Michael Ofori Amanfo Boateng

It started as a 10-page ambiguous question and it ended up with a compressed 18-page solution in three different parts.

The Question – Gas Marketing (Download Question)

My Solution (Non-Maths Solution)

1. Linear Programming – Model (Download Solution)

2. Stochastic Programming – Model (Download Solution)

3. Integer Programming – Model  (Download Solution)

(The Professor’s Official Solution – Download Solution)

Special thanks to Luis and Nyanteh … ur input were TERRIFIC …. kudos!

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The Project

The project is about a gas marketing company with 4 clients who have different preferences in terms of contract definitions.

We are to use maths to crack the code!Integer Programming

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Below is a simple Abstract

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ABSTRACT

A Gas marketing company with four residential customers, three of whom are ready to bear risks of future increases in gas prices is interested in a model that will minimize the amount of money it has to pay for satisfying the demand of their prospective customers.

We build a linear model with AMPL Studio to find the optimal cost in transporting gas to the first three customers and then extend it to a stochastic and integer model to solve some key questions the company seeks to address.

The Linear model gave us a minimal total cost of £6,534,236.828 with a minimal price per MWh to the three customers at £39.64.  By adding customer 4 with its expected demand, the minimal price went down to £38.41.

From our integer model, we deduced that it was going to be profitable to the company if it chose at storage in City B

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Boomark To:

I still cant believe I have just a week to exit LSE …… Let the count down begin!

Boomark To:

Gradually the stress level is dying down and now I am beginning to feel like “the work is almost done”.

Tuesday 26th May 2009 will officially mark the day I will cross the 75% Mark of the London School of Economics and Political Science Job.

This is because I will be taking my last exam (Combinatorial Optimization)  and my dissertation follows later in September(25%).

I am still trying hard to cover all notes and solve as many questions as possible.

Once I am through with the paper …… I will get back online and write more about my the LSE!

Boomark To:

Christmas is here with us again and bloggers like myself would want to get busy.

If you happen to be a tourism fanatic like myself, then you would want to visit one of the hottest travel destinations in the world.

Thinking of traveling outside your country?

Here are a few tourism destinations you would want to tease yourself with; Amsterdam Attractions, Athens attractions, Greece Attractions and Prague attractions.

You would also bear with me that around this time, getting a very good and affordable hotel is a bit worrisome but Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk will ease your pain in searching for the best of hotels that will give you value for your money.

With Cheaper than hotels, you can get discounted rates at budget and luxury accommodation from Europe to America and the World Over.

Also on their site you can get the best of deals for Prague Hotels, Greece Hotels, Athens Hotels and Amsterdam Hotels.

Visit their site for more information on getting Cheap Hotels >>>

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Clickatell is happy to announce Len Pienaar, CEO of Mobile & Transact Solutions for First National Bank (FNB), will present “Cellphone banking in South Africa, and innovation success”, on Thursday, 15 November at 12pm.

The BAI Retail Delivery Conference is a leading financial services conference and expo to help banking executives understand how to increase the bottom-line and invest in customer relationships.

Pienaar will discuss how FNB has employed SMS and other cellular technologies to drive business results and deliver valuable and intimate services to customers.

Clickatell, the leading provider of global mobile messaging for banks and other financial institutions, will be featuring the FNB case study in its booth number 2444.

Clickatell provides the mobile messaging software for FNB to deliver international balance enquiries, account payments, micro-payments, and critical fraud alerts over cellphones via SMS to its customers worldwide. Clickatell has been providing mobile messaging solutions since 2000 and has over 8 000 active customers worldwide.

A world expert in SMS banking, Len Pienaar is CEO of the Mobile & Transact Solutions division for FNB and is part of a delegation of South African bankers facilitated by the Business Trust. Pienaar has been integral to the implementation and delivery of valuable services to FNB customers.

To learn more about FNB and their banking services, please visit www.fnb.co.za.

Boomark To:

In its effort to take over the SMS Message world, Clickatell earlier this week hired Chuck Drake as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, and Bill Wolfe as Executive Vice President of Research & Development to help steer the affairs of the mobile company.

Clickatell has also upgraded all its servers and if you are an existing client, you will realise there are now many IP Addresses available for use in sending SMS Text Messages.

With over 8,000 active customers worldwide, including Barclays Bank, BBC, CNN, FNB, and Oracle, Clickatell has proven itself as the leader in providing mobile messaging solutions to large enterprise organizations and delivering online SMS services for small to medium businesses.

With the explosion of cell phone usage, mobile messaging is fast becoming a ubiquitous and cost effective way to communicate directly to customers, partners, and employees.

Clickatell is bolstering its worldwide facilities to meet the growing demand for SMS messages being sent globally for a multitude of applications. Having expanded coverage to include an additional 85 networks, Clickatell supports more networks and carriers than any other messaging provider in the world. Clickatell has further upgraded its enterprise-grade facilities to include hosted services, receiving the SAS 70 stamp of approval, a widely recognized standard used as a proof point used by Chief Security Officers to examine the due diligence process needed to assure data security, safety and integrity.

Within its existing 24×7 system, Clickatell has significantly extended its customer support capability by enhancing Quality of Service (QOS) and reliability of its IT infrastructure, which is built on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, a set of industry guidelines and best practice techniques for managing IT infrastructure, development, and operations. In addition to these enterprise-grade additions to its facilities, Clickatell has added network support in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and has also increased reliability in China, Hong Kong, and Japan.

