The Nooby Book Writer

So I decided to purchase a .tt domain name. In the past I would have gone the way of Godaddy because it was cheaper (for 2nd level domain name), more convenient and offered DNS management. There was a time when online credit card payments was not accepted by TTNIC . TTNIC manages the .tt cctld (country code top level domain). TTNIC is a register. Read up more about the internet domain name system if you want to learn more about this. At the heart of what they do is point your domain name to your specified nameservers that manages your DNS records. They only manage nameserver records in their zone so you will have to obtain DNS management outside of them. Cloudflare seems to be popular for this and they offer a free tier. I found serverspace.io and their free tier and I chose this. For now I am hosting a landing page on my domain name and using firebase hosting. For this I am using A records pointing to firebase's hosting ip addresses. One of the main reasons I chose a .tt domain na

I was browsing youtube and came across a newsclip about the launch of the Huawei IdeaHub rollout to select schools in Trinidad and Tobago. My interest was piqued and I quickly contacted the local agency that handles Huawei's public relations. I asked for any press release they had. I was going to learn as much as I can, ask questions and write this blog post. I am a big supporter for tech in education. What is the IdeaHub? It is an interactive electronic whiteboard with video conferencing capability. According to the IdeaHub website, innovative intelligent writing recognition automatically identifies words, figures, and flowcharts. The board will allow students to connect and share their screen. There are third party software designed for interactive whiteboards where you can perform quizzes for example. The board can be used for online classes if the teacher is willing to work from school rather than home. But soon enough we would be returning to school in classrooms and these boa

So many memories. So many good memories. Where to start? What to write about? It's 317 am on a Wednesday morning and I am thinking about doubles for breakfast this morning. I remember the doubles man that sold outside San Fernando ASJA primary. You could even buy a singles. I remember the doubles from the cafeteria in St. Mary's College. That up north doubles was different. The bara was more yellow and more fluffy. Back to San Fernando. A big part of my younger years was spent in San Fernando at my uncle's place. They owned a chicken depot. I remember eating bread, butter and tea for many breakfast. I remember the chinese parlour next door where I would go to buy the Kiss bread. Madame Lee would total my purchase using pen and paper. I remember watching Madonna music videos on the tube TV in the living room. I remember the empty streets and silence the day the Strike Squad played USA. All we needed was a draw to go to Italy and everyone was inside and glued to their TVs. I

Often when people ask for career advice, I recommend doing things that they are passionate about. Plenty money is nice but doing what you love is nicer. I have seen arguments against this advice in articles. There can be arguments for and against anything. But nothing has changed my mind or stopped me from giving this advice. I am 41 and choosing what I am passionate about has served me well. My passion is technology. I knew I wanted to pursue my career in technology since the age of 14 in form 2 at St. Mary's College. I skipped form 3 and it was at the end of form 2 that I had to choose subjects for forms 4 to 5 (CXC and GCSE). I did Computer Science at O Levels and Computing at A Levels. Then my BSc in Computer Science at Morehouse College. This was all at a time when computing and technology was emerging. I am passionate about technology because I recognise the power of tech to make the world a better place. To make our lives easier and better. This passion means I put my best f

Thanks for the opportunity to share with you and your audience more on Digital Transformation (DX) of Trinidad and Tobago. I would like to stress that this is a journey and while we have a destination in mind – of digital technology being part of the fabric of society and in our daily lives and contributing to a more inclusive and productive country, and a more transparent and accountable government – the journey will reveal many different layers that lead to that destination, those layers involving: firstly people – our population, leaders, tech community; and an overall change of mindsets and behaviours – a culture for using technology, of innovation, and responsible use; secondly infrastructure, of course – affordable, accessible and robust and secure telecommunications and devices; as well as hardware and software powered by the ICT sector; thirdly – enabling legislation and regulations; fourthly – actual eServices – whether it is government or business including entrepreneurs pro

The last digital divide survey was done in 2013. TATT is currently doing an updated survey called Digital Inclusion Survey . The aim of this survey is to measure the digital divide in Trinidad and Tobago. Digital divide is the gap between those that have access to technologies and those that do not. Technology includes mobile, internet, computers and TV. This survey is mentioned in the national ICT plan and is the basis of some of the action items aimed at bridging the digital divide. When the results of the last survey was released I had blogged about it as follows The results of the digital divide survey has been published by TATT. I have glanced through the report and this is what I gather. It is long with a lot of metrics and expert language so I tried to simplify it in my mind as follows. The main aim is "to pinpoint the underserved communities within Trinidad and Tobago". The digital divide is the gap between those that have and do not have access to ICTs. The service p

What is an etextbook? An etextbook is a textbook in digital format. You will use a laptop or tablet or other device to download and read your etextbook. There are several advantages of etextbooks. These include lower cost, environmentally friendly, easier to carry many books, easy to search, text to audio, easy to update and can be interactive. When are we going to see etextbooks in Trinidad and Tobago? I contacted TTUTA and asked, "Do you think that etextbooks should be used in Trinidad and Tobago? And why?" and have not received a response as yet. I contacted the Ministry of Education's Textbook Unit and asked, "Does the ministry have plans to introduce etextbooks in the education system?" and have not received a response as yet. I did a search of the MOE website and came across this recent RFI (due date Jan 15 2021) which states The Ministry of Education (MOE) is seeking to introduce e-textbooks into the education system and recognises the significant role o

