a site but I have yet to find it.

Since you can’t really trust what a politician says, you should be able to see what a politician does, or in the ideal world you should.

Another error of Iraq

I was catching up on my podcasts (not easy in a world of seriously limited bandwidth [an average of 1kbps]) and was listening to NPR’s “Ted Koppel Report” and “On The Media”. I consider Koppel’s commentary to be relatively fair (obviously leftist but in his case not unfair) and he made the mention of what Iran’s place was before 911/Iraq and what it is now, at least in terms of rhetoric and influence they are stronger now than before, why? Well there are no doubt a myriad of reasons but one of the reasons that Koppel points out is that Iran (Shite) was pretty much a balance to Iraq (Sunni) but now that Sadam has been toppled Iran is now somewhat unchecked. The balance held by these two countries was imperfect at best but would it not have been better to let them keep each other in check (neither has been found to ever have supported Al-Qaeda) than sacrifice our troops, reputation, and money to take out Iraq?

 

Another point that I seem to remember now but had forgotten is that the Bush administration (more like Cheney) originally said that Sadam was harboring Al-Qaeda, well it turns out Sadam wasn’t harboring Bin Laden’s cohorts but the irony is that now Iraq is crawling with Al-Qaeda “franchises”, the irony is painful at best.

 

Swan Shaped Paddle Boats, in Afghanistan

Swan Shaped Paddle Boats, in Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is one of the last things I would have expected to see in Afghanistan, especially out here where there is no paved road leading to it (you actually need 4 wheeled drive to get here [this is the first country I have seen true 4wd minivans, complete with locking hubs]), no electricity, and no running water but they have paddle boats.

As I have mentioned in some of my other posts we arrived here (Band-e Amir) fairly late so I don’t remember seeing these boats but the next morning as we were eating breakfast people started a line for the paddle boats which made for an entertaining breakfast.

That I am aware of there are very few bodies of water in Afghanistan (lots of little streams and a few rivers thanks to the yearly melting of the snow in Afghanistan’s many mountains, but few ponds or lakes) so Band-e Amir is a special treat for many afghans. There were many more people crowded around the docks (two stones used for stepping into the boats) and I am not sure if it was because they didn’t have enough money (conceivable but if they could afford to go to Band-e Amir I would think taking a boat wouldn’t be too much extra) or because of fear. I never asked any of them why but I have heard that many Afghans aren’t the best swimmers (one could hardly expect them to be given the lack of water) so that is a plausible explanation.

Around The Behsood II Office

Around The Behsood II Office
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Behsood II is a district in the Wardak Province that is just about as isolated as Behsood I. I had just finished playing volleyball that evening (the seemingly favorite after-work past time) and thought I would snap off a few photos so I walked out from the compound to a spot nearby where I thought I could get a good 360 degree photo.

The compound to the right is my organizations Behsood II field office, by far the nicest/biggest field office I have seen so far (though I hear the one up north in Mazarsharif is really nice). One of the things that amused me (though I am not sure amused is the right word) is the satellite TV the office has. Every evening after volleyball they rev up the generator for lights and TV. I will admit that these offices are homes of sort to staff and life out there can get pretty boring but satellite TV just seems a bit frivolous to me (as does spending 4-8 liters of gas per evening).

Anyway, the compound is up on a hill overlooking the valley kinda. I never did get the name of the village (left/center) but I thought it would make for a nice picture. The part to the far left is what is behind the compound, lots of nothingness. Actually nothingness is not true there are little roads and foot paths that lead to little villages scattered around but no large roads/town/buildings for miles and miles.

Taliban House

Taliban House
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I'm not sure how obvious it is but this is an outhouse, one of the less sanitary outhouses in Afghanistan I might add and was the only place to poop other than outside (which many many people did, you literally had to watch where you stepped if you chose to shortcut behind a rock or house because it was very likely someone saw that same spot as a private place to poop).

