Re: Google Summer of Code and OLPC

[Charles Merriam]

No problem.  Wiki now has a link.  -- Charles

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Martin Langhoff
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Roberto Fagá <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  > Try  "One Laptop Per Child" :)
>  >  http://code.google.com/soc/olpc/about.html
>
>  Ooops! I'm a tired fool it seems. Sorry about the noise!
>
>
>
>
>  martin
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State of Update.1 on March 20, 2008

[Michael Stone]

Folks,

First, thanks are due to gdesmott, morgs, cscott, dwmw2, daf, walter,
wad, mstone, and Blaketh for contributing helpful updates to our U.1
bugs. If your name isn't on this list: shame on you! Update a bug!

Next, we're blocked on testing results for:

  Packages Bugs
   ---
  q2d146245 5422
  telepathy-salut-0.2.3-1  6575 6707
  olpc-library-core-1-23   6685
  olpc-library-common-1-23 6685

Let's make an update.1-701 with these packages, take the necessary
measurements, and call ourselves done if the 5 listed bugs are fixed.

Objections?

Michael


Within reach
-

#6685 TSTsj  (library bundle localization)
#6245 TSTrichard (system firmware update issue)
#5422 TSTrichard (boot even if firmware needs update)
#6575 TSTcollabora   (chat receives message but can't send anymore)
#6707 TSTcollabora   (probable dup of 6575; maybe new)


Missing the boat
-

#6586 DBGdwmw2   (wireless scan failure, reproducible, dwmw2 on it)
#6299 TST??? (salut backoff when gabble running), needs to be 
tested on a big mesh;
#6170 ???uwog(shared write crashes)
#6407 ???marco   (Write crashes when sharing and add an image)
#4153 DBGwad (connect to linklocal instead of schoolmesh) see 
also #5963
#5848 DBGmarco   (network manager failure)


Boat sank before arriving
-

#1407 ???dilinger(Touchpad recalibration should be forced under 
some circumstances.)
#2804 SGNbernie  (Cursor sometimes goes strange)
#6050 ???uwog(Arabic is broken in Write)
#5841 STK??? (spanish and portuguese keyboards)
#6572 STKcollabora   (key hash in mdns, new tiny patch, needs review)
#6483 DBGmstone  (read sharing broken)


Important non-build related changes
-

#6716 DBGerikb   (record fails to share audio)
#6672 TSTbdoin   (gnuchess gcompris in /home)
#6673 ???Nat (tamtam broken in /home)
#6708 TSTcjb (new pippy to deal with moved tamtam)
#6689 ESCcscott  (provide means to customize ~olpc/.i18n)
#6475 FINmorgs   (pull in new pippy required by salut changes in 
#6299) fixed in build-700, Pippy-19.xo
#6521 TSTNat (tam tam has new translations)
#5036 STKkreneskyp   (Master build addition of Watch & Listen activity)
#4593 MSGkreneskyp   (localization for Watch and listen, blocked on 
#5036)




Key: ??? - status or author unknown
 TST - needs to be tested
 BLD - needs to be put into a build
 PKG - pkg needs to be built
 DBG - debugging/diagnosis still needed
 STK - stuck; a decision is needed about how to proceed
 SGN - a signoff is needed
 ESC - canceled or siginificantly reduced in priority
 FIN - successfully finished
 MSG - communication needed


P.S. - ??? means that I don't know what's going on in a bug. Please
fix this. Now. Thanks.

P.P.S. - Some new reporting techniques that may be useful for keeping
tabs on our progress:

  http://dev.laptop.org/report/11  - Bugs tagged release? with recent changes
  http://dev.laptop.org/report/12  - Details of recent changes to bugs tagged 
release?
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Re: Switching between Arabic and French

[Ralph A. Mack]

Hello all,

It appears I've finally figured this out. The following command, from an
olpc command window, seems to get me what I want (with Right Alt as the
group toggle key):

  setxkbmap -display :0 fr,ara -option grp:toggle

(Of course, in the real world, these would be reversed :-))

What fooled me was that I was using Write as a test application. With
the above settings, I get precisely what I would expect in Chat - French
on the left, toggle, then Arabic on the right. In Write, when I switched
to Arabic, I just got pseudo-European gibberish on the right of the text
(not the margin) filling in leftward, :) but this was with a Ship.2-659
build, which might be quite venerable by now - not sure. 

