Froggy on Stage

Froggy is on stage today - unfortunately, I can't be there, because I am off on a business trip. But some students are taking extra special care of him during the grand opening ceremony and research fair the school is offering today. They had Froggy all last week and managed to convince the computer center people to get Froggy to speak with the school wireless LAN.

Since our school's color is green, Froggy fits right in :) I dropped by in the early afternoon to see what was up. The students were very enthusiastic about all the stuff that Froggy had installed. They had even found the Doom :D but found it to be strange to play Doom on such a machine. Anyway, they had see the Sony "My First Computer" that you could not do anything with, and really liked what they saw here. They were just missing Flash, they said, so I explained how hungry Flash is for electricity, and that is not something an XO has a lot of. And of course they asked were the crank was - really, guys, you have to get a crank going! Everyone wants to see how much electricity they can crank!

There will be a live feed from the fair and there will be an online documentation - link to be here soon, if I ever get back to civilization = a usable Internet. Link (in German): http://edufuture.de/2008/04/17/mobile-user-generated-evideo/

OLPC Continued

Yesterday I let different people play around with the OLPC:

• The local 16-year-old was finally allowed to touch it. He managed to open it without hints, and figured out the navigation without having to ask. He spent a good 20 minutes trying out all the buttons. He liked being able to surf, but was disappointed by the games - no ego-shooters. "This would not be for me," he said, "but I am sure that Third World kids would find it really cool, especially as they don't have other computers." Then he wanted me to switch the OLPC to "their language" to see what it looked like. As WiseWoman groaned and began to explain that there are lots of different people who speak many different languages who live in developing countries, he detected teaching mode and fled the home office to go turn his stereo up to full blast. He would, however borrow the EeePC in a flash, he noted at lunch.
  
  
• Two of my graduates in computing had a look as well. One wanted to test the water-repellent properties as a joke, I didn't want to do this test just yet. The other looked for the crank - I think he is the fifth or sixth person to ask for that. That seems to be the property that people remembered.
  
  They had some trouble getting it opened, but did finally manage, even figuring out that the screen could swivel. I had to show them the twist-to-playstation-mode. As a playstation gamer the one was comfortable with that mode of operation right away, but the games installed were, well, trivial. They didn't really like Sugar, getting irritated when it would not do what they wanted it to.
  
  The one working as a consultant for a big-shot company found it to be too much of a toy, the knowledge of using this thing won't transfer to the Real World (tm). I forget the official rejoinder that they can, of course, use Google Docs and Spreadsheets if they have an Internet connection. But that IF is a big IF - even here in lovely Friedrichshain, the handfull of access points we found were all locked. There needs to be free WLAN everwhere for this to work. (Same problem with the EeePC - with no Internet connection it is just a fancy notepad.)
  
  They also agree that high scores are a must. I wonder if this is a Western culture thing, that we want/need high scores?
  

Must continue the games test soon, but there is some real work screaming to get done here.....

OLPC Games

I tried to connect the OLPC to another university network that "only" hat WEP Passwords enabled (5 letter), but this did not work. It appeared to be a problem of the university, however, as the EeePC couldn't get an IP Address, either.
The OLPC Wiki has a list of programs you can install on the OLPC, I downloaded some games so I could test the OLPC in Playstation Modus (completely on the basis of scientific endeavor, you understand).

First up was BlockParty, a Tetris-like game. Strange, you click on it, it is supposed to install, I don't get any message. But looking through the "dock" I do see a new thing, and wow, it starts! Hmm, click Enter to start. No enter key when I have the screen turned out. Okay, trial and error, the arrow keys on the left work: left, right, down is drop, up is rotate. But the stupid power source is right next to the arrows! Bad enough that it is for the left thumb, with the power cord in the way it is almost unplayable.

But wait, you can swap the screen! So I flip it 180 degrees, the screen flips nicely, now I can grab for the arrow keys okay, but they do *not* switch. I now press left to get the block to move right. Suboptimal. An interesting exercise, but I cannot swap my brain left-to-right. I keep hitting down to drop, but down is up and rotates, okay. Opening up the keyboard, the left and right arrows work, but down does not. Okay, thumb on one control, fingers on the arrows, I make it to level 8 and then it forgets my score. Forget this. I want a high score list!!!!

Next up is Maze. Okay, cute little maze-thingy. Gets harder as you go along. Seems to be a collaborative thing, as I keep being announced a winner (I suppose). It is hard to communicate without words! I think it is giving me the time to solve the exercise. For that last one, it counted the time I took to write the last sentence.....

Now for Implode, a logic game. Hmm, what do I do? Ah, click. Okay, groups go away. I clear the board, and get a red smiley. Yeah. Next one I clear on 5 clicks and get a green smiley face. I suppose that means I am better! Got one where a single color was left - couldn't go on. I suppose that means I lose. Can't get rid of 2er blocks, either. Ahh, I can make the blocks smaller, more on a page. Not bad. Took a bit, now I can clear medium. Oh oh, where did the time go? I still have real work to do! Still trying to get less than 5 tiles left with hard. Good game, and habit forming :) But it needs a score and a high score list!

Still to test: 3DPong, Jump, Mimic, SimCity.

OLPC

There is a new electronic member in our household, I call him Froggy. It is an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) that I got through the G1G1 program (Give one, get one).

These machines are only available in the States, but my brother was kind enough to take delivery on it and then send it on in the mail. Extra points for the good old US Postal service, for 36$ they got it to Europe in 10 days. FedEx wanted 120$ for shipping it.

Customs picked it out, of course, must have a look at what this is. The customs guy was very nice and apologetic, says he believes me what is inside, but he is curious, could he have a look, please? So I open up, he gets to touch it, and then he is lenient and only assesses me for value-added tax for the one notebook, not the full price paid for two.

First order of business was getting a plug organized. Luckily the power cord thingy can take 220 V, just needs an adapter. The battery gets extra points - it had been fully charged in the States, was 10 days in transit, and still had 3/4 of its charge here! EeePC take note!

It takes forever to start up, and some fussing around with a Unix command (!) to get it named. I took it to the Wikipedia Stammtisch, people liked playing with it. Everyone asks if it is for underwater use - the keyboard is in continuous plastic so those drink spills don't cause so much trouble. I had some teenagers play with it, they were quite absorbed with the Python programming stuff. Had it with me at Code Camp yesterday and they enjoyed playing the synthesizer.

But we couldn't get it to talk to the WLAN at school, it uses WPA encryption. According to the wiki you have to update to version 656. Okay, will do. Except I still have the old updater that can't update from a stick. So I have to do it at home where I control the WLAN router.

Spent 5 hours last night downloading the image (DSL has a download rate which is just slightly higher than carrier-pigeon message transferring lately). Put it on a USB disk, started the flashing: Bad hash, and it stopped dead. Tried it again: Bad hash in a different address. Hmm. Got out a stick that I could delete enough on to use, same thing.

Wrote a bugtrac item on this, will buy a new stick (so there is nothing on there but the OS) today. Hope this works, because currently I just have a nice green paperweight - before uploading the new OS it erases the old one.....

Stay tuned!