OK, so my title grabbed your attention.
Leo brought up today that he had a line on some inexpensive high quality solar cells, which brought me back to some ideas Godwin had for converting a lot of our computer equipment in Tanzania to Solar power.
The end goal that I have is a large scale mesh network covering a large portion of the area. Yeah, internet access would be wonderful (and is a goal) but networking doesn’t require global access. If we get 1mbps across the network we could run VoIP between IEO facilities. Beyond that though, I’ve seen some great setups of hardened PCs set out for anyone’s use. There’s a fair amount of localization of Linux to Swahili already, but we could setup kiosk systems that would be on the network at say $1500 each (computer, solar cells, etc). By providing onsite servers at IEC we could provide useful information and communications to the local area.
Of course, it would also pretty well take me being onsite full time to maintain the network, but if enough nodes were in place it would be fairly self healing.
In general I am in favor of anything to improve overall communications, even if it’s as simple as basic e-mail or the unix chat command.
Couple downsides to the network that would quickly be pointed out is that the majority of it would be daylight only (cost savings in batteries, just enough to work when cloudy). This is really not an issue as the majority of activities are going to take place during daylight and the limited number of kiosks would require some travel on the part of most users. Primary links for IEO itself would have full battery for 24/7 use.
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Filed under: Uncategorized — jmac @ 3:17 pm
Well, here’s the issue, I leave for Tanzania in a couple weeks. The repairs to my laptop were going to take at least a couple weeks (and cost $99 to get priority in service which may have gotten it done in time).
As a result, I have a new white macbook, it is for sale Nov. 3, 2006 =)
Yes, I am happy, ecstatic, etc </sarcasm>
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Heading to Tanzania in a couple of weeks, would rather like to be able to pop a sim card from one of the local cell networks into my phone. Still extraordinarily expensive, but cheaper.
So, to accomplish this I made a call to T-Mobile, gave them all of my info and waited for the e-mail with unlock code. Instead, I got an e-mail with absolutely no contact information saying that they were missing information, although not saying which piece, and giving an 8 point list of exactly what the rep asked me about yesterday.
Good thing I’m not leaving today, I would be rather unhappy.
Filed under: Uncategorized — jmac @ 7:43 pm
Part of setting up HyakDev has been setting up the phone system. Might as well describe a bit of it here.
The goals are to have no centralized office, but rather a small network of representatives around the US, and sometimes in my case the world.
The basis of the setup is an Asterisk PBX running on Debian Sarge. Asterisk is an open source phone system, completely free, although a bit tricky to setup.
Incoming calls are handled by les.net providing some great support services and reasonable prices. Outgoing calls are provided by various providers (based on availability, network congestion at the time, and price) and run between 0.5c and 2c/min to the US.
So, while not everything is up yet, feel free to call in at (800) 987-3897 and say hi to one of us, although phones are not always staffed at this point. If you’d like to just call up and chat, you can try 319-522-1197 (general) 425-606-3054 (Mike) or 360-207-0475 (JM [me]), we’d be happy to throw you into the conference room or transfer you to the CNN podcast extension.
Roughly our costs run $2.50/month per toll-free number, 4c/min incoming and 1c/min outgoing. Right now we are using softphones, which provide support for between 2 and 6 lines, voicemail access, transfer, hold, etc. SIP hard phones start at $50 and go up from there if we want to go that route at some point. We also have some telephone adapters to plug analog phones into the system.
Future goals are to add integration with PSTN lines
Filed under: Uncategorized — jmac @ 12:25 pm
For those that have followed the changes that are happening as a result of the PKi, WDM, HDC creation/merge/dissolution however you like to look at it the biggest technical change is the server virtualization plan and the decommissioning of moogle.
moogle was a good server, but OpenNMS sent out FOURTY notices about it going up and down overnight. The servers are mailbombing us.
Filed under: Uncategorized — jmac @ 12:40 am
I know it makes sense that since I use more computers than most people, I use those computers more than most people, and I use those computers harder than most people (it is not uncommon these days for me to be on my laptop with VNC windows open to two other computers and one of those computers to have 2 more open to vservers running in Xen on the same hardware as itself) (Beatrix->Palom,Porom->Rydia,Kain)
So, given that it isn’t really surprising that Porom has a bit of a network driver bug, or a netfilter bug, or a Xen bug, or no bugs, depending on how you interpret it. Swapped out network hardware anyway and applying a patch to netfilter is on the todo list.
My laptop is also crashing, but without helpful kernel panic messages. Today I realized that it crashes when the fan turns on… there was a firmware update for the fan last week. So, right now my laptop sits on an ice pack with a CPU temp at 27C which is keeping the fan from starting. Need to get it into Apple soon, though.
Because in October I’m going to Tanzania again.
Filed under: Uncategorized — jmac @ 3:21 am
Pretty neat firefox extension for blogging at performancing.com
Works with WordPress and other blogs, quite sweet. Lots of fun stuff.
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