XO-2: Gutting the XO-1
OLPC News published my editorial on why I think announcing the XO-2 is a bad mistake for OLPC. I take full credit for the frowny face XO photoshop job as well.
June 05, 2008
May 20, 2008
New XO today?
OLPC is expected to announce a new version of their laptop today. I'm disappointed that they'll be doing this as I think they need to focus on software, not hardware. I've written a little editorial about that over at OLPC News, we'll see if they run it.
May 07, 2008
My Android Developer Challenge Entry
Here's a little demo of the program I submitted to the Android Developer Challenge.
March 10, 2008
Jim Riggs Concert
Today I went to a concert by Jim Riggs, the organist at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, CA. He was performing at a local private residence, the owner has a pretty spectacular Wurlitzer. He played a bunch of duets he's arranged for the organ and player piano, which was pretty neat. Here's a video of him doing something similar, although listening to this with speakers or headphones just can't compare to hearing it in person.
Another great part of the concert was watching the 1927 silent film Fluttering Hearts with Jim Riggs' live music accompanying it. The movie was fairly amusing and the live music really added to it.
One way I know it was a great concert is that I just wanted to go play music when I came home. I've found that hearing great live music always encourages people to want to go make some themselves in a way that recordings never can.
March 08, 2008
Strange Tech Support
We received a tech support message from our online support request form yesterday with the following text (edited for privacy):
---- realname: Linda ****** email: *****@yahoo.com subject: E-Mail body: I need to send a news letter 8 pages out to folks on our list for a rabbit show. How do I do this? ----
This of course had nothing to do with our children's 3D modeling software. And our software has nothing to do with rabbits, in fact until this post that word never even appeared on our web site. I wasn't sure what to do and I was really curious about where this lady came from.
So I did some digging and found that she found our site by searching for "sending email tech support" on yahoo.com. We're currently the eighth result, don't ask me how. I can't say why she chose us over the other top 7, maybe she just liked our name.
I haven't responded to the email yet, in the past with random requests like this I've sometimes responded but I just don't know what to say. Though if anybody's interested in going to a rabbit show, I can probably hook you up with about 8 pages of information.
March 05, 2008
NodeBox is Great
I just discovered NodeBox, a really neat graphics programming tool for the Mac. It's based on Python and lets you easily write programs to generate 2D graphics. You can create PDFs or animate them and create QuickTime movies.
Tools like this are a great way to get kids interested in programming. The immediate feedback and visual rewards really let kids get into the programming aspect of it, incrementally increasing their program complexity to make more and more elaborate visuals. I could see tons of uses for this tool in math and science curriculums as well; for example, you could simulate an experiment, measure a real experiment, and then render the two results on top of each other.
Here's a screenshot of a program I was playing with, follow the link below to see it in action.
February 14, 2008
BBS Memories
In the summer between my eighth and ninth grades I was one of the most frequent posters to a local BBS. After my morning paper route I would call up on the 300 baud modem connected to our Atari 800 hooked up to the TV set and read and type away. Then I'd watch Robotech and fall asleep on the couch.
I'm reminded of all this thanks to the song below. I'm glad the BBS archives are probably lost to the ages.