₦airaland Forum

In any case, while it's possible that it's Jesus' tomb, I remain sceptical of their claims

To KAG (and any others): Thanks for sticking to the issue at hand

Let's stick to the purpose of this post and not on what I do or don't believe please. After a few people might have responded, then I will answer this.

You may choose to see me as that nutty professor who has to make you sit through his evolution class in school and then make you take an exam on it. Are you going to spend your time wondering about his beliefs or answer his questions as asked, make an A, improve your chances of getting a good job and moving on in life.

Let's stick to the brass tacs for now please.

Thanks,

Now here is a thread that I know will generate gigabytes of debate

Apparently, Jesus' tomb may have been found: http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/tomb.html

For those in the US, the show is coming on March 4 at 9pm EST

Now, before some of you go out and announce edicts for my immediate assassination (because I know that there are fanatics and zealots amongst you ), I am not saying that it is indeed his tomb. I am saying however, that it is a possibility.

As a human, I have to open my mind and eyes to all things, for the same reasons I would never say don't read the Koran as a Christian (You should read the Koran and other religious books because how else would you know what their religions say and how else can you counteract their positions, other than saying the ridiculous "all muslims are bad" line?). For the same reason, as a Christian, I don't believe in Evolution as it has been put forth, however, I do believe that we do evolve over time and that I can accept this fact without it moving my faith. Again, for the same reason, I can accept that there is perhaps a book of Judas just as there exists the books of the apocrypha. Finally, for the same reason, I can accept that King James made monks write the Bible to suit his needs under penalty of death, which implies that even despite what the book of Revelation says, certain portions may have been added or removed.

Let the debate (emphasis on "debate" as opposed to "I am a born again christian and know it all" or senseless/baseless arguments based on faith and not fact) begin

Well, oh well,

based on reports from 2 wks ago or so, it appears Walmart may be opening a place, in Calabar, after all:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=11917453

http://www.thetidenews.com/article.aspx?qrDate=02/27/2007&qrTitle=New%20Calabar%20airport%20to%20gulp%20N13%20bn&qrColumn=NIGER%20DELTA

I can see it now - all roads lead to Tinapa

I think the question should be rephrased as, "American Football more violent than soccer?"

All hail the return of ECOMOG

If past experience is of any use, then I would like to say it will b interesting to c if vendors accept the coins. Back during the ECOMOG days, most vendors refused to accept them, even though it was legal tender. Even more disturbing was that most of the coins ended up being smelted by mallams

I have always wondered y, for the most part, it is those countries which we help financially that turn around and bite the hands that feed them. I may not be able to speak for Tanzania, but I do know that we have provided various African countries with vehicles, planes, electricity, water, etc.

I have even met a few Kenyans who have told me that prior to leaving their homeland for the states, that their folks told them to avoid Nigerians at all cost.

It's a shame. Perhaps we should just cut off such assistance and see how they view us after that.

What resolution I code for is based on the web stats of the client. Right now though, generally speaking, most of the web world is surfing with 1024x768 resolution. However, rather than code for that resolution, I have found it safe to do either of the following, depending on design:

1) Set the page to a max width of 965px. That way, there isn't a concern of horizontal scrolling

2) Set widths to % so that pages contract/expand with each resolution.

3) Play it safe, where all else fails, and code for the Lowest Common Denominator. Again, rather than set page width at 800px, I would make it 770 or 780 tops.

I hope this helps.

rogo,

perhaps you could help by providing us with a URL.

nigeriapolls:
I like the creativity in using the map of Nigeria as a menu item. I think I may borrow that for a future project. Hopefully you won't find out and sue me

On the other hand, the map images were not sliced right (there is a hazy outline border showing up against your background. Perhaps you could change the background color to that of the map border to hide it, or you slice your image on a transparent background. Also the date is chopped off (I use firefox by the way. it might be different on IE. having said that, don't use it as an excuse as you are to code for an array of browsers and devices. Think web standards). I personally don't like frames but won't use it against you here

verve auto:
Looks very "cut up" as in everything appears in blocks. Might be the array of colors you have chosen for your backgrounds. Also, again in firefox, some of your elements seem to be floating out of the left column. Again, you might want to make sure you are coding for many devices. I noticed you used dreamweaver. Were you coding in design mode or manually? If the former, then you might want to learn more about what happens behind the scenes as from experience, WYSIWYG isn't always the best.