We had arrived at this site in the evening so we didn't see the writing on the outhouse before but while walking by the next day we saw it "Taliban House" written on the side of the outhouse. Now I have no idea if a foreigner wrote it (likely) or an Afghan wrote it (possible, there are plenty of Afghans that know alittle English) but I was amused. The Taliban particularly brutalized the people in this region (the Hazara) so there is no love for the Taliban here (which makes this region a particularly safe place for foreigners).

Stopping for no particular reason

Stopping for no particular reason
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

We had been driving for a few hours (according to my GPS at about 15-20mph) and came across this cluster of houses and a stream. I am not sure what prompted the driver to stop here instead of somewhere else but we did so everyone (all four of us) got out to stretch splash our faces with some cold water (ironically it started to rain not 2 minutes later) and some kids appeared. With my “French beard” and no scarf to hide it they picked me out from a mile away and began staring. I have never been a fan of being stared at but can tolerate it sometimes better than other times. Since I had been discovered I thought “what the hell” and pulled out my camera and started snapping photos of the area (usually I try to be a bit more discreet so people don’t single me out so quickly but here I had already been discovered, there were no women around, and this area was a safe area [something you have to consider when in Afghanistan]).

Two layer Panoramic

Two layer Panoramic
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Honestly I just wanted to make a “Two Layer Panoramic” (that is, multiple photos in width AND in height, if that makes sense) and this seems as good as good a place as any, plus I had a lot of time on my hands.

This is a village (in the lower left hand corner) that is about ½ 3/4th of a kilometer from my organization’s office. I thought taking a picture of the village with the mountains in the background would be pretty enough but I goofed and cut out part of the village (taking multi-picture panoramics is not as easy as you might think). Anyway I like “middle of nowhere” type pictures and having mountains and fields just sweetens it for me so I took the shot.

A new day in central Afghanistan

A new day in central Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This was my first morning in Behsood I (now that I think about it the title sounds a bit misleading/hokey) in central Afghanistan and I apparently got up too early (5am, when the sun came up). I will have to admit that I was treated *very* well (not sure if it was because I am the program manager, a foreigner, or both [I suspect both]) and got a fairly cushy afghan bed, a long mat on the floor, so I slept pretty well so getting up early was not a problem but was apparently unnecessary so I ended up just aimlessly walking around for about three hours. The more bored I got the further I strayed from the office (Again, this is central Afghanistan and is quite safe, especially compared to Kabul not to mention southern Afghanistan) and since the office was at the base of a small mountain I thought “Why not?” and started to climb but I was in sandals so that didn’t last very long. Once I gave up climbing I sat down and soaked in the morning sun, clean air, etc and thought I’d take a few photos. I did manage to take a few pictures but the wind was blowing pretty hard so keeping the camera steady for a multi-photo panoramic shot was difficult.

Anyway on the left (partially covered by trees) is the office and further to the right is the nearest village (it actually looks closer in the photo than it does in real life, odd, it seems that it is usually the other way around).

Nomads?

Nomads?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is one of the many times I have been confused; I was told these people are not nomads but they don’t have homes and they do travel around… go figure.

One of the things that caught my eye was the yurts they used; here they are using a combination of tents that the west is familiar with and Mongolian style yurts. I have also learned that “modern” nomads often use trucks to bring their livestock to central Afghanistan to graze on the “readily available” vegetation… and these people have vehicles… but they are not nomads, go figure.

Later I was informed that some villages make a yearly exodus to the grassier areas to let their livestock graze so just a few people stay in the village and the rest head out so that could be the situation here (yes, I was told these people have no home but I am regularly given contradicting information so its possible).

Afghan Nomads?

Afghan Nomads?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Actually I have no idea if these people are nomads but we were easily 10 miles from the nearest encampment (and further from any established villages, at least any visible villages, there could have been a village tucked away over/between one of the hills/mountains).

I just wanted to mention the nomads though, here called “Kochi” (pronounced Koochee). I am still trying to figure out the difference between Nomad and Kochi, usually when I mention kochi people think of the nomads that were just coaxed out of central Hazarajat after killing almost 15 people over land disputes (and weren’t even punished, I don’t pretend to understand this), people here aren’t too fond of them so at first I think they are a specific group of nomads but I am told that “no, kochi just means nomad” and there are several nomadic groups in Afghanistan and they aren’t all as seemingly evil as the ones in Hazarajat (to give you an idea of how despised they are in Hazarajat I heard one old man compare the Kochis killing of Hazara to the Israelis treatment of the Palestinians… and trust me, there is no love for Israelis here).

