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I’ve recently developed an interest in….metal detectors.

That’s right. Metal detectors that enable the search for metallic objects hidden some inches below the surface. Contrary to other places, the geographical middle of Europe seems to be blessed with archaelogical treasures.

Which leads me to the actual dilemma:

1. I actually don’t have any time to waste on another hobby.

2. There are so many other interesting hobbies I have.

3. I’ve always thought it may be better to limit myself to a few leisure activities (due to 1. & 2.) and focus on them only.

4. Most of my friends are academics or intellectuals who aren’t as geeky as I am and/or won’t have an interest in …strange….hobbies such as using a metal detector to search the nearby forest for Roman coins.

So I did a quick test and asked the freakiest freak-friend of mine who usually rumbles around in military clothes all day long and looks like a potential metal detector freak (he actually looks a lot like Al Yankovic in UHF) if he would be interested in joining me on such a hobby.

“Naa…”, he said, “…not really”.

See? This is the same reaction I received from most of my friends in 1994 when I started being interested in amateur radio. Or fishing. Or guitar playing. Or shooting. Or blogging. Or while repairing my old ‘89 VW Golf. Or repairing electronics with a jua kali approach. Or my recently aquired toy helicopter. Or other handicrafts….

I’ve always been interested in geeky stuff – which isn’t that bad – but I’ve so often been alone on this. And then I’ve chosen those activities although there are other things I would really like to spend more time on. Like improving my guitar playing. Or learning more foreign languages. Reading the pile of books that’s next to my table – not fiction but books related to water & sanitation or political issues.

Well I am not complaining – for I am still free at this (advanced) age to do whatever I want to (uhuru!) and actually created this space in order to enjoy this variety. It’s only that I am wondering why I’ve always chosen such rather geeky hobbies instead of playing soccer with my mates or clubbing with the fiancée*.

What a luxurious dilemma this is! Get a life…

I know. I’m just sayin, u know…?

Oh, and btw, would you join me on a walk to the forest? Hey this is really cool, we can find great stuff!

*fiancée isn’t into clubbing and also says that metal detectors are for Spanish grandmothers who are combing the beaches, improving their pension.

[Disclaimer: I am yet to decide whether my I can afford to cough up USD 200 on such a metal detector if in the end I'll only use it about 20x and then sell it on eBay...]

Batteries for cell phones are a commodity and thus often quite cheap. The interesting part is that fake batteries will often cost the same as original ones and some dealers will swear by the fake Chinese NokLa phone in their hands that they are of course only selling “Original Nokia” products.

Original. Yeah, right.

What you see here:

A) original battery that came shipped with my Nokia 6230i

B) fake “original” battery from eBay @ 6,39 EUR

C) most-likely “original” battery from eBay @ 4,99 EUR

Battery B really pissed us off as it was drained within a few hours (!). The hologram is just very simple yet it looks like an original battery (except for the hologram and the deeper golden contacts). There are no hints on Nokia’s website other than the hologram (they used to have a form to double-check that number on the holo but imho even those numbers were faked).

Battery B was bulk-ware, meaning that it came shipped in a plastic bag while battery C was in an original Nokia packaging with a proper invoice. A bit irritating that there are two different mAh readings – a sticker that says 850 mAh on the front and a printed 970 mAh on the back. On Nokia’s website it says 900 mAh for the BL-5C, but hey – Nokia’s website has never been that accurate on phone details. Nokia also published a product advisory on the BL-5C type some time ago – a successful battery type has been produced over 300 million times and is built by five different manufacturers.

There are many, many dealers on eBay that sell BL-5C batteries for Nokia phones and I’d say that most of them are just fake ones. On the other hand, candidate number C was the cheapest, came in an original packaging and seems to perform like candidate A. Simbaya!

eBay as an online marketplace of course isn’t the best platform to purchase such electronics, but it is the one with the most competitive, or let’s say: comparable prices. Any other online-shop or even physical store will be more expensive (due to shipping rates & other general expenses). And it ain’t about the costs alone – I’d be willing to cough up more on a battery (but not too much!) if the dealer can assure that it is indeed original. I know this is a huge issue with product piracy and so on but – other than with cars where a non-original spare part may just as well be performing as required – most fake batteries also don’t last as long.  There may be exeptions to this general rule, but from my experience with this and other phones, most copies aren’t good enough, not even close. Probably also because they are commodities and their Chinese manufacturers just don’t give a damn…

It’s almost 4 years ago that I published my first post on this blog.

