New joyride build 272
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build272/devel_jffs2/ -kernel.i586 0:2.6.22-20071113.2.olpc.12b96a5183e39dc +kernel.i586 0:2.6.22-20071114.4.olpc.1e8a258033be1c4 -- This email was automatically generated Aggregated logs at http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 02:45:31AM -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: 2.5. Download: http://dev.laptop.org/~bemasc/StopWatchActivity-1.xo Tested on build 625 on a B4, works okay, problems you probably already know about: 1. the Start/Stop text legend disappears when the cursor is over it and the stopwatch is running, and the keyboard up and down arrows are used, perhaps just white text on white background, 2. the icons for the Start/Stop and Zero buttons are not there, perhaps these are in the later builds, 3. with the activity shared, but one XO active, stopping a stopwatch may result in a reduction of the displayed value, more likely to occur if all stopwatches are running, 30% CPU used on B4 with ten stopwatches running. Switching to text console causes this to stop, as you state. My opinion is that the number of significant digits should be selectable, and a younger kids version could have a single stopwatch with a bar graph, stopwatch clock face, and digital display. -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 273
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build273/devel_jffs2/ -sugar-datastore.noarch 0:0.2.2-0.38.20071112git.6d3d607ec7 +sugar-datastore.noarch 0:0.2.2-0.39.20071114git.a42f40d575 -- This email was automatically generated Aggregated logs at http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 James Cameron wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 02:45:31AM -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: 2.5. Download: http://dev.laptop.org/~bemasc/StopWatchActivity-1.xo Tested on build 625 on a B4, works okay, problems you probably already know about: 1. the Start/Stop text legend disappears when the cursor is over it and the stopwatch is running, and the keyboard up and down arrows are used, perhaps just white text on white background, Yep, white on white. Known bug. 2. the icons for the Start/Stop and Zero buttons are not there, perhaps these are in the later builds, I made these icons myself. I just tested a clean install, using that .xo, and they appear fine on joyride-269. This is probably due to changes in Sugar's path behavior. 3. with the activity shared, but one XO active, stopping a stopwatch may result in a reduction of the displayed value, more likely to occur if all stopwatches are running, This is actually a feature. It takes some time to process your mouse click, and under heavier CPU load, that time may be long enough that the time label continues to redraw before it can be stopped. However, the first thing the code does upon receiving your mouse click is to record the time-of-click, which is what is used to determine the displayed value. Thus, the negative change you can see (if you have very fast eyes) is just a correction for the computer's own reaction time. To understand the motivation for this feature, imagine if the processing delay included several mesh hops, or even a satellite link. In this case, it might take several seconds for the fact that person A has pressed stop to propagate to person B. When that message arrives, person B's clock must be stopped and set back by the propagation delay, in order to make the two clocks agree. StopWatch does this by passing around absolute reference times with every event. My opinion is that the number of significant digits should be selectable, and a younger kids version could have a single stopwatch with a bar graph, stopwatch clock face, and digital display. Every digital stopwatch I have ever seen has precision to hundredths of a second, no more and no less. In this case, more would be infeasible, due to the coarseness of software timing. Less would be pessimistic. To be clear, I am really trying to duplicate the interface and functionality of a standard digital stopwatch, except where I think it can be improved. I don't know what you mean by a bar graph. Younger children can't read analog clocks (I recall being taught how to read them in second grade). Also, drawing clock faces is computationally expensive. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHOypMUJT6e6HFtqQRAuxhAKCTcfqnyvfkzXjpmZkF8HSysXf7OACgoK2M ZfQovLMmlalL8r4s8ohRVkE= =QDY8 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
Is there a reason you haven't made the clock and the stopwatch different functions for a single activity? I second that. I think these could be integrated - Eben Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.cc/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHOyxzic1LIWB1WeYRAo9HAKCGVJ81f0coABHNViSJIVU+XENsbACgvyyE wMFJ+UpOpCEtB3Lqcr3oMRk= =wQCB -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
I'm so glad you got around to doing this! Such tool are badly needed on the laptop. Is there a reason you haven't made the clock and the stopwatch different functions for a single activity? Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.cc/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 274
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build274/devel_jffs2/ -telepathy-salut.i386 0:0.1.7-0.8.olpc2 +telepathy-salut.i386 0:0.1.9-0.8.olpc2 -- This email was automatically generated Aggregated logs at http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
