Today was the fourth day of training with NRIDS and Inveneo. One more day and we'll be going into the field to apply what we've learned and see if everything goes smoothly there.
Before the training the day started interestingly enough, as today was a religious holiday for our Nepalese colleauges. They were gone to the temple by the time we woke up (they'd left at 5 am...) and when we saw them just before the training they'd got their prayer beads and red spots on their forehead, a slight difference in culture and a very good start of the day!
The training itself started with a radio emulation game, a nice enough start of the day (and a game that might with some adaptations actually be useable in other scenario's as well).
The actual training started with the use of a program called radio-mobile. A very usefull and interesting program that allows one to set up extensive radio networks anywhere in the world. If you enter the kind of equipment you use and where you place it it can show you the network, if it'd work or not (keeping into account ground levels and everything), as well as allow you to easily change the properties to show how that'd work.
The networks are split into three things, a .net file that is the size and contents (type of radio's, kind of systems etc Basically the network information itself).
A .map file that contains the map that you use, height information and such and a simple .jpeg that's the map that is actually shown (Which should correspond to the .map file obviously).
The best technical details on how the program works exactly can be found on their own website though at, http://www.cplus.org/rmw/english1.html , and for anyone interested in the program I can definetly recommend looking (as well as downloading it there).
The program was unknown to us but is freely available and is a program we'll surely be using again in the future. The interface could be better but is still very useable. Aside from how nice the program itself is perhaps the nicest thing about it is that it'll actually give us a way to continue contributing significantly to the direct work of NRIDS even from the Netherlands once we return there.
With radio mobile we used the site survey information we'd gathered after the training yesterday to build a small 'example' network for the Dharam area between certain hotels here. The building itself was a nice bit of training (further demonstrating how well the software worked). That wasn't the most interesting part of it though, that definetly lay in the comments made during the setting up. You need to consider if a building is grounded when you examine it, how many monkeys are around to wreck your dish and other such examples. Aside from our monkeys returning constantly these are the things that truly make you realize just how different work here can be, and think just that bit harder about anything you might be forgetting.
After another nice lunch (fish this time, and some kind of not as edible vegetable called 'bitter' gold) we continued on work with compasses. How to work with a compass is, especially for me, very basic knowledge that I've often taught myself. As such the explanation itself was totally unnecesairy. What was good to see though was what Mark and Andres chose to explain. Do you teach about shooting locations or does that get too complex? What concepts work in a country like Nepal, and think a bit about how those differ from the Netherlands and what ways of explanation we use there. The 'meta knowledge' of the explanation was the worthwhile part of this bit of the training, but definetly still worth while.
And of course there remains a great fun factor in seeing the cultural difference of how people actually come to your cluster in the street and look, quite intently, at what you're doing instead of just walking past.
After a lot of shooting directions with the compasses the training continued on OS's and servers this time. The information was supplied clearly enough, a lot was abstracted from obviously but there's little other choice in so short a time. The thing that I did find interesting to hear, although I heard no surprises in the end, was the information concerning low power computing compared to operating system. The extra considerations were known to me, but seeing how Inveneo has tested them and what conclusions they drew on OS use was still a nice bit of information (that further confirmed what I already knew, and actually strengthens my belief either auto resetting images that an administrator can edit or a linux system, or maybe both, are the best way to go for telecenters).
I suppose I found it somewhat dissapointing Mark and Andres mentioned they'd talk about how to secure windows a lot but eventually didn't quite have the time to get around to it, one of the subjects were I think we might have a fair few good suggestions as we have a lot of experience securing networks in Africa especially. Things like good virus scanners (avg is a good example), not giving everyone administrator rights, but also the use of reborn cards and 'auto' restoration images. On the other hand I know from experience how hard it is to run a training like this and I can fully imagine how the schedule just gets skewed slightly, especially when external factors like customs and getting parts here before friday comes in.
We'll see, hopefully they'll get round to it tommorow.
Finally we talked about servers and had a tiny amount of time to play around with the inveneo server. The server itself contained no surprises, seeing the software that was set up on it though as well as the robustness of configuration was good. An actual thought out system that is well configured, easy to maintain and can easily be restored when things go wrong as well as a good standard.
I can see the clear advantages for both Inveneo, in being better able to assist sites all over the world, as well as for sites that have a good set up and the ability to (indirectly) learn from each others mistakes. A good standard just like the EEE pc's (which I still think might want to consider Chrome due to its lower processor load and better use of bandwith, perhaps Inveneo can look at that at some time), which I think is very well suited for the project.
Confidence in the fact things will be going well and looking forward to another day of training tommorow.
Regards,
Jos
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