Oladipo Ademola Esq

I joined Nairaland on January 30, 2006, then it had approximately 12,000 members, of which less than 3000 were active posters. Compared with today, 153,753 members, must really be an achievement. I remember when members virtually celebrated the coming on board of the 20,000th member. Then people started looking forward to the the 25,000th member, then 30,000th member.

With any system that has an increase in member numbers, its bound to face some form of corruption of ideals. Nowadays, you can hardly make a post without someone replying with an insult. Is it necessary, must you reply?

Many of the “old timers” on Nairaland seem to have “disappeared”. Is it unconnected to the inflow of “new generation” nairalanders? I don’t think so. There were times I spent a whole working day on Nairaland, but now I just visit once in two weeks – watching, reading and leaving.

Even the RSS feed system has been disabled by Seun. Since I can’t keep track of new posts, I am left with no choice but to read posts that make the front page, I am left to the discretion of the owner of the forum.

Nairaland’s editorial policy became non transparent. Then, you were notified of an error and allowed to make amendments. Last time, I had an infraction, the post just went poof. No notification, except the mail that said it had been deleted.

What happened to Nairaland? Got too big for its own good? Or have I just been away for too long?

I had a discussion with a friend over the weekend, concerning christians and movies. Bone of contention: a pornographic movie laying on my brother’s bed (dropped there by me while rearranging my room, and yes the movie is mine). Transcript (as much as I remember)

Him: this kind of movies are not good for you

Me: why?

Him: they corrupt your soul and mind

Me: how?

Him: because, after watching them, you get feelings which you should not have

Me: urges to have sex?

Him: yes.

Me: ok, I agree, but what of horror movies

Him: they are still ok, not as bad as porn

Me: so a porn provides a greater sin than action/horror/war/*whatever* kind of films

Him: i did not say so

Me: so, a pornographic movie corrupts your soul, yet a horror movie (obviously showing off the devil’s power) does not corrupt your soul

Him: no not really, but its still easier to watch a horror movie than a porno

Me: and how is that? prove it.

Him: do you know how many women get raped in Africa daily?

Me: do you know how many people get shot in America because someone watched an action movie?

Him: but that’s them, we are us.

Me: so in your view, action and horror films are good for us blacks and porn is good for whites?

Him: do you have that cash to lend me or not?

Obviously, end of discussion. Got me thinking, its alright to watch an action/sci-fi/war/horror flick, yet a pornographic movie is an abomination. Who are we kidding?

Him: well, different people have different ways of handling things they see and hear

Me: which means

Things must be looking up for Yahoozee crooner.

In his words, “cos if I hammer, first thing na hummer, one million dollars, elo lo ma je tin ba se si naira“. From what I am seeing through my window, I don’t think he has “hammered” yet. Olu came to the car dealer to negotiate the purchase of a Geely. I have not confirmed if he actually made the sale, if I do I’ll update.

I suspect he intends purchasing the CK model.

Some Geely links:

http://www.geely-global.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely_Automobile

Some Olu Maintain video links

http://www.pcplanets.com/videoyoutube-Olu-Maintain-Yahooze-Official-Video-Naijapolis-net-.0Jh8tCns-Bg.shtml

http://www.naijapolis.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=120

I am working on a project, coding in PHP (a language I am still relatively new in) and I have to consume a web service written in ASP.NET. And yes, I had to provide support in writing the web service, so I know quite a bit about how it works, internally.

My headaches started with consuming the results in PHP. All I got was a response “Array”. Nothing more. New to PHP, it took me a while to figure that I could display the results using the print_r function. Also, I could access some part of the array. Fine.

I am using the NuSOAP library as I learnt that .NET Web Services tend largely to SOAP.