Eben Eliason wrote: Is there a reason you haven't made the clock and the stopwatch different functions for a single activity? I second that. I think these could be integrated While you're at it, how about integrating the camera activity with it, so it could be like Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist TV. :-) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
While you're at it, how about integrating the camera activity with it, so it could be like Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist TV. :-) The original message included Obsessive accuracy, so maybe this option would be appropriate: First Atomic Clock Wristwatch http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/ Back to somewhat serious so this isn't pure clutter... On the suggestion of combining StopWatch and Clock. How about a button on the stopwatch to use its display to show the current time. Or maybe two buttons, one for local and one for UTC so kids learn about time zones. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
I thought about this a bit more, and think that there may be a valid split between what might be called Clock and Time (currently StopWatch) activities. Clock's primary purpose would be to display a large clock. It would likely have digital and analog modes, but could probably choose one or the other only to maximize the display size. It would be used much like a standard bedside clock, and would ideally have basic alarm functionality built-in once that's possible. It is for simply displaying the current time, and could also be shared and integrate the world-clock idea for an educational purpose. Time, on the other hand, is about the act of actively timing things. This would include the stopwatch functionality it already has, but could also have an egg-timer countdown mode. Both of these are short term, in the moment activities which are more appropriate for experiments and such. It is a much more active activity than Clock. What do people think of this distinction? - Eben On Nov 14, 2007 1:38 PM, Hal Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While you're at it, how about integrating the camera activity with it, so it could be like Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist TV. :-) The original message included Obsessive accuracy, so maybe this option would be appropriate: First Atomic Clock Wristwatch http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/ Back to somewhat serious so this isn't pure clutter... On the suggestion of combining StopWatch and Clock. How about a button on the stopwatch to use its display to show the current time. Or maybe two buttons, one for local and one for UTC so kids learn about time zones. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
Benjamin, 1. Clock is non-interactive. It doesn't make sense to share it, or save it to the journal, so I've disabled those features. Human being is good at finding differences, but drawing similarity out of seemingly different things is more fun if you know it. 2. I like small programs that do one thing well. I'm not sure if this is the Constructionist Activity philosophy, exactly, but it seemed like a good idea. If a program has two different main screens, that suggests that it does two completely separate things. Probably the best thing is to provide one of them (or other basic blocks) and to let the children build one from another by themselves. Combining it with the camera makes a lot of sense, BTW. Kids can make an interval timer for camera... (and other things like Pippy.) -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
What do people think of this distinction? To my prejudice, it sounds like a bad idea. If you have to do some operations on the laptop and wait many seconds just to check the current time, that sounds bad, too. There was an idea of having a little clock in the Sugar frame. How about that? (I think Alan gave a demo of that, and it can be made in 10 seconds, during his talk at Cambridge sometime ago.) -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
Eben, If you have to do some operations on the laptop and wait many seconds just to check the current time, that sounds bad, too. The clock activity is wholly independent in my perspective from having a clock in Sugar. We still intend to incorporate that - the overhead of launching an activity is silly. Wow, ok. Kids will have plenty of different clocks. That sounds like a rich environment. This is, in fact, why I think we need to clarify the use cases for these activities, and having a computer that is actually impersonating a clock is a reasonable thing to want in some cases, but not what you want while you're actively using the laptop. Exactly. That is one reason why kids should make one. And *ideally* it shouldn't be that hard for say, a 12 years old, like I wrote here: (I think Alan gave a demo of that, and it can be made in 10 seconds, during his talk at Cambridge sometime ago.) -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
To my prejudice, it sounds like a bad idea. If you have to do some operations on the laptop and wait many seconds just to check the current time, that sounds bad, too. The clock activity is wholly independent in my perspective from having a clock in Sugar. We still intend to incorporate that - the overhead of launching an activity is silly. This is, in fact, why I think we need to clarify the use cases for these activities, and having a computer that is actually impersonating a clock is a reasonable thing to want in some cases, but not what you want while you're actively using the laptop. - Eben There was an idea of having a little clock in the Sugar frame. How about that? (I think Alan gave a demo of that, and it can be made in 10 seconds, during his talk at Cambridge sometime ago.) -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