Kamaz Trucks

Kamaz Trucks
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Pronounced “Kah-Mahz” I think. This is a Russian truck manufacture that I think has been around since the soviet days. To me these trucks just look menacing and uber industrial.

The history of the kamaz in Afghanistan is interesting (ok my knowledge of it is short) but I believe it was introduced while the soviet union was here (makes sense) and was widely used but when the soviet union left the remaining Afghan government forbade private individuals from owning these vehicles, only government could. Either during (or more likely after) the Taliban private individuals and companies started buying Kamaz trucks and now they are pretty much ubiqutus here. I get the impression that they are kind of the VW Beatle of trucks here in that they are practical, cheap, and easy to fix. I am not sure about how often they break down (my guess would be often but I am basing that on the 15 year old soviet trucks I would see in Eastern Europe) but they have to be fairly sturdy on the outside to endure afghan roads (or the lack thereof) and Afghans seem to think pretty highly of them.

Example of nowhere

Example of nowhere
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I find myself taking pictures of scenes that look particularly representative of Afghanistan even if they are middle of nowhere type pictures. Because all the projects in my program are in central Afghanistan (and due to safety) that is were I go most when going out of Kabul, but this area is also pretty remote and mountainous with small roads (this one is more or less an afghan highway) going through narrow valleys (here), through mountain meadows, or along cliffs

The Eye of the Beholder Mannequins

The Eye of the Beholder Mannequins
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I was walking with a friend through one of the shopping centers in Kabul when we came across these mannequins. We werent quite sure whether we should be repulsed or laugh but if I was a kid I would have peed my pants.

I swear whoever made these Mannequins had to be a fan of the twilight zones The Eye of the Beholder (11/11/60) episode.

Afghan Bike Bling

Afghan Bike Bling
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I have noticed in various countries that bikes are the American lowrider car equivalent, that is, they get dressed up with all sorts of non-functional “bling”. Another observation is that the grand majority (there are of course always exceptions) of the bikes in a given country are all from one place. This bike is pretty (really) standard and I am told it is probably either Chinese or Indian (most manufactured things here are either Chinese, Pakistani, or Indian) and as usual some color has been added which can take the form of ribbon, stickers, or in this case stars and reflectors and even a light with a mini-generator (back wheel).

Cheaper by the dozen

Cheaper by the dozen
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Ok, so I am not sure our host had a dozen children but I would bet that he had close if not more than 12 kids. Every child here is his and I know that it is not all of his children (for example the girls were not allowed to come out) and for every dish that was brought out it was a new child, geeze. You would think a condom manufacturer could make a killing here but nope, the large family sizes are in part due to the lack of a governmental safety net, the reasoning is that if you have a large family then you will have many children to take care of you when you are old.

Afghan soldier's graves

Afghan soldier's graves
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

In my travels (here in Afghanistan) I have seen tons of these “graves”, sometimes they are intricate little mausoleums other times they are a pile of rocks, but they always have green flags (or rags) flying for those killed during combat (bystanders that are killed apparently don’t count). One kind of gets accustomed to seeing all these graves but if you stop to think about it then it becomes pretty sobering.

More soviet kitsch

More soviet kitsch
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I have not posted all my photos in chronological order for various reasons (not the least of which is personal disorganization) but if you have been following my postings you will have noticed at least a few photos of soviet tank remains and a picture of a stone wall that has tank wheels incorporated into it so this photo is a continuation of that theme. Here the roofline is lined with soviet mortar shells which I admit is an eye catcher compared to most of the architecture I have seen in other parts of Afghanistan (i.e. mud).

Chill'n in Panjshir

Chill'n in Panjshir
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

We had been invited by a resident of Panjshir (who also owns a house across the street from my organization’s office) to come to his house. They setup a cloth, cushions, etc for us to sit on right beside the river (big river). So we chilled on the cushions until the food started coming out.

