The Maldives Police Service revamped their website on the 29th, adding some interesting online services to their website. One of the things that I caught my interest was the crime statistics, a month by month tally of different crime categories from 2008 to 2012. As far as I am aware of, these data has not been easily, publicly available before. The data listing displayed on the site, while interesting, doesn't facilitate an understanding of the trends over the period - which I was more interested to see.

Anyway, I scraped the data from the site, put into a table on Google Spreadsheet and made a small trend chart. I am sharing it here in case anyone else is interested in such too. The data used for the chart can be accessed and downloaded in the related sheet.

There are a few interesting things that can be seen.
- Crime was apparently very low at the beginning of 2008, was high for much of 2009 and came back to 2009 levels in 2011.
- There is a drop in theft from 2009 to 2011.
- Traffic related issues has continued to drop through the years.
- Drug crimes reached a major peak at the end of 2008 and had a significant drop through 2009-2010.

Smoothing the trending lines should give a better view of overall trends but that's for another time...

- View chart on Google Spreadsheet and download data

Early last year, I posted a font installer for Android that replaces the default fallback font with the free FreeSerif font that includes Thaana glyphs. That installer should still work on most older devices.

Here is a repackaged version of that installer which should work on most of the new devices with more recent versions of Android. This version has been tested on a Samsung Galaxy Note running Android 2.3.6 and a Samsung Galaxy S2 running the recently released Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Steps

1. As before, the device needs to be rooted. You can easily root your device using SuperOneClick (free/donationware).

2. Put the update zip file (see below) somewhere on your device. You could do this by downloading the file straight from the web on to the SD card of your device.

3. Power off your phone and boot into recovery mode. The specifics of how you do this depends on which recovery tool was installed during rooting of your phone. Try VolumeUp+Center Button+Power. If that doesn't work, use Google. If you have the CWM app installed, then you could just flash the zip through that.

4. Select the update from Zip option in your recovery tool and select the update_thaanafont_v2_jaa.zip file from the list and OK it.

5. The update should progress and will ask you to reboot once completed.

6. Congratulations you have a Thaana font installed. Thaana text on the Facebook, Twitter and other apps should appear OK now!


- Download update_thaanafont_v2_jaa.zip

Do drop me a message, here or on Twitter, if it works and if there are issues. Enjoy!

Here's a quick tip for anyone stumped by the issue.

I have not dealt with the web hosting services from Dhiraagu for a long time but had a brief encounter earlier this week when I was attempting to setup the custom CMS we use at Semicolon for a client project. It turns out Dhiraagu has error reporting disabled for their PHP setup as well as disabled the phpinfo() function, which by themselves really are decent security measures. But as a developer, error reporting is essential when setting up a new application or testing out code and debugging.

You can get back error reporting on Dhiraagu hosting services by overriding their error reporting setting through a .htaccess or by adding a PHP statement at the start of the PHP files.

.htaccess:
php_value display_errors on
php_value display_startup_errors on

PHP:
ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL); // Or whatever level of error reporting you would like

Unfortunately, short of asking Dhiraagu, there is no way (atleast, that I am aware of) to activate the phpinfo function if it has been disabled by adding it to the "disable_functions" list in php.ini. However, it is possible to cull all (if not most) the data available via the phpinfo() function using other functions available within PHP.

The photo below seems to have gone viral in the Maldives. The photo was snapped by someone from the police station in the island of Kulhudhuffushi in HDh. Atoll and according to the news, has caused panic and fear among some in the island and elsewhere. Haveeru Daily reported that even the police have now started to look into it. All because the black "thing" seen behind the kid in the photo is not easily discernible as being something we are familiar with. The general conclusion seems to be that it is an unknown creature. Some are calling it a "kandu geri" (hippopotamus), some consider it to be a "fureytha" (jinn) and some consider it to be a walrus or seal. Anyone who has ever seen a hippopotamus or seal or walrus will easily dismiss those claims.



