Lebeko Poulo 's Space - Academic and Personal!

On Saturday 30 July 2016 the news came that my nephew, Mokhethi, was missing and had been missing since Thursday 28 July 2016. Given the weather (snow) conditions in that part of the Eastern Cape where he was reportedly missing, I already lost hope of ever seeing him alive when I heard this. However, one stays optimistic until such time that there are reports to confirm that the person has been found and in what state. Later the same day, at around 11pm, my biggest fear was confirmed - someone has spotted his lifeless body in the snow-capped mountains between the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and the South-Eastern Lesotho border. Yes, indeed death had struck us, again. Mokhethi died of hypothermia while he was on his way to attend to his livestock in the snow-capped mountains of the rural Eastern Cape.  Mokhethi Benjamin Kulumane Lebeko was born on 19 December 1992 (age 24). He was the second son of Mr. Khana Simon Lebeko and Mrs. 'Malerotholi Rosalia Lebeko . He was surv...

Well, this has been a tough journey to hell and back. I though Pagination was hectic but then again comes searching simpleDB? Anyone out there with cool ideas will be greatly appreciated! it's been too long. But the journey is about to end! YAY!

A journey well traveled comes to an end! It was fantastic sometimes while it lasted BUT I guess its time to move on... There is so much out there. thesis completion, lovely people, horrible people, sympathies, celebrations, and all BUT hey, it's all good! ~~~~PEACE~~~~

WOW! this was a big one! I had such a fantastic holiday in the Hawaiian Islands of O'ahu and Maui. Hawaii is such a stunning place! September 13th to 24th, 2010 will be memorable throughout my entire little life! If anyone would really like to have the time of their lives, I would say GO to Hawaii, you don't even have to think twice. And without degenerating to name calling, I would say thank you so much...... you know who you are! ~~~~PEACE~~~

No. 1: Tue Sep. 7 I don't get jealous when I see my ex with somebody else... My mom always taught me to give my old toys to the less fortunate! ~~~ Dirk Venter OMG! he cracked me up completely!!! No. 2: Tue Sep. 7 Fuck the people, I am the people. ~~~ myself

in exactly 11 days from today, I will be at Cape Town International Airport heading to the beautiful Hawaiian islands! I have always imagined myself in one of the Hawaiian islands and little did I know that I will finally get to see two of the islands! I enjoyed my volcanism lessons in my high school Geography and now I will have an opportunity to see some of the dormant, active and/or extinct volcanoes in Hawaii. Well, what more can a man ask for?!?! anyway, it's time to get back to work now and watch this space for more info about the trip! :-)

I finally got my google-style pagination working with JSP and Java servlets. Damn the select count(*) is interesting in SimpleDB. you gotta do something like: SelectRequest request = new SelectRequest(); String select_Expression = "select count(*) from dllcloud"; request.withSelectExpression(select_Expression); try { service = new AmazonSimpleDBClient(accessKeyId, secretAccessKey); SelectResponse response = service.select(request); SelectResult result = response.getSelectResult(); List all_items = result.getItem(); for (Item item : all_items) { List attributeList = item.getAttribute(); for (Attribute attribute : attributeList) { if (attribute.isSetName()) { if (attribute.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("Count")) { if (attribute.isSetValue()) { ...

If you have an insight with regards to Amazon Web Services, especially SimpleDB, your help will be appreciated! I am hitting walls with the google-style paging issue here but at least I have a theoretical algorithm that works fine though not yet integrated into my CODE.

to all my great family and friends out there, watch out for e-mails like the one below: PHASE I - an e-mail in my spam from an unknown person with questionable credentials and all: Greetings From Mr.Barena lalado Dear Friend, For your kind attention. I will be very glad if you do assist me to relocate this sum of ( US$18.6M ) to your account for the benefit of our both families. This is a genuine business,only i cannot operate it alone without using a Foreigner who will stand as a beneficiary to the money, that is why i decided to contact you in a good manner to assist me and also to share the benefit together with me. By indicating your interest I will send you the full details on how the business will be executed. Please be informed that your utmost confidentiality is required. If this interests you, I want to remind you of the confidentiality of this Transaction at hand whatever your decision is. I await your urgent response,and fill those question below to enable u...