Middle of nowhere?

Middle of nowhere?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This was a fairly common kinda scene while driving to Band-e Amir, lots of nothingness. Being from the southeast USA I get a feeling of Agoraphobia when I go out to these wide open expanses of land. These spaces, to me, feel more like the middle of nowhere than forested places, not sure why though. In Afghanistan there are lots of open spaces some more desert like than others. While it appears to be pretty barren there always seemed to be some lone person(s) around, I often wondered where they were living, to look on the map you see a ton of villages but when you are out there you hardly see any.

Buddhas of Bamiyan

Buddhas of Bamiyan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I remember hearing about the Taliban destroying some 2,000 year old statues of Buddha and just feeling sick. It is a story that is repeated throughout history destroying cultural or historical works or places for defunct reasons (such as religious or to demoralize conquered populations). When I saw the statues it was even worse than I thought, I jut cant imagine people being so stupid and ruthless as the Taliban.

Band-e Amir at 4am

Band-e Amir at 4am
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Ok, so this picture wasn’t taken at 4am (more like 4:50am) but that is the time I got up. It was a night of 40F temperatures, a blanket that was a few cm too short and a bed/mat that had a wet spot so needless to say I got up early (plus there were some afghans yelling across the campground at around 3:50am.



So I got up early and after eating a bit, walking around, etc I decided to take advantage of the fact that there were very few people up and walking around (or walking after me) and take some pictures. This is the first place I photographed and I am very sorry I didn’t take another picture later when there was more light.



This is the sides of a lake, apparently over the years this was “created by the carbon dioxide rich water oozing out of the faults and fractures to deposit calcium carbonate precipitate in the form of travertine walls” (wikipedia). I don’t know how to describe the area, it was pretty surreal, especially at 4ish in the morning. There is one main structure there with a few smaller structures (first aid amazingly enough) but mostly there were tents for “tourist” (I didn’t see any other tourist around and only heard about a Ukrainian guy floating around somewhere) and vacationing afghans. There were a few vendors setup in tent-shacks that had an array of things from toilet paper to bottled water to various hardware.

The even lesser seen part of Bamiyan

The even lesser seen part of Bamiyan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Here is one of the many reasons it is good to not only have an Afghan with you but to have a Hazara Afghan (the ethnic group from the Bamiyan province, actually they are descendant from the Mongols) with you. Our driver was from the area and took us to a part of Band-e Amir which the few tourist that come there rarely see. I don’t think this picture does it justice, it was really beautiful and kind of reminded me of Yellowstone National park in the US.

The Beauty of Band-e Amir

The Beauty of Band-e Amir
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I am particularly proud of this Panoramic photo (it took awhile to take and I was really afraid that the glare of the sun would screw it up). The previous night we met a person who told us that there was a path going up to a plateau above the camp site and that there were some phenomenal views so when a college of mine got up about an hour after me we decided to hike up there. The guy from last night was right, the views were quite amazing…

The Band-e Amir resort

The Band-e Amir resort
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

The first picture this way was the walls of the lake from the ground but that panoramic wasnt 360 degrees and this picture isnt perfect in that it is a shot from the back but it still gives one an idea of the area.

The area was made up of some buildings and tents, the row of shanties are little shops selling various things like water, snacks, etc (for a fairly reasonable price considering). The big white tent cut off at the bottom was where we stayed during the evening to eat socialize. To the left you could walk up and eat breakfast (and presumably other meals) while looking at the lake or the fiberglass paddle boats (kinda took away from the beauty but whatever).

Little Buddha

Little Buddha
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

It was around 5am now and I saw one of my favorite field staff, Zargham (I routinely mutilate the pronunciation of his name). He is the regional manager of the Hazarajat region (I guess the field equivalent of my HQ job), in his 50s, is native Hazara (very laid back) but can be quite the spry one if he wants. He speaks very little English and I speak very little Farsi but he took me to a few places to snap off some photos including on a temple looking building that was overlooking one of the lakes. I thought it would be nice to get a pano with Zargham in it so this is what I got

I once made the observation that he looked like Buddha and the American with us (who speaks Farsi) came up with Buddha Koochek, Little Buddha.