I hope this helps.

lol,

From the book, I knew of Nung Asang in Ikot-Abasi. My mom is actually from Nung Asang Ikono in Uyo. As history (confirmed by the "Ibibio" book) states, those of you in Ikot Abasi emigrated from Nung Asang Ikono in Uyo. As you may know, the Ibibio has its origins in Ikono (hence when libation is poured, any "pourer" who is worth his salt and isn't political, will start with "Etefia Ikono").

I hope this helps.

K@RST,

I respectfully beg to differ. I work with some guys whose degrees range from history to english to liberal arts. I dare say they are better than I am

yicob:
You mention you are an IT reporter. Why not use your connections to learn from those you interview? As K@RST said above, IT is broad. You need to focus on a particular discipline - Web dev, app dev, web graphics, networking, database, to mention but a few. Even if you have never been to school, it shouldn't be a problem. Read and understand, give yourself assignments to accomplish and you should be good to go.

I hope this helps.

To all:

Sorry for not replying sooner - I have been having problems signing in to NL. Wow, wat can i say? I didn't realize there were that many Akwa Ibomites/Cross-Riverians on this forum. I am happy that my thread has brought you all out. There is definitely power in numbers

To LondonCool:
At the risk of promoting his book over mine , I can't insist enough that you get "Who are the Ibibio". It was the first definitive book on the Ibibio and I dare say it still is. I would rather not delve into the meaning of "Ibibio" et al so as to stick to the purpose of this thread. I will say though that this topic and more is addressed in the "Ibibio" book. For example, if you know anyone from any Akwa Ibom village called "Nung Asang (I remember this one cos my Mom's from such a village and it was in the book )", the village was so called cos they were assigned the duty of town-crier as in "Nung (the people)", "Asang (of walkers)". Pardon my literal translations please. Hopefully you get my point that in trying to highlight such meanings, I could get into the trouble of saying the wrong thing. Forgive me please.

As for written Ibibio, from my experiences living in Nigeria b4 my "second coming" to the US, I dare say that there was a written form of Ibibio that was seldom used cos 1) the white man learnt efik and disemminated their culture to us in Efik and as you may know, what the white man teaches us is regarding by some as the best and 2) efik was the only dialect written on paper at the time. Again, at the risk of saying the wrong things, I will defer you to the "Ibibio" book and independent research on your part.

I say all this to ask this question - If written Ibibio were born after state creation, then it was pretty fast given we had our news translations in not only Ibibio but the other dialects (Annang, Oron, Itu Mbuso, etc) pretty quickly. It's almost as if someone was just waiting for state creation to "release the beast" so to speak

To Ndipe:
LOL - Etibe? It wasn't on my mind, but I could put it in the 2nd edition

To Ani4:
Thanks for the encouragement. Do spread the word

To EkyBabe and Husband:
A wise man once said though we don't have a choice in where we are born, we do have a choice in the path we want our lives to take. You may not have been brought up speaking Ibibio but you made the conscious choice to at least try. This is better than those of us who not only don't know but purposely refuse to know and rather choose to pick up the white man's culture.

Thanks all. Let's keep this thread going. Thanks for the words of encouragement. We need it in this day and age.

geez,

I wonder where the heck some of you guyz on this forum get questions like this

Hopefully, this will serve as a hint that more "Flash Masters" should sign up

Sorry it didn't work out and good luck on your search.

My web analyzer says it all:

1) 21 Images, 3 flash objects (of which the top 2 weigh 855Kb and 104Kb). On a 56K modem, we are looking at 280 seconds of downloading the home page alone

2) The CSS is all inline. Non-breaking space ( &nbsp everywhere. Makes it hard to read.

Verdict:

"Wow" factor: 80%. "Reality" factor (and I am struggling to say this): 50%

devine8,

You need to write a book for real. When it gets published, mark me down as buyer #1 because your analysis hits the spot 1000%

Last month, some guy approached me online asking what I could do to "make his site look better" . Apparently, some guy had charged him N40K for basically a crappy site and I told him so. He even agreed with me. To make matters worse, since he had paid the guy in full, the "webmaster" had vanished. Now he was stuck with a crappy site and having no knowledge of what to do to make it better.

Of course, I offered my services, but my price was out of his league and so I respectfully declined the offer. In the end, I helped him, given the limited resources available via YIM, to change a few things and his site looked a little better.

This is why I advocate a "certification (not in the traditional "cram and learn nothing" sense but in a "if you hire from one of us, you know you are getting the best services" sense)" approach (not necessarily a union as I hate price and policy controls ).

