Kenya, Teaching

Whenever you think that things couldn’t possibly get more busy/stressful/expensive/whatever, they do! Here’s the deal, I posted a few weeks ago that our semester had started and that I was teaching four classes; it turns out that I’ll be teaching five!

A student came last week saying she failed a class in 2005 and she wants to come sit for the class again. The thing is that it’s my favorite area, and I’m really the only one at the school who can teach it. The course is Operating Systems II, basically Unix/Linux system administration. It’s not really terrible, it’s just bad timing because we’re already in the fifth week of classes.
Continue Reading

Kenya, Miscellaneous

I bought a Nokia 2630 phone a few weeks ago. It has Bluetooth and GPRS, the latter meaning that I can browse the net on the go. The former plus the latter meaning that I can browse the net from my computer via the phone using the Bluetooth. I got it working in a few minutes on my Zenwalk (Slackware) laptop, and now you can too!

Continue Reading

Kenya, Miscellaneous

I live next to nowhere in Kenya, so Internet access is pretty limited. I am able to access it at work, but it’s slow and only available during the day. Luckily Safaricom, one of the local cell phone companies, just rolled out 3G technology across Kenya. My cell phone isn’t very fancy so I picked up the USB modem instead. When the Safaricom employee asked if I had brought my laptop for them to configure I replied, “Um… no. I’ll do it myself…” So this is the culmination of my ensuing research.

Using a Huawei e220 With Safaricom Under Linux


Safaricom\'s Huawei e220The Huawei e220 is a USB HSDPA modem capable of some crazy speeds like 7.2 megabits per second, though Safaricom advertises the max on its network as being around 3.6. If you look around on the internet you’ll find a dearth of information about using the Huawei e220 under Linux, as lots of mobile phone companies all over the world have been providing these units for a few years. The software required to use these under Linux has changed a lot of the years, and it’s actually pretty easy to get working once you piece together the information from several blogs, forums, and man pages. If you also live in Kenya, use Linux, and have one of these modems, keep reading.
Continue Reading