GPS Rox!!!

Well I *finally* got around to incorporating GPS data into my pictures, first I had to get my hands on a GPS device then some software that could match the time stamps of the photos to the times that each coordinate was taken (Turn on tracking on the GPS device) and viola! The Latitude and Longitude data is embedded in the JPEG photo. I know most people are like “so what” well with this you can see exactly where you took the picture. There are softwares that use online maps (IDimager, Picoplo, and WWMX to name a few) and there are online services that will automatically place the pictures on a map. I use Fickr.com and they have this service so if you click on some of my newer pictures and then select “map” (on the right under “Additional Information”) it will show you where the picture was taken on a map, nice!

Jesus on a Tanker?

Jesus on a Tanker?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is an example of one of many psychedelic vehicles in Afghanistan. I don’t know if it is Afghan or not but it does remind me of the many Pakistani trucks that can be seen on the Afghan roads. The Pakistani trucks are usually painted with loud colors and intricate designs and pictures and you can pick them out from a mile away. I find the trucks amusing and I have heard that the drivers are regularly stoned which would go a long way towards explaining the designs.

Middle of nowhere?

Middle of nowhere?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This was a fairly common kinda scene while driving to Band-e Amir, lots of nothingness. Being from the southeast USA I get a feeling of Agoraphobia when I go out to these wide open expanses of land. These spaces, to me, feel more like the middle of nowhere than forested places, not sure why though. In Afghanistan there are lots of open spaces some more desert like than others. While it appears to be pretty barren there always seemed to be some lone person(s) around, I often wondered where they were living, to look on the map you see a ton of villages but when you are out there you hardly see any.

Solar power in Afghanistan

Solar power in Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I recently found out that my organization recently finished a project dealing with solar power though I am not sure that had anything to do with these panels on the roof of our other building. Actually, I am assuming these panels are solar but they don’t appear to have any pipes (solar water heating) or cells (electricity generation) but then again this was from a distance.In my three plus weeks here I have seen two rainy days and was informed that they were pretty rare so I can say that Afghan weather is pretty darn sunny (though in Kabul the weather is not that bad, I have certainly experienced hotter feeling days in the southeastern US). With all the power outages in Kabul and the general lack of electricity in the rest of Afghanistan I am surprised that solar power generation projects are not more common here. Something to look into, one of the people here who tries to talk with me quite a bit (with limited success due to my lack of Farsi and his rudimentary English) worked with the solar project so he would probably be a good place to start.

Mountain Houses

Mountain Houses
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Nothing spectacular here, though this mountain is *in* Kabul (it just seems odd to me for there to be mountains in the middle of cities). The reason I took the picture was for the houses, on the mountain, if you look closely you can see lots of rectangular structures (sorry, I am limited to a 3x zoom lens). Apparently Kabul real estate has become pretty expensive so poorer individuals have been “driven” up the mountains in and around Kabul. I have been told almost none of these homes have running water and are forced to ferry water up the mountain on a daily basis, and don’t be fooled, these hikes are not for the meek, you can take a good 30-45 minutes of walking up these twisted streets and if you are carrying 5-15 gallons of water I would imagine that it gets pretty rough.

360 Panoramic of the Garden

360 Panoramic of the Garden
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is the garden in my "compound" that I walk around in (circles?) quite often. The receptionist (part day guard, part receptionist) has quite the green thumb (which is helped along with inordinate amounts of water considering the climate) and these flowers are some of the more aromatic flowers I have smelled, which I believe is saying a lot considering my mother is a licensed florist.At any one time there are at least four vehicles parked here, so this was definitely a down day since sometimes there are so many cars that they park on the sidewalk as they don't seem to like leaving their cars on the street (I haven’t asked if it's for the sake of their cars safety or what, perhaps it is to avoid too much attention).There is a small spigot at the end of the sidewalk to the right, and pump to the right of it hidden by the bush. I will get a better picture of them later but everyday our organization lets the neighbors come and get water so they send their kids every morning.

