SaigonNezumi.com » Apple/BSD/Linux

My poor AspireOne

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:29:25 +0000

On Thursday, I was surprised to see my netbook’s screen cracked. I had it for two years. It will cost nearly $100 to replace the screen so I decided to wait until I get to the US.

My Poor Wet Yamaha Nouvo Well, this morning I got up early and Mr. Ut,...
Poor Pugs Pugs are a very popular breed in Saigon these days. ...
Drupal Well, looks like I will be learning Drupal now. We...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Viettel 3G Modem

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:36:32 +0000

I just bought my 3G usb modem from Viettel today. 780,000 VND for the usb modem. 50,000 VND monthly charge, 65 VND per mb. You can recharge your account like any cell phone in Vietnam, no bills. Initially I got up to 2.92 Mbps downloads with Speakeasy in the US. Not bad. Faster then wired.

Bandwidth Irregularities with FPT? Just checked my FPT ADSL bandwidth with Speakeasy‘s Seattle server....
Increased Internet Speeds in Vietnam? VNPT just announced they will increase internet speeds (and prices)...
ADSL Bandwidth , Slow? It is 11:30 PM at night when normally the internet...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Thank you FPT

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 05:45:25 +0000

You guys are one of the worst ISPs in Vietnam. Related posts:Saigon’s worst motorbike rider Over a week ago, this woman on her motorbike nearly... Faster Internet Bandwidth Coming to Vietnam? The internet bandwidth here in Vietnam definitely makes for a... Remote Help Desk ERP application support engineer Hey guys, I am currently recruiting for [...] Related posts:

Saigon’s worst motorbike rider Over a week ago, this woman on her motorbike nearly...
Faster Internet Bandwidth Coming to Vietnam? The internet bandwidth here in Vietnam definitely makes for a...
Remote Help Desk ERP application support engineer Hey guys, I am currently recruiting for the following position/s:...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

End of a horrible week

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:59:21 +0000

Finally, it is an end of probably one of my lackluster weeks in Saigon. Lets see, what happened:

HSBC deactivated my bank account because they could not find me. I forgot to change my address but I was surprised that HSBS never tried to call me or email me. I always get advertisements through SMS and email. I went in to change my address and passport information. Now I can get money transferred to my email account.
Yesterday I got my favorite shirt muddy and probably stained while I was following two HTV employees to their office in Tan Binh not far from the airport. I thought their office was in District 1 so I did not bring my jacket or wear a mask. Forty minutes later, I regretted that.
On the note of HTV, they called me and I thought they wanted me to complete a project for my school. I agreed but it turned out, rather lately, that they wanted me for another project for their client. Why they were not clear in the beginning, I am not sure. They recorded me speaking English so fast, I had to skip words. Their transcript was three pages long and I needed to complete it in under 4 and a half minutes. I made it but I feel sorry for the Can Tho Province residents who have to listen to it.
My Moodle template for my school became corrupted, I do not know why. It only works in wide resolutions greater than 1024×768.
My Joomla template had problems. This was for my own new website.
Several of my school projects are behind schedule thanks to the Albanian hacker.
On the note of open source, I let the guys down again. I am too tired to organize a meeting…
At home, I cannot sleep. Even worse, I wake up early to fast so I get less and less sleep each night. Yeah, I am a grouch these days.
My Milestone phone drained it’s battery really fast this week. Wifi is off and most of the apps as well. Bad battery???
Got into an argument with a significant other. That was a big drainer for me.
I need sleep…

Anyway, it is Friday. Saturday I work but I may skip it to rest and get caught up on projects.

Can’t wait for a brighter Monday morning in Saigon. Next week has a lot of positives.

Have a good weekend.

There, one of my few negative posts on my blog…

Ubuntu Linux Install Week at AIS Picture Gallery It all started at the beginning of last week. I...
Job Opening: PHP Programmer – People with Ideas People with Ideas is currently recruiting for a full-time PHP...
IT class update, more Vietnamese Linux users :-) Well, I just completed week 3 at the American International...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My computer desk

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:32:13 +0000

I like my new computer set up : -) Related posts:My desk Setting up Ubuntu with two monitors. Working on my Ubuntu... My Computer Lab nearly ready Yesterday I saw the monitors for my computer lab stacked... Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2007 Yesterday, Tony, his wife, and I attended the Vietnam Computer... Related posts [...] Related posts:

My desk Setting up Ubuntu with two monitors. Working on my Ubuntu...
My Computer Lab nearly ready Yesterday I saw the monitors for my computer lab stacked...
Vietnam Computer Electronics World Expo 2007 Yesterday, Tony, his wife, and I attended the Vietnam Computer...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Learning OpenBSD

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 05:13:19 +0000

We plan to install a firewall and web filter in OpenBSD next week. Reading up on it today. Related posts:Update #3: Electricity problems with EVN EVN informed my friend today that the power meter was... Joomla/Moodle/openSIS – Perfect match for education? Well, it has been nearly a month and a half... Sakai: an online Collaboration [...] Related posts:

Update #3: Electricity problems with EVN EVN informed my friend today that the power meter was...
Joomla/Moodle/openSIS – Perfect match for education? Well, it has been nearly a month and a half...
Sakai: an online Collaboration and Learning Environment I just read a good article about Sakai, an online...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My desk

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:35:16 +0000

Setting up Ubuntu with two monitors. Working on my Ubuntu Thinkpad on the left. Related posts:My computer desk I like my new computer set up : -)... Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1 on my Thinkpad T60 Last Saturday, I got a fully running Ubuntu 8.04.1 system... Debian Lenny on a Thinkpad T60 Okay, I know Debian [...] Related posts:

