UNZA GROUP

I should say i would like to thank everyone that made it possible for us to be in Macha. Our Dean Dr Wamukwamba, HOD Mr. Nyoyi, The Director of Linknet Mr Van stam and Mr. Jonathan Beckens, the Linknet students and the entire Vision community for their hospitality.

We managed to finish our program of Networking where we had concentrated on the wireless part and the Linksys system. We also did A+ courses with the local students such as the Internet, the connections made, security systems, Care for PC's and Laptops, other topics in IT.

We travelled back safely and i would say our flight back was wonderful.

May God bless them all.

For more information you may google http://www.link.net.zm/

Unexpexted Fairwell Party

Having had such a tiresome week, Mr Jonathan Beckens , our teacher and members of staff of Macha vision community center organized a graduation party for their students and UNZA farewell party. It was so lovely and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We were called somewhere around 19hours of which we all met at the restaurant at the community center. There was beautiful food, dancing and speeches. It was awesome. It finished somewhere around 22:30 hrs.I thank them all for such a beautiful evening.

Final Project

Hallo!
Am fine just winding up everything.Last week was so busy that i had no time to blog but to work and work. We went to Macha Mission Hospital to survey the routers and their locations which made two routers from the ten, not to communicate with each other. Was tiresome but we managed. We noticed that in our places of interest, there were so many trees blocking the signals and the walls were too many and thick. We recommended that by putting an extra router midway between our places of interest would help solve the problem. This was somewhere near the TB Room. The trees couldn't be cut down as this would affect shelter meant for visitors and patients. Field work involved measuring distances, knowing where the routers were placed and determine the distances in between them and finally by using the Link Budget.
Upon surveying the place and doing the link budgets, we analyzed the situation and come with with a report, both on hard copy (Microsoft word) and power point.
On friday, Dr wakuwambwa our DEAN, Mr Njoyi our HOD, and our senior lecturer came to Macha for the Graduation Day for the LITA students (LINKNET STUDENTS). We also presented our final project report we undertook last week at the Mission Hospital. Was a beautiful day.

UNZA

This is a place I can say I will miss. Different people grouped together following different cultures and behaviours. Many people wonder why we misbehave, as they would call it. Sometimes we do it for fun, to be noticed, when we are broke and we need the government to do something. Silly hey, we call it life!
First year and second were Bad, but now am a big girl and able to handle pressure. At one time during VIVAS, as we would call them, a can of tear gas dropped in my room and thank God nobody was in there. For the next two weeks my room was the most smelly room around the block. The pressure i would get from school, missing good movies at arcades during exam times, being innocently chased by the police and cursing them, the monks passing funny comments, all that will be missed.
I would go on and on and complain about our biggest university in the country but one thing for sure is that it has made me acquire knowledge and above all meet good people i may call friends. I love my school precisely school of engineering. So love your school. it is the reason why you are what you have become.
During this week we were learning about Behaviors of radio waves, huygens' principle, fresnel zones, link budget (which simply means how much the equipment costs and specifications, wheather or not your transmission will work depending on several factors like transmission power, sensitivity(ability to speak and hear) , cable loss, free space loss, Antenna gain. All these help to calculate the signal.
When Radio waves travel through air they produce fresnel zones.The higher the frequency, the higher it is absorbed. As a practical example we made a link budget. This afternoon we have a project somewhere in the hospital. There are about 10 routers in the hospital and two of them are not communicating with each other. Our main job for today is to find causes for this and to make a link budget and see if the solutions we will discover will work. We are going to use mesh networking and the software being used is called Freifunk software.
Over the weekend, We have been invited to the Lwindi ceremony practiced by the Tongas. Its an overview of their culture and traditional dances. I can't wait.

Happiness and Stress

Wow, today has been stressful. Been trying to log on to the web i opened for myself that is biddykams.multiply.com unfortunetly i forgot my password. Tried to use forgot your password service and guess what, the email is not being received in my in box. Spent like almost an hour. I felt so tired.
But then again i thought, Is it that am not happy today and thats why am forgetting things or what? Then i thought, the happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they simply make the most of everything that comes along their way.
When you have friends, it adds value to your lives. Have friends to build you up, to show you things, to help you, to share life's greatest gifts.
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who have searched, and for those who tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.
The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past. You can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
When I was born, I was crying and everyone around me was smiling. Lets live our lives so that when we die, you and I will be the ones smiling and everyone around us will be crying.
So lets be happy and put on a smile everyday. Life is too short.

Tears of a woman!

