A small windup radio, tuned to the BBC Africa, on most Malawi evenings, brings Marissa and I the days news from around the world. Before moving to Africa I worried about loosing touch with Latin America and my travels there. Little did I know that the BBC Africa would provide us better coverage of Latin American news and events that I could have ever hoped for. (Yes, BBC Africa has far better coverage of Latin American news than any of the mainstream English news outlets in America – I regularly receive updates on all of Latin America... more than just the border crazies).

Last week the BBC Africa discussed Hugo Chavez, the current President of Venezuela, and his recent visit to Africa.

Just wanted to let my other Linux loving friends in Malawi know that we have successfully downloaded a copy of the newest version of Ubuntu Linux here at the University. We are installing it in a few of the computer labs.

We are happy to make copies of the disk for anyone in Northern Malawi who, for bandwidth reasons, might not be able to download this new version (700MB). Please bring (or send) us a blank CDR to Mzuzu University. If you want to send 150MK and have me buy a blank CDR that is ok too (arrange by email first).

Use the

Here is a new version of a simple script I have written to create local copies of websites suitable for browsing offline. We have been using the program successfully at the university to schedule downloads of websites during off peak hours of internet usage for reading the following day.

The program uses the *nix wget utility to do its magic. My code is simply a wrapper around wget which sets the proper command line arguments for wget to create a mirror website. The script uses conservative settings by default for fetching sites in order to be respectful to website owners and other users of the network. Once a site is downloaded the program automatically zips the file in a tar gz for you. You will need python and wget installed in order to run.

Last weekend, I turned our kitchen into a chemistry lab. The Quest...to successfully make long lasting paint using only my hands and natural resources. The Result…fabulous egg tempera paint!

Egg Tempera ExperimentI was inspired by a number of factors including Victoria Finlay’s book Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Malawian artists’ need of access to affordable paint, and personal curiosity. Over the past few months I have been researching pigments and paint making techniques. Egg tempera paint is one of the oldest paints known to man, even older than oil painting. Some date egg tempera paint back to the first centuries AD, but it was most widely used in the Middle Ages with the Byzantine painters. The Greek Orthodox Church has maintained the tradition, and up to the present still uses egg tempera for icon paintings. In the secular world of art this tradition has seen a revival over the past 10 years. So much so, that there is a great online forum where you can read and participate in discussions about issues relating to egg tempera paint and painting