With this in mind, it looks like it might be time to switch from Ship.2
to Joyride and update frequently, which means I will need to be able to
pull down new builds more reliably than I can right now for some reason
- but that's a whole different subject, so I'll post separately on it.

One other comment, just a nit really: it surprised me that the mapping
of  to [ISO_Next_Group, ISO_Prev_Group] was put into each of the
main language files rather than once in the option file and then
reflected in the rules as needed. This wasn't true for group mappings on
my Ubuntu Linux box. Instead, based on what I see there, I'd expect an
alias definition in whatever the olpc uses in keycodes (evdev?) and then
its use in symbols/group. 

Was this inherited from upstream? If not, I'd be interested to learn the
rationale for the choice. I'm only a couple of days into this stuff, and
the more I read of it, the more I'm certain that there's a lot more
underneath that I missed. When I see a pattern, I usually learn the most
from its exceptions :-)

Gxis,
Lupestro


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Re: Google Summer of Code and OLPC

[Martin Langhoff]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Roberto Fagá <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Try  "One Laptop Per Child" :)
>  http://code.google.com/soc/olpc/about.html

Ooops! I'm a tired fool it seems. Sorry about the noise!


martin
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Re: Google Summer of Code and OLPC

[Roberto Fagá]

Try  "One Laptop Per Child" :)
http://code.google.com/soc/olpc/about.html

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Martin Langhoff
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Martin Langhoff
>
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >  This year, GSoC is starting early, so
>  >  we should be getting in motion asap.
>
>  Did we manage to get in? Or rather - did OLPC apply at all? Deadline
>  was 12th March... we don't seem to be on the list here
>  http://code.google.com/soc/2008/
>
>  cheers,
>
>
>
>  martin
>
>
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Re: Google Summer of Code and OLPC

[Martin Langhoff]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Martin Langhoff
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  This year, GSoC is starting early, so
>  we should be getting in motion asap.

Did we manage to get in? Or rather - did OLPC apply at all? Deadline
was 12th March... we don't seem to be on the list here
http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

cheers,



martin
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Re: Devel Digest, Vol 25, Issue 83

[Bert Freudenberg]

On Mar 21, 2008, at 0:31 , Nehemiah Dacres wrote:
> RE: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample  
> code) were you testing  on a machine or in an emulator?  the olpc  
> must have some wicked python optimizations to get that don to . 
> 25seconds how much data were you working with?


It's OpenCV, not Python:

http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/opencv/

- Bert -


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Re: Devel Digest, Vol 25, Issue 83

[Nehemiah Dacres]

RE: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample code) were
you testing  on a machine or in an emulator?  the olpc must have some wicked
python optimizations to get that don to .25seconds how much data were you
working with?