Have you ever wondered why your wives ,girlfriends ladies in general cry?Well, here is the answer.
A boy asked his mother
why do you cry?
Because i am a woman, she answers.
I don't understand ,he says
His mother hugs him and says:
and u never will.
Later the little boy asked his father
why does mommy cry?
all women cry for a reason is all that his father could answer him.
When he become an adult like you, he asked God:
Why do women cry so easily? and God answered;
When I created women,she needed to be special.
I created her shoulders strong enough to bear the weight of the world
and soft enough to be comforted.
I gave her the strength to give life,
the kind that accepts the rejection that often comes from children.
I gave her the strength to allow her to go when everyone gives up.
The kind that takes care of her family,despite illness and fatigue.
I gave her the sensitivity to love her children unconditionally, even when they have hurt her deeply.
I gave her the strength to endure her husband in his faults
and to stay at his side without weakening and finally, i gave her tears to shed whenever she needs them to be shed.
So you see, the beauty of a woman is not in the cloths she wears, nor is it in her face or in the way she does her hair.
The beauty of a woman resides in her eyes.
It is the door to her heart, the door where love resides.
And often through her tears that you see her heart go by.
All beings are beautiful.
Get to appreciate your lady and be proud of her. There is just one chance in life.Live to your best.
Remember, Love begins with a smile
grows with a kiss
and ends with a tear!

HAVE A BLESSED DAY.

summary for the week

The week was so challenging. Had two assignments.The first one was browsing on HTML,creating an account with geocities.com and to finally upload a picture into my profile.I few hints to share on how to go about it would be;clicking into www.geocities.com,go into device manager.If you have an account like me,you use your yahoo password to sign in.you go under (manage) and you open file manager and you go to upload files by browsing through the images of your interest.You look around and locate the URL address by coping it and pasting it in your profile where it is written (about me).
We learnt on javascripts,visual basic scripts,computer codes,WIFI connections, Firewalls,bridging using AP-CLIENT and its advantages.The bridging was interesting. It allows for fast internet because you may restrict other users from using your network.The computer which is the access point will have a MAC address and so will the client. This will allow only the two to communicate and blocking other users. The speed is usually 54Mps. If there are more clients, the speed is reduced. This explains why we complain if the internet is slow without understanding that alot of clients are connected to one access point and each person doing a span of things.
Depending on the type of routers, it may have 2 or 3 MAC addresses. You may get the MAC address for your PC or router by going to the start bar and going to run and type( ipconfig /all )
It will give you all the important parameters.
The last exercise was to take photos. We went to the dam,was fun and that explains the pictures in this blog post.
Later!

Assignment

Finally finished our assignment today. One problem we faced was that we didn't know that one of the routers IP address was already existing.
In order to get into the control panel for the router by using the software (dd-wrt), we went to the browser and typed in the IP address. upon doing that, a page was displayed and it gave different configuration modes, wireless settings, administration settings etc. we went under the wireless bar and put our settings to AP- CLIENT ,Put the IP settings to static and changed the host part and kept the network part, other settings were also done. When pinging one PC from the other, we could read out that all the data was transfered and nothing lost. We gave the two routers names and we were able to bridge the two routers.
We noticed that Different subnets couldn't talk to each other until we used a gateway.The only problem we faced was in trying to connect the client PC to the internet and thats what we are working on today. As we further on did our assignment, in order for the Access point to be connected to the network we needed a gateway.
The other set of routers were challenging. The model was WRT54G version 7. The only thing we managed to do was to be able to see one PC from the other by setting the routers. It was not possible to bridge the routers by using the software WRT.We configured the routers and did the necessary settings. The following were the IP addresses in our assignment.
for the access point we used 10.1.1.190 (wan) and 192.168.2.1 (lan).
for the client, we used 192.168.2.2 (wan) and 192.168.3.1 (lan).

Knock knock

hallo,
Today,we were given an assignment on how to make two computers communicate with each by using a wireless network. We were given 2 routers, the documentations, in short 2 full and sealed packages containing all the information needed for the set up wizard.
We were in two groups but we decided to work together to put all our ideas in achieving the assignment. It took us the whole day to put everything in place unfortunetly, we had a problem on the final part of the installations. It was when entering the password on step 7. Upon typing in the password, the pop up was telling us to unplug the DSL cable and plug it back again but still the same problem. And now this time, it told us to enter a password again and again.
I called it a hot afternoon,tried all passwords but still failed to go ahead.
Today has marked a year since I last came here and I thought of sharing three or four photos I took. I asked my friends to take me round and they took me to a place called Gideons and the dam. It was a beautiful day.I enjoyed myself tho i got tired. It was kilometers away, as if i were on my way to the promised land.
How was the weekend?
It was fun. We had volleyball on saturday and sunday afternoons around 16:30hrs. Musapa the sports captain blew the whistle inviting everone to come and organize themselves. We could have been 25. The winning team kept on replacing the losers from each play. You could have been there. Where you?
On sunday the kitchen was closed so we all assembled at Mr Aniset Kamanga's place and had lunch. We were 9 of us, Aniset, Musapa, Mwatwa and the 6 of us. Mr Van stam donated 2 pizzas. mhe mhe mhe, they were so delicious.
Now getting back to today;
At 16 hours we called it a day but of course continued straggling trying to finish up the assignment.
Bye bye.

