24/5-08 at 13.17 Bart

It has been quite a while since I posted my last message. Sorry, I am just not very good at blogging. However, I will post some more information on the project we are doing on this blog, so keep on watching.
I started yesterday with a new project on Flickr, called project 365. From now on, I will make a picuture every day, for the next 365 days and post these on my Flickr account. There will be some text accompanying it as well. It allows me to learn to take better pictures with my new camera (a Nikon D80) and give me a kind of diary. Well, enough about it, just click here for my pictures on Flickr

Anita and I have got a picture site as well! Please follow this link to see all our pictures!

26/2-08 at 09.57 Bart

Last week, queen Sofia of Spain paid an official visit to the kingdom of Cambodia. She also paid a visit to our hubmle project. She was shown desktops in Khmer language, the Khmer keyboards, and I explained to her about the low cost computers we are making. The queen was so impressed by low cost computing, that she thought it would be great for her own country and Europe as well! Below is a picture of our demonstration to the queen.

26/12-07 at 10.51 Bart

The first low power computers have been deployed in the National Institute of Education (NIE, the place where teachers for secondary schools are being trained). Unfortunately, the first batch of 30 computers do not have the Cambodian made casings yet due to logistical reasons. The lab will be used for real teaching and the lessons started this week, which meant we had to use normal casings. The next batch of 30 will be equipped with the Cambodian made casings though. The machines are running both openSUSE 10.3 and Windows XP. It gave me the chance to install an installation server, which greatly reduced the installation time. openSUSE comes with some nifty installation tools (like autoYAST) which automates the complete installation process. The clients were plugged into the network, and pressing the OK button twice was enough to install openSUSE. Great stuff! Especially for the lazy sysadmin. Lazyness is an important virtue to have as a sysadmin, since being lazy, you want to do things right in one time. Mistakes mean extra work (and we want to avoid that).
Here is a picture of some machines installing openSUSE

03/12-07 at 17.14 Bart

26/11-07 at 22.26 bart

We've got him!

Some mice have been bothering us the last few weeks. Saturday I was woken (rather violently) by Anita who was telling me to have a quick look in the toilet. See the result ...

It looked quite dead to me, but I fear it drowned when I flushed the toilet though ... 

20/11-07 at 21.52 bart

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. Since a couple of weeks I have been promoted to "Director of low cost computer lab". I will be managing the installation of a low cost computer lab at the NIE (National Institute of Education) where teachers of secondary schools are being educated.
Intel has donated 60 so called "little valley" boards, with a Celeron CPU on them. We are now in the process of making our own, Cambodian made casings! We have this done at the Don Bosco technical school in Phnom Penh . There, Lay Thea, the manager of the welding section,and his team have made our first Cambodian made computer casing. The first prototype will be ready tomorrow. I hope we don't forget to take our camera this time.
In an effort to make this blog a part of our communication channels, I am going to update it more often, so stay tuned for more!

15/8-07 at 16.53 Bart

One of my collueges is member of a group of 5 Cambodian bloggers which have introduced the term "Clogging" for Cambodian weblogging (or blogging). Together they have given 14 workshops in Cambodian universities to introduce the student into the wonderfull world of blogging. According to them, more than 1700 students have participated. And they did it all on a volunteer basis! Quite impressive I must say. Now they are organising a conference in Phnom Penh, called the "Clogger Summit". It seems to have a very interesting agenda. Click here to find out more
about this event.

06/8-07 at 12.02 Bart

Yesterday night we visited a "concert". We heard rumours that a free concert was being given in the local stadium. It soon became clear what it was: A certain American organisation had their own view on the best way to develop Cambodia: Convert the Cambodians (who are Buddhists) into Christians! No costs were spared to fly in a gigantic stage, complete with videoscreens and laserbeamlights, on which an "American from Oklahoma" was spreading the good word, accompanied by his favourite minstrels, a band of Cambodian and American Evangelicals. People from surrounding villages were brought to the stadium with trucks, paid for by the Americans. Rumours even have it that the Americans paid the villagers $5,- each (and that's a lot of money in rural Cambodia!) to attend the concert!. Allthough I am open to the notion of free religion I think that converting poor people in Cambodia is fundamentally wrong for several reasons. First, I think that converting people in a country to a different religion will divide that country along religious lines (just open any history book to find evidence about this).
Secondly, the Christians are promising from their brightly lit stage with videowalls and laserbeam lights a solution to all the problems the Cambodians might have, like diseases or poverty. And that solution is conversion. I think that problems like diseases and poverty are very complex issues that will not be solved by changing religion.
Thirdly, they are trying to impose a religion which embodies a very western way of thinking into an Asian society, where a different morale exists. Importing another religion will also import another culture, which is disrespectfull towards Cambodian culture and preavailing religion to say the least. Fourthly, no Cambodian is benefiting from the massive amounts of money spent on this rock-group-like Christian concert tour. All the equipment seems to have been flown in directly from the USA, and even the booklets they spread have been printed in the USA.
I do not want to attack Christianity as a religion in itself. On the contrary, I do respect other peoples' religions and convictions and therefore I expect that from others as well.
Here is a picture of our happy evangelic singers:

06/8-07 at 12.01 Bart

A few days ago we decided to go on a boat trip on the Mekong river today. But, as it goes when you are in a group, plans change. So we decided to go to the Phnom Proh and Phnom Srey, which literally translates as "Man Hill" and "Woman Hill". These hills are said to have been built by means of a contest: The man hill was built by men, the women hill built by a group of women. The women won because they built a big fire which the man mistakingly took for the sun. I leave the comments on that "trick" by the woman to yourself ;). We only visited Phnom Proh, which has a nice Buddhist temple on top. In the picture below you see us in front of a sleeping Buddha. More pictures are in the Kampong Cham gallery album!

03/8-07 at 15.08 Bart

Yes, it is very relaxed here in Kampong Cham. We stay with 10 volunteers in one house (sometimes nicknamed "Big Brother house"). Most people have to share a room here. Dinner and lunch is taken care of, and so is the cleaning and other domestic work. We have 3 hours of class in the morning and the rest of the day is free. Since Kampong Cham is not exactly an exciting place I spend my days reading, studying and sleeping. Here is a picture of us playing a game (Boonanza for those interested). Quite funny to translate a game filled with Dutch puns into English.

Anita is not so lucky as I am: She still has to finish a report and has to do a lot of nasty typing work for that. Oh well, someone has to do the relaxing stuff :) This weekend we will go on the Mekong on a boat trip, so I hope I'll be able to make some nice pictures.