Oct 26 2009
ATK is a special purpose PHP framework, targeted at business applications. It allows you to build an application with very small amounts of code. This release contains bug fixes and several enhancements.
Read more about this release by clicking here.
Jan 19 2006
Last night I attended a meeting by LAMPsig in Los Angeles, California. LAMPsig is one of the open source technology groups that I’ve joined since this passed December. The meeting was filled with great energy. All of us, attendees, were exposed to a presentation by a new and upcoming web technology, called, SVG.
Prior to heading to the meeting, I called home to see how things were going and check if my 10-year old son, Jimmy, was done with his homework. To my surprise he was done with his school work, but he still had some extra reading and reporting to do for his lovely parents. When I invited him to the meeting, he was so happy, probably thinking that dad would forget about his reading and report writing assignment.
Usually when we attend technology meetings of this kind, we bring our laptops to connect to the internet wirelessly to share projects. I had Jimmy pack his laptop and as soon as we got on the road, I asked him to pull his reading material to complete his work, to which he gave me that nice look, somewhat signifying “I would prefer to enjoy the ride by just looking around and doing nothing more”
When we arrived the meeting, we came across many new faces, most excited about the great new features that SVG has to offer. The whole setting reminded me when I attended a PHP meeting at the University of San Diego, when I had recently relocated to California in 2001. Back then, PHP was in its infancies and now it has grown to be one of the major development languages on the web.
If you are new to all these technology buzz, SVG, stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. The gentleman presenting at the meeting last night was from an organization, called Ink Scape.
I just recently visited the Ink Scape’s website and this is what they are all about “Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.”
You can learn more about Ink Scape from:
http://www.inkscape.org
Just like PHP, I have no doubt in my mind that SVG will be one of the next biggest things on the web. The popular browser, Firefox version 1.5, already has built-in support for it.
Who will benefit from SVG? Well ultimately the end-users will enjoy all the benefits of a rich-client web experience. At the heart of all, Graphic Designers and Web Developers will find SVG to be a great addition their tool box.
As a Web Developer, one of the problems that I always found with flash, was the inability to add dynamic content to the beautiful interfaces. Of course this has changed over the years, but I love the fact that SVG allows for dynamic content from the ground up. What this mean is that Graphic Designers can add their artistic touches to their work, while the Web Developer may alter the content of the graphic, programmatically on the fly. All of this is brought to you, thanks to the XML structure that SVG is composed of.
If you are a cutting edge Graphic Designer or a Web Developer, you may consider the following sources to further your education about SVG:
SVG Tutorial
http://www.w3schools.com/svg/default.asp
SVG Examples
http://www.w3schools.com/svg/svg_examples.asp
Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics Editor
http://www.inkscape.org
To be part of the growing members of LAMPsig, please visit the following site and sign up to the mailing list:
About the author:
Jorge Garifuna is a Computer Scientist and Real Estate professional, who loves to serve his Garifuna community. Jorge has served as vice-president of former New York-based, Garifuna youth organization, Lileiti Dufigati, has been the president to Los Angeles-based, Garifuna organization, SONHOCA, and holds membership with various Garifuna organizations, such as Wafadaha Uwara, and national technology organizations, such as ACM and IEEE. Jorge has donated his time to lecture classes about Computer & Internet usage for Garifuna organizations like, MUGAMA. Additionally, Jorge has trained high school students in programming, for national competition, under the BDPA-LA organization.
Jorge is also the CEO of Garinet Global Inc. Garinet has established itself as the major Garifuna Network since it launched in 1999. It currently averages over one million hits per month from over one hundred different countries around the world.
Garinet has consistently created services to enhance the future of the Garifuna community. Through its GariDigital.com website, Garinet offers the general public, a multitude of Website services for organizations, businesses, entertainers and family members.
Jorge may be contacted by email at jg@garinet.com
Jan 18 2006
On Tuesday, January 17, I attended the meeting of the Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) in Los Angeles, California. I was invited to the meeting by Kenneth and Candy, the great folks that I met late last year at a technology meeting.
The meeting room was filled with about fifteen to twenty bright individuals that I had never met. One topic of discussion was the schedule of the Film Festival that PAFF organizes every year for the month of February in Los Angeles, California.
I had the opportunity to meet several members of PAFF, including, the Executive Director, Ayuko Babu, the Celebrity Liaison, Chris Sibley and the Special Assistant, Gail Jenning, among many.