quote who=Eben Eliason date=Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 01:48:44PM -0500 I thought about this a bit more, and think that there may be a valid split between what might be called Clock and Time (currently StopWatch) activities. I agree with your analysis. There are several important ways in which a stopwatch and a clock are different. That said, I'm already finding the number of applications installed by default in recent builds (nearly three full screen-width) to be overwhelming. Until we have a better of way to navigate and find activities in such large collections, I think that reasonable combinations of overlapping applications is a good idea for this and for the normal reasons that we avoid duplicating code. Every time I've used a timer on a phone, computer or watch, it has been a dual clock/stopwatch. They both count and display time and the interface is similar. It may be that all of those systems are combining two things that should be separate. On the other hand, the inclusion of these separate thing in one activity will at least not be surprising to anyone who has used a digital watch. I still think they should be merged. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.cc/ Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. --GNU Manifesto ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 275
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build275/devel_jffs2/ -Journal-71.xo +Journal-72.xo -Web-72.xo +Web-73.xo +olpc-library-common.noarch 0:1-2 +olpc-library-core.noarch 0:1-3 -olpc-utils.i386 0:0.43-1.olpc2 +olpc-utils.i386 0:0.43-2.olpc2 -sugar.i386 0:0.65-0.88.20071113git.9d28557bbd +sugar.i386 0:0.65-0.89.20071114git.411879e9de --- olpc-library-common.noarch 1-2 --- * initial RPM version of the core content library including CSS, javascript, and the make_index.py index building script --- olpc-library-core.noarch 1-3 --- * initial RPM version of the core content library example bundles --- Journal-72 --- * #4909 Add Resume method to the DBus service. (marco) --- Web-73 --- * #4909: added a dbus call to open the source data by the journal (marco) * #4889: use the window's fullscreen method to get to fullscreen mode, this does not mess up the state the window manager has (erikos) * #4870: Add onStatusChange method to Download. (tomeu) * #4904: Save downloads to the instance dir, not tmp. (tomeu) -- This email was automatically generated Aggregated logs at http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 02:36:08PM -0500, Eben Eliason wrote: We still intend to incorporate that - the overhead of launching an activity is silly. More precision would make this particular comment more helpful. How low an overhead (in seconds and MB of RAM IO) are we aiming for? What are we willing to spend to get there? Michael ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
On Nov 14, 2007 4:07 PM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 02:36:08PM -0500, Eben Eliason wrote: We still intend to incorporate that - the overhead of launching an activity is silly. More precision would make this particular comment more helpful. How low an overhead (in seconds and MB of RAM IO) are we aiming for? What are we willing to spend to get there? I'm talking, really, about interaction overhead. In order to see the current time I should press a key, or make a gesture with the mouse, or something similar. I shouldn't have to find the clock activity wherever that might be, click to launch it, wait for it do launch (however short that may be), and then close it again just to check the time. I could leave it open all the time for later checking, of course, but I'd still have to perform this exercise every time I rebooted. This kind of things should really be a system device as well. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Telling time (was: StopWatch activity)
On Nov 14, 2007, at 22:37 , Eben Eliason wrote: I'm talking, really, about interaction overhead. In order to see the current time I should press a key, or make a gesture with the mouse, or something similar. I shouldn't have to find the clock activity wherever that might be, click to launch it, wait for it do launch (however short that may be), and then close it again just to check the time. I could leave it open all the time for later checking, of course, but I'd still have to perform this exercise every time I rebooted. This kind of things should really be a system device as well. I question the very assumption that continuously telling the time is even remotely important on a learning machine for kids in elementary school age. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [PyCON-Organizers] OLPCs not considerate wireless users
