Alex Little

As I predicted last year, my Asus Eee 1008HA has proven to be a little too fragile, although what failed wasn’t exactly as I’d thought. When I was back in Ethiopia at the end of May, the casing started to come away from the screen:

Whilst there was an unnerving cracking noise whenever I opened the lid, it still worked ok, but after another couple of weeks, the screen failed completely. The machine itself was still usable, providing I plugged it into an external monitor, but was proving to be rather useless for travelling:

So I’ve just bought myself anther new laptop, this time a Lenovo ThinkPad X220:

I’m running Ubuntu on it (11.04) and all installed very easily, no messing around with configurations/patches to get any of the hardware (webcam/wireless etc) working which I’ve had before. All the special keys worked out of the box with no extra configuration. The only very slight comment I’d have is that it has combined speaker and mic jack socket rather than a separate one for each.

Feels good to have a proper laptop rather than just using a netbook as I have been for the last 3 years or so. Although the X220 is still quite small and light it vastly more powerful!

Last week we set up Digital Campus as a not-for-profit company to continue and expand the work we have been doing over the last couple of years in ICT infrastructure development, technology enhanced learning and using technology to improve public health. You can read more on the Digital Campus website. Below is a presentation to give an overview the types of services and solutions we’re providing to improve ICT infrastructure:

Next week I return to Ethiopia for a few days and will then go to present at the eLearning Africa conference in Tanzania.

Update (12 Oct 2011); This instructions have now been deprecated, to install the keyboard on your Android phone please visit: http://alexlittle.net/blog/2011/06/03/installing-geez-virtual-keyboard-on-android-devices/

Here is a short video of how to switch between virtual keyboards and how to use the keyboard:

Please let me know if you have any feedback/questions.

Update (12 Oct 2011): For instructions on how to install the keyboard on your phone please visit: http://alexlittle.net/blog/2011/06/03/installing-geez-virtual-keyboard-on-android-devices/

Over the past few weeks, a group of graduate students at Alcalá University have been creating a virtual keyboard for Android to allow the input of Ge’ez script. This will allow anyone using Android smartphones or tablets to input Amharic and Tigrinya in their native script. We’ll be trialling use of this keyboard in our mHealth projects.

As the script contains over 200 characters they can’t all be displayed on the keyboard, so tapping the root consonant character will allow users to cycle through the 7 consonant+vowel combinations to enter a particular character, much like using a numeric keypad to enter Latin script characters. We’re also working on a version where the possible combinations appear in a small pop-up window when the root consonant is pressed.

The installation isn’t yet as simple as we’d like because the Ge’ez font isn’t default on Android, so the devices need to be rooted and the system font installed before the keyboard will work correctly. We’re currently putting together some full instructions and video and I’ll post up a link when these are ready. If anyone wants to try it out now, please contact me, we can provide a ROM with the font and application pre-installed.

More photos of the keyboard in action.

Although the elearning training went very well, we still have some issues with the lab expansion and opening. Health Sciences is still in the process of recruiting lab attendants to open the lab there, previously they’ve been relying on the goodwill of Tilahun (the ICT team member based at Ayder), but he’s now moved to the main (Arid campus), so opening is rather ad-hoc. The lab at Arid now has 3 lab attendants so should now be open 24×7, although the network connection (between the lab and the data centre) has been quite flaky recently, due to some of the intermediate switches. The other new elearning computer lab at Arid is still under development, as yet the networking and electrical installation isn’t completed, although they were working on it this week. The electrician was surprised that we need over 15kW in this lab to power the 90 refurbished PCs, but seems we will this amount of power given the ratings on back of the old PCs and the CRT monitors.

One of our successes was to improve the boot speed and responsiveness of the refurbished PCs when they boot from the thin client server. The improvement was as a result of some changes to the network switches (they were only operating at half duplex for the ports these machines are attached to), and also to update the protocol used for the display. We’re now using FreeNX, which is proving far quicker than X11. We also tested XRDP which was also very responsive. With X11 the responsiveness to mouse clicks or key presses was so slow as to make the machines almost unusable, now these machines actually appear faster than the SunRay terminals. Much of this is simply my experiences during testing, rather than scientific measurement, and we’ve not yet tested these terminals when the lab and network is under load. So I was very pleased we were able to get the lab in a position where the old PCs would be usable, even with a less than ideal network.

Last week we received the unfortunate news that one of the computer labs we helped set up in Mekelle in Nov 2009 was broken into. Just over 20 computer terminals were taken, but fortunately none of the (LCD) monitors were also taken. Given that the terminals are relatively small, so easily portable, we had thought there was a risk of one or two going astray, especially given that thefts of portable electronic devices (laptops etc) happen at all universities and all organisations around the world.

