MikesDesk

Barbarians At the Gate

mike — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:23:13 +0000

The book “Barbarians At the Gate” written by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar is the accurate recollection of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco tobacco and biscuit company in America. A fascinating read of greedy and egotistical directors who sell a company to benefit themselves. The eighties is a time in American investment finance history where leveraged buyouts were a popular method to buy a company. A leveraged buyout uses junk bonds (bonds below investment grade) to buy out the shares of a listed company. The acquiring company will sell off the the lagging business units of the newly bought company and may run the remaining units under a different company name. Both authors wrote the award level account of the buyout and showed the greed for power on wall street. Although this is the ethical objective of the book, I am excited by the finance described.

The Current Days

mike — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:56:03 +0000

The past months I have focused on three parts of life. I am studying for the Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1 exam in December. I work for Investec Private Bank in Durban as an internal consultant. And I am speaking at the Highway Toastmasters club in Kloof. I have embraced my work, study and speaking but shortened my time in my other passions for open source software, education and maths. These current parts of my life have offered exciting oppotunites and I hope to write my experiences in this blog.

Ownership of Ideas

mike — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:27:42 +0000

I disagree with Tyler’s post and Stafano’s article on ownership of ideas. The ideas that I create had come from reading books, magazines, media, learning , varisty and from influencial people. To acknowledge every person for their contribution to the formation of my ideas is impossible. The same applies to people that I have influenced. All ideas are not original. We are purely building on other people’s ideas and forming our own derivative idea.
A fresh idea should be secret. Take the time to implement the idea, patent or trademark. Then share you idea with other people.

Durban’s 27 Dinner

mike — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:30:53 +0000

The 27 Dinner in Durban is to enjoy dinner celebrating the innovative, ideas and people from Durban. Dave is a man who within minutes made a impact on me and is the creator of the 27 Dinner. Marc who organized the Dinner made the evening a success. The atmosphere and food at Ciao Itallia Restaurant was perfect. Join Ciao Itallia’s Facebook group to hear about their future funky cooking classes.

Graham is the gentleman that created Stormhoek wine. He built a wine brand completely by blogging on the internet and his site receives millions of visits. Graham has an inspiring presence and is a role model for entrepreneurs.

Anice Hassim is the genius behind the success of East Coast Radio in Durban. He took marketing of radio to a new level. Thank you Anice for your brilliant talk.

During the evening I sat with Linda and Carol. These ladies have a wonderful command of English and brought such fun and grace to the table. Linda, I’m watching for Sutcliffe’s friend.

The evening left me thinking till the early hours of the great ideas that people expressed. Thank you to Dave and Marc for bringing together genuine people for dinner.

Freedom is a Privilege

mike — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:13:47 +0000

I am blessed that I live in South Africa where there is freedom to work and express my ideas. This writing is an expression of that freedom. The entry was inspired by the North Korean government is tightening the freedom of its people. South Africans must be thankful for our privilege. Often, a fundamental privilege like expression of ideas in writing is taken for granted.

Ubuntu is People. A Template to Introduce Ubuntu to People

mike — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:00:00 +0000

The month of June is my first anniversary of productively using Ubuntu Linux. I owe it to a patron of Ubuntu Linux, William Kinghorn. I had ordered the Ubuntu LiveCD and installed the operating system. However my enthusiasm waned when on my own to dissect and make use of Ubuntu Linux.
I later meet William at a LUG meeting and was invited to his free weekly Ubuntu workshop. He showed me the install of Ubuntu desktop and server. I witnessed my web page on a LAMP server over the network which started my interest in the web. William created a simple math equation using OpenOffice.org which I latter used successfully in a finance case presentation. We enjoyed coffee breaks with discussions on free software and the freedom it represents.
William, guided me through the quality of Ubuntu Linux operating system. This article is a testament to the incredible person William and the quality he brings to the Ubuntu Linux community. The weekly workshop that William held is a perfect template for people to spread the interest of Ubuntu Linux and introduce new people to Ubuntu Linux.

Brochure Websites Waste My Time.

mike — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 06:30:15 +0000

Brochure websites are static web pages that describe the business. Businesses that use brochure websites are wasting the clients time. Paper brochures in a store are used to start a conversation and to assist the sales person. Brochure websites don’t create any relationship with your clients. If you consult, start a blog that emails your clients. This consistent reminder of your expertise will build trust in your clients. If you sell or perform a service, try do so over the internet. As the very least open conversation with your clients. Brochure websites do have a consistent message unlike blogs, that older businesses feel less at risk with. This thinking fails to build a relationship with potential clients and stops the purpose of a website. The website is created to open a conversation with your clients.