Noah Kantrowitz wrote: We can always lock the mesh interface to a single channel, and keep the normal APs on the two others. Also turning down the Tx power will reduce interference with normal 802.11b/g. As an absolute fall-back, there is a snippet of commands on the wiki to disable the wireless interface (Airplane mode or similar IIRC). I think banning them from PyCON is over reacting. I've been at multiple conferences with multiple OLPCs turned on for days. This includes conferences like Chaos Camp, with 100 times the wireless traffic of Hackers. At the Camp, they even had several other mesh networks running with zero problems. But yes, at Hacker's it was a serious pain in the neck. There were two main problems. People kept rebooting the OLPCs, which re-enabled the network after I had disabled it. I finally had to make sure it stayed off after a reboot of any of the 3 units. The other problem was originally thought to be the high density of APs, about 9 within a few hundred feet, and several within 25 feet. (down the length of the hallway) At other conferences (like the Camp) the APs were mostly dozens, if not many hundreds of feet away. After brainstorming with some other folks at Hacker's, our feeling is the problem was caused by having multiple APs with the same identical SSID, but multiple MACs. This should be easy to reproduce if you can reconfigure several APs without causing other problems. :-) Sorry this response took a few days after the problem was reported, I was offline on a rare few days of vacation. Yosemite was beautiful! - rob - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hal Murray wrote: Obsessive accuracy. What's your version of Obsessive? Seconds? Milliseconds? Microseconds? I have no desire to do better than 0.01s. Human reaction times are an order of magnitude slower than that anyway. What I meant is, I have done everything I could think of to maximize accuracy, and this is obvious in the way the code is structured. For example, the first instruction in each user-interface callback records the event time, before any processing is done, to minimize computation delay. Are you assuming that the clocks on various XOs are synchronized? If so, how well? No. Upon joining, a new member asks everyone else what time they think it is. The algorithm assumes that the network delay is the same in each direction. Whoever responds first wins, because this computer experienced the least network+scheduling delay, and so the assumption is most likely to be true. Experimentally, this works very well with two nodes on a mesh; that's about all I can test at the moment. A more sophisticated synchronization algorithm would be appreciated, but I did not know how to make NTP work: 1. From python 2. As a highly restricted non-root user 3. Over Tubes 4. In a way that is resilient to the sudden disappearance of any member of the group. TamTam developers: I would like to know how you do synchronization. I looked through your git repository, but I couldn't find any C source for it. [Long discussion to follow in a separate messsage.] ? -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHO3grUJT6e6HFtqQRAvTVAJ9QewEBavAaUz+LSGygTjkljJsb3QCfS8Gk ykQYi9Jefr/CZDT9ESuxEm4= =+KNe -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [PyCON-Organizers] OLPCs not considerate wireless users
Rob, After brainstorming with some other folks at Hacker's, our feeling is the problem was caused by having multiple APs with the same identical SSID, but multiple MACs. This should be easy to reproduce if you can reconfigure several APs without causing other problems. :-) It would be a great help if folks would capture traffic when they observe network problems with the xo's. Here's how to do it on the xo itself: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4805#comment:22 This way we could really get some insight on what was the real cause for this problem. For this particular instance, does anyone recall what was the brand/model of those access points? Cheers, Javier -- Javier Cardona cozybit Inc. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
Eben Eliason wrote: On Nov 14, 2007 4:07 PM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 02:36:08PM -0500, Eben Eliason wrote: We still intend to incorporate that - the overhead of launching an activity is silly. More precision would make this particular comment more helpful. How low an overhead (in seconds and MB of RAM IO) are we aiming for? What are we willing to spend to get there? I'm talking, really, about interaction overhead. In order to see the current time I should press a key, or make a gesture with the mouse, or something similar. I shouldn't have to find the clock activity wherever that might be, click to launch it, wait for it do launch (however short that may be), and then close it again just to check the time. I could leave it open all the time for later checking, of course, but I'd still have to perform this exercise every time I rebooted. This kind of things should really be a system device as I think the time should be in the sugar frame at a fixed location, so anytime the frame is visible, the time is visible. And perhaps if you hover over it, you can see the date. The Windows System Tray area at the right of the task bar has a simple clock that works like that, and I think it is a good design. Unobtrusive, easy to see when you need it, easy to get a bit more information. Nothing fancy, just text that tells you the time of day. well. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 12:03:08PM -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: It takes some time to process your mouse click, and under heavier CPU load, that time may be long enough that the time label continues to redraw before it can be stopped. Good. I suspected as such, based on your original announcement, so when I saw it I didn't dimiss it but tried some more. Hopefully the kids will notice as well, and the teacher can have your notes on how to explain the effect. ;-) Please put your post in the source. Every digital stopwatch I have ever seen has precision to hundredths of a second, no more and no less. Yes, I suspect they mostly use the same internal design. You are lucky, you don't have to. I don't know what you mean by a bar graph. Younger children can't read analog clocks (I recall being taught how to read them in second grade). Also, drawing clock faces is computationally expensive. A bar graph ... okay, perhaps fuel gauge might be a better term, ... creates a linear single axis representation of time, which the human eye is *very* good at estimating and predicting against. It is how a kid catches a ball. A stopwatch clockface, represents the time by rotation of a marker around the circumference of a circle. It does not have the same problems associated with 12-hour analog clocks, since there is normally only one hand, and the full circle doesn't represent half a day. Analog day clocks can be taught to children, but not as easily as numbers and digital clocks, I agree. On the other hand, the lack of momentum perception on a digital clock tends to teach children the art of estimating time without requiring an external beat. Analog clocks remain the cheapest clock per square metre of visual coverage, so our target market will be exposed to them. You cannot dismiss them based on your first-world understanding of digital clocks. -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [laptop.org #1581] StopWatch activity
So it doesn't look like there is consensus on this yet - Mako - since you seem to be following this (and I'm at a conference), could you ping me when you think consensus has been reached? Thanks, -- Daniel Clark # Sys Admin, One Laptop per Child # http://laptop.org # http://opensysadmin.com # http://planyp.us/djbclark # http://dclark.us On Nov 14, 2007 4:35 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hal Murray wrote: Obsessive accuracy. What's your version of Obsessive? Seconds? Milliseconds? Microseconds? I have no desire to do better than 0.01s. Human reaction times are an order of magnitude slower than that anyway. What I meant is, I have done everything I could think of to maximize accuracy, and this is obvious in the way the code is structured. For example, the first instruction in each user-interface callback records the event time, before any processing is done, to minimize computation delay. Are you assuming that the clocks on various XOs are synchronized? If so, how well? No. Upon joining, a new member asks everyone else what time they think it is. The algorithm assumes that the network delay is the same in each direction. Whoever responds first wins, because this computer experienced the least network+scheduling delay, and so the assumption is most likely to be true. Experimentally, this works very well with two nodes on a mesh; that's about all I can test at the moment. A more sophisticated synchronization algorithm would be appreciated, but I did not know how to make NTP work: 1. From python 2. As a highly restricted non-root user 3. Over Tubes 4. In a way that is resilient to the sudden disappearance of any member of the group. TamTam developers: I would like to know how you do synchronization. I looked through your git repository, but I couldn't find any C source for it. [Long discussion to follow in a separate messsage.] ? -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHO3grUJT6e6HFtqQRAvTVAJ9QewEBavAaUz+LSGygTjkljJsb3QCfS8Gk ykQYi9Jefr/CZDT9ESuxEm4= =+KNe -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Activity Testing: PLEASE READ
Calling all activity developers! We need more testing on activities. We also need more volunteers. I'm working on a project that, with luck, will help us with both. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_Testing_Project The goals: * Welcome new participants to OLPC * For each activity, identify clear owners for development and testing * Provide new volunteers with clear, simple, rewarding tasks A lot of this is repackaging of work that's already been done, but I think this repackaging is crucial: it focuses on optimizing the time of new volunteers -- and in my experience in open source development, new volunteers are the most important resource. Developers, I'm asking you to help by filling out the Activity Testing Matrix. Once we've got enough information collected, enough so that well-meaning newbie testers can get started, I'm going to start aggressively recruiting people to help. = WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: 1. Follow the testing guide for activity developers. It's very brief: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_Testing_Developer_Guide 2. Go to the activity matrix and add your activity: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_Testing_Matrix 3. Join the Testing mailing list: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/testing 4. If you IRC, come hang out on the #olpc-qa channel on freenode. If you've already built your activity and it's ready for testing, this shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, tops -- but it's absolutely crucial. Also, note: this is a work in progress. If you don't understand what's being asked, or if you think there's a better way to do something, please email me and let me know. Or better yet, join the Testing list and send email there. :) Thanks for your help! --g -- Greg DeKoenigsberg Community Development Manager Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255 To whomsoever much hath been given... ...from him much shall be asked ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 276
