Shit Ezra Says

Achiever. Thinker. Wanker. Cofounder and CTO at Paystack.

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Happy New Year, bitches!

It feels so good to be baaaack! Erm, did I really go anywhere? I know, its January 12 already. Guess a lot of peeps have forgotten they even had a holiday. No, I’ve not. I’m still living it. And hey, did I say I had the best Christmas break ever? Mum should definitely not see that – we haven’t seen each other since April last year. I’m currently less than 40 kilometers to her so I should go say hi to her very soon.

A lot of things have happened since I last blogged. I’ll mention two notable ones.

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Michelle, my queen, gave birth to 4 kittens. Junior, Brenda (the girl in the picture), Alex, and Kaytee. The kittehs are soooooo cute. Two of them have gotten themselves good foster parents already. Seriously, I would have loved to keep them all.

Next, I made a really good friend. ‘Nuff said. :p

Anyway, I’m looking forward to an awesome year ahead and I’m sure you guys are doing the same.

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Cats on Tuesday: Dear Henry

Dear Henry,

Last week Tuesday morning, you woke me up from sleep. It was so unlike you. I felt loved and couldn’t resist playing with you before going to the office.

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You were on my mind all day at work. On my way back, I got you your favourite treat – mackerel in tomato sauce (popularly called geisha in these parts of the world). I knew you loved it. Yes, it was written all over your face.

I don’t know why I had to spoil the fun by letting that girl have you for the night. She came to me asking that she needed one of you guys to stay in her kitchen for the night to scare the shit out of the rats in there. I knew I wasn’t supposed to honour her request…but I don’t know why I still went ahead and did. I picked you. I believed you would make a good soldier.

On my way down the stairs, I saw the fear in your eyes but I chose not to acknowledge it. Stupidly. Heck, you even buried your...

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The power of a name change

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Microsoft, the laughing-stock of the browser/open source software community, finally came out with a new search engine. To those who follow tech news and trends, this isn’t exactly surprising as the story has been on for a while now – as far back as November 2008.

When TechCrunch covered the story about the rebrand (and the project codename: Kumo), readers scoffed at what seemingly looked like Microsoft trying to beat a dead horse. A few examples:

Changing name is an interesting idea but does NOTHING to solve their fundamental problem, the lack of vision in Search to begin with. Google has its flaws, paying people to search and other marketing ploys do nothing to help get users using your platform over the long run. This is nothing but a stunt that will lead them to loose even more market share (even if they do buy Yahoo). - Jon

Most of Microsoft’s users are the 35+ year-old that...

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Search & highlight text in a RichTextBox control

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A while ago, I needed the ability to search for text in a RichTextBox control and have all occurrences of the query highlighted simultaneously. I thought this was going to be an easy task but soon discovered I was terribly wrong.

Ok, maybe its just me but I wonder why some basic functionalities weren’t just built into these controls from factory by default. Why cant I just call a method such as rtbSample.HighlightInstances(“query”); and have all instances of “query” highlighted?!

Long story short, I modified this example into what I needed and thought to share with everyone. Feel free to also modify it for your projects. And maybe I’ll come up with my custom rich text box control that has this functionality built in someday :). Hmm, before I forget, its in .NET.

Now Playing: The Corrs – Runaway

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What would Jesus do?

The article you are about to read simply voices my opinion and not that of any existing religious group or movement (not even Deeperlife’s). Any similarities to existing groups is purely coincidental.

Last Wednesday, I did an introductory blog post on these series. The post generated a bit of controversy particularly about my reasons for not being a Christian. Initially, I wanted to go the Noktah Hitam route but I realised that would only help the already bad opinion stronger. While I’ll refrain from trying to justify my statements further, I hope this and further posts would help shed more light on my opinion.

When I was much younger, Mum got me a copy of Charles M. Sheldon’s ‘In His Steps: What would Jesus do’. The two-hundred-and-fifty-something-page book took me a while to read and turned out to be one of the most interesting stories I’ve ever read. It talked about a group of...

