Part 2 of elf's OLPC Journal
Emacs on the XO
software
Mon Jun 02 22:06:41 2008
It was very easy.
<timthelion> installed Emacs on his XO:
sudo yum install emacs emacs-el Terminal
...
emacs-22 -nw
He also suggested installing, "Terminal because emacs doesn't play
nice with the normal Terminal activity. Terminal(an xfce4) thing has
a way of changing color selection which fixes the problem."
Week 3 Report Addendum
Thu Jun 05 04:33:31 2008
On Sunday, I told him that we could load the house that he had
drawn (and kept) in Turtle Art by going to the Journal ("click on
the Notebook"). I had also saved another geometric Logo puzzle
called "flower" he asked what that was, as it was the latest
entry. There were two icons named "flower" one was a document with
a checkboard pattern along the bottom and the other was the Turtle
Art activity icon. I clicked on the document thinking and got a
preview document (looking at the preview image, he said, "wowwww!
that's so cool") it would would open in the Activity itself—
no such lock. I tried this a few times, looking like a compete
idiot (later I was told that this should be fixed in the next
release).
I then decided to click on the Turtle Art activity named "flower"
and it loaded. I then asked him to change the repear counts to see
what happened. Instead of making incremental changes (from 6 to 4,
for example) he enter 10000. Naturally, that just re-traces the
geometry over what is already there (but he doesn't realize that;
the turtle should really be "slowed down" so its movements can be
observed, there should be a faster/slower speed slider).
Next, I asked him the Postit where I had written the 15-word Logo
programs and explained that "RPT" was repeat, "FWD" was forward,
etc. I asked him to create the Fanflower program which was the
simpler construct explaining that the command following the repeat
block went "under" the repeat block to be executed after all the
iterations were performed. He was suitably impressed and played
with the iterations again. I also told him that he could change the
pen color by adding a "setpen" command; that the values went from 0
to 99 in increments of 10. The first number he tried was 100,
naturally.
Turtle Art Samples
Then I opened the Projects tab and clicked on the "door" icon
(representing "load") and asked him to pick one of the .ta files
that appeared in the dialog. Nearly all of them were "rainbow
candy-cane" style Logo art which suitably impressed both of them;
he kept asking "how did they do that?" for each one he subsequently
opened. I said that the program was right there on the screen but I
think he meant that he hadn't seen the command sequence to vary
colours before. The younger one was sitting beside him watching
and making descriptive comments ("that looks like the turtle
skating on ice", "oooh, rainbow"). All the samples were examined
in turn and commented upon.
The Journal
The Journal's time keeping was suitably impressive when he
scrolled all the way to the bottom and saw "3 weeks 4 days, ..."
and scrolling back up to the top the activity time for the last
activity had changed from "right now" to "two minutes".
Etoys
Somehow (I was having lunch and had stopped taking notes) the
conversation turned to Etoys. He wanted to know what Etoys was, so
I asked whether he had run the demo; he asked "what
demo?". Clearly, though he had started the activity during the
first week, he hadn't realized that there was a demo/tutorial in
one of the bubbles. So I showed him which bubble to click. I did
some narration during the demo (I had run the demo earlier); when
the car was being drawn, he asked how the brush size was changed;
he asked what was going on during the bouncing bean animation
demo. After the demo finished, he asked what the second demo
(Haunted House Challenge) was and he wanted to do it. All during
this time, the younger one was sitting beside him, watching. He
didn't realize that clicking the right mouse button brought up the
Properties menu-frame for each object. When he got to Slide 8/10,
pressing the Next key brought up an "Abort/Debug" dialog. Seeing
that he was becoming frustated, I said that was enough computer
work for today; he asked how long he'd been at it; I said about an
hour.
Jigsaw Puzzle
I downloaded the Jigsaw Puzzle activity from MaMaMedia and tried
it (I would be interested in seeing whether he finds it). I played
with it for a bit— there was now obvious way of choosing a
new puzzle after finishing the current puzzle. I had to click
around and realize that clicking on the thumbnail image between the
two arrows brought you back to the image selector screen. I noted
that there was a "My Picture" button (a nice touch). So I went to
the Record activity and took a picture, saved it and returned to
the puzzle. I then clicked on the "My Picture" button and nothing
happened. Then I clicked on it again a few times and finally a
dialog appeared. I selected the photo and loaded it and created a
jigsaw puzzle.