The facts:

• Fellow blogger Mzeecedric inspired told me in 2005 to start my own blog. Thx, bro!
• The initial motivation arose out of frustration – a very popular German social network had rejected a few of my texts for publication so I’d told myself: “F… them. I’ll come up with my own site.”
• SEO kitu gani? I am still using the same WordPress template when I switched from using (the standard WordPress) Kubrick template. Am btw still searching for a suitable & modern alternative but people keep on telling me they like the Kikoi banner. And I couldn’t even take another shot of the said Kikoi as I’ve meanwhile used it on another project. Recommendations for an alternative WordPress template with lots of whitespace are highly appreciated!
• Renamed this blog only once – from “Kikuyumoja’s Realm” to just “Kikuyumoja”. From http://blog.uhuru.de to http://kikuyumoja.com.
• 916 posts, 46 categories, 363 tags, 3.107 comments. Still need to improve that tags thingy for older posts. Categories? Blogroll? That’s so 2005. But I still use them.
• 4 years of using WordPress – an experience that has landed me at least two decent jobs related to the creation of blogs as well as some other unpaid WordPress blogs. Those new to WordPress and the taxonomy still prefer categories over tag clouds btw.
• I am still blogging despite the invention of microblogging services such as Twitter.
• I still haven’t lost my blogging mojo.
• I’ve always tried to keep it personal instead of blogging on one specific subject range, e.g. fellow blogger Erik blogging mostly on Africa & technology (and rugby), Sokari on gender violence, racism, sexuality, HIV/AIDS and cancer, Daudi on sports and politics, and so on. It’s a balancing act for me not to blog everything that crosses my mind, but at the same time I am not too selective and try to keep a healthy mixture. I don’t know if I am that succesful with such an approach, but the truth is: I wouldn’t know how to classify this blog other than “private” or “personal”. At least, that’s how I’ve tagged my blog (and those like mine) on my Google Reader. How do you classify or categorize this blog on your linklist (if at all)?
  Also, I wouldn’t want to limit myself to one specific range of subjects. I know that it’s better to be a “theme blog” by covering only a few things (e.g. “this is a chocoloate blog where I only write about chocolate products”), but I chose not to be that. I do participate on other, theme-related blogs where I contribute to water, sanitation, health, environment, climate, technology, etc. subjects so this need for a categorized view of the world (Weinberger’s second order of order, I presume) is already covered by those sites.
• Other than the commentators, I don’t know much about the many lurkers out here. Who are you? And why are you reading my blog? Please comment! Thank you.
• This blog has been part of the Kenyan Blogosphere almost right from the start. And this although I am based in Germany (ok, been working and blogging from Kena in between) and will always remain being a German to an extent where I will require a work permit for jobs in Kenya. My Kenyan side probably is that I know more about Kenyan politics & history than the average Blueband Generation kid out there that grew up with [name of US-American sitcom] on KTN and then quickly left the country for the US or the UK for studies only to develope a need to rediscover their cultural heritage aborad because they’re also being asked about that, e.g. during marathons or once Kenya is back in the media with a negative story (hunger, poverty, AIDS, slums, scandals, natural disaster, tribal clashes, etc.) Don’t want to insult anyone here – guess it’s just a matter of interests. It’s like those immigrants in Germany who are much more German than I am (which isn’t that difficult).

Blogging is easy. Go to WordPress.com (or any other blogging platform), choose a username, register a blog and start writing. And publish it.

Do it anonymously, put your name under it -just do as you feel. But make sure your voice is out there.

My mother once asked me “JKE, who’s supposed to read all this stuff??”. – “Well”, I replied, “…I don’t know. But some apparently do.”.

That would be you, dear readers. Without you and your comments, I would probably never have taken it to this level. I owe you big times!