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Cats on Tuesday: Was she pregnant at all?

Sometimes in March, early March to be specific; I noticed a ‘growth’ around Michelle’s abdomen. Based on the knowledge that she was on heat a few weeks earlier, I concluded she must be pregnant, thanks to Henry :grinning:

I started reading articles on how best to care for a pregnant cat. Michelle seemed to be exhibiting all of the ‘pregnant cat’ symptoms I read about, including occasional morning sickness. She was already seeking out quiet/hidden spots at my place to relax which is normal for a pregnant cat – They love to raise their litter with little or no disturbance. Cats gestate for 9 weeks as against humans’ 9 months so I already assumed I should be getting ready to welcome new kittens into the family by late April or early May.

Approximately 5 weeks after I noticed the ‘growth’, It got real firm and I felt re-assured that my cat was truly pregnant. I couldn’t help telling...

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Redefining Christianity

The article you are about to read simply voices my opinion and not that of any existing religious group or movement. Any similarities to existing groups is purely coincidental.

I’m not a Christian. Not just because I don’t want to be a Christian, but because I feel Christianity as a whole has lost its meaning. And I definitely can’t be a part of a meaningless movement.

The word ‘Christians’ came into existence when it was used to describe Jesus’ disciples by folks at ancient Antioch. It meant ‘Christ-like’. Basically, these folks could clearly see the disciples walking in their saviour’s steps. What we have today is very much different.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing articles under the category – Redefining Christianity. I have some topics lined up to deal with various aspects of Christianity. Here are a few of them:

  • What Would Jesus Do: Origins and Importance
  • ...

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Firefox extensions I use (and cant do without)

Of course I can do without them. Life on the web may not just be as interesting and informative as it is now. The list is quite exhaustive so its best to start without further ado.

  1. Firefox Environment Backup Extension
    A complete Firefox profile data backup utility. It makes it possible to move your Firefox settings, addons, themes, etc. from one installation to another, or between your work and home PC. It supports scheduled backups which could come in handy incase your computer crashes. It can automatically backup your data to the cloud if you have a box.net account.

  2. Firebug
    This is a must have extension for frontend web developers. JavaScript debugging has never been better. My only problem with this extension is that it doesn’t retain its errors after a page refresh. I usually have to test my code on the onclick event of a form’s submit button rather than the onsubmit event of the...

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I think I’ve got a writer’s block

Maybe not the type that Karen Eiffel from ‘Stranger than Fiction’ experienced, or Henry Roth’s . I’ve always wondered why I don’t seem to churn out posts like I initially expected myself to. I’m usually someone that almost always have something to talk about. In fact, these past few weeks, I’ve had several things cross my mind to blog about but somehow, I manage not to post a thing.

I have a few notes written down about my perspective on several issues relating to technology, web development, religion, etc. already. It’s time to put them in order and post right here for the world to see. Hey, I’m not going to bore you with a post a day. I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with that even if I tried.

I’m currently reading this. :grinning:

By the way… jQuery rocks. I wonder why I never thought about using it all these while.

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Celebrating Mediocrity

No, I’m not the average Nigerian with a blind / misguided belief that Nigeria is a great country when it comes to Information Technology. Nope, we are not! And if drastic steps are not taken, we wont get anywhere.

While several industries in the country have put modern technology to good use, the software industry is lagging far behind. I remember vividly when I first heard of StartupsNigeria, I thought: “Cool. We have out own TechCrunch!”. I felt this would encourage the creation of innovative startups in the Nigerian IT sector, and as well help showcase what we can build to the world.

But alas, the reverse is the case. Seemingly pointless services come up like every moment. I know the word pointless is far fetched but what do you say when everyone is trying to become the next Nairaland or the next Facebook. The ‘pointless’ part comes in when you realize that these so called aspiring...

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