2008/3/20 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

> Send Devel mailing list submissions to
>devel@lists.laptop.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Devel digest..."
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample
>  code) (Nirav Patel)
>   2. SoC:  Language Learning Activity (Steven Mohr)
>   3. Assorted Data on the Quality of our Networking, Presence, and
>  Read  Sharing Capabilities (Michael Stone)
>   4. New joyride build 1784 (Build Announcer v2)
>   5. python programming assist. (Aaron Konstam)
>   6. Re: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some
>  sample code) (karl)
>   7. New faster build 1785 (Build Announcer v2)
>   8. Re: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some
>  sample code) (Chris Hager)
>   9. Re: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some
>  sample code) (Nirav Patel)
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: "Nirav Patel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: devel@lists.laptop.org
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:18:39 -0400
> Subject: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample code)
> I've been playing with vision processing stuff for the XO, mostly
> using OpenCV.  I have some sample code up at
> http://eclecti.cc/code/face-detection-on-the-olpc-xo that does face
> detection surprisingly quickly.  It seems that the bottleneck isn't
> even the OpenCV Haar Cascade algorithm, but the time it takes to
> initialize the v4l2 drivers.
>
> The code I wrote is just basic proof of concept stuff, but there are
> some amazing possibilities involved in vision processing, like
> recognizing sign language and gestures, drawing in air, playing motion
> based games, and even identifying plants and wildlife.
>
> If anyone is interested, I'd like to start developing an Activity that
> uses face/object detection for something more fun or useful.  I'm new
> to Python and OLPC development, so I could use some help.
> Alternately, I am a student, so if anyone is interested in mentoring
> this as a possible Summer of Code project, that would be great.
>
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: "Steven Mohr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: 
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:20:56 +0100
> Subject: SoC: Language Learning Activity
>  Hi,
> my name is Steven Mohr. I study computer science dual at the BA Mannheim (
> www3.ba-mannheim.de) in Mannheim, Germany. This is a 1:1 combination
> of "normal" studies and working in a company. Instead of having vacation I'm
> working at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the department for software
> and simulation technology (http://www.dlr.de/sc/en/desktopdefault.aspx).
> I've already have at bit experience in an open source projects. I
> participated for the DLR in an open source project called catacomb (
> http://catacomb.tigris.org/).
> I would like to work at the Language Learning Activity. I've looked at
> the Lingoteach app and it seems to be a good basic for a port to
> XO. Lingoteach has already language files and even spoken examples. I would
> like to port it to Python. There's a C library which implements access to
> the language files so what we could reuse them. So my question is: Who is
> mentoring this task that I can talk about details?
>
> Steven
>
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: devel@lists.laptop.org
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:41:42 -0400
> Subject: Assorted Data on the Quality of our Networking, Presence, and
> Read Sharing Capabilities
> Friends,
>
> Chris Ball and I spend several hours last night measuring the behavior
> of Read sharing. The data we collected are reproduced below.
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
>
> A Fragment of the Critical Path for Successful Read Sharing
> 
>
>
> This chart was created based on general knowledge of the Telepathy, Sugar
> Presence Service, Sugar python libraries, and the Read source code at
>
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/read-activity;a=blob;f=readactivity.py;hb=HEAD
>
>
>  *
>  |
> XOs join the network  |
>  |
>  |
>  *
>  |
> Read is started on|
> the "sharer"  |
>  |
>   /--*--\
>  /

Re: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample code)

[Nirav Patel]

OpenCV has a Python API that uses SWIG.  It's in the default fedoro
repo as opencv-python.

Good idea, I'll add it to the wiki momentarily.

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 6:47 PM, Chris Hager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nirav Patel wrote:
>  > I've been playing with vision processing stuff for the XO, mostly
>  > using OpenCV.  I have some sample code up at
>  > http://eclecti.cc/code/face-detection-on-the-olpc-xo that does face
>  > detection surprisingly quickly.  It seems that the bottleneck isn't
>  > even the OpenCV Haar Cascade algorithm, but the time it takes to
>  > initialize the v4l2 drivers.
>
>  Wow - this is amazing! And especially with this speed of ~0.25 seconds
>  for finding a face! How are you accessing OpenCV - via SWIG or CTypes?
>
>  I'd suggest to create [[OpenCV]] and start linking to infos, howto's and
>  examples. That will make life much easier for all who want to play
>  around with image recognition on the xo in the future.
>
>  - Chris
>
>
>
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Re: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample code)

[Chris Hager]

Nirav Patel wrote:
> I've been playing with vision processing stuff for the XO, mostly
> using OpenCV.  I have some sample code up at
> http://eclecti.cc/code/face-detection-on-the-olpc-xo that does face
> detection surprisingly quickly.  It seems that the bottleneck isn't
> even the OpenCV Haar Cascade algorithm, but the time it takes to
> initialize the v4l2 drivers.

Wow - this is amazing! And especially with this speed of ~0.25 seconds 
for finding a face! How are you accessing OpenCV - via SWIG or CTypes?