As you have said devine, hopefully we are getting better.

Interactivity = animated gif floating left, right and center all over the web page.

LMAO. Let's play an exercise to prove this right: Look at the following sites and tell me how long it will take b4 u feel you are being hypnotized http://www.unionbankng.com/ and http://www.akwaibominterest.com/

LePhillipe: Mon ami de la republique ,

hmmm, I thought Nigeria already prides herself as the "Giant of Africa".

Aren't we forgetting Alaba Int'l Market, Ojo?

Here is something that might take a big chunk out of the "inventing the wheel" part

I just found out about http://pipes.yahoo.com/ . What is it you ask? Just click to find out. In a nutshell, it is pretty powerful and cool. Hint: Think aggregators and feeds

Good luck!

Thanks xanadu,

Most likely, you got the most recent header by the time you posted. I thought again about the header and noticed that when using plain text, the "@" sign was not appearing smoothly, so I caved and went for a graphical design and of course added another 8Kb to the page Oh well.

Thanks once again.

I hereby recommend a combo of google news and link clouds

Rather than have users turn in news (again, I am sceptical about certain users), you can, ala google, spider websites and gather news from Nigerian news sites. Then using the power of link clouds, more popular news items could have a bigger font size, thus drawing users to it.

In particular, I used to visit www.nigeriaworld.com . However, as the years went by, it seems they decided to concentrate on number of links, rather than a usable interface. Then they decided to go even further by putting up the hideous interface that is there now. I stopped visiting there on a regular basis since last november. Now, cos of their bad architecture, I visit www.saharareporters.com . I am definitely itching for a good naija news site though.

Just a thought

1) We need the talented web developers to step up their game with respect to advertising. This will attract business their way as well as provide a benchmark between their sites and those of newbies.

2) We need to educate clients on the need to spend on their websites. Right now, it seems clients are playing the miser game. Right now, with every okoro, akpan and babatunde learning "web design", it is easy to pick up a "how to in 24 hours" and call oneself a "guru" or "webmaster".

3) Perhaps some sort of certification. Not in the traditional sense of "cram and learn nothing" but in terms of quality, as judged by peers. That way, again, once advertised, just like in the case of periwinkle unions (come on now, we all know they exist ), when you contact someone to get a website done, you know it is nothing but the cream of the crop that you are hiring. This issue in particular is one of the reasons behind my founding of www.webmastersofafrica.com .

Good initiative although I do have one concern/question: you will need to build in a mechanism to root out the rumor-mongers. Such pple could seriously ruin the site's reputation.

Good luck!

I get news from a variety of sources but in terms of truthfulness, I blv what I hear in the following descending order:

1) Those back at home - forums, phone calls, online chatting: Family first, then outsiders

2) Those returning from home

3) Online news

4) "Hear-say" at functions

I always laugh when some pple challenge me saying "you need to come home, its not how it was x years ago" or the oh so typical "nkpo aka afofon idaha mi, ama se diok akanam am", cos though this may be true, I can easily dispell rumors and myths via this forum, phone calls and online chatting with those back home.

LOL,

By so doing, the plan is that when I land, I easily blend into the population. So far so good

Ete,

Keeping in touch is the only thing that keeps me from going insane in obodo oyibo o LOL

What beats me though is the fact that atimes it seems I am more up-to-date than those back at home. I always wonder why

It's just simple, and thatz the point

I get that a lot from pple and to say I didnt expect that as one of the comments, if not the #1 comment would be the understatement of the century. A website doesn't necessarily have to have everything including the kitchen sink. In the end, just like the driver who only cares that his car cranks and now how it cranks, users just wanna get to the information they seek. The easer they get to it, the better experience they have.

As for the banner, I guess I could say I will work on it I only stick to text headers right now. Saves on download speeds and is preferred by search engines. The flash thing is something I am experimenting with. I am thinking of creating a few and randomizing them so you don't get the same scripture each time which even to me would b a tad boring.

Thanks for the input though. Much appreciated.

http://www.thechurchofchristatriverdalega.org/

The basic infrastructure is done. Ignore links in the following sections, "Our leaders", "Youth" and "Contact" as well as links in the "Assembly Schedule" section. These will be added by friday.

Other than that, critique away

Thanks

I am so happy that there are schools in Nigeria with better websites than this one: http://www.brenau.edu/

Based on the design alone, I probably would not even apply