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build276/ -sugar-datastore.noarch 0:0.2.2-0.39.20071114git.a42f40d575 +sugar-datastore.noarch 0:0.2.2-0.40.20071114git.ea0764a9e9 -- This email was automatically generated Aggregated logs at http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
project idea: Interactive-Sugar-Online-Simulation (ISOS)
Hello, I just stumbled across a very interesting comment by Eduardo Montez over on OLPCnews.com (http://www.olpcnews.com/laptops/xo1/olpc_news_100_laptop_fundraising_drive.html): off topic: I just got an idea for showing people what Sugar can do. Some should put up an interactive web site where anyone can sign on for free, and all the people who are using it at any time would be the community and show up on the gui, connected through the server instead of the meshnetwork. That way people could experience the collaborative aspect of Sugar, which is its greatest innovation. I certainly think this is an outstanding idea, even though such an implementation is obviously anything but trivial. Such a virtual Interactive-Sugar-Online-Simulation (ISOS) could potentially act like one of those web-operating-systems that have become somewhat popular lately. It would basically allow for children who use a regular Windows PC to use at least some of the innovations and unique features that Sugar provides. So the requirement for being able to benefit from these outstanding developments would shift from need to have an X0 to need to have some computer with a browser and internet connectivity. What do you think? Best regards, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: StopWatch activity
Note that X button and keyboard events have timestamps, in milliseconds. (This wraps in some hundreds of days, but I doubt anyone will use the stopwatch that long; you do have to worry in principle about doing modulus arithmetic, though IIRC, X servers generally have been using time since the server reset last for this value. Theory goes that since we are using the kernel's evdev driver, that these timestamps may even get done in the kernel at interrupt level, if the implementation is as has been intended (I haven't looked to make sure), as we did in the original X drivers in the mid '80s This would make the timing pretty independent of user space considerations. - Jim On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 09:22 +1100, James Cameron wrote: On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 12:03:08PM -0500, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: It takes some time to process your mouse click, and under heavier CPU load, that time may be long enough that the time label continues to redraw before it can be stopped. Good. I suspected as such, based on your original announcement, so when I saw it I didn't dimiss it but tried some more. Hopefully the kids will notice as well, and the teacher can have your notes on how to explain the effect. ;-) Please put your post in the source. Every digital stopwatch I have ever seen has precision to hundredths of a second, no more and no less. Yes, I suspect they mostly use the same internal design. You are lucky, you don't have to. I don't know what you mean by a bar graph. Younger children can't read analog clocks (I recall being taught how to read them in second grade). Also, drawing clock faces is computationally expensive. A bar graph ... okay, perhaps fuel gauge might be a better term, ... creates a linear single axis representation of time, which the human eye is *very* good at estimating and predicting against. It is how a kid catches a ball. A stopwatch clockface, represents the time by rotation of a marker around the circumference of a circle. It does not have the same problems associated with 12-hour analog clocks, since there is normally only one hand, and the full circle doesn't represent half a day. Analog day clocks can be taught to children, but not as easily as numbers and digital clocks, I agree. On the other hand, the lack of momentum perception on a digital clock tends to teach children the art of estimating time without requiring an external beat. Analog clocks remain the cheapest clock per square metre of visual coverage, so our target market will be exposed to them. You cannot dismiss them based on your first-world understanding of digital clocks. -- Jim Gettys One Laptop Per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Upgrading the kernel
Hi! I am trying to upgrade the kernel of a XO, but something is missing: According to the wiki: rpm -ivh kernel-rpm cp -a /boot/* /versions/boot/current/boot/ But the files are not being installed on the /boot, so the cp returns that every file is the same. If I do 'rpm -qi kernel' both kernels appear as installed. The initial build is 623 (with the bundled kernel) and I am trying to update to the latest stable release. What I am doing wrong? Thank you! -- Ricardo Carrano ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: clocks, watches, stopwatches, chronometers
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007, Ed Montgomery wrote: (Or is it possible to get started on that using the liveCD?) Since I'm in Japan at the moment, my XO is being shipped to my home address in Canada, so it may be some time before I can tackle this. FWIW I'm on vacation in Tokyo until Monday evening, and I have an XO you could borrow while I'm here! Also you can totally get started on this using sugar-jhbuild; I think it's the best way to do development even after you get your real XO. -- Asheesh. -- It's my cookie file and if I come up with something that's lame and I like it, it goes in. -- karl (Karl Lehenbauer) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Please ignore: Upgrading the kernel