During my brief conversation with Gail, she was kind enough to share with me some of the business ventures that she was involved in. In one of those ventures she imports great seasoning products directly from West Africa to have them distributed in the United States. You can get a better appreciation of her great seasoning products at:
As I mentioned on some of my previous articles, I’m currently collaborating on the paff.org website, assisting Kenneth and Candy with some technical programming and concepts.
If you live in the California area, be sure to checkout the Pan African Film Festival that takes place every February. You will be glad to be one of the first ones to have watched a unique film before it makes it to the big screen. You may also have the opportunity to come across some upcoming actors and actresses that may become big Hollywood stars in the years to come.
To learn more about PAFF, please visit the following website:
About the author:
Jorge Garifuna is a Computer Scientist and Real Estate professional, who loves to serve his Garifuna community. Jorge has served as vice-president of former New York-based, Garifuna youth organization, Lileiti Dufigati, has been the president to Los Angeles-based, Garifuna organization, SONHOCA, and holds membership with various Garifuna organizations, such as Wafadaha Uwara, and national technology organizations, such as ACM and IEEE. Jorge has donated his time to lecture classes about Computer & Internet usage for Garifuna organizations like, MUGAMA. Additionally, Jorge has trained high school students in programming, for national competition, under the BDPA-LA organization.
Jorge is also the CEO of Garinet Global Inc. Garinet has established itself as the major Garifuna Network since it launched in 1999. It currently averages over one million hits per month from over one hundred different countries around the world.
Garinet has consistently created services to enhance the future of the Garifuna community. Through its GariDigital.com website, Garinet offers the general public, a multitude of Website services for organizations, businesses, entertainers and family members.
Jorge may be contacted by email at jg@garinet.com
Jan 13 2006
Hi,
The beginning of the New Year usually brings the Bee out of Busy to form Busy Bee. This second week of the year has been particularly hectic at the office. In spite of this, I would like to take a few minutes out of your busy schedule to inform you of some of the great things that took place this week, ending 1/13/06.
o One thing I’m very happy about is that I finally had the chance to launch my personal official website, Jgari.com found at:
http://www.Jgari.com
o Since I did not reported with you last week, I thought that it is only fair that I let you know that this passed weekend I spent it at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, where I learned about some of the hottest things that are scheduled for this new year, 2006. I wrote a little article about this on my new official site for you to get an idea.
o In the back-office, we’ve been preparing for new magazine that we are planning on putting out in a few months, to keep you better informed of what’s taking place within out community around the world. So far I have selected the project lead, organized the topics and started making contacts in Belize and Honduras. The response has been great, so I expect to keep you updated in the days ahead about our progress. In the mean time if you have some writing or editing skills, please feel free to let me know so I can make you part of the team.
o On the entertainment side, we are about 60% complete on our new music download system. This new system will allow you to listen and download music instantly. So far we have about 20 different agreements signed by interested potentials that want to sell their music online as downloads. If you know of any artist, band or executive producer that would like to offer the music for download when the new system arrives, please provide me their contact information and I will be more than happy to share the great news with them.
o I got a call from Cheryl Norales in the middle of the week to participate at the Garifuna Forum 2006, taking place in a few months. You should see more buzz about this great event on the Garinet sites in the weeks to come.
o Yours truly seems to be heading to Hollywood very soon! Last night I had the opportunity to work on the Pan African Film Festival website (paff.org) in preparation for their upcoming February festival. I met Kenneth Wyrick & Candy through a programming meeting that I attended in December, 2005. These individuals are currently in charged of the PAFF website, so I volunteered some of my services for this great cause. I’m planning on attending the PAFF meetings on a regular bases, until the festival starts and assist in as much as I can. My dad and Dr. Jorge Bernardez, had been mentioning PAFF to me for years, but I never had the chance to go to their film festivals, so it is very excited to be working close the where the action is taking place.
o I came up with and documented about three new ideas this week. I believe the community will benefit from these ideas, but I will provide you with more details in the weeks to come, when I have really decided if they are going to be a go or a no.
Have a wonderful and enjoyable weekend!
Sincerely,
Jorge Garifuna
Garinet Global Inc.
http://www.Garinet.com – Our most visited website
http://www.GariDigital.com – If you are looking to create a website, CD cover, business cards or other digital services, visit Gari Digital
http://www.Jgari.com - Keep a close on Jorge Garifuna’s Official Website
Jan 09 2006
Welcome, You have landed on the official website of Jorge Garifuna!