Observations and Suggestions
- I expected the sample projects to be listed (thumbnail preview
followed by name) after clicking on the "Projects" tab. I didn't
realize that one had to additionally click on the "door" icon in the
upper frame to bring-up the file-browser dialog. It would be nice if
there was a preview of each sample program when one selected it
before clicking "Open" (which means re-writing the file browser dialog).
- There should be some feedback in Jigsaw Puzzle activity during
the time between the click on "My Picture" button and the file
dialog appearing.
- The Puzzle pieces should have some "thickness" or shadows to
them.
- TurtleArt sample-project file dialog should have thumbnail
previews of the programs.
- If you leave the file dialog open and go to the Home screen, the
dialog remains on the screen until you "Cancel".
XO Revolutionaries
Thu Jun 05 19:13:40 2008
New Scientist reports on worries that the OLPC's
BitFrost security protocols could hand a ready-made
surveillance system to controlling 3rd world governments.
—Slashdot
post
The ensuing chat on #olpc...
<Lerc> I'm actually of the direct opposite opinion. I think one day,
somewhere, XOs will be instrumental in the overthrow of a government.
<Quozl> When the world is finally overrun with hordes of screaming third-world
school kids wielding XOs ... we will have manufactured our own salvation.
<Lerc> Quozl: They won't be screaming. No caps-lock key.
![](images/bm.png)
"One Laptop Meets Big Business"
Sat Jun 14 08:45:21 2008
Businessweek article,
"One
Laptop Meets Big Business" on the travails of the OLPC
Foundation. My favourite passage is:
Edith Ackermann, a visiting scientist at MIT, says OLPC should have
involved more educational experts in creating and testing the
applications. Instead, she says, "The hackers took over." The result
is some programs are too complex for many children to use.
After 5 minutes of observing kids, it would have been obvious to
the developers that their software required adjustments to improve
usability. The developers should have been sent to Peru and
Uruguay to watch the children use their software.
Another problem that needs fixing is people (mostly from Uruguay)
joining #olpc-help and expecting questions answered in
Spanish. There is only a single person that speaks Spanish in the
channel (and he is rarely available). He had begun translating
the Support
FAQ into Spanish, however he never finished it and he no
longer has the time. The #olpc-auyada was created for Spanish
speakers, but it's taking time to populate it with helpers. I
also suggested hiring a Spanish translator for the
wiki.
My response to the detractors of the program is this: It is
possible for a single person to change the world. If someone in
the future makes an important contribution to society and claims
that the XO Laptop was the seed that inspired them or helped them
in their childhood, then the entire program was worth it.
Pygame Tutorial
software
Sun Jun 22 07:45:11 2008
I had an idea for a children's activity (a quiz game) a couple of
weeks ago and decided to see how easy it would be to code it. Since
it is graphical in nature I decided to look at the Pygame
library. I found
a nice
tutorial linked from
the wiki
page on game development.
I was surprised at the complexity of the library; I expected it to
be simpler to use.
Java is Finally Free
software
Sun Jun 22 16:44:22 2008
The Java Development Kit (Java SE 6) that shipped with Fedora 9
passed the Java Test Compatibility Kit after all the remaining code
in the JDK that had licensing restrictions, was replaced with GPL
code.
Perhaps now we'll see Java in the Browse activity and perhaps it
be easier to write activities in Java rather than Python.
Week 4 and 5 Report
Sun Jun 22 16:54:19 2008
Jigsaw Puzzle
I demoed the Jigsaw Puzzle activity to my niece, who loves doing
the Kinder Surprise jigsaw puzzles. She showed interest but could
not move the pieces as click-and-drag using a trackpad is beyond
her capabilities and she gave up after a few seconds. I tried to
show her how to use one hand to hold down the "X" mouse-button and
how move the piece using the other hand on the trackpad, but she
wasn't interested. The older nephew find the puzzles too easy and
the hand-drawn images, uninteresting.
Observations and Recommendations
The attraction of the Jigsaw Puzzle activity to young children, is
marred by the impossible interface. It should be modified so a
puzzle piece can be moved simply by clicking on it and moving the
mouse (the piece "sticks" to the mouse pointer) and clicking a
second time to drop the piece.
The 5th week saw very little use of the XO. Turtle Art was used
once during the week, by my nephew, to Keep his Logo program called
"bacteira"[sic].
