Sunday, August 19, 2007

One month... feels like one week!

Nearly a month since I last posted. Seems like only a week. Peter is back this week, so will be sharing the workload again till I leave in September and he is left all alone!

Yes, we do now have bank accounts open in the name of the organisation! We have also changed the accounting package we use to SQL-Ledger. SQL-Ledger is a very good multi-currency and multi-user accounting package that runs on most systems [we are running it on a Linux server] and... its free!

I installed SQL-Ledger and then created the 'chart of accounts' to make it work and then got it printing... sounds easy? I have to have so many different skills to do this work. Actually creating the chart of accounts was tedious but relatively easy, whereas getting the system to print was frustrating and relatively difficult. But now it is working and David and I have had two Wednesdays [he comes in every Wednesday] working on the new system. I shall the whole of each Wednesday with him before we left in September so that he is comfortable with the new system...

Phyo, our trainee designer/programmer has been working on two things: 1) a new administration menu system for all our admin systems [we will use if for administration of web-sites too later on] and 2) designing logo/business cards etc for the organisation. Both have taken some of my time supervising.

Also been frustratedly trying to make dual-layer DVDs on Final Cut Studio. So far not succeeded. I have read and read online about it and some people seem to have no problems at all, others immense problems. I am one of those with immense problems. I am still working on that.

Dual-layer DVDs are like the sort that you normally get when you get a feature film, in that you can store theoretically about 120 minutes at most on a single layer DVD and up to 240 minutes on a dual layer. So a feature film with with all the extras usually needs a dual layer. But... I say theoretically get 120 minutes, this depends on the quality you want on the DVD, the higher the quality the less minutes. So for some projects I need to be able to reliably create dual layer DVDs. So far I have not succeeded.

One of our partner organisations had problems streaming video again, so we took over, again... but its Windows Media. Horrid. So unreliable. Microsoft have admitted a problem with the system and sent a patch out with a 'hack' to the registry as well... which is documented 'at you own risk'. Our partner says they will move all the streaming to Scandinavia in September... good luck to the new people...

In between that all I have been doing all the 'duty engineer' roles as Peter is away. An example: Email comes in from partner tech support to say that they have seen on one of the sites having an 'invalid security certificate'. I gently write back to say something along the lines of 'we warned you about this and told you to notify your users'. Response from tech support guy: 'Yes I told my users but forgot about it myself'. [My paraphrase] If I was a lawyer I would bill them for an hour or my time!

Paula, our new 'administrator' [part of the job is to work out a job description, ie work out what we need administrating and how to do it], has been in a few days and we have been going through things together. She starts regularly some time in September.

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