I'd suggest to create [[OpenCV]] and start linking to infos, howto's and 
examples. That will make life much easier for all who want to play 
around with image recognition on the xo in the future.

- Chris


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New faster build 1785

[Build Announcer v2]

http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/faster/build1785

Changes in build 1785 from build: 1778

Size delta: 0.00M

-telepathy-salut 0.2.2-5.olpc2
+telepathy-salut 0.2.3-1.olpc2
-Memorize 25
+Memorize 26

--- Changes for telepathy-salut 0.2.3-1.olpc2 from 0.2.2-5.olpc2 ---
  + Upstream release 0.2.3
  + dev.laptop.org #6575: muc receives message but can't send anymore

--- Changes for Memorize 26 from 25 ---
  + Fix sound issue when using Memorize with non-US language

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Re: Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample code)

[karl]

Nirav Patel wrote:
> I've been playing with vision processing stuff for the XO, mostly
> using OpenCV.  I have some sample code up at
> http://eclecti.cc/code/face-detection-on-the-olpc-xo that does face
> detection surprisingly quickly.  It seems that the bottleneck isn't
> even the OpenCV Haar Cascade algorithm, but the time it takes to
> initialize the v4l2 drivers.
>
> The code I wrote is just basic proof of concept stuff, but there are
> some amazing possibilities involved in vision processing, like
> recognizing sign language and gestures, drawing in air, playing motion
> based games, and even identifying plants and wildlife.
>
> If anyone is interested, I'd like to start developing an Activity that
> uses face/object detection for something more fun or useful.  I'm new
> to Python and OLPC development, so I could use some help.
> Alternately, I am a student, so if anyone is interested in mentoring
> this as a possible Summer of Code project, that would be great.
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>
>   
I made a demo in Etoys for color tracking objects with the camera:

http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/camTrack.pr

Have good lighting and a distinctly  colored object.
Pick the color from the object with the color picker and a yellow 
ellipse on screen will track relative how you move the object.

This is just a demo , more to come later...
Karl
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python programming assist.

[Aaron Konstam]

Recently someone mentioned they were trying to improve their python
programming skills.

Attached is a python program than might help. It is called:
create_module_list

If create_module_list
is executed for example like so:
create_module_list string
it will produce a file called:
string_modules

which contains a list of all the functions in string.py together with
the documentation of each function.

It will not work properly on packages.

--
===
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. -- P.
Erdos
===
Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
#!/usr/bin/env python
""" produces list of components in a python module """
""" Usage: create_module_list module_name   """
import string, sys
if len(sys.argv) == 1:
	print "Usage: create_module_list  module_name "
else:
	module = sys.argv[1]
	exec("import " + module)
	osmod= eval( "dir("+module + ")")
	file=open(module +"_modules","w")
	file.write("  List of "+ module+ "  modules \n" +
	   "  -- \n\n")
	index=0
	while index < len(osmod):
		element=osmod[index]
		file.write(element + '\n')
		docum=eval(module +"." + element + ".__doc__")
		if docum != None:
			file.write(docum + '\n')
			file.write("\n" + "=="+'\n')
		index = index+1

	file.close()

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New joyride build 1784

[Build Announcer v2]

http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build1784

Changes in build 1784 from build: 1783

Size delta: 0.00M

-telepathy-salut 0.2.2-5.olpc2
+telepathy-salut 0.2.3-1.olpc2

--- Changes for telepathy-salut 0.2.3-1.olpc2 from 0.2.2-5.olpc2 ---
  + Upstream release 0.2.3
  + dev.laptop.org #6575: muc receives message but can't send anymore

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Assorted Data on the Quality of our Networking, Presence, and Read Sharing Capabilities

[Michael Stone]

Friends,

Chris Ball and I spend several hours last night measuring the behavior
of Read sharing. The data we collected are reproduced below.