Foxy Thinking

mike — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:22:21 +0000

In 2004, I had the privilege of Mr Clem Sunter, co-author of The Mind of a Fox, lecturing me at university. He introduced scenario planning as a method to think through a problem. Fortunately I bought his book at a discount after the lecture. It is three years later, when launching my first internet start-up that the book has become worth the money I paid for it. I read the book within a matter of hours and I am applying the thinking to my start-up. I have risks that I had failed to acknowledge and problems without solutions. The scenario planning method highlighted these risks and focused my thinking. If you are starting a business or are troubled by problems consider the book, a Mind of a Fox.

Cubit Accounting - Installing onto Ubuntu 6.10 Server

mike — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:39:58 +0000

Cubit Accounting software package is developed and updated by a South African company for local businesses. As stated on its website, cubit is a secure network accouning package that works on linux & windows and with no-per user licensing. Initially I did have problems when installing the software onto my server. This reference guide is to install cubit accounting onto a server using Ubuntu 6.10 operating system.

Perform a clean installation of Ubuntu 6.10 server onto your computer without including the LAMP server and log in using your username and password.

Uncomment the universe repository under the /etc/apt/sources.list file as seen:

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the ‘universe’
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe main restricted
# deb-src http://za.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe

Update the repositories using apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get update

Install gcc, a GNU C compiler. This should be found on the Ubuntu 6.10 server CD:

$ sudo apt-get install gcc

Install dialog, which allows dialog boxes in scripts and on commandlines:

$ sudo apt-get install dialog

Install libreadline5-dev, allows consistency in the user interface of command lines.

$ sudo apt-get install libreadline5-dev

Install zlib1g-dev, helps deflate compression:

$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

Install flex, generates scanners that recognise lexical(words of language) patterns in text:

$ sudo apt-get install flex

Install bison, is a language parser:

$ sudo apt-get install bison

Install checkinstall, which keeps track of all the files created or modified by your installation script:

$ sudo apt-get install checkinstall

Download the cubit accounting software:

$ wget http://www.cubit.co.za/dealers/software/cubitl286.tar.bz2

Untar the bz2 file after the download has completed:

$ tar xvf cubitl286.tar.bz2

Change into the directory and run the install script as root:

$ cd cubit-2.86/

/cubit-2.86$ sudo ./install.sh

Press ok to the first warning screen

Install the with the SSL installation(default) and press OK

The installation should continue, installing apache, compiling and installing postgres and finally installing cubit accounting. This will take some time.

Once the installation is complete, change to the cubit directory /usr/local/cubit:

$ cd /usr/local/cubit

To avoid the error that “httpd: bad group name nobody” which would stop apache from starting. In the Cubit directory under conf, edit the httpd.conf file. Replace Group nobody with Group www-data :

$ sudo nano conf/httpd.conf

User nobody

Group www-data

Start Cubit accounting server with the script under Cubit directory. Apache and Postmaster should confirm that they have started:

$ sudo ./start_cubit.sh

Using firefox webrowser on a networked computer, type in the IP address of the server and Cubit Accounting should be present.

http://192.168.0.3

Amatomu.com - Blog Ranking on Steroids.

mike — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:53:01 +0000

Amatomu.com is SA’s blog ranking website that is brought to us by Mail & Gaurdian online. The site has various blog categories and lists your blog based on the previous 24hours, 1 week and 1 month of activity. I admit to being a new blogger and have yet to gain large traffic flows to my site. But I do not understand why my ranking fluctuates so frequently on amatomu. The site is in alpha stage which means it is early in the development but my ranking should be more consistent. Maybe Vincent Maher, who is a creator of amatomu.com and a top blogger could outline how the ranking works and what defines a top blog.

UPDATE - My blog ranking on the amatomu.com website has stabilized. Amotomu have added set of new features to their blog ranking engine. A Shmaak It and Favourites tags to every blog listed which helps identify popular posts on every blog. They have added the code for stylish badges and tag clouds that may be placed on your blog. A tool named BuzzGraph that graphs the number of times that a keyword appears on all the entries listed in the past 30 days. A perfect tool to judge the popularity of blogging topics among other bloggers.