In addition, Clickatell has hired Chuck Drake as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, and Bill Wolfe as Executive Vice President of Research & Development. These two executives are poised to bring a strong focus in the financial services sector and building large infrastructures to support millions of mobile transactions.

Chuck joins Clickatell from MarkMonitor and Corillian where he led both companies to achieve market leadership status in their respective Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Enterprise software markets serving Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, High Technology, CPG and other verticals worldwide.

Bill joins Clickatell from VeriSign and Openwave Systems where he was responsible for managing critical business cycles to provide complex, intelligent, highly secure, and reliable enterprise infrastructures to deliver core communications services targeting the Entertainment, Technology, and Telecommunications markets.

Via Clickatell

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Today is Blog Action Day for the Environment …. Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is this day About?
This is generally a day where real bloggers who Blog To The Banks (LOL) write articles on their blogs to promote environmental safety and quality.

What can we do as bloggers?
We can serve as an ambassadors by blogging to help to protect and improve the environment. Bloggers can also take it upon themselves to make sure that air, land and water are looked after by everyone in today’s society, so that tomorrow’s generations can inherit a cleaner and healthier world.

In Short this is what you can also do to help

• Post on your blog relating to the environment on Blog Action Day
• Donate your day’s earnings to an environmental charity
• Promote Blog Action Day around the web

What did i do on this day?
Well instead of my normal 3 Plates of my favourite Fried-Riped-Plantain and Beans, I decided to forfeit two of them and take just one in solidarity of this great day of celebrating the environment as a blogger. Hope you also did something interesting. Cheers.

Boomark To:

The first part of the tutorial on to retrieve two-way text messages from clickatell gateway was basically about creating a mysql database that will store data received from Clickatell Gateway via the Callback Url.

This tutorial is will just show you how to create your “settings.php” which declares the main settings of your programme. It stores your mysql login details and the clickatell gateway api login details.

All you have to do is copy and paste the code below and save it as “settings.php”. Then you change all the xxxx in the code to the appropriate values per your mysql database and your credentials at clickatell.

settings.php

<?php

$baseurl =”http://api.clickatell.com”;

//User details @ Clickatell
$user = “xxxx”;
$password = “xxxx”;
$api_id = “xxxxx”;

//mysql details
$hostname_conn = “xxxx”;
$database_conn = “xxxx”;
$username_conn = “xxxx”;
$password_conn = “xxxx”;
$conn = mysql_pconnect($hostname_conn, $username_conn, $password_conn) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);

?>

User Details @ Clickatell
//$user = This is the username assigned to you by clickatell
//$password = This your clickatell api password;
//$api_id = The api id can be generated on your clickatell control panel

User Details @ Clickatell
// $hostname_conn = This is your database hostname
//database_conn = Change this to the name of your database
// $username_conn = This is the user logon to ur database
// $password_conn = Change this to your database password

Part 1 | Part 2

Boomark To:

In an earlier post, I wrote about what a two-way (2-way) or bidirectional messaging is and the sms messaging provider to consider if you are considering building a 2-way sms application.

This tutorial shows you how to retrieve your two-way messages from Clickatell’s Gateway using their HTTP/S Protocol. It is fairly simple and almost the same as using a Callback URL to retrieve SMS Message response from Clickatell gateway.

Before using this tutorial, make sure two things are done

1. REQUEST for your Clickatell two-way number.
2. Set the callback URL at your control panel on Clickatell’s website. eg. (www.mboateng.com/2way/callback.php)

Once these two things have been done, you will need to create a mysql table which will store data sent to your web server by Clickatell’s Gateway API. Below is the mysql script.

Mysql Table (tbl_messages)

CREATE TABLE ‘tbl_messages’ (
‘msgid’ int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
’sender’ varchar(50) default NULL,
‘recipient’ varchar(50) default NULL,
‘dated’ varchar(50) default NULL,
‘message’ text,
PRIMARY KEY (’msgid’)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

//The sender field stores the number/ name of the sender
//The recipient of course will be your Clickatell assigned number
//The Dated field will store the timestamp of the sms message
// The Message fields stores the SMS Message

Part 1 | Part 2

Boomark To:

Are you planning to get your own SMS Number where you can receive inbound text messages direct to your system applications or Web Applications? Are you also planning to undertaking a two-way sms messaging application? Well the best place to consider is Clickatell.

Clickatell makes extending your messaging capabilities with two-way SMS simple. You can easily receive messages by making use of their HTTP, SMPP or FTP application programming interfaces.

What is Two-Way(2-Way) Messaging

A Two-Way(2-Way) SMS Messaging Service enables you to SEND and RECEIVE SMS Text Messages and Manage responses directly on your PC through an SMS Application.

For example a web advertiser can send out messages to all its web publishers (using say bulk sms) and receive replies from them directly to his PC.

Sending the SMS message could be easily done with your existing email client, server, website or a business application.

Two-way messaging requirements:

* Clickatell API account.
* Apply for a two-way messaging from inside your account

How two-way messaging can help you:

* Bidirectional Messaging
* Clickatell’s two-way messaging is currently available in over 100 countries.

Check Out More on Two-Way SMS Messaging @ Clickatell >>>

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