If someone gets this, please ignore it. I'd sent it to the wrong address. Thks! --- Hi! I am trying to upgrade the kernel of a XO, but something is missing: According to the wiki: rpm -ivh kernel-rpm cp -a /boot/* /versions/boot/current/boot/ But the files are not being installed on the /boot, so the cp returns that every file is the same. If I do 'rpm -qi kernel' both kernels appear as installed. The initial build is 623 (with the bundled kernel) and I am trying to update to the latest stable release. What I am doing wrong? Thank you! -- Ricardo Carrano ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 277
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build277/ -olpccontents.i386 0:1.4-0 +olpccontents.i386 0:1.5-0 -olpcupdate.i386 0:1.0-0 +olpcupdate.i386 0:1.1-0 -olpc-utils.i386 0:0.43-2.olpc2 +olpc-utils.i386 0:0.44-1.olpc2 -sugar-presence-service.noarch 0:0.65-0.26.20071113git.89c33bcf93 +sugar-presence-service.noarch 0:0.65-0.27.20071114git128c59c612 -- This email was automatically generated Aggregated logs at http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
peripherals digest Vol 1
Hi all, This is a (low frequency) compiled update of all peripherals related developments of the community. In this issue - * [Message1] Meet Nicholas who is focusing on designing interfaces to read sensor values easily * [Message2] Meet Elijah , a doctoral student in information science at Indiana, who is looking for people to collaborate on providing hardware/arduino programming activity support on the XO * [Message3] Meet Ian - chemistry hobbyist, electricity enthusiast, Wikipedian, sustainability advocate, and student * [Message4] Joel Stanley quickly needs to build some peripherals * [Message5] Mary Lou's microscope * [Message6] Peripherals wiki page * [Message7] (Regular feature) Question for discussion Message 1 - Hi, I am currently working on the software framework to allow easy analysis of data. Specifically, I am making a system for representing both functions and buffer based (collected) graphs on the same canvas and how to make them interact effectively. I have also built a very primitive GUI. Hopefully I will combine these by this weekend, so I can get hacking on various sensors. The goal is then to provide pre-designed setups so that one can e.g. click on the temperature probe, hit collect, and start getting data. After that, along with refining the GUI, designing some useful sensors is in the todo list. Finally, integration with the camera and mic/speaker (for distance measurement) will be added. This is a long term schedule -- for the next two weeks, I would like to get the GUI and functional/buffer based graphs (including regressions, etc) working. I have never used Gstreamer before, so that is a hurdle that I am trying to cross (or, better yet, avoid by using pyalsa...). While I would like to devote all my time to this project, that is simply not possible, so I am working on it as much as I can. This varies from week to week, but I should have a looser schedule now than I did until mid/early December. If anybody is interested in helping me work on this or wants to coordinate functions, they can feel free to contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] nick Message 2 - hi, i am, hopefully, getting an iodata usb2rgb (usb vga dongle...) cable soon, and will be devoting some of my OLPC time to that - probably mostly integration work, so that we can hook olpc to other display hardware (projectors, etc) when needed. i'm also interested in working on integrating wiimote control with the XO. again, a lot of that is integration work :-) but it makes several different kinds of sensors trivially available, modulo the availability of a bluetooth dongle. i'd love to work with someone on adding processing.org hardware / arduino programming activity support to xo. cool stuff, those projects are, and pushing them together with OLPC is an interesting synergy. --elijah Message 3 - Hi all, My current projects include the various I/O devices for the XO, but my focus is the TeleHealth Module. I am trying to design a peripheral, application, and library for the XO to successfully bridge the last-mile gap between the medical community and the children of the third-world. My work on the activity still remains trivial at this point in time, as I am relatively new to python. My work on the hardware is outlined in depth on the wiki page, [[TeleHealth_Module]]. I am still working on obtaining the few remaining components via samples, and am currently struggling to obtain an oscilloscope and developer boards for my surface-mount components. A bit about me: My heavy involvement in OLPC precipitated after I was severely burned on my left hand by a plasma cutter. I have since learned much about medical diagnosis technologies and protocols. I am a chemistry hobbiest, electricity enthusiast, Wikipedian, sustainability advocate, and student. There's more to be said, but some of it is on my wikipedia user page, [[User:ITxT]] I look forwards to collaboration, Ian Daniher Message 4 - (Joel would be presenting OLPC at an important conference soon - on the 20th of November, Please help him with peripherals ideas and designs) Joel says... Hi, I'm presenting OLPC at a big education conference in two weeks time (nov 20th) and I'd like to demo some of the different bits that we currently have.