360 Panoramic photo from my roof

360 Panoramic photo from my roof
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

As I keep mentioning it isn’t a great idea for me to wander around in Kabul (though a Bangladeshi colleague of mine has said that going to the market that is not on the main road is ok, we shall see, perhaps after I get some traditional Afghan clothes) so I am not getting as many pictures as I would like (which might not be a bad thing since I fall behind on labeling my pictures pretty quickly).

On one of my days off I decided to climb up on top of the roof to take some pictures but of course there are no stairs for this, actually there is a tiny door/hole in the ceiling of the bathroom that is too high for a chair but we don’t have a ladder small enough to get up there so I had to hop on a chair, get a foot on the door knob, then balance on top of the door (while holding on to the edge of the door/hole in the ceiling) and hoist myself up… whew. Well that door goes into a shack on the roof that houses the water tank (since water is only turned on for a few hours a day most buildings have a tank that fills up while the water is turned on then it feeds the building for the rest of the day [with really low water pressure]). Anyway I got into the shack then slipped through a hole in the side of the shack onto the roof (I should probably make a video of this next time). Of course I didn’t take into account that it would be flaming hot (I was barefoot) so I got down, got my Tevas, and repeated the previous steps.From the roof I took this photo and a few other panoramic photos to give people an idea of what it looks like, at least from where I am.

Its not all that exciting but it is kinda representative of Kabul. I would love to hike up one of the mountains that are in and around Kabul but my afghan counterparts have advised against it (security again, and I guess they would know) but I am sure I could get some pretty phenomenal pictures. The satellite dish is actually for our whopping 64Kbps internet connection that runs around $300/month which really sounds criminal to me, and incidentally makes me appreciate (for a moment) the comparatively cheap prices of broadband access in the US (though when I see internet access in Scandinavia I cease to have any respect for American broadband ISPs). The little hut to the left of the satellite dish is where our water tank is housed, most houses (if you squint you can see a few others) don’t have their tanks covered and I would guess have perpetual hot water, like it or not. You can also see at least two buildings under construction as well, it amazes me that in this time of insecurity (admittedly less secure for me than for the average afghan) that construction would continue but it is, slowly but surely, as long as the aid money comes Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan will continue to improve, slowly but surely.

One of the many buildings that tell a story…

One of the many buildings that tell a story…
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Different parts of Kabul look pretty different. While I expected to see some areas that looked practically modern, new buildings good streets etc, well that didn’t quite happen (there are new buildings but sometimes they are on dirt or severely “potted” roads or have beggars right outside of them). The different parts of Kabul do have big differences but sometimes they are more subtle than one might expect. My neighborhood is an example of subtle differences. Some areas look like they are falling apart and I didn’t notice that some of them look like they are falling apart because they were shot up. It should be noted that the bullet holes in the side of this building are not from recent fighting (well not since the US invasion) but from the civil war. I am about a block away from a fairly large main street and apparently (as I understand it) two opposition groups were on either side exchanging daily fire/mortar and as you can see the buildings suffered (as did many of the people). Now a family appears to live next door with kids and all, and I would bet that the inside of the house looks a bit better than the outside, and probably doesn’t tell nearly as good of a story

NPR : Pew Survey: Discontent with Global Leaders Grows

Well, at least Bush isn't the only President that the world doesn't trust (though I suspect he rates pretty high on the "distrust meter")

Water/Thermoelectric cooling for everything!

Ok, not for everything. I was thinking about how hot my office chair gets and how to avoid the sweaty back syndrome. The chair is oh so cushy (good) but I am not sure the same level of cushiness could be maintained if ventilation was added so I was thinking why not a cooled chair? My folks have a Volvo and nice as it is my favorite part (in the winter at least) is the heated seats if it works for warming a car seat then why not cooling an office chair? Well I’m no engineer but having tinkered with computer overclocking and modding I have toyed (a wee bit) with peltier coolers and it seems to me that a combo of water and peltier cooling could make for a pretty comfy chair… though I could be wrong.

