Cambodia: KhmerOS to have a social impact

The goal of the KhmerOS project is to produce the basic computer technology necessary for Cambodia to enter the age of technology. The requirements for this technology are clear: It must be in Khmer (Cambodian) language, sustainable, and well adapted to the socio-economic situation of the country. Cambodia not being a profitable market for software companies, the only option left to undertake this effort is to base it on free and open source software (FOSS), which allows translation, adaptation and free distribution of the software.

http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5212173

Khmer Software CDs available on Cambodian market

Below is my original post at KhmerOS website:

KhmerOS would like to announce that Khmer Software and openSUSE CDs are now available on the Cambodian market. You can find the CDs at the following places in Phnom Penh:

• Toul Tom Pong Market
• Around Santho Mok High School
• Around National University of Management (NUM)
• Around Yokuntho High School
• Along Wat Langka Gate
• Central Market

The market will sell the CDs for the following prices:

• $1.5 for Khmer Software CD
• $3.5 for openSUSE 10.2 CDs (7 CDs)

To encourage the sellers, for those who want to get the CDs from KhmerOS office (Open Institute), we will sell the CDs for $0.5 more than the market price.

Paula Deanda feats Bow Wow-EASY: My favorite song this week

My dad’s blog gets more traffic?

Slide number 26th of Visal’s presentation about Blogging 102 during Cambodian Blogger Summit was really funny. It reminds me the time I was at grade 10th (about 10 years ago). My friend and I was playing a game with a stranger boy at about the same age (the same height but he looks stronger than my friend and me). We then had some argument and as the tender boy (we don’t like, well afraid I think, fighting), my friend and I tried to scare that strong boy. We tried all the tricks. We suddenly came up with a nice one. At school, my friend and I were considered as the smallest students at grade 10th. So we asked that boy loudly, “oh yeah!?! What is your grade then?”. He replied with wonder “11th, so what’s up?”.

Yesterday Italian GP

As one of the Ferrari fans, my younger brother and I were really upset of the Ferrari team performance at Monza, Italian GP. The pair drivers, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen were starting on 3rd and 5th position on the grid while the rival Mc-laren’s drivers, Fernado Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were on 1st and 2nd. Starting third, Felipe Massa fought really hard with Hamilton to get 2nd position (I never have doubt about Massa’s performance), but ten laps later was forced to retire from the race with a rear suspension problem. The failure to finish drops Massa to fourth in the championship, 23 points behind leader Hamilton.

The retirement of Massa was putting his fans (yes, me) nervous. Without him, who will fight the Mc-laren? That should be Raikonen. Yes, he made a good start from fifth on the grid to run fourth before Massa retired. With his one-stop strategy, he was later able to briefly run second (about only two laps) before Hamilton made an aggressive pass to re-take the position. Raikkonen finished third, 20 seconds behind Hamilton. That was another pain for his fans. My brother was really angry. Both of us wonder why he performed such a weak performance.

As the result, Alonso won the race while Hamilton and Raikonen finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. With such performance of Ferrari, I never slept tight. I tried to seek the answer behind the result and finally I found the explanation from Raikonen.

Actually he had a pain at his neck after his crashes in practice a day before racing (my brother and I didn’t know it). It was hard for him to hold his head steady under braking. That’s really pity for him. His fans should not have been angry with him.

Ok, here are some interesting photo from the race:

I’m one of those red flag holders.

Mass (3rd) fought with Hamilton (2nd) during the start.

Clever Hamilton went through shortcut.

Was Hamilton really happy with Alonso?

Linux Instant Messenger

Kenno’s post about Pidgin reminds me about Kopete, my favorite instant messenger in Linux.

Kopete’s logo

Sometimes ago, I wrote an article about communication via Kopete using Khmer Unicode. Sometimes it was really difficult to communicate in English if you are Cambodian. We can’t just find an equivalent English words of what you want to say in your native language. Most Cambodian chatters use language transliteration during their chatting.

Yap Man! – This is the English transliteration of the word “យ៉ាប់​មែន” (sorry, Khmer Unicode is required here to avoid the square boxes) in Khmer. I can’t find any English word equivalent to this Khmer word. One of my colleagues suggested “Bullshit” but I don’t think so.

Install OpenOffice Khmer Spell Checker

My cyber-friend, Kenno, has written a very step-by-step instruction on how to install KSC in Debian on his blog.

For how to install it on other Linux distribution and Windows, please follow the instruction contains in the Readme file of the KSC download package.

Discussion about how to install KSC at KhmerOS website:
- http://www.khmeros.info/drupal/?q=en/node/1942
- http://www.khmeros.info/drupal/?q=en/node/1939

KhmerOS released Khmer Unicode spell checker for OpenOffice

Writing Khmer correctly is a very challenge work. It was always a dream to have a computer software which can handle this spelling task. In the past, there were a lot of discussion about this kind of tool. Some people also made some effort to create such tool (we still remember about Nathan’s initiative at SBBIC). Lately, KhmerOS released its first version of Khmer Spell Checker for OpenOffice (both on Windows and Linux). The word list is based on Samdech Chuon Nat dictionary.

I have successfully installed and tested the Spell Checker in OpenOffice 2.1 (both on Windows XP and openSUSE 10.2).

- Almost 100% of people write this ព័ត៌មាន incorrectly.
- The word ប្ដី is also wrong if you use Coeng T (ជើង​ត). You must use Coeng D (ជើង​ដ).
- In Samdech Chuon Nat writing style, it’s wrong to write សម្រាប់ in the descriptive way.
- A rule of thumb is that, you must use Zero-Width Space otherwise you will meet the same situation like the last phrase (ខ្ញុំទៅសាលារៀន).

Based on the word list, the tool offers various choice of suggestion.

It would be also nice to use OpenOffice spelling dialog to check spelling for a long document.

See my original post at KhmerOS website.

Smile pleaz…

Thank you Beth for taking this nice foto during the Cambodian Blogger Summit 2007

Yes, that’s me with the short hair The long hair is Miss. Kong Sidaroth (she would be more happy if we call her only Da). She is the project coordinator of the Woman and E-learning program at Open Institute while I’m her assistant of the E-learning program.

Hey, can I talk for a second pleaz? Look at the man at the left of me, his name is Visal. He talk talk talk until I stop him.

Here are all the fotos taken by Beth during the event.

Opps, thank you 2 for the Google T-Shirt.

Brett Anderson – Love Is Dead: a cool song