This post has three purposes, which I think overlap sufficiently to combine them: A User Guide for the system that we developed for UNICEF, IDS and RuralNet Zambia A Developers’ Guide for anyone wishing to build something similar Notes on lessons learned that may assist future implementers Project goals Automate the data entry part of [...]
Embedding jinja2 templates in Django templates
November 15th, 2011
We recently integrated the Askbot forum into the Django-based websites we developed for the RIMI4AC Project. Askbot uses the Jinja2 templating language but this was incompatible with the standard Django templates we had used up to this point. Here’s how we solved the problem. When we were asked to recommend a forum to be integrated [...]
How can a $35 tablet computer change the world?
October 21st, 2011
Osama Manzar poses some very interesting questions about India’s new $35 tablet computer “for the poor”. However he doesn’t attempt to answer these questions, leaving the reader in no doubt that he thinks the answer is No! in all cases. I must admit to being skeptical about any such innovation, and I’ve been listening to [...]
Jazz Talking: The Agile & Participation Event
September 28th, 2011
A format for a multi-disciplinary conversation – two experts, on a sofa, in front of an audience.
Computers in Schools: Sound solutions
September 5th, 2011
Activities with sound are ideal for kids. Preferably lots of sound. Especially when it comes to teaching language, reading and writing. When you have a classroom full of children with computers, each working at their own pace on speech or language tasks, they need private sound rather than the built-in speakers of their laptops. Otherwise [...]
Ubuntu Laptops in Schools
September 1st, 2011
I’m currently working on a project that’s putting computers into Zambian schools to try to revolutionise education, making it more fun and interactive for kids, and reducing the problems of teacher absence. They’re using Intel Classmate style PCs, currently running Windows 7 Home Starter. I’m investigating whether Ubuntu would provide a better experience. It might [...]
Traffic shaping with PF, ALTQ and HFSC
August 5th, 2011
We usually use Linux firewalls for traffic shaping, because the power of the traffic control (tc) system exceeds FreeBSD’s dummynet in most ways. Dummynet can be used to create arbitrary delays and packet loss, which is very useful for simulating poor connections, but not for sharing bandwidth and prioritising packets between different traffic classes on [...]
Checking missing translations automatically
July 26th, 2011
For our open source openconsent project, which uses the Django framework, we have recently added internationalisation support. Here’s how we’re testing it. Before any translations are in place, it’s difficult to ensure that all text is appropriately tagged for translation, either with {% trans %} tags in templates or using gettext() and its friends in [...]
Starting and Stopping VNC with Fabric
July 13th, 2011
We wanted to have a VNC server for client demos and for remote pairing on tasks. Our old VNC server was in the office, so the bandwidth available to anyone outside the office was pretty poor, leading to a pretty bad experience – lots of lag between doing anything and seeing the result, slow screen [...]
8 bit alpha png optimisation with pngquant
June 28th, 2011
It looks like we may have found an alternative to great png optimisation at last, pngquant. We really struggled with this issue on the Reaction Scorecards website as the homepage had some graphics with fine lines and alpha transparency which were proving difficult to optimise. In the past I have used Adobe fireworks which seemed [...]