Week 1    22 January – 28 January, 2006 

We left Newark, NJ Friday Jan 20 at 7pm and landed in Accra, Ghana
 Saturday Jan 21 at 9pm.


Just as we were about to board the plane out of Newark we realized
 that we didn't have one of our carry on items.  The black bag 
 containing our brand new GSM cell phones, cameras and other electronics. 


We spent Sunday in Accra.  Monday morning we were met by Emanuel 
Azasoo and John Ocran from TTI.  They greeted each of us with a 
hug.  We picked up Amy Sun from her hotel and departed for Takoradi.
 During the drive from Accra to Takoradi we had time to chat 
about local customs and some Fab Lab history. 


During the rest of the week  Amy showed us the lay of the land and 
 introduced us to some local restaurants.  She passed on many bits of 
 cultural know-how,  showed us the market place and taught us
 the way to haggle with taxi drivers. We met the Mayor, visited
 an orphanage, and met Linda, the owner of the Joy Restaurant. 


On Tuesday, John Boafo, the principal of TTI, hosted a meeting where 
 we were introduced to the heads of departments.  We were then given
 a tour of the campus.


When we got to the Fab Lab, our first impression was that the lab's
 equipment seemed to be reasonably functional on the surface,
 but was not being used to its full capacity. Small projects 
 were being cut on the laser cutter and the vinyl cutter, but the Modella 
 looked like it had not been used for quite some time. The plasma
 cutter had been working recently, but was having a problem when we arrived. 


Martin worked with Emmanuel and Abu, one of the Fab Lab assistants,
 to repair a linear bearing that holds the plasma cutter beam 
 to the X-Y table.  The ball bearings had fallen out of the race
 due to the fact that the plastic cap had bent in the heat. 


Amy was going to order a new assembly from Torchmate.  In the 
 meantime, the students machined a new cap piece in the mechanical
 department  to replace the plastic one. This is the kind of
 DIY fix that happens here all the time. They just don't tell anyone 
 in the rest of the Fab world what they're doing. It was rather tedious 
 to put the bearings back together, but our team worked on it patiently
 with care and precision.
 

The network was working over Ethernet, but the wireless router had 
 been disconnected and put away.


Network printing to the HP PSC 2510 all-in-one printer was not working
 properly.  We could ping the IP address, but could not send it a print
 job over the network.  The printer will print locally when
 connected via USB.  


The electronics area was clean and looked like it had not been used
 recently.


Most of the activity in the lab was focused on the computers. Many 
 students were drawing in Open Office. Some were using Boolean operations
 and cutting simple objects (mostly key chains) on the laser cutter,
 but many others were drawing pictures with no larger project in mind 
 or randomly making basic shapes with the tool palette. The
 other major activity was hanging out on the internet.  Groups of 
 students were huddled around computers surfing, e-mailing to pen pals
 around the world, using IM to chat, and downloading an assortment
 of music, and pictures.
 

Stella, one of the older students, was interested in MIT. Amy helped
 her understand the college application process and begin SAT preparation. 
 We attempted to download a sample SAT test which, due to the
 slow and unreliable internet connection, took repeated attempts 
 over the course of four days. 
 

We began installing Ubuntu.  The first installation was Ubuntu 5.04 
 on a Dell Optiplex SX270 with a Dell 1703FP display.  Things went relatively
 smoothly except for trouble spots with screen resolution and 
 network setup.  We have posted the install notes on the CBA Fab Lab Forum. 


Open Items:


-- Amy was going to order a new assembly from Torchmate.  Do you know
 if she did? 

-- Printing to the HP PSC 2510 is still not working over the network.



Stay tuned for more,

Janice & Martin