Rio Rancho Native American Families (RRNAF) Group

At the end of March 2020, we were starting to get into the full impact of Covid-19 here. People began to stay home and schools like Rio Rancho Public Schools were assessing impacts. In an effort to help bring the Native American families together (like school district students and families) using technology, I started a group on Groups.io called Rio Rancho Native American Families (RRNAF). Over the subsequent months we have managed to pull together many people and now hold weekly coffee talk meeting on Saturdays to talk about our various concerns. It’s been very useful to talk informally to fellow native parents and students to see what is happening with each other, compare notes about the realities of school now, and learn how we can leverage each of our talents. RRNAF is an open group, so if you are interested in joining, just click the link above.

– Dom

New Badges and Certifications for June 2020

Since we are getting more into the era of accreditations, certifications, and badges.  I thought it fitting to highlight some of the more involved efforts on keeping up with the changing skills landscape and what this looks like.

I have recently earned the following accreditations, certifications, or badges in the month of June 2020:

  • IBM Certification Exam Developer 2020 – Level II (developing the Spectrum Virtualize Administrator Exam)
  • IBM Certified Administrator – Spectrum Virtualize v8.3.1
  • Red Hat Accredited Professional, Red Hat Sales Engineer Specialist – OpenShift Container Platform (OCP)

More of my badges are listed on the Acclaim website.

– Dom

 

Chromebook Users of Rio Rancho

I live in Rio Rancho, New Mexico and my kids attend the Rio Rancho Public Schools District.  One of the changes that have happened over the last couple of years in the district is the adoption of the Google Education infrastructure and the use of Chrombooks throughout all the schools.  I’ve seen investment in classrooms where teachers now have over 30 chromebooks to use for classroom instruction.

With these changes, what I have not seen is any general education for the students, siblings, or parents in the community (and surrounding tribal communities).  I decided to try and change that with the free resources available through the City of Rio Rancho.

I am a volunteer with the city and this enabled me to teach my Raspberry Pi classes in 2017 at the Loma Colorado Public Library.  This library has great resources … rooms, tables, chairs, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, and great internet bandwith!  So all I really needed to do was schedule and coordinate to get this new set of classes started.

One of the challenges in starting anything new is awareness, so I decided to use the Meetup.com to raise awareness initially, then moved on to a email list.  The email list page is at:

https://groups.io/g/cuorr

We had our first class/meetup on July 27, 2019 at the Loma Colorado Public Library Auditorium, I brought 12 Chromebooks for folks to use … we had 11 people attend, some hands on time, and many questions around the Chromebook and Google services.  I was excited about the attendance and am looking at holding this class once a month for now and maybe more frequent based on interest and demand.

I will be scheduling new meetups or classes via meetup.com so, keep an eye on this website for new events or check out to the library calendar.

– Dom

GnuCash Linux on Chromebook via Linux Beta Crostini

I’ve been looking for some time for a solution to run the GnuCash free accounting software local on the Chromebook, now we have it.

This is not the android version of GnuCash via Google Play, this is a full install of GnuCash Linux running in a Linux Container on the Chromebook.

Here is how to install it.

Turn on the Linux (Beta) container for your Chromebook under the settings (you might need a more current Chromebook, I’m running Google Chrome OS version 73 on a Samsung Chromebook 3 XE501C13-K02US as of this writing).

Once the Linux (Beta) is installed and run (this will take some time), you will get a command prompt, this is containerized Linux.  From here you can use the apt-get command to install GnuCash from the default Debian repository.  Simply type:

  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get install gnucash

Once the gnucash install is finished (this will take some time too), you can run the GnuCash program by just typing the command “gnucash” (as indicated in the above image).

This will launch the GnuCash user interface and one can start creating a new GnuCash file or use an existing one.

A couple of notes:

  • The current version in the Debian repository is GnuCash version 2.6.15, the latest in the version 2.6.x series is 2.6.21, not sure if this will be updated anytime soon.
  • The current latest version of GnuCash is 3.5, so for simple accounting the 2.6.15 version may be suitable
  • The gnucash files are installed in their respective directories to run the program and any .gnucash data files can be saved in the linux container which is also available as a folder on the Chromebook after installing the Linux (Beta).
  • I’m looking into more if the current GnuCash 3.5 code can be manually installed in the linux container (it should), but will take time to understand it more and get it running.
  • A GnuCash Icon will be added as part of Linux App group on the Chromebook (see the image below).

So for the cost of a Chromebook one can now get into free double entry accounting software.

Enjoy!

– Dom

 

Winner winner NB3 plant based dinner!

My son Kyle participated in the Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation’s “Healthy Kids! Healthy Futures! Native American Youth App Contest”.  He teamed up with his friend Kaiya (who is homeschooled), to develop a mobile app idea targeted at Native Youth to help combat Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity.  Their mobile app design (previous blog post here) was selected for the final round and combined with a third applicant’s idea to incorporate exercise and meal information.  The three students then worked for another 6 weeks with a local software development company, 11 Online, to see their design become a reality and a minimum viable product (MVP) was created.  Kyle and Kaiya split the $1750 prize money with the third participant, a native high school student from Albuquerque.  Along with the award ceremony, we had a wonderful plant based dinner from ItalityNM.com from Jemez Pueblo, NM.

It was fun coaching Kyle and Kaiya through parts of the IBM Enterprise Design Thinking process to develop user desired outcomes to battle childhood Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity.  All the players worked hard to develop the Mobile App MVP … please take the time to look at the photo gallery below and small video showing the early modeling of the app.

Here is the Figma link that the video was made from (not sure how long this link will be good):

https://www.figma.com/file/Qz03jMJZHpwwMv2k8dE8uyYk/Trim-Tracker?node-id=0%3A1

Thanks again to the NB3 Foundation for creating a contest to challenge our native youth in the areas of design and software development!

– Dom