I then noticed that the web service could not read my input. Blast. Long story short, I fund out that I had to wrap the parameters in a parameters array.

require_once('libs/nusoap.php');

/* Initialize parameter */
$PayerID = $_POST['PayerID'];
$param = array('sortOrder'=>$PayerID);

/* create the client for my rpc/encoded web service */
$wsdl = "http://192.168.200.187/PayTesting.asmx?WSDL";
$client = new soapclient($wsdl,true);
$err = $client->getError();

// Let NuSoap extract the correct target namespace from the WSDL!
$result = $client->call('FetchData', array('parameters' =>$param));

I hope this helps someone.

Am pinging myself just to confirm that I am still alive. Need to finish up on some projects.

NigerianWeblogs.net is still on track?

2am (I think). Friday 16 November 2007. Silverbird TV. Legends of Nollywood with Paul Obazele.

I worked through the night to get a demo of a website ready for the morning, the programme came on and I decided to invest 30 minutes into educating myself (yeah right!). Paul featured the director/producerof “Two Good Friends” featuring Mr Ibu. Blah, blah, blah. The part that got my attention was the point when he mentioned (I’ll try to quote that part)

• Q: is it true that your movie sold 70,000 copies
• A: a movie selling 70,000 is not considered a success.
• Q: so would you consider this movie a success?
• A: this movie sold over a 100,000 copies and i would consider it successful. we initially printed 20,000 copies for the first part, another 20,000 for the second part. later due to demand, we printed another 5,000 copies for each and later another 5,000 each. in all, we printed well over a 100,000 copies.

– imagine that. If a producer needs to consider part 1 and 2 of a movie released at the same time as counting to the sales of the movie, who are we fooling. IMHO, if a movie was released as part 1 and 2 simultaneously, isn’t it logical to slash the “presumed” sales figure by 2 to get the “actual” sales figure.

By his calculation, he indicated roughly a 100,000 sales figure. His figure. My figure, the guy sold less than 50,000 (don’t forget some copies will be given out for free).

This is the same mentality that other producers and directors have in calculating their sales figures.

Imagine the actual figure of a movie releasing parts 1 to 3 at the same time. Nollywood, truly Naija.

Been having a little pain in my jaw for a couple of days (2 days actually), woke up this morning to find myself infected with Facial Palsy (also known as Bell’s Palsy). Second time it is affecting me. Previously infected some years ago on the left side. Now it is the right side.

Somebody help. Good thing is I remembered the drugs I used then, just can’t remember the dosage.

Did a search and found a site: http://www.bellspalsy.org.uk/

Well, a good news is that it usually subsides in approximately 3 weeks.

Sunday morning, November 4 2007, 6am. I woke up and had this feeling that I was not going to go to church. I went back to sleep.

I woke up to hear my name is screamed. “What?”. “The landlord wants to see you”. “Not again? My generator is bad, so it can’t be that. My dogs did not make noise through out the night (or maybe they did). What could it be?”. Don’t blame me, this man only complains. He lives for it. And yes, I was right, it was a complaint. This time it was with regards to the water tank.

I heard some whispers, someone had died. My neighbours wife died over the night. He was called by his in-laws around some minutes past 12. She had been sick for months. Could not go to church.

Around 1pm, the burial was done (I did not attend). Around 3pm, her folks came to pack her belongings <- this is what I have issues with.  The lady is dead barely 15 hours and the family were already fighting over her property.

A statement made included “we do not want another woman to use her property”. Oh stuff it somewhere the sun don’t shine. The head of the “mob” was her immediate younger brother who was living with them uptill a while ago. I am on this man’s side even if he is wrong (though I do not see how). The lady had some expensive things, agreed, but she was not working. Meaning that this same man was the buying this things for her, yet her family would insult him over them.

The marriage is less than 2 years and they had no kids.

I have seen things that I do not understand.

Many folks are saying the guy should skip the mourning and go ahead with looking for a new wife. What is your view?

I apologise the long delay in getting a new post out. I have been a little busy, have to put food on the table, otherwise I would starve to death. Just kidding, no dying yet.