Professor Noel Kalicharan has passed away recently. May he rest in peace. I remember him as being the organiser for what we called the Computer Olympiads for secondary school students. I was attending St. Mary's College at the time. We would submit solutions to programming questions and then be selected to participate in the next round of the selection process at the Roytec computer lab. I never made it past this round. Winners after that round would be trained at UWI under Kalicharan and then another selection made to fly to the international competition. The local awards ceremony would usually be held at Algico plaza. When I went on to Morehouse College I would participate in the ACM contest and one time my team placed 2nd in our division having gotten 3 questions correct. I see that UWI and other tertiary schools have been participating in the ACM-ICPC contests. At one point we also had participants in the Microsoft Imagine Cup. We really need to promote our participation in the

The following is a listing of internet options in Trinidad and Tobago that I am aware of as of 6 JUL 2021. This is a work in progress. If you know of others please leave comments. Best if viewed on desktop browser. If you are using a mobile browser, select desktop site from the menu. Company Type Comments Link FLOW Digital Cable Fibre to the node and then coaxial cable to the home. Only in digital ready areas in Trinidad. No contract required. website Digicel Play FTTH Fibre to the home. Around a few years now. TV and landline service also available. website Bmobile Broadband LTE Available in Trinidad and Tobago. 5G is in the works and 5G fixed wireless broadband was demoed on 4 DEC 2019. website Amplia FTTH Formerly Massy Internet and now Amplia and under bmobile. website Bmobile 4G HSPA+ and Mobile LTE SIM card devices and cellphones. website Digicel 4G HSPA+ and Mobile LTE SIM card devices, cellphones and USB sticks. website Air Link Digital Cable Smaller ISP catering to some areas

Today we’re fortunate enough to share some time with Hassan Voyeau. Holding more than ten years experience in the field, applicable education and extensive technical expertise, he continues to seek ways to utilize and enhance his skills. His love for Information Technology doesn’t go unnoticed and is quite evident with his blog TECHTT. He can be seen covering a range of topics at a very dedicated pace. Be sure to check it out. 1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Years working in the field?  11 What position/positions do you hold now?  Applications Programmer What are your hobbies?  Photography and walking What are your passions?  Technology 2. What made you decide to get into the world of ICT? Secondary school classes. I was getting top scores in my secondary school computing class. 3. How have past experiences helped guide and shape you into the person you are today? By showing what works and what doesn't. 4. What/who was/is your main influence? Dr. Ng/Morehouse College. His courses

A lot of persons are having problems with the upgraded republic bank online website and app. Last I checked there were 2500 comments on their facebook post  and if you search republic bank or @republicbanktt on twitter you will see more complaints over there. I worked in IT and I feel for the workers. I also feel for the customers because I am also affected. At this point I am thinking what can we learn from this? These are the questions I have. Could they have done a parallel and phased rollout? Could they provide a toll free support number? Why not implement a ticketing system to deal with support requests? Could they be more timely with social media updates? Why were special characters removed from the password field? Is secret answer something new? Is a mobile app necessary if it is just a mobile website in a container? Could this have been done in the middle of the month when bills are paid already and there is I assume less activity? Why not allow something like Google Authenti

I briefly tuned in for the Windows 11 launch last week and tweeted a few times and that was it. No real excitement from me. I have shifted to a mobile first workflow. Everything I have been doing on my mobile phone. To besides my laptop is 5 years old now and feels sluggish. I wanted to at least give Windows 11 a try so I could blog about it. I would be hoping for a speedier and effecient new OS that works on Windows 10 hardware. Performance is key for me. Initially Microsoft had released a PC Health Check tool where you could see if your machine met the new hardware requirements for Windows 11 but that tool was pulled because of problems. When I turned on my laptop running Windows 10 Insider Preview Dev Channel I saw that there was a pending download for Windows 11 Insider Preview 10.0.22000.51 (co_release). I left my laptop on in the corner of my bed so it could download and then install. In the meanwhile I could watch youtube videos about the new features. On the Windows blog they d

Edit - Read about Google Play version of Termux https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux_Google_Play First thing I did was install Termux from Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux Next I installed nodejs which I had done before and documented here on this blog https://trinbagotechie.blogspot.com/2020/04/experience-termux-nodejs-android.html Next thing I did was install firebase-tools under Termux npm install -g firebase-tools Follow the steps from official Firebase documentation to create a new project https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/quickstart I got the following error - Failed to create project because there is already a project with ID. I was using web-test. Id must be unique globally across all users of firebase. Finally I was able to create a project, modify the index.html and deploy. This is the result. https://trinbagotechie-web-test.web.app This was simple enough so I decided to make it interesting by creating a hugo project apt install hugo F