Michael





A Fragment of the Critical Path for Successful Read Sharing



This chart was created based on general knowledge of the Telepathy, Sugar
Presence Service, Sugar python libraries, and the Read source code at 

http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/read-activity;a=blob;f=readactivity.py;hb=HEAD


  *
  |
XOs join the network  |
  |
  |
  *
  |
Read is started on|
the "sharer"  |
  |
   /--*--\
  /   \
invitations  / \   the "sharer" is 
are sent|   |  marked "public"
 \ /
  \   /
   \--*--/
  |
Joiners recognize the |  
presence of the shared|  
activity  |
  *
  |
Join commands are issued  |
to Sugar  |
  |
  *
Read instances look for   |
Tubes, register callbacks |
for new Tubes |
  |
  *
  |
...   |
  |
  |
  *
  |
After accepting a new |
tube, the joining act.|
issues an HTTP request|
  *
  |
...   |
  |
  |
--*---
   /  |   \
Results   /   |\
 /| \
/ |  \
success   divergence   failure





Experimental Setup


A Log of our measurements follows.

All experiments were conducted with four B4s (MS1, MS2, MS3, MS4)
running update.1-699 and Read-44.xo. The build log for 699 is here:

  
http://pilgrim.laptop.org/~pilgrim/xo-1/streams/update.1/build699/devel_jffs2/build.log

if you need to see what software is in the build.





Simple Mesh, Sequential Invitations


We created a simple mesh on Channel 11 and extended invitations to
join a Phyla.pdf (under Library > Biology; ~2.5 MB) session from 
 
MS1 -I> (MS3, MS4).

The invitations were received on both MS3 and MS4.

First, we caused MS3 to accept the invitation. MS3 successfully
displayed the shared PDF. Then we caused MS4 to accept the invitation.
MS4 displayed the shared PDF.





Simple Mesh, Simultaneous Invitations


Still on Channel 11, simple mesh; we closed all open instances of Read
and reopened Phyla.pdf on MS1. We extended invitations from

MS1 -I> (MS3, MS4)

The invitations were received on both MS3 and MS4.

We caused MS3 and MS4 to accept their invitations simultaneously. Both
MS3 and MS4 displayed the shared PDF after about 5-10 seconds of data
transfer.

  NB: Joining Read instances do not save the actual PDFs they receive to
  the DS. There is a comment in the source code stating this fact but
  there is no explanation of _why_ this decision was made. If you know
  why, please let us know.



Connecting to an AP


Next we connected MS1, MS2, MS3, and MS4 to the channel 6 "media
802.11" AP.

MS1, MS2, and MS4 all connected successfully on the first try and
received presence updates.

MS3's connection icon changed to indicate that it was connected to the
AP but it received no presence information. 

  'olpc-netstatus' on MS3 reported that Salut was running but the
  "Config" field was blank. [On the other XOs, the "Config" field read
  "Access point".]

After five disconnect/reconnect attempts, MS3 made a successful
connection to the AP and presence information was exchanged.





Making Friends


In order to speed up the process of issuing invitations in the future,
we added each of MS[1,2,3,4] as a friend of each of MS[1,2,3,4]. All
XOs saw their three friends as being available. 

Unfortunately, in the mesh views on MS1, MS2, and MS4, the MS4 mesh
icon representing MS1 had a palette offering a "Remove friend" option.
All the other representing icons had palettes with the "Add friend"
option, even on the Friends View.





Dynamics of maintaining connections
---

SoC: Language Learning Activity

[Steven Mohr]

Hi,
my name is Steven Mohr. I study computer science dual at the BA Mannheim
(www3.ba-mannheim.de) in Mannheim, Germany. This is a 1:1 combination of
"normal" studies and working in a company. Instead of having vacation I'm
working at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the department for software
and simulation technology (http://www.dlr.de/sc/en/desktopdefault.aspx).
I've already have at bit experience in an open source projects. I
participated for the DLR in an open source project called catacomb
(http://catacomb.tigris.org/). 
I would like to work at the Language Learning Activity. I've looked at the
Lingoteach app and it seems to be a good basic for a port to XO. Lingoteach
has already language files and even spoken examples. I would like to port it
to Python. There's a C library which implements access to the language files
so what we could reuse them. So my question is: Who is mentoring this task
that I can talk about details?
 