We’re not sure if the thief (or thieves) realise that without being connected to a server to boot up from, the devices are pretty much useless and there’s going to be an extremely limited market for reselling such stolen devices in Ethiopia. So it’s a small consolation that the thief/thieves are unlikely to profit from the robbery.

It’s far more disappointing they have taken the opportunity for the students to fully use the lab, now being down to half the original number of terminals. However, most students are in the run up to their exams over the coming weeks, followed by the semester break, so they won’t be accessing the lab as much as during the rest of the semester.

This gives a few weeks to get the lab back up and running fully before the start of the next semester (probably in first weeks of March) and we very quickly managed to put plans together for how we can replace the missing terminals. We’re hoping to (at least temporarily) replace some of the missing terminals with refurbished PCs, we’d already been testing this over the past few months, so just means that we will deploy them sooner than expected. We’re also checking the costs of having some (SunRay) terminals we had in the US shipped over as replacements for those which have gone missing.

So, despite the setback, the lab should be back up and running within a couple of weeks.

I’ve now added to my growing collection of mobile voice and internet sim cards, dongles and pay as you go (prepago in Spanish) accounts. Today, with a lot of help from my Spanish speaking colleague Jaime, I got myself sorted out with a local mobile internet sim card with dongle. Buying the sim card and dongle was no problem language-wise, but getting the information as to how to top up, where I can buy credit, getting the correct settings for Ubuntu etc needed a long phone call to their tech support helpline.

As I’ve mentioned before, not staying in the same place quite long enough (or not knowing how long I’ll be staying) doesn’t make it worthwhile getting a contract account (or broadband installed at home) so means I’m paying the top price for all the phone and data services. The cost of mobile broadband is far higher here in Spain than the UK. In UK I paid 15GBP (around 17EUR) for 3Gb to use within a month, which I thought was bad enough, but in Spain I’ll be paying 20EUR for 1Gb to use within a month. So more than 3 times as much. The small consolation I have is that after I’ve topped up 3 times, I get 2Gb free – so that’s 60EUR for 5Gb.
Hopefully though, whilst in the UK my mobile dongle was my only means of internet access, here I can use the office connection much of the time.

One slight quirk with my new internet account is that to find out how much data I have left for the month, I need to send an email with my phone no and ask for the data balance. When I asked what format the email needed to be in (assuming that it would be an automated response) I was told that the format doesn’t matter as it will be a real person looking up my balance and replying manually – possibly one of the reasons for the high cost.

The thin client solution we currently have running in Mekelle is based on using OpenSolaris and we have a variety of terminals – a mixture of SunRay 1′s, SunRay 2′s and Nortech clients. Using sun ray session server, the sunray terminals are performing well, but when we have the labs full of students, the Nortech terminals are significantly less responsive. There are a number of possible reasons for this, the protocols used, the network amongst others. There is a huge range of other configurations and technologies we could use to provide a robust and scalable thin client architecture.

I’ve spent a few days this week in Barcelona with Cast-Info investigating their Desktop4All solution, which we’re looking to trial as an alternative to the OpenSolaris setup we currently have. Goitom, one of the phds students from Mekelle will spend the next few weeks based in the Cast-Info offices, learning how to install and set up the server system used for Desktop4All, with a view to installing this when back in Mekelle in a couple of months.

Desktop4All, based on Linux, is a set of integrated open source applications. It’s likely to produce a similar end result to the solution that we already have running with OpenSolaris, but the main advantage for us will be in the support and documentation available as a reference. Testing out Desktop4All will give us the opportunity to collaborate in the development and to investigate whether we get similar types of issues arising as we have had with OpenSolaris.

When we started the Digital Campus project, I think there was some concern over whether the students would need much training in how to use a non-Windows operating system, given that much (all?) of their previous experience of using computers/pcs was with Windows (usually XP). This has turned out not to be the case, given that many students have had limited time to become locked in Windows, we’ve found few issues with students being unable to navigate the interface or use applications. I suspect we don’t always give the students credit for their ability to adapt to new interfaces and systems (especially judging by how quickly they find their way to webmail, youtube and facebook).

I recently became the owner of an unlocked HTC Dream smartphone (running Android 1.6). Smart phones are still quite a rarity in Mekelle (and I’d guess in much of the rest of Ethiopia), so despite this not being the most recent model, everyone who sees me using it asks me to have a look & play around. I have seen a few people with Nokia E71 phones, but when you look closer they’re actually Nokla E71′s (yes, that’s Nokia with an L instead of an i).