On the 11th October 2009, our Digital Libraries Research Group flew to Gauteng for the SAICSIT 2009 Conference. SAICSIT is the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, and there is a conference running in October of every year. This year I was lucky to be there and witness things myself. That doesn't make me just a spectator though! I presented my work in progress for my Masters to my peers on the 12th October, which was the first day of the conference. Thereafter, I had the honour to attend the presentations in the main SAICSIT conference. It was quite a nerve-wrecking experience indeed. There was positive feedback from the attendees although it culminated in an idiot throwing stupid questions which were way off my research topic! I took a while trying to get him to the theme of my research, but in vain! The worst was him referring to a "layman", at a conference attended by Computer Scientists and Information Technologist! how fun...

Today, I turned 27. wow, I have been looking forward to this day. I am feeling great! and I can't wait for the dinner with the most awesome guy Steve McDermott and his friend Jullie. I am also humbled by the amazing wall posts on facebook, messages on facebook, phone calls, SMSes, you name them..... from my friends! Thank you so much guys! I love you all. :)

Yesterday, I did my presentation of the paper Preserving Endangered Languages using a Layered Web-based Archive, which was co-authored with Gina Paihama, Morwan Mohamed Nour and of course the great Dr Hussein Suleman. It was my first paper to get published and of course my first presentation at a conference. What an amazing experience it was. And once again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my research group,  Digital Libraries Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, for all their useful feedback during my dry run and for all the support they gave me to do this right. My presentation was indeed excellent, and I am proud to say that. I hope to be in SAICSIT on the 12th October 2009, should everything go well. A little bit of fun for the rest of the day in Port Elizabeth and of course back to Cape Town tomorrow. :-)

Yesterday I did my dry run for the ZA WWW Applications Conference 2009. I didn't do too bad after all. So I will be presenting my first paper at a conference and yes! "For the first time"!!! Well myself, Gina ( MSc student), Marwan ( MSc student) and Hussein (our supervisor) wrote a paper based on our honours project  titled " Wordbank - A Language Preservation Portal" **sigh**, YES its got some memories, if you know what I mean. Anyway the paper itself was titled "Preserving Endangered Languages Using a Layered Web-based Archive", gosh what a long name! So I hope all will go well in Port Elizabeth next week when I do my presentation on Thursday.... wish me luck.... ;-) Right now, I am invigilating a first year class (CSC1016S) writing their Practical Test on "recursion in Java", poor things, I hope they all get a 100% because this is their last chance. :-)

Today I am running around like a headless chicken putting up my MSc proposal presentation together. I have a dry run at 3pm tomorrow. The actual presentation is coming on Thursday, 20 th August 2009. I have one of those stage frights and I hope to be OK this time, OR rather I can't wait for all of this to come and go. :-) So I really need someone to wish me luck on this one.

hi all, First of all thank you for taking your time to read my blog. Lebeko Poulo is the 6 th in a family of 8. Yes, I come from a very big family but I love it. There is so much to learn in such a family and believe it or not, you really get educated. Anyway...... my parents, Mr. Taelo Poulo (deceased, may his soul rest in peace) and Mrs. Mmakutloano Poulo (nee Falatsa) , were born and bred in one of the smallest villages of Morataleng and Ha Falatsa respectively, in Southern Lesotho. I have been unique in several ways in my family. I have always loved my siblings (despite those trying times when you feel like "shooting them") and I have always been a school enthusiast even though my family hardly ever studied, but many thanks to them for all the support. I was born and grew up partly around my parents' home and most of my life away from home..... Being from a small village, I could ONLY go as far as Grade 5 and then had to leave for another school in the town...