The ‘famous’ Ombalantu (old name for Outapi) Baobab tree is just 100m from our office premises away (should cut the barbed wire fence some day, as you have to take a kilometer detour to get there). Usually I grab some lunch at GOMA food service and have a siesta under the tree on my camping …
Read more “Lunch break stories: bad boys have come to Outapi”
The landing of the WACS (West Africa Cable System) in Walvis Bay on the 8th of February had been the theme of last months ICT summit. When becoming operational next February it will cut down immediately the latency and hopefully increase the bandwidth for the Namibian Internet end user in the long run. Since last …
Read more “‘We have arrived – the globe is linked’ – but not this week”
In the previous post ‘Linked(in) Outapi’ I’ve mentioned a tiny and costly line which connects our building with the Regional Council. This line provided by the Telecom and ITN had been down from the 5th of September till last week. Almost a month. If everything would run according to the plan we would have sourced …
Open source solutions at schools and within the administration are a mine field since the Namibian Government shut down SchoolNet a few years ago. Their legacy can still be found at many schools where surprisingly some of the OpenLab installations (Linux Terminal Server running on common Desktop PCs + old machines with 64 or 128MB …
Read more “Open source user acceptance field trial: Edubuntu at the Outapi and Okahao library”
Usually 35°C up in the North in the afternoon. Becoming a couch potato would be so easy. Since I’ve been in the North I am trying to avoid that and found several activities to stay in shape. One and a half hour exercise at the Yap gym in Ongwediva on Friday. 30min swimming at Bennies …
Read more “lunch break stories: Namibian summer vs. Ben – 0:1”
Our 22 HP computer school labs. I had them mentioned in ‘Nicht für diese Welt’ in Outapi Times issue #2. Maintenance is done by Netts in Windhoek – in theory. Last month Victor finished to put our own Win2K3 image on all of the servers in the Omusati Region. The Labs are equipped with a …
For months little progress at the construction site of the third gas station in Outapi which will be operated by Caltex (unfortunately no Engen = no Wimpy = no decent coffee). During the last weeks things have changed: construction goes on even after 5.p.m which says a lot. I was told by the lead worker …
Despite the availability of Internet access which has become quite ubiquitous in the country email as an communication channel for official (government) business is virtually not seen yet. A society simply needs time (and not just two or three years as some members of the Namibian Parliament wish for) to get used to the media. …
For the last months making copies at the regional office had become playing the lottery: the machine indicated everything (paper jam, paper tray not detected, system error XY) but ‘yes-I-am-ready-to-make-you-a-copy’. Two weeks ago the ICT department’s new toy a Kyoceramita TASKalfa 300i arrived. Not just a copy machine – a multi function printer (MFP). I …
You’ll get used to that the filling stations in Outapi are sometimes out of gas for up to 24 hours especially around payday. Friday I ran out of gas for my kitchen stove. Not a big deal. Usually you can exchange the empty bottle with a new one at my favorite Indian supermarket or a …