In a couple of days I will be heading out to some rural areas with a colleague doing his doctorate in public health. He’s testing different smartphones and applications for data collection whilst he’s interviewing Health Extension Workers (HEWs). I’m joining him to see what some of the issues are with using these types of phones and applications in this context, with a view to spending some time over the coming months seeing how these devices may be used to deliver training.

I’ve only really been using the phone for the past week or so and there are a couple of areas where I can already see we may run into problems.

Firstly, the battery life. With my usage, not particularly heavy, the battery usually only lasts just over a day. Given that we’ll be using these devices for data collection, then they’re likely to be having heavy use in areas with little or no mains power. We are testing out some small solar power chargers.

Secondly, the GPRS coverage. GPRS is not used widely here and coverage in extremely patchy (even in large city like Mekelle) and it’s not yet been rolled out to other more rural areas (or even large towns). Sim cards need to be specifically enabled to use GPRS – it’s not turned on by default. The applications we’re testing out (EpiSurveyor and Sana) will both allow data to stored until an area with coverage is reached, but unless the user visits Mekelle on a regular basis then the data will never get uploaded.

I’m sure that improvements in the phones and the phone network infrastructure will eventually make both of my concerns invalid – it’s just a question of when they will be addressed.

The other questions and areas I’d like to look at include:

1) How easy is inputting the data on such a small screen? Might a tablet or netbook PC be more appropriate? Perhaps they’ll work well for short, relatively simple surveys, but not for others?
2) Do any of the HEW’s already have java enabled phones? If so, this would enable them to use the EpiSurveyor application without any new phones.
3) Do any of the phones support input using ge’ez (the alphabet used for Amharic and Tigrinian)? I can’t see how to input these characters on my phone (if anyone knows how I’d be pleased to hear from you), but I can display the characters.
4) How long do the phones take to get a GPS signal? For each record input we can automatically attach the location coordinates – but I’ve noticed that sometimes the phones can take a long time getting a GPS fix. With the power issues it’s unlikely they’d want to leave the GPS on all the time.
5) Would they really be used? Getting reliable data in these areas (even just for the number of births/deaths) is extremely difficult – reporting processes are often unreliable or just not used. Using these phones could help with gathering this info – but obviously only if they are used.
5) What are the other uses for the phones? E.g. providing remote diagnostic support, clinical support, training content/activities or reference, or perhaps for fun/social activities.

Plus I’m sure many other questions and possibilities will arise over the coming days.

Over the last week, as well as preparing for next weeks delivery of our Basic Certificate in Online Education to nearly 50 new staff, I’ve also been looking at ways in which we can extend the project. Possibilities we’re investigating include offering the certification to staff at other Ethiopian universities, testing the thin client infrastructure at another organisation and taking thin clients attached to a data projectors/whiteboards into the classroom.

Getting the network into the classroom would allow us to help close the gap between the classroom teaching and the online activities – currently they are very separate, but if students can see the Moodle content/activities in the classroom, they’re more likely to realise they can access this content and more in the computer labs. It also gives us the possibility to test out whiteboards and other technologies.

The labs we installed last November are still working well, only a few of the terminals aren’t working and these are almost all due to poor network or power connection, rather than the terminals themselves. We still have a few issues regarding getting the labs open outside normal working hours. The Health Sciences lab is well used as it’s always open during the normal working day, but we still have to work on extending these hours and also make sure we can get the Technology Institute lab open.

Mike and Elfu in the new lab

In the Technology Institute, as well as ordering several hundred new PCs (not yet all purchased/distributed) they are building a new thin client lab on a similar model to our existing lab. This lab is reusing old PCs as thin clients – with the new PCs arriving there should be plenty of old PCs available for use. It’s a huge room, space for 60 terminals. All the furniture is being produced by the university’s workshop and I was pleased to see that they are using my design for the hexagonal tables which we have in the other labs.

[Our labs need some better names - any suggestions welcome ]

Metalwork for new tables

We begin delivery of the elearning training again on Monday and we have had a lot of interest from staff. Our plan was to deliver to 15-20 staff, but we had over 50 staff asking to join. Only a few who have told us they are leaving for masters soon we’ve had to turn down. I expect that, similar to last year, we’ll have a fairly high drop out rate, but even if half complete we’ll have more than 20 new courses online for student access.

In personal news, I was very pleased to get my first shower in over a week on Friday – the water in our area of town had been completely off. The well near our house was restricting the amount of water anyone could take, despite the best rainy season for 10 years only just ending.