Category: News

The Rowbory/Nigeria Family Blog

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Jos church attack

Many of you will have heard about the attack on a church in Jos early yesterday morning. We and all friends are completely fine. We had good advice from our leadership in the group from soon after the attack and just stayed at home. Reasonably high security around the city has been stepped up but …

‘Al Gore’ quotes from over a century before

A couple of curious Wikipedia lookups in the realm of History turned up an intriguing Irish-origin French General who gets remembered for unfortunate quotes, including these: Concerning the floods of the Garonne river of 1875, in Toulouse he exclaimed “So much water! So much water!” (Que d’eau! Que d’eau!). After the Republicans’ victory in the …

Surprisingly effective fan-less laptop cooling in hot places

I never really had a problem in the UK with my MacBook Pro getting too hot, but Nigeria’s another story. With ambient temperatures often around 35°C rather than 20°C, and when stressing the processor a fair bit, the processor was often running up to 90s°C, so that the fan had to kick on. Eventually it …

Instant Linguistic Workstation: just add netbook and stir

For linguists and Bible translators frustrated with the many problems of Windows machines (mainly viruses) this looks quite interesting: A beta release of Balsa ‘Basic Language Software Appliance’: About Balsa

Headline mismatch

OK, headlines sometimes grab the reader unjustifiably, but this is a bit too much: RAIL WORKERS’ WIVES DESERT On 20 June, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) commenced long distance intercity service between Minna and Kaduna (158km)… and if you read the (mildly interesting) article you’ll find out it’s about Nigeria opening up railways, but nothing …

This is a test: Famous First Words

I read an interesting article recently which surveyed some of the most famous first words: first tweet, first SMS, first words from the moon, right back to the telegraph etc. But most interesting was the fact that especially today, the actual first words are normally along the lines of “This is a test. Please ignore.” …