Google Maps Mashup for Barber shops that give shaves

Ever since puberty I have loathed shaving. Life kind of got a bit easier when it filled out (ceased to be patchy) so i didn't look *quite* as bad when i didn't shave but still its a pain. As a result I have always enjoyed a good shave at the barber shop but the problem is its getting harder and harder to find a place that gives a shave.

I get the impression that the US is one of the only places that ever did shaves outside of the home and while everyone (in the US) *used*to* get shaves right before work its almost non-existent now. I am actually a bit embarrassed to ask places if they give shaves now because I usually get a funny (actually, not so funny) look followed by a "No".

I know these places still exist, somewhere, and that is why i *wish* i knew how to put together a Google maps mashup where people could submit addresses of shops they know give shaves. That would be a killer use of Google maps but of course if its exists i haven't been able to find it yet.

Amusingly enough I have discovered that getting a shave in Afghanistan is quite normal, and really cheap (about $.50). Of course there is the worry of some stranger wielding an unlikely-to-be-sterilized piece of cutlery around my throat buuuut... we shall see (I can't get out much around here so getting to a barbershop has been problematic).
So if you know of such a place, or know how to make a mashup then please let me know!

Trip'n to Panjshir

We were driving down the road when we came up upon a white Mercedes and guys with Kalashnikov rifles. I didn't think flashing a camera in their face would be in my best interest so i turned my camera off and sat on it.

Turns out they were just some Afghans on their way to a celebration I think. This region is apparently pretty independent and *very* proud that they were able to fend off the Soviets and Taliban so they carry rifles all the time and since they have behaved the government has been hesitant to try and disarm them. whoa.

Drive by filming in Parwan

This was on the way to the Panjshir province/valley. I believe this province was Parwan, nothing spectacular, I actually took this mini-video because it was so typical of what I saw during the majority of the ride.

Ride'n around in the Panjshir valley

The Panjshir valley was pretty spectacular and a long drive (we didn't even get half way after more than an hour of driving). In areas like this it was narrow and the road was obviously carved into the side of the cliff but it opened up in other areas and these areas are where most of the villages were, though i was repeatedly struck by the houses built way up on the sides of the cliffs.

How much is an immigrant's life worth, exactly? - By Steven E. Landsburg - Slate Magazine

I was recently catching up on my podcasts (not easy when you barely have any bandwidth) and I heard this segment from Slate Magazine's podcast "How much is an immigrant's life worth, exactly?" By Steven E. Landsburg.

I thought he did a damn good job of breaking the issue down using cold hard numbers and not all this emotionally charged (and oft misguided) rhetoric. Being in Agriculture I can tell you that there are many aggies torn on this issue, their conservative sides may say "don't want em'" (the Hispanics) but the business side of them says "we need em'". Being an Aggie in international development I can say that I have no problem with law abiding (excluding the "illegal" nature of how they got to the US, law abiding to me means no stealing or violent crime and hopefully in the future a sort of tax system that can incorporate these people) migrant workers.

Valley Market

Valley Market
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I couldn't really think of a title for this photo, the main reason I took it was the mountain in the background. Much of this trip had a Colorado feel it to it being in these small towns at the base of these big mountains (ok big by Southeastern US standards).

God Bless the Germans!

Since my arrival I have already had to go to the hospital twice. Ok, so I wasn’t dying either time but I wasn’t feeling that great either. The first time I had gotten some funky bacteria that was giving my GI tract fits, that’s pretty much par for the course when going to a new developing country but being the wimp I am I wanted to ease the discomfort (and reduce my TP usage) so I went to what is known in Kabul as “the German Clinic”.

 

My most recent visit there was due to all these little bites, or I thought they might be insect bites but there were so many (over 100 at last count) that I thought maybe it was the hives (an allergic reaction). These things itch like mad, I really haven’t had something that itches this bad in a loooong time. The wife of one of my Afghan colleagues is a pharmacist and had given me some industrial strength cortisone cream (at the time I didn’t know what it was since it was all written in Chinese but the German doctor informed me that it was indeed cortisone) and that still didn’t reduce the itching. Well I got to the clinic this time and found out that they were mosquito bites, gads!!! Those little buggers (yeah, pun intended) had eaten me alive. Well the good doctor gave me some German medicine (only a tiny bit easier to read than the Chinese stuff) and the ointment seems to help a bit more than the Chinese stuff and he also gave me some pills to help reduce the itching.