Jorge Garifuna is a Computer Scientist and Real Estate professional, who loves to serve his Garifuna community. Jorge has served as vice-president of former New York-based, Garifuna youth organization, Lileiti Dufigati, has been the president to Los Angeles-based, Garifuna organization, SONHOCA, and holds membership with various Garifuna organizations, such as Wafadaha Uwara, and national technology organizations, such as ACM and IEEE. Jorge has donated his time to lecture classes about Computer & Internet usage for Garifuna organizations like, MUGAMA. Additionally, Jorge has trained high school students in programming, for national competition, under the BDPA-LA organization.
Jorge is also the CEO of Garinet Global Inc. Garinet has established itself as the major Garifuna Network since it launched in 1999. It currently averages over one million hits per month from over one hundred different countries around the world.
Garinet has consistently created services to enhance the future of the Garifuna community. Through its GariDigital.com website, Garinet offers the general public, a multitude of Website services for organizations, businesses, entertainers and family members.
Jul 29 2005
When I had my first concept of Garinet in the mid 90’s, I was attending Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York for my Computer Science degree. Prior to attending this school, I was already versed on many aspects of technologies(since around 1992), but I wanted to strengthen my skills to serve my Garifuna community better, rather than having all these great ideas in my head, passing away tomorrow, without contributing a bit to the progress of the Garifuna nation.
My father, Ruben Reyes, has always had a great sense of Garifuna culture in his blood. During my breaks from school, I would travel to Los Angeles, where he is stays. During a year period, I would make at least three trips to Los Angeles from New York and every time I would go back with some more Garifuna in me!
During these trips I found my dad working on some the following projects:
- Translating the national anthem of Honduras into Garifuna
- Translating the national anthem of Guatemala into Garifuna
- Creating a Garifuna clock, which we animated to display the real time
- A Garifuna compass
- Creating schematics of the Garifuna village, Santa Rosa de Aguan, before and after hurricane mitch
- A Garifuna dictionary, which has taken over ten years ļ, but it helped me learn more about the Garifuna language.
Combining the strong Garifunaness that I had learned from my father, with my strong technology background, gave birth to a project that, we all know as Garinet.
By the late 1990¡¦s, I had transferred most of my research from my head into something that could be shared. With the help of my great friend, Rigoberto Mejia, a Garifuna teacher, song writer/singer and the best Garifuna database programmer that I¡¦ve ever known, organizing the contextual part of the project, became very easy. At the time, Rigo, was living in Brooklyn, New York, where I was staying with my mother.
We had a project, we had the culture, we had the technology, but we were missing one of the most important ingredients, the people. To this, we all, awe it to the great Dixon Marin. You would not hear about Dixon¡¦s name very often, but those few that knew him, were more than pleased to have him around. I met Dixon through a cousin of mine, named Hernan Mejia. Hernan, gave me Dixon¡¦s AOL instant messenger account, so I added Dixon to my buddy list and waited patiently. One day, while I was working on something, I can¡¦t quite recall what exactly, but, I saw Dixon¡¦s account get online. I introduced myself, mentioned the Garinet plan and we agreed to meet two weeks later.
Two weeks passed by very fast and I was anxious to share the project with Dixon. I prepared for meeting and took the train to meet at Dixon¡¦s house in the Bronx, New York. When I arrived at his place there were about fifteen to twenty Garifuna individuals. I had prepared for everything, but not to meet a crowd of that proportion. At the time I was just beginning to socialize, so I was a bit shy around multitude of people, but sure, I was not going to let that ruin the opportunity of my life. I think I was the youngest in the group, so I wasted no time and got right to the deliverance. I made my introduction, and explained my concept of the project. Since I was not expecting a large crowd, I took the single copy of documents that I had and passed it around while I explained all the categories that I had researched.
Although, I may not remember the names of every individual that was present at that first meeting, I can almost remember the ones that took action and stayed around long enough for me to get acquainted with their names, which are the following:
- Dixon Marin
- Meldy Perez (Dixon¡¦s sister)
- Andoni Castillo
- Dilnyn Castillo
- Members of Libaba Baba, a Garifuna organization lead by Andoni Castillo
- Ubafu
- Ronny Martinez
- Vilo Lopez
- Jorge Cacho (at the time, now Jorge Garifuna)
One thing I learned about myself is that, in many cases, I know exactly what it is that I want, although, I may not know how to get it. Having said that, I had the categories of the items that we wanted to present to the world, but the actual information had to be written. We made delegations on that first meeting and I remember very clearly, that Don Guity Ubafu, pulled out a pen and a paper and started writing the purpose of Garinet right there and then, based on the information that I had shared. Although slightly modified, the existing ¡§About Us¡¨ section of Garinet.com, it was something that was originally written by Don Guity Ubafu.
