Life is a game – we fall and fail before we learn how to win. It is a struggle up the hill of survivorship, where we do get knocked down at times. However, raising ourselves to some beautiful glory demands positive attitude, a belief in the self, and want for change. Along the way, our action “ripples” out for the change that we want to see in the world.
Help educate
Nepal, like other developing countries, need hefty external support and supervision to increase the literate populace in the nation. Please consider making some contributions to bring positive changes in a burgeoning life. Click here to start:
Bioinformatics – Optimal Leaf Ordering
For my Bioinformatics project, I, with the help of Dr. Ivaylo Illinkin, designed a program that takes a bunch of numerical sequences (i.e. a list of lists), and orders them – the lists in the “bigger” list – on the basis of their closeness (measured in terms of their distances) amongst each other. This project was based on a paper by Ziv B. J. et. al. entitled “Fast Optimal Leaf Ordering for Hierarchical Clustering”. The basic algorithm for the program was to generate a leaf cluster using the UPGMA algorithm, followed by finding the leaf order that carries the minimum calculated distance score with particular leaves on the very first and the very last position of the list. The algorithm checks all the possible combination of the leaves generated from the UPGMA clustering and therefore runs in O4 time space.
Here is a demonstration of what the program actually does.
Please visit this site on Optimal Leaf Ordering to learn more what the program or use the program itself.
Free Bawo / Bao / Omweso African Mancala Game on www.bawogame.com
Fumba Game Labs™ will be officially releasing its first version of the traditional African mancala game on the 8th of August, 2010. Bawo ( Bao, Omweso ) is played is several countries of Eastern Africa (including Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi and eastern Congo) but it is most popular among Swahili people of Tanzania and Kenya. [ref: Wiki].
Fumba Game Labs™ Bawo Version 1 will be available for free download at www.bawogame.com . The bawo game will be compatible with all Windows Operating Systems (XP, Vista and 7), Macintosh OS and Mobile Devices that support Adobe Flash Player. The game will also be playable on Apple iPhone and iPad.
The first version of FGL™ Bawo Game will be available as a standalone application which will not require any installation. It will also be playable online from any browser with the Adobe Flash player plugin.
Fumba Chibaka*
Game Designer, Fumba Game Labs™.
The game link is www.bawogame.com.
[*Fumba, friend of mine, is finishing up his Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Gettysburg College. For more info: http://fumbani.blogspot.com]
The last gaze
I had never seen my brother in tears before. I could not tell if he was really trying to balk his tears, but his eyes were thick with them. Although he was squatting on a greasy rock a few steps behind everyone, he was stealing every last remains of my grandfather through the crowd. Everyone at the cremation was standing around this mammoth fire eating up the last of the woods and my grandfather. The wood blended and merged with his body like the red and orange in the fire. His right arm that had crept out of the woods looked like logs – all thick, all voicing their recent fate through the deep, pulsating red. The fire was growling in that dusky wind, and Ghatko khola – the river passing through Panauti – was roaring its mourn below the rocks. Panauti had lost an educational, social and cultural protagonist, a freedom fighter.