 

While under assault I had taken every precaution I could think of, I had fumigated my mattress, washed all my clothes (thinking it might be bed bugs), then thinking maybe mosquitoes I moved to a room that had a screen over the window, but all for naught, I still got eaten alive each night. Turns out that the mosquitoes here can be pretty little (noseeums?) so an AC is en route (since sleeping in an unventilated room would be intolerably hot [the AC was my afghan colleague’s suggestion so its not just me being a wimp]), I have closed all the windows, and my counter attack has consisted of using half a can of insecticide in my room (no more licking the countertops for me), and some sort of time released deterrent; if I get bitten again then I have no idea what I will do.

Life in Kabul

Well, I was (really) starting to worry that my little bit on “location” (what I filled in for my location on my blogger account, “different day, different place”) was becoming more an more inaccurate. I am now working in Kabul Afghanistan and learning my way around, kinda. The security is a funny thing here, my co-workers (all Afghan) tell me that walking around in a place is fine but walking from point A to point B is “inadvisable”, that is, attacks apparently are quite often premeditated so someone could follow me home, sigh. So as things are I don’t usually go out much (in Kabul) without an afghan friend and/or a driver, this is new for me as I usually quite enjoy hoofing it around town to see the sites.

 

Anywho, I got to Kabul in one piece and its an interesting place (no, that’s not a euphemism for I don’t like it) the past fighting is very apparent with the falling down buildings, bullet holes in the walls, etc people have been quite nice but I have been most struck by available products, mainly food. I won’t bore readers with the details here (I will write the details in thedigestibleaggie).

 

 

Web page annotation + Google-zon + Wiki-News

I was just reaching and article on TechCrunch about web page annotation tools/services. There are some pretty interesting services out there with a myriad of options all of which are neat. I haven't tried all of the services (doubt i will) but i don't think any of them offer a combining of annotations, actually I can't fathom how that would be done automatically at the moment but that lead me to my next though. Something like maybe a wiki-news type service that could #1 aggregate all the annotations from the different services and #2 take all the meaningful information from the aggregated annotations and roll them into a big, super useful annotation for each link; which would be insanely difficult even for an army of people to do, which lead me to my final thought: what about something like the Google-Zon vision applied to combining and "neatening" the annotations? Maybe even combining more information like using reputation systems to filter out useless annotations, flames, etc. Damn that would be cool and insanely useful to me. I am a rabid del.icio.us fan and use it constantly but I get a bit lazy about putting information in the comments section (i am more motivated sometimes than others) but mashing up something like my del.icio.us bookmarks with an aggregated annotation system would be, well, handy (to say the least considering i am well over 1,000 bookmarks and have to put comments in addition to tags if i am going to remember anything about the link.

YouTube for Productivity?

I am a ADD/Dyslexia poster child and needless to say easily distracted but for whatever reason I never spent much time on sites like YouTube (subconscious repulsion by the sensory overload?). Anyway, i was reading over yet another GTD like post (on lifehacker this time) extolling the virtues of the Quicksilver productivity app which was making me really jealous (though i do have a love affair going with FARR which keeps my jealousy in check). I have read tons about quicksilver but never really seen it in action and all of a sudden it popped into my head, "maybe there is some demo of quicksilver on YouTube". I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me before, I had actually wasted a significant amount of time drooling over the linux XGL/Beryl video captures (highly recommended if you like nice graphical desktops) on YouTube. So i took a look and sure enough there were tons of Quicksilver videos, many of them tutorials, I thought, "Maybe there are other application like tutorials" so i looked up a video on using Del.icio.us and viola! that was there as well.

The point of this is that YouTube is a great resource for instructional videos, no they aren't all professional and some are easier to follow than others but the convenience of it is pretty darn nifty eh?