—

Four other things I’ve also learned during the last 4 years:

1. A blog post without a photo is like chicken soup without chicken. You feel that something is missing. So here’s the mandatory and totally random picture:

2. The world is changing faster than expected. And we will need much more visionaries out there who are able to think out-of-the-box and and are willing to take a risk. Even if it means that everyone will start laughing about them.
I wouldn’t say I am a visionary, but I’ve followed my own path during the last 4 years and am happily working freelance now on projects I really like. I like my work and what I do. Do you?

3. Things I value the most: time, inspiration, freedom.

4. Everyone likes a good story. Had this colleague at work who kept on sending me links to “potentially interesting news” for our newsletter: “Here, this link is interesting”. – “Yeah, thx…”, I replied, “but where’s the connection and where’s the story to it?”. Silence.

Twitter taught us that news may be limited to 140 characters only. 140 characters that will either be read or ignored.

Now, scientists can sometimes be very complicated. Blogging really helped me shrinking news to a necessary length – and I am still only at the beginning. I wish that colleague would twitter.

Epilogue
SEO is a horrible buzzword, suitable for bullshit bingo. Thinking about this blog post, I keep on adding new stuff to the list of facts. 4 years are an interesting timeframe to draw a line and look back. Alas, this aim to categorize the blog with something else other than “personal” still remains the hardest part for me.

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This snapshot of digitalis purpurea was today taken in a forest next to a Roman fort near Frankfurt – with the 5mpx CMOS camera on my 2y old Nokia N95 mobile phone.

It may not be the best photo, but it clearly shows what’s already possible with a decent camera phone.

Heute habe ich mir endlich einen Traum erfüllt und einen ferngesteuerten Hubschrauber gekauft, mit dem man im Zimmer herumfliegen und seine Mitbewohner (Frau, Hund, Katze) in den Wahnsinn treiben kann.

An dieser Stelle auch gleich das große ABER! – denn bei diesem ultraleichten Spielzeug aus Hartschaum und nur popeliger IR-Fernbedienung kann natürlich keine große Freude aufkommen. Jedoch, als Einsteigerset ideal und richtig interessant wird es dann wohl erst ab 99,- EUR mit dem E-Sky Lama V4 oder vergleichbarem.

Das abgebildete Set gab es günstig im Laden und nachdem ich den Kauf bisher immer verschoben hatte (”ach, brauch ich nicht wirklich”, “einmal gespielt und liegt dann in der Ecke”, “kostet nur Geld und bringt nix”, “hmm, nen HeliSimu fürn PC wäre auch fein…was kostn nen USB-Controller?”, etc.), hab ich mir dann heute gedacht: WTH? Nich lang schnacken…einfach mal kaufen und wenn scheisse dann halt Pech gehabt.

Dass wir uns nicht falsch verstehen: so ein Billighubschrauber mit 2 (3-) Kanalsteuerung kann natürlich nur hoch- und runterfliegen, sich schön im Kreis drehen bzw. gegenlenken und mit etwas Glück und bißchen Einstellungsgeschick zum Geradeausflug bewegt werden. Der Flug nach vorne interessiert mich aber gar nicht so – vielmehr das Schweben auf einer Stelle. Und das kann auch dieses Gerät (mit etwas Übung und Ausrichtung des Heckrotors).

Für dieses Kombiset aus Hubschrauber und Flieger hatte ich mich eigentlich entschieden, weil der Flieger im Gegensatz zum Heli mit einer Funkfernsteuerung ausgestattet ist und ich diese noch für ein weiteres Projekt verwenden kann.

Als Kind wollte ich immer ein ferngesteuertes Flugzeug haben, aber damals waren diese Bausätze noch ziemlich teuer. Erst seitdem es diese günstigen Fertigmodelle gibt (an denen man auch relativ wenig einstellen kann – was gut und zugleich auch schlecht ist), ist das Ganze erschwinglicher da populärer geworden.

Trotz des schlechten Gewissens, mit dem Kauf dieses Spielzeugs wieder Sondermüll Made in China gefördert zu haben, ist so ein Gerät die perfekte Entspannung für Zwischendurch.

Not a question of the location, but rather: from which movie is this?

Just when I thought that nothing could stop us from a well-deserved vacation, visiting some dear friends in London – a journey we had anticipated for a long time – parts of my body revolted and sent me to hospital on Sato evening.

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