Re: project idea: Interactive-Sugar-Online-Simulation (ISOS)
On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 01:59 +0100, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Hello, I just stumbled across a very interesting comment by Eduardo Montez over on OLPCnews.com (http://www.olpcnews.com/laptops/xo1/olpc_news_100_laptop_fundraising_drive.html): off topic: I just got an idea for showing people what Sugar can do. Some should put up an interactive web site where anyone can sign on for free, and all the people who are using it at any time would be the community and show up on the gui, connected through the server instead of the meshnetwork. That way people could experience the collaborative aspect of Sugar, which is its greatest innovation. I certainly think this is an outstanding idea, even though such an implementation is obviously anything but trivial. Such a virtual Interactive-Sugar-Online-Simulation (ISOS) could potentially act like one of those web-operating-systems that have become somewhat popular lately. It would basically allow for children who use a regular Windows PC to use at least some of the innovations and unique features that Sugar provides. So the requirement for being able to benefit from these outstanding developments would shift from need to have an X0 to need to have some computer with a browser and internet connectivity. What do you think? Best regards, Christoph Sounds great. Go ahead and implement it. -- John (J5) Palmieri [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: project idea: Interactive-Sugar-Online-Simulation (ISOS)
Wonderful! Suggest: Making a wiki page on wiki.laptop.org, called ISOS - on a subtitle, put Interactive Sugar Online Simulation without the dashes as a subtitle, copy in information from email (without email addresses) Great idea. Suggesting putting external links, investigating thoughts such as these: - wixi, swixi -- there are a couple of web 2.0 startups that are doing things like this. I think it's critical personally that someone would develop a sugar os, web launchable platform. - think about developing documentation to help make it easier for people to install the vmware player -- investigate the build that is available for simulating sugar OS -- ask around to see if it's possible to launch through web services -- probably not - search devel list archives for recent mention of parallels version of player. - look for existing page on emulators, emulation, see if it is possible to make it more understandable to people, and if not, make a simplified version, as a step towards the easy version for everyone. - stage 1: suggest consider seeing if someone can make a flash-based simulation, not as good as full OS -- but at least it is something. easy, quick - stage 2: fuller interactivity -- guessing that adobe flex, air, one of the rich media application environments could work - stage 3: holy grail -- full os simulation -- sugar os application server, sugar os sitting on the back end, wonderful wonderful And unless this is already habit for you (I need to learn it myself) -- publish early, publish often, meaning try to pick a day once a week (ex: sunday), to put some notes on wiki page as to how things are going so interested people can see how it goes. On Nov 14, 2007 6:59 PM, Christoph Derndorfer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I just stumbled across a very interesting comment by Eduardo Montez over on OLPCnews.com (http://www.olpcnews.com/laptops/xo1/olpc_news_100_laptop_fundraising_drive.html ): off topic: I just got an idea for showing people what Sugar can do. Some should put up an interactive web site where anyone can sign on for free, and all the people who are using it at any time would be the community and show up on the gui, connected through the server instead of the meshnetwork. That way people could experience the collaborative aspect of Sugar, which is its greatest innovation. I certainly think this is an outstanding idea, even though such an implementation is obviously anything but trivial. Such a virtual Interactive-Sugar-Online-Simulation (ISOS) could potentially act like one of those web-operating-systems that have become somewhat popular lately. It would basically allow for children who use a regular Windows PC to use at least some of the innovations and unique features that Sugar provides. So the requirement for being able to benefit from these outstanding developments would shift from need to have an X0 to need to have some computer with a browser and internet connectivity. What do you think? Best regards, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Todd Kelsey Good Green Fun: http://www.cftw.com/xoroids/ Willy Wonka Wonderful! - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:StartOfMP.jpg Love Poem for people of Middle East: http://welcome.cftw.com Tour of laptop | http://wiki.laptop.org/go/608-demo-notes About Me/CFTW | http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46bhl=en http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhbxftbn_35f5b46bhl=en Loving the World | http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhbxftbn_36cx4kj7 Fascinating for me to sit here and realize the interplay and influence that music can have -- it is a part of my life, yet I haven't continued as I could, partly out of thinking there are more important things. but it has it's place. i am sitting at olpc offices, and someone is playing pink floyd, and I think music is a gift of creativity that can inspire an atmosphere of creativity, and the range of such echoes is infinite. - Me Free tunes by me: http://www.cftw.com/music ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Telling time (was: StopWatch activity)
Bert Freudenberg writes: I question the very assumption that continuously telling the time is even remotely important on a learning machine for kids in elementary school age. Dealing with time is a critical life skill that must be learned. Having a clock is thus very important. Keeping the activity separate is good. Once the frame clock arrives, the activity clock can either be deleted or mutate into a calendar. The clock activity could also be used to set the time zone. If anything, the stopwatch goes with the ruler and the acoustic ruler. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