We had subsequent meetings, during the weekends, where more community members attended and contributed great inputs into the project. Some of these individuals are:
- Andres Cayetano
- Dely Suazo
- Justo Guity (German)
- And many others, which you can see at Garinet contributors page
From a distance, Swamy Blanco and a great lady name Sandra, contributed with documents translations and editing.
The domain, Garinet.com, was registered on July 29, 1999 at 9:07PM. The project was launched and it finally became a reality! The world could officially have a taste of this community project that was put together, thanks to continuous team efforts of the Garifuna community.
Now that the ball was rolling there was nothing stopping it. Murphy Valentines, from Centro America Show, gave us the opportunity to present the project the community through his Television program.
In early 2000, Jerry Castro, jumped onboard and ever since has given us a steady doses of community & political insights. One of the early articles on record that Jerry contributed to Garinet is ¡§Garinagu in the 21st Century…The importance of your vote.¡¨ I take my hat off for Jerry, for being, one of the most persistent members that Garinet has ever had. Many of you probably heard about Garinet your first time, through Jerry Castro. I highly commend Jerry for his massive contribution to the Garinet project!
In 2000, we also had the late Joseph Flores join us with a newsletter titled ¡§The Texas Garifuna-Belizeans Community Newsletter.¡¨ You may still read many of the issues at the following link:
http://www.garinet.com/gari_newsletter.html
In 2001, Dixon Rochez, a Garifuna student at Clarkson University at the time, approached us fix the visual inconsistencies around the many pages that we had by then. I presented Dixon Rochez, with a set of templates, he chose the best one, incorporated his idea, we adapted it and created a content management program, utilizing his concept in the visual front. You may read more about Dixon Rochez at the following link:
http://people.clarkson.edu/~rochezd/
In late 2002, while I was attending a Real Estate class at Century 21 in Long Beach, California, I received a call from a gentleman, who wanted to sell T-Shirts, through Garinet. Somewhere along the conversation came the topic of website design and how changes needed to be made to the Garinet face. I had heard this comment so many times from so many people, so I scripted myself with the following:
¡§Well, thank you for your observation. Garinet is a community project and you are more than welcome to contribute¡¨
At the time, Garinet was growing at a pace that it was hard to keep up without a proper content management system in place. In many cases, I found this script to filter out the doers from the talkers and it worked very well. Many talkers, never came back with second great talk, but doers, remained true to their words.
Luis David, sure turned out to be a doer. By Mid 2003 he was already working on a new interface for Garinet and the great visual changes that you have enjoyed on the front page of Garinet from Mid 2003 to the time of this writing, April 2005, has been provided by the great Garifuna graphic designer, Luis David. I commend Luis, for his great talent. His artistic graphic contribution to Garinet is, so far the greatest!
For the most part in 2003, I set myself the goal to automate the information management part of Garinet. I programmed a content management application, that allows my team members to enter the news/content as it comes through a web interface. I also spent all December of 2003, programming a web store that I had designed in the late 90s. During this year, Roselynn Lambert contributed one of the first published all-Garifuna articles to Garinet.
By 2004, Garinet was completely automated. All the thousands of pages of information that Garinet has, can now be managed from one single web based administrative management section. My brothers, Wilmer & Felipe Cacho, from Brooklyn, New York, update the news, health, sports, and entertainment sections daily.
On October of this same year, Cheryl Noralez, the organizer of the Garifuna forum 2005, was given special author access through one of the Garinet automated secure web interfaces, to post her articles for the Garifuna 101 section.
2005 has been a year of exponential growth for Garinet.com. We successfully reached one million hits per month from over one hundred different countries. More young contributors, such as Isidra Sabio, Reina David & Irene Aranda, join in.
The future looks very bright! Garinet Global currently holds over forty five domains under its wings in the areas of business, wholesale & retail, service & media, entertainment, education and non-profit. In the next two years we expect to be the leading provider of Garifuna websites, including creating a website for each Garifuna village.
The ultimate success of the Garinet project, is attributed to the continual support of the entire Garifuna community, which has kept it alive for over five years.
As we document the history of the Garinet project, I will be more than happy to include your name for your contribution to the Garinet project in the upcoming chapters of this historical book.