I tend to agree with the people who think it is just a woman in a black abaya and large black "buruga" (burka). The person who took the photo apparently says that he did not notice the thing at the time he took the picture and only noticed it later when he was copying the pictures from the camera to a computer. That really is clue number 1 - people tend to ignore things they are familiar with. He most certainly had seen the "thing" at the time but ignored it because he had seen a woman in the background and was not really concerned with what she was doing or how she appears frozen-in-motion in the picture.



Clue number 2 comes from processed pictures where light levels have been manipulated to show more details, as I have done in the picture above. The thin material of the burka appears against the background as being translucent. The form of the human body is also discernible with the limbs and the cloth wrapping around it. Abayas and burkas are designed to obfuscate the human form and it performs its job well for the woman in the snapshot!

Will this madness persist and a myth like the Loch Ness monster be created in the Maldives? What shall it be called? "Kandu geri" monster? I doubt the woman will be flattered.

The Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science will be kicking off its public stargazing event series tonight. Like the recently launched MAAS public science lectures series, the stargazing series will also be regular events and will be held at least once a month.

Tonight's stargazing event will mainly focus on Jupiter and its Moons as the planet will start setting early in the evening in a few weeks and will not be easily visible in the waking hours of the night for the next several months. Jupiter is a beautiful planet to look at with the telescopes we have at hand; the equatorial bands are visible brightly and, depending on the time, around 3-5 of its 64 moons can also be visible.

Venue: Masveringe Park, Male' (infront of Jade Bistro, next to the Hulhule ferry departures) (map)
Time: 8pm - 10pm, 27 January 2012
Attendance: Free, open to all

If you haven't seen Jupiter up close and personal through a telescope, then do come and join us. See you there!

The events and activities at Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science took a break towards the end of 2011 with the start of school holidays and us taking a break. We are switching back on for the new year this coming week with a brand new monthly "Public science lectures" series.

This coming Wednesday, MAAS will be hosting a lecture by Dr. Ibrahim Mustafa, titled "Thalassemia Beyond Mutations: A Novel Approach to Treat Thalassemia". The lecture will cover the research on the novel treatment he investigated while reading for his PhD, which you may have read a bit about from local news recently. The lecture will also, as I understand it, cover the how's and why's of Thalassemia which the public might be interested in furthering their understanding. This event might be of special interest to those who deal with Thalassemia in one capacity or the other.

When: 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM, 18 January 2012
Where: Main auditorium, Faculty of Management and Computing, Sosun Magu.

As ever, the event is open to all and free to attend. We will accommodate as many people as the lecture auditorium can hold.

Special thanks goes to Cafe' Alfresco for their kind generosity in helping make this event possible.

Happy new year to all!

For me, 2011 was a very mellow year. It was a good year. Very relaxed, by my standards. Got lots of thinking done. Planned things out. Developed new ideas and concepts. But the success rate on things I had hoped to achieve was a case of hit and miss:
- Started and got really good work done on a new Internet start-up - one of two reasons I had come back to Maldives - but is still not ready for launch thanks to its scale and complexity.
- Science education and popularization - the other reason I came back - didn't go so well. The two science books in Dhivehi I had planned to write and publish, I couldn't finish. An exciting science TV series I had formulated, with a bunch of others, didn't get off the ground. The science organization I formed with two others, Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science, fared better. We had a number of events, each with an audience and participation higher than the previous. But all it had was our love and passion for science and less in the way of proper planning and and close to none in the way of external funding.
- The tinier, highly portable version of the magnetic implant interface for my man-machine interface, which I mentioned on my previous post, was completed early in the year. But the research on the effects of extended use which I had designed it for, didn't get a start and is still sitting on my desk.
- Technova, the web and software development company I had co-founded about 6 years ago had become non-functional over the years especially with me and some others involved being away from the country. So when Semicolon, a promising Maldivian software house offered me partnership towards the end of the year, I took the opportunity. Things are looking up.

I'm usually not one to make new year resolutions or such but this year, I'm making an exception. I have set goals. I have set milestones. And I bloody damn hope I achieve them without getting distracted or lazy or bored.

I hope that by the time the Earth completes its current lap around the Sun, that I and you achieve what you all desire Have a good year!