It is again the end of year 2008 and I am really grateful to God for His Mercy & Grace over my life. Every year seems to be incredibly more of a testimony having God do lots of great things in my life. I can’t say I am the rightest guy or I have everything I need but for sure, I have seen God move in my life and He has continuously shown Himself both in hard and easy times.

Among several things, it is in this year that I made a year or so of freelancing, travelled to the Netherlands for an academic tour which was terrific, completed all the three semesters of my MSc course, began off my research proposals and joined the biggest telecom in Uganda, MTN Uganda as Analyst Solutions Architecture. All this and many more, I attribute them to God, The Almighty for He is faithful and worthy.

As I await for the new year, so much is awaiting for me BUT I know ALL WILL BE WELL THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME.

Great thanks to all who have impacted my life including my dad, mum and family; friend George Appiah and many others for their tremendous support. May God richly bless you all.

To all my fans and well wishers, I wish you a PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR and God Bless You All. Off to church… till next year

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Netbeans IDE is one of the famous IDEs used by Java and other programmers and it is especially very good when you are creating graphical user interfaces (GUI) applications.

Lately, I have been working on a java project and I have been facing a problem with using Netbeans on my Microsoft Windows Vista to add external libraries to the project. Normally external libraries are packaged as .jar files.

Whenever I try to click the Add JAR/Folder button as on the screenshot above, instead of getting the Open File dialog, I was getting a java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException error.

Source of the Problem

This is exception is mainly caused because of some incompatibilities issues of the JDK you are using and Microsoft Vista. To be more specific, the java file chooser dialog using WindowsLookAndFeel is incompatible with Ms. Windows Vista on any Java release less than 1.5.0_11 caused by some changes made by Microsoft in Ms. Windows Vista.

Solution to the Problem

To solve this problem,

• Update your JDK to JDK 6 and above
• Ensure that your Netbeans IDE uses the new updated JDK instead of the previous JDK which has been upgraded.

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A few days ago, I wrote about Mozilla Firefox in Luganda and pretty much sure that most people have tried to install it but all in vain. Personally, I also tried it but I was missing an add-on to get it working. So for those who desperately wanted their Mozilla Firefox in Luganda or are interested in having it, you can have a smile on your face.

Today, on the i-network mailing list, Michael sent out instructions of how to complete the installation and they are as follows:

1. Crosscheck that your Firefox browser is 3.0.1. In case not, click here to upgrade ( http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ ).
2. Open this page (http://translate.org.za/). Within the subsection of NEWSFLASH, under the heading of “Kickstarting Firefox in Luganda” click on DOWNLOAD.
3. A window entitled “Software Installation” will be activated. An xpi file will appear within the window. Just click on INSTALL NOW.
4. You have now installed the Luganda add-on, but you will not be able to see the changes unless you install the language switcher. The language switcher will enable you to change between languages. Open this page and download the Locale Switcher 2.1 (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/356).
5. Re-start Firefox for all these changes to be seen.
6. Go to Tools > Languages > Ganda to start using your new Luganda version of Mozilla.
7. In case you want to switch back to English, go to Tools > Languages > English

However, note that this language pack is still in beta-version.

So what do you think about this beta version? Do you think localization of software, in general, will be of great help to the local people or not?

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We have just concluded an ICT Sensitization and Training Workshop for Headteachers of primary and secondary schools at Gayaza High School which was organized by SchoolNet Uganda. I was very privileged to attend this workshop and facilitate one of the sessions of how schools can take advantage of the web and the internet.

Overall, the workshop was a great success as over 100 headteachers attended the workshop and a lot of great sessions where held at the workshop.

In my session, I share about school websites from a user’s perspective and I tried to answer the common questions asked by people who are trying to get websites for their schools and what they should expect. I cover:

• What is a website?
• Why is it necessary for a school to have a website?
• What makes up a good school website?
• Why should a school have a good website not just a website?
• How to plan a good school website to meet your objectives?
• What does it take to have a website?
• Testimonies of having a website.

I have seen very many people, organizations, etc with websites or intending to have websites but these websites aren’t meeting the objectives they are met to achieve (of course, this is in my option). So even though websites are really crucial and critical for organizations, people etc.. how do we ensure that they are worth it and they are helping us to achieve our objectives of having a website? or are we just trying to follow the current trend that everyone, every organization should have a website?

I really hope to share the details of this presentation sometime to come however, in a more general perspective of having a website rather than just school websites. So don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds or to keep checking my website/blog for details of these series.

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For those who are more comfortable with working with local languages especially Luganda, a great initiative of translating Mozilla Firefox into Luganda, one of Uganda’s largest spoken language was started by Translate.org.za, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Makerere University and Rhodes University.

In just two days, a group of around 300 students with a computing and luganda linguistics background were able to translate about 8,000 words of the Mozilla’s user interface into luganda.

You can read more about this from:

• BBC - Firefox translated into Luganda
• Tectonic - Ugandan students translate Firefox
• Translate.org.za - Kickstarting Firefox in Luganda

In case you are interested in the provision language pack for Firefox 3.0, feel free to download it from Translate.org.za.

Otherwise, thanks to all those students who participated in this and the partners who came up with this initiative. We hope to see the whole of Mozilla Firefox in Luganda.

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Finally after days, weeks, months, years etc of contemplating, post-ponding being water baptised, I was baptized this Sunday, 10th August, 2008 and this makes yet a great declaration to you, my friends and the rest of the world that I got born again. I am now a new creation and the old is all gone as 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) says

17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

I know you might be wondering how I have reached this age and yet I claim that I was just baptized yesterday. In fact, when I called a good friend of mine yesterday to tell him about it, he was kinda shocked. Yeah! it is true and that’s why it had also taken me a long time even when I gave my life to Christ in 2001.

First and foremost, I would like to thank our church leaders at Kampala Pentecostal Church for going back to the Spiritual Basics and teaching us the foundations and fundamentals of our faith, Christianity.

Well, Water Baptism is one of the ordinances, sacraments or acts of righteousness in the Christian faith among others. Water Baptism like other ordinances was done immediately after someone had given his life to Jesus or confessed Jesus as his Lord and Savior NOT when you were a kid and then sprinkled water on you. However, water baptism in itself doesn’t take us to heaven as the only permit is being born again. So why get baptized?? There are so many reasons and among these include:

• It is biblical (Mathew 3:1-12, Acts 2:38)
• It was a common practice of the early church (Acts 2:38)
• It is an act of Obedience (Mathew 3:13-17, Philippians 2:5), etc…

Mathew 3:13-17 (NIV) says

13Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

So if our King, Jesus Christ, God Himself who came down on earth just in human fresh, had all the reasons not to get baptized still got baptized even when John tried to deter him. He said that it was proper to fulfill all righteousness. So what of me and you, who aren’t BUT are just saved By His Grace.

Acts 2:38 (NIV) says

38Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit….”

So if you aren’t yet born again, please repent and confess Him as your Lord and Savior AND if you are born again, you’ve got no reason not to get baptized.

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