Category: Tech Posts

Shifting to 8 digit mobile phone numbers: DIY method

by
Inf

As you may or may not know already, all mobile phone numbers in Mauritius are shifting to 8 digit numbers as from 1st September 2013. So if your number is 777-8888, it will become 5777-8888. So to call or SMS you, I’d need to put a 5 in front of your number. Same for SMS. More info from Emtel here.

The problem is how to change all your mobile contact numbers to add that 5 before. I hear the various mobile operators are developing mobile apps to handle it for you, but I wanted a DIY way for my S3. If you have a similar DIY way for your own mobile, feel free to share in the comments. This article is NOT a guide, but merely the steps I will take to add 5 to my own numbers. It may, or may not work for you so use at your own risk. I hope I don’t end up with a horribly broken contact list! :/ Feel free to suggest if you have a better idea, apart from using an app coded by a third-party. I’m interested in DIY methods, or how you are planning to do your own migration if your phone doesn’t have an app.

Here’s my plan:

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Windows 8 Release Preview – Quick Review

by
Inf

The Windows Release Preview came three days ago. I decided to download the ISO and give it a quick run through to see if it’s really as horrible as people claim it is. The short answer: it is. My opinion? Except for the new look given to Windows Virtual Desktop, it will throw off any average computer user.

Things are seriously different, and not in a good way. I’ll go through the issues I have as we go along. This will be a quick review since I didn’t have time to go through every little nook and corner of Windows 8. It’s also my first time trying it, so if I seem a bit clueless, think of it like how an inexperienced user views the OS.

This review has lots of pictures so bear with me if you have a slow-ish Internet connection. I’ll go through the setup phase to actually having the Metro interface and the Desktop. Let’s see how that goes.

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Fundamentals of Programming: Part 7 – Loops

by
Inf

Welcome to Part 7: Loops! I hope you have enjoyed the previous parts and if you haven’t checked them yet, you should! Here’s a link to Part 1!

In this part, we consider another fundamental building blocks of programs: Loops. What are they? Simply, a method for telling your computer to do the same thing a bunch of times. Nothing too hard huh? Let’s get on with it!

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Fundamentals of Programming: Part 6 – Conditions

by
Inf

Welcome again! In this series, we go on to the first of the essential building blocks of programming: conditions. This is the first part of the series that starts to deal with blocks of code, as opposed to just independent lines. So without delay, let’s start.

In this long series, we’ll cover condition blocks using if-else and if-else if-else. We cover checks using AND, or and NOT (! symbol). We finally end with the switch statement. I doubt you’ll be able to grasp everything in one go as a beginner, so go slow, maybe a section at a time, try to understand how it works before moving on.

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Fundamentals of Programming: Part 5 – Data Types

by
Inf

Hello! Continuing with the Fundamentals of Programming series, we will now look at what Data Types are. If you have not read the earlier series, now would be a good time to start. You can click here go to Part 1.

What are Data Types? Well, they are a way for you to tell the computer what kind of data you are referring to. In English, you have two basic kinds of data types: numbers and letters. To a computer, those would be “char” and “integer”. Char is short for “character” and integer means a whole number, without fractions or decimal points.

Unlike humans, computers are not so intelligent (yet!) and need to be told exactly what kind of data they are dealing with. For us, numbers are “3” and “3.24”. For a computer, you’d need to specify “integer” for whole numbers, “float” or “double” for decimal numbers and even specify the sign! Talk about smart!

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Fundamentals of Programming: Part 4 – Variables and Arrays

by
Inf

Welcome to Part 4 where we will talk about variables and arrays are. If you’ve read the previous 3 parts, you would have noticed that I’ve used a few variables already, like A, B, Tc and Tf for example. In this section, we go deeper into what variables are, how to use them and finally, how to cope with situations where you have lots of variables to use, or don’t really know how many you need in fact! Knowing such details would be ideal if you want to pursue a tech career in the near future. In fact, there are tons of career options available online. That’s why as early as possible, it’s  also advisable to learn their distinctions such as data analyst vs. data scientist.

So let’s begin this fairly short part, shall we?

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Fundamentals of Programming: Part 3 – Style, Indentation and Comments

by
Inf

Welcome to Part 3 of the multi-post series on Fundamentals of Programming. Last time, I just touched upon one very important point regarding style in programming: indentation. In this series, we’ll see a bit more about styles in programming. You can think of those as the “formatting” used in programming. We’ll end with the importance of conventions, comments and consistency in programming. I hope you will enjoy this part and learn something.

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