TamTamMini
When I started playing with TamTamMini on Friday, my niece came
over to play. She preferred to tell me which voice to choose before
she played it. I encouraged her to do it herself and when she tried,
her hand-eye co-ordination was not very accurate— she kept
going to the edge of the screen (her favourite voice, "rubber duckie"
was at the bottom of the screen) and the Frame kept popping-up and
obscuring the "rubber duckie" icon. Her fingers also tended to drift
over to the adjacent trackpads, which do not sense fingers but are
to be used with the stylus, and the mouse pointer would stop moving.
TamTamJam
I got a chance to try out TamTamJam and I played with it for about
10 minutes. It's a great concept and but I think it helps to have
more than one laptop so a collaborative jam session can happen. I
was able to figure out the interface after a bit of trial and error
and I have to say it was intuitively designed. However, I found it
annoying that after a new loop was selected, it didn't
automatically assign a key to it or automatically popped-up the key
selector; instead I was forced to click on the small key-assignment
button and assign a key before I could play the loop.
Second Generation Classmate
hardware
Mon Jun 23 12:12:16 2008
Daewoo has unveiled the second generation Classmate PC, called
Lukid. It
is powered by a 900MHz Celeron, running XP. It has 512MB RAM and a
30GB HD. The 9 in. screen has a resolution of 800x480.
XO Demo at Work
Mon Jun 23 14:08:47 2008
I took the XO to work today as the kids were away for the weekend
(I don't think they'll miss it for one day). I got a chance to try
it out in direct sunlight while waiting for the train. No one
approached me to ask about it during the train ride; not even the
really cute babe who sits across the aisle from me (*Sigh*). Then I
walked up from Union Station, carrying the XO, and again no one
noticed. This is quite different from the experiences of people
doing the same thing in the U.S.
I also did an impromptu demo of the XO for my colleagues at work
(an admin, a programmer/admin and a hardware engineer). The "slow"
boot-up was noted. I demo'd the camera, fullscreen was decribed as
"pretty good". I demo'd Jigsaw puzzle as a typical game. I also
demo'd TamTamMini was got a few laughs. Then I demo'd the PDF
reader in book-reader mode. It was immediately noted that access to
the mouse pointer was an issue in that mode. (Earlier, on the
train, as I tried reading The Hobbit I made some notes to
this effect— both the game keys and the direction controller
pad have the same key bindings: "Home", "End", "PgUp" and "PgDn". I
think it would be useful if the mouse pointer could be controlled
via the direction keys and leave the pagination bindings to the
game keys. We do need a key for "Select/Enter", though. This needs
to be thought out some more.) I also demonstrated PDF zooming.
They asked about the charger and were surprised when I pulled out
the "cute" green wall-wart; they were expecting a black
wall-wart.
Then I was asked whether there was a terminal program. I started
the Terminal Activity and then also showed the console screens from
Alt-Ctrl-F1 and Alt-Ctrl-F2 (Alt-Ctrl-F3 returns to X). I then did
a df -h to show disk usage and a uname -a to
prove that it's just Unix. I mentioned that yum update
works just as expected. The next question was whether it supported
wired ethernet; answer: yes, via a usb ethernet connector.
The comments were to the effect that it would make a great home
server sitting in a closet, serving mail, web, etc. and that it
would be great to have an XO in a network administrator's toolkit
(but that it was unfortunate that didn't have a built-in serial
port) to connect to the console ports of network routers and
switches). A USB to serial connector would likely work.
There was a question whether the computer stayed on (but the LCD
powered off) when the lid was closed; answer: yes, with the current
build (656) the XO stays on, as does the LCD, but that's a bug; on
subsequent builds, the XO will hibernate when the lid is closed and
will resume with the power-button is pressed.
LEGO WeDo
hardware education
Mon Jun 30 15:39:25 2008
Lego Education, a business unit of the Lego Group, on Monday
introduced Lego Education WeDo, a new robotics package designed for
classrooms of primary school students ages 7 - 11. It’s coming in
January, 2009— pricing is yet to be announced.
WeDo is aimed at providing students with some hands-on experience
with building Lego-based robotics systems and programming them. It
builds on Lego’s highly successful and popular Mindstorms products,
and it works with Macs, PCs, and OLPC XO and Intel Classmate
laptops.
—Macworld article
Update Sat Jul 26 23:04:51 2008: LEGO now has a marketing
page (but no pricing information) on WeDo.
Solar Power for XO
hardware
Sat Jul 26 23:45:47 2008
I accidently stumbled across a site that sells solar
panels to power the XO laptop. I'm not sure what sort of
connector it has— whether the laptop power adapter is plugged
into the panel or the panel plugs directly into the
XO.