My computer desk I like my new computer set up : -)...
Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1 on my Thinkpad T60 Last Saturday, I got a fully running Ubuntu 8.04.1 system...
Debian Lenny on a Thinkpad T60 Okay, I know Debian Lenny is still in Beta but...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

OpenSIS

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 03:47:15 +0000

We are testing openSIS today. Related posts:Joomla/Moodle/openSIS – Perfect match for education? Well, it has been nearly a month and a half... TGIF in Saigon Well, it is the end of my workday at Horizon... Job Available – IT Support Staff We are currently looking to hire one or two IT... Related posts brought to [...] Related posts:

Joomla/Moodle/openSIS – Perfect match for education? Well, it has been nearly a month and a half...
TGIF in Saigon Well, it is the end of my workday at Horizon...
Job Available – IT Support Staff We are currently looking to hire one or two IT...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Joomla/Moodle/openSIS – Perfect match for education?

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:36:27 +0000

Well, it has been nearly a month and a half since I started as IT Director at Horizon. For us, it is crunch time in choosing what systems to use at our school. The Ministry of Training and Education started classes nearly a month early this year. To add a bit of stress, a hacker took down our website and school information system. This gave us an opportunity to start from scratch.

Website/Content Management System

Our major need right now was to get our website back up. The original site was run on Joomla. Since I never really used Joomla, I want to replace it either with the propriety finalsite CMS or with the open source Drupal or WordPress. Finalsite, which is used by many well known international schools around the world, was my favorite but since three of us in school are web developers, it did not make sense to pay a license for this software. We thought about Drupal but the professional themes were not that desirable. I am a WordPress guy but after spending a day migrating the school website over to it, I gave up. WordPress did not make a good platform for a school website, it is just for blogs and I finally admitted that this week.

Hence, we decided to stick with Joomla. We are using a professional theme and the site should go live this week. It took me a day to get used to the admin interface and now I really like Joomla. Joomla has many amazing modules and plugins and I am quite surprised to learn that many websites are actually developed with Joomla.

We plan to integrate Joomla with our SIS and LMS in the future. A big benefit is that since Joomla is popular in Vietnam, it already has Vietnamese language support.

School Information System

Horizon used an in-house SIS for the last 3 years developed from a sister school in Cambodia. This SIS was a bit crude but it did it’s job. Right now I must find a good replacement for our SIS within a week. My favorite, is SchoolOne. Veracross and PowerSchool are the leading propriety SISs out there but neither really fit the need of Horizon since we are using both the Cambridge (CIE) and Vietnamese curriculum. Both are no goes most likely for this academic year. I am even looking at the SIS developed for the American International School which I really liked.

Right now I am testing openSIS on our server which is used by The American School of Vietnam and APU International School. Hence, we will either choose SchoolOne (my favorite) or openSIS. If we go with either, I will have to bring in a developer to localize the entire database and integrate it with Joomla (single login).

Learning Management System

The last major project for me at my school is to find a learning management system we can use. Our favorite is StudyWiz out of Australia. StudyWiz integrates with SchoolOne. It has one of the nicest interfaces I have seen with LMSs. Both SchoolOne and StudyWiz are fully supported by the companies which can make my job easier but since the school year already started, I may have to postpone the two until January.

In the meantime I installed Moodle, a popular open source LMS. I am not a fan of Moodle being a long time Sakai user but it does meet the needs of my school. It is already localized in Vietnamese which makes it a nice choice. Moodle can also be integrated with Joomla via Joomdle or JFusion.

Final Decision

It looks as if in the meantime, we can use Joomla/openSIS/Moodle for our interim needs. I am looking at a couple developers to help with the integration including a Viet Kieu Drupal guy. I will post about our final choices in the future. We still have a lot of work to do…

Joomla at Horizon I was a bit premature in selecting Drupal. In the...
Update from Saigon (Working in International Schools) Well, now I am moving unto Year 6. I am...
Drupal Well, looks like I will be learning Drupal now. We...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Job Available – IT Support Staff

SaigonNezumi (Kevin) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:02:02 +0000

We are currently looking to hire one or two IT Support Staff for our An Phu campus in HCMC. See below:

Title: IT Support Staff (Full-time) – Vietnamese

Department Name: IT Department

Date Opened: Immediate

Salary: Based on experience and qualification.

Job Description:

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Assist the IT Director with the evolution, security, and management of the school IT network. Assist in the Management installation and
maintenance of all desktops and laptops within the school campus system. Assist as school liaison to Internet Service Providers and IT vendors. Utilize quality systems and methods that ensure fast, reliable and secure systems while maintaining a customer focus.

REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information System or related
One year of work experience managing and maintaining IT networks and workstations, an equivalent combination of education and experience will also be considered
Leadership skills dealing with non-technical staff needed
Must have a technical understanding of local and wide area networks, switches, routers, and firewalls and Management tools
Working knowledge of PC’s, MS Windows OS necessary
A+, Network+ or CCNA certification preferred
Excellent customer service, interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills required
Knowledge of English a must

Send cover letter, resume, and references to kevin.miller@hibsvietnam.com

Review of resumes will begin immediately and continue until position is filled, with a preferred filing date of September 1, 2010. Please reference the job title in cover letter.

Remote Help Desk ERP application support engineer Hey guys, I am currently recruiting for the following position/s:...
Job Opening: IT Project Manager IT Project Manager Report to: IT Manager Role: Work with...
Job Opening: PHP Programmer – People with Ideas People with Ideas is currently recruiting for a full-time PHP...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.