Chech this out

Hallo viewers!
Today Mr Van Stam, the director of linknet in macha came with a visitor overseas to look at the mighty projects being done in macha.They came in class and observed what we were doing and told us about the meeting he had with the minister of Education in lusaka.The meeting was fruitful and they will soon be coming to macha and hoping that they take a part in this investment for the rural people and the upcoming Ubuntu Campus.
Today i should say i'm impressed on the technology i'v seen in macha, the wireless internet, the networking,the hospital,MIAM and in general the plan and the design of the community,Its beautiful. People should see this.It may be in the rural area but the activities being done by everyone is great.Everyone works together all are friendly and above all everyone looks up to God to make things work.Visit this place and you'll see the beauty.A few years from now,Macha will be everyones place to visit and invest.
Mr Gertjan Van Stam,the Director of linknet has been in Zambia since 2004 and from what i'v seen around this place he is a man with a vision,helping to develop the local peoples skills and free training.The locals are 6 so far and they are doing A+ which constitutes of basic software,hardware,networking etc.
They are been taught by Mr Jonathan Backens,a young man from united states,He did Combined courses in Engineering and Computer science as majors and some other stuff.A Good teacher indeed. The local students can actally build computers, can determine sources of failure for several problems in troubleshooting or looses of signal , helping users,can set up a network just a few to mention..And i should say that is great.They havn't been to college but they are being taught by someone that has been to university and they are good.Like yesturday, we were putting up internet cables and connecting them to our PC's,(RJ 45 cables) and testing if they were working,and they did!
I believe that if people are talented they should extend a hand to others like what Mr vanstam and Mr jonathan are doing.
Jumping to class now,
Today we were learning about security, How information is transfered from one computer to another via internet.
Data is bundled together as packets and for it to be transfered to another computer through the internet, headers are attached to it.
The first header tells us what program is used to read the file.It is usually FTP, and it is attached to both ends of the data.The second headers surrounds the first ones and are called TCP which tells us where the data is coming from and where it is going, it will give you the IP Addresses and finally the data with the headers is sent to the required destination.Upon arrival to the desired computer the pieces are put back together and the headers fall out the outer ones first and the inner ones second.One at a time. The inner headers will again tell us which program should be used to open the files. Finally the receiver gets their lets say song and open it through windows media player for instance.
One would wonder how your internet service provider knows that you are connected to the internet.The two main ways are:
1. Through Point to point connection ( PPP).A number is dialed to your ISP to be connected and their is need for a password.
2. Through DSL. A single telephone line goes through a DSL box and two other
connections extends from the box.One goes to your PC and the other to your
phone. This is advantageous. You can have a single connection to serve to
two tasks in your house or work place.
On Security measures we discussed various viruses and how they affect your computer,and certain ways to prevent down loading them.
Examples of common viruses includes:
1. Boot sector virus, this one moves the information in the boot sector
2. Stealth virus, it constantly changes
3. Root kit, This one loads before your operating system loads. It can change
the system and it cannot easily be found
4. Spyware ,Its a hidden software which reports on you to a website
5. Worm, It is self Replicating
6. Keylogger, records your typing and sends it to a the website
7. Browser hijacker, Everytime you open a browser you go to their web page
Wow,just a few to mention.
How can you prevent them, the most important ones are that:
a) Do not open on links in the emails
b) Do not forward messages anyhow
c) Scan the attached document.

I hope you'll get one to two tips from what i got from class today

What I learnt today!

Today was a beautiful but rather a hot day.
I learnt about PROXY in networking.How a group of PCs are connected to a gateway all the way to a web page say (www.google.com) and finally the internet.
A Gateway is a generic name used which shows how a LAN gets to another network ,it allows one network to communicate with another network whilst a proxy is a server which acts anintemediary between computers and the internet, In short it makes requests for you.
I further learnt on proxy-caching which simply means the storing of webpages accessed often. One interesting thing on how go about proxy-caching is to follow some steps below.
1. The user requests for a webpage
2. A proxy interrupts requests and asks for the web page in place of the user
3. The web page is sent back to the proxy
4. The proxy stores the web page in a file/ cache on the screen
5. The proxy sends copy to the user

Windows uses a version of proxy called ICS.
I further experienced on how to locate and get an IP Address, which can be found through the static or the Dynamic way and also the classes of networks and how to write them.
I think todays lesson was pretty cool and interesting.Some of these things you don't get to learn about them by using the school,s syllabus but through research work and interest.
Later!

Testing!

My name is bridget kamanga. My friends call me biddy. I'm actually trying if this blogging stuff works. we were learning about it in class some two days ago and i thought i should try it out.Thanks to my teacher jonathan.
I'm a forth year student at the university of zambia studying electrical engineering. I'm specializing in electronics and telecommunications.
To the left, that is me with my school mates during some schools function.
I'm currently in macha right now for a month. I'm attending a workshop on wireless networking, solar panels and some other stuff. I'm hoping to benefit a lot and extend the knowledge elsewhere.
It's kind of cool and fun.Away from the busy city and stressful life. We are right in the middle of the bush.
Wow, i think its time up.The blogging test is over.