The Imara Project

Well I made it back east and after a couple days, back to work too.

The view from home is a bit different

And so is the walk to work

I'm not sure which is the bigger news, the computer giveaway or the first significant rain since I've been here. The rain started just as I was loading the last giveaway into a woman's truck, so I'm going to take it as a good omen. Presumable most people aren't here for a weather report though so I will talk some about the giveaway.

The total for today was 28 systems at minimum, that counts MIT systems and Diné College systems that still had property tags. A few more that already had the tags removed might have gone too. Things got to moving pretty quickly, having free computers in the hall and all.

Today was the last teaching day of class. All that's left is the technology fair/give away on Thursday. That will be an opportunity for some review as the students setup the accounts and settings for others, but no new information.

Went right down to the wire, but got everything in. Maybe the last hour or so was a bit dense, but everyone seemed to manage it. Still don't have an exact count on the number of give away systems, as there's a few we might manage to get done Thursday morning. After the student's cut (each got a PC already), I expect at least a dozen, but we'll see.

One class to go until the Tech Fair/give away day. I wish we had more time to spend on software, hardware and installs have really sucked up the time, but we'll get there. In future I'd either split the class into two, one hardware and one software, or make it a summery practicum class requiring Operating Systems Fundamentals and Hardware Fundamentals.

I must say I'm impressed with they way the students have kept up with the wide range of topics thrown at high speed.

Weaving is a great art among the Diné, so I couldn't really leave without some. I'd hoped to be able to afford something maybe wash cloth sized, but as you can see I only managed coaster sized (not the a beverage will get any where near this!). Hand spun, vegetable dyed wool, it's my current pride and joy. When I'm rich and famous I'll come back for one of the lap quilt sized rugs.

Didn't quit make it to the top there, the pitch went up an the ground got sandier, and that was a bit too daring on my own without having told anyone where I was going or when I'd be back. But there was quite a view. The little digital doesn't like the haze, so you'll need to trust me a bit on that one.

Oh yeh, work...So starting in on my last week here seems like a good time to summarize my my impressions ad such like. I've been thinking quite a bit about that and putting it all into one piece is proving difficult. So while I cogitate here's some more from the day's wonderings.

We have the reading colors section of gcompris translated and working. The working part didn't happen until after class, mostly because it was much simpler than I'd thought. Maybe we can have a translation editor open at the Tech Fair and people add to the translations as they go by...

In the continuing string of things going wrong, after having miss judged the size of the rood directory yesterday, and consequently needing to restart the install of all yesterday's machines today, we had a scheduled power outage (that no one in class knew about because it was scheduled at 9:30 or so) at 11:30am just as the installs were almost finished.

Next Thursday we're holding the first (annual?) Diné College Technology Fair. This was a student generated idea, though I forget just whose and no one is claiming responsibility...

I killed my demonstration machine right before class today so I didn't have a system like the students systems to project on the screen. Since my plan for the morning was to go over the GUI environment and installed applications this was a little bit of a problem.

Spent the first half hour of class trying to kludge something to gather, but to no avail. Ended up running the apps from the command line and saying "somewhere in your menus you'll find OpenOffice.Org" as I ran oowrite, and such. Also found all the things I didn't put on the install list that I should have (well maybe not all...)

So I spent the weekend up in Durango, CO a pretty tourist town on the edge of the San Juan Mountains. It reminded me how much I don't really miss "civilization". Also saw a Celtic Heritage festival there and ran into Renaissance Faire in Mancos, CO on the way back. This put an odd perspective on things in general...

Back in Tsaile, students finished up the last of the hardware bits today. They built up their machines to take home, after a bit of polish on the video and audio systems they'll be ready to take home tomorrow. This should give them more casual time to poke around with the software environment.