As you can see, when the Garifuna community works together we all win!
You may view some of the changes that Garinet.com has gone through from the following link:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.garinet.com
Kind regards,
Jorge Garifuna
Garinet Global Inc
——————————————–
http://www.garinagu.com/gallery - representing the largest Garifuna photo gallery in the world!
http://www.garidigital.com - representing your website needs
http://www.garinet.com - representing all the Garifuna community
http://www.puntamusic.com - representing the Punta Music
http://www.belizeanworld.com - representing Belize
http://www.guatemalavirtual.com - representing Guatemala
Coming soon: For all your music downloads GariDownloads.com
Jul 19 2004
On June 27, 2004 the baby shower for my wife took place at her parents house in Los Angeles, CA. A great deal of close family and friends attended the event. Because my wife and I are new in making family, we could not tell whether it was going to be a boy or a girl and when the doctors at the hospital asked us if we wanted to know, we told them that we wanted to keep it a surprise, and so we did.
At the baby shower, however, every experienced woman was betting that it was going to be a girl. According these women, when the belly looks pointy, there was a high chance that the baby will be a boy, but when the belly looks round and a bit small chances were that the baby was going to be a girl, which was the case with my wife.
Meanwhile at the lamas classes, this theory in most cases proved to be true. For the majority of the women and our lamas class who knew what they were going to have, the belly was pointy for all of those who were going to have boys.
Back at the baby shower, there was a man that did not agree with all those women votes. That man was my father-in-law. This man was sure that it was going to be a boy. How did he know?, I don¡¦t know, but he claim he had a dream about it.
For you to understand my father-in-law¡¦s strong desire for a baby boy, you have to understand his immediate family structure first. My in-laws have four beautiful daughters and my wife happens to be the oldest. With no planning on expansion from his end, of course, my father-in-law, would want a boy to complete the family circle ƒº
On my mother¡¦s side the reverse hold true. This side of my family is dominated by boys, so my mother had a strong desire for a baby girl. This left my wife and I trapped in the middle, so we left it to the lord.
Around 1:01 PM yesterday, July 15, 2004, my wife started having contractions, which I started timing right away (that lamas class was starting to payoff ƒº). Given the fact that she had an appointment scheduled for 1:30 PM, we decided to pack everything just in case she had to stay to have the baby. In my wife¡¦s mind she was sure she was going to come back to finish a few things in the house. In my mind I knew she was going to come back, but if it was with the baby, I wanted to make sure that we were prepared.
So we left to the hospital, which was about five minutes away from our home and arrived on time for her appointment. The doctor performed the regular checkups and since the contractions were already happening, she performed additional checkups and sent us to the labor and delivery department.
As soon as we arrived at the L&D department, my wife was asked a few questions about her contractions and was put to bed right away. I called my sister in-law, Ana, to let her know what was going on. She was at work at the moment, but she notified me that she was going to get out early so she could come to the hospital, since she was only about twenty miles away. I kindly told her to stand-by, just in case it was too early for labor and we would have to be sent home to kill some time. The doctors mentioned to us that it was too early, but if we wanted to stay, that would be fine. My wife and I decided to leave for a few hours and come back later.
We went to the grocery store to get a few things for the house, I called both of my mothers, my in-laws and then we went to pickup my sister in-law, Ana. On the way back from picking her up, we stopped by our home, prepared more things, rested and then around 7:00 PM, I made the call to the hospital to let them know that we were on our way.
My in-laws arrived the hospital around 10 PM. By that time, the contractions were coming harder and more frequent. It was time to practice everything we had learned at the lamas class. My wife was doing her breathing just like she learned in class and I was trying to be the best couch I could be.
Time went by, but the contractions kept coming. When it was time for the real thing, my in-laws retired to the waiting room, the real pushing began and around 1:25 AM, July 16, 2004, there came our wonderful baby boy. My wife and I were extremely happy that everything had gone well. We held our prince and then I delivered the news to the in-laws in the waiting room. My father-in-law¡¦s dream had come true.
We all shared the happy welcoming of our boy together. When I had a chance, I called my two mothers and they were extremely happy to have a new member added to the family tree.
This morning, we named the baby, Jorge Garifuna Jr. and he also received his first business mission, which was to protect and preserve the Garinet Empire for the many years to come.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you, for allowing us to share these happy moments with you in welcoming our new son to this world.
From this moment on a new section dedicated to newborns have been created on Garinet. If you have a story to share about your newborn, you are more than welcome to submit it here.