Steven
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Face Detection and other Vision Processing (and some sample code)

[Nirav Patel]

I've been playing with vision processing stuff for the XO, mostly
using OpenCV.  I have some sample code up at
http://eclecti.cc/code/face-detection-on-the-olpc-xo that does face
detection surprisingly quickly.  It seems that the bottleneck isn't
even the OpenCV Haar Cascade algorithm, but the time it takes to
initialize the v4l2 drivers.

The code I wrote is just basic proof of concept stuff, but there are
some amazing possibilities involved in vision processing, like
recognizing sign language and gestures, drawing in air, playing motion
based games, and even identifying plants and wildlife.

If anyone is interested, I'd like to start developing an Activity that
uses face/object detection for something more fun or useful.  I'm new
to Python and OLPC development, so I could use some help.
Alternately, I am a student, so if anyone is interested in mentoring
this as a possible Summer of Code project, that would be great.
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Re: Building kernel on non-Fedora systems

[Richard A. Smith]

Denver Gingerich wrote:

> 
> Has any work been done on removing the dependency on Fedora Core for
> kernel building?  Can someone provide a brief list of the reasons for
> this dependency so that those interested in fixing it can do so?

Michael stone pointed me at the kernels existing 'make binrpm-pkg' one 
evening and using the olpc config file I used this to create an rpm on a 
debian ubuntu system without any of the Fedora stuff.

This kernel booted fine and ran fine.  The problems I had were in the 
modules. I was not able to get the depmod to quit whining but later 
conversations with mstone showed that I was probably not running the 
right depmod command.  My testing only needed stuff that was static so I 
didn't care at the time.

> without RPM.  Being able to build the kernel binary seems to be
> sufficient for most development purposes as a developer could just add
> the new binary to /boot and update the /boot/vmlinuz symlink or update
> olpc.fth.

/boot is not really /boot . :)  /boot is really 
'/versions/boot/current/boot'. you must put your kernel there or it 
won't be used.

-- 
Richard Smith  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
One Laptop Per Child
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New joyride build 1783

[Build Announcer v2]

http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build1783

Changes in build 1783 from build: 1778

Size delta: 0.00M

-Memorize 25
+Memorize 26

--- Changes for Memorize 26 from 25 ---
  + Fix sound issue when using Memorize with non-US language

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This mail was automatically generated
See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs
See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a 
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Building kernel on non-Fedora systems

[Denver Gingerich]

The kernel building wiki pages
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rebuilding_OLPC_kernel and
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Kernel_Building) suggest that the only way
to build an OLPC kernel is using Fedora Core 6 or 7.  This is quite
limiting for people like me who don't use Fedora regularly as we would
have to dual-boot Fedora or install it in a VM just to build kernels,
while most Linux distros are perfectly capable of building a normal
kernel.

Has any work been done on removing the dependency on Fedora Core for
kernel building?  Can someone provide a brief list of the reasons for
this dependency so that those interested in fixing it can do so?

I realize that it would still be necessary to have RPM installed to
create an RPM for quick deployment on an XO, but it should be easy to
at least make the kernel binary and perhaps even the initrd image
without RPM.  Being able to build the kernel binary seems to be
sufficient for most development purposes as a developer could just add
the new binary to /boot and update the /boot/vmlinuz symlink or update
olpc.fth.

Denver
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GSoC project - Language learning activity

[Aditya M]

Hi,

I am a college UG student hoping to participate in the SoC. The
foreign language learning activity project interests me. I had a look
at the LingoTeach project [0] and I think that it should be
convertible into a tool that can let children learn new languages and
be used in OLPC deployments. I know Python and C/C++. Is there someone
who is interested in mentoring this project? I would love to discuss
further my ideas for this application.

Also, if this is not the right place to ask, please tell me.

[0]: http://lingoteach.sourceforge.net/

-- 
Aditya
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Branches listed on kernel wiki page out-of-date

[Denver Gingerich]

The list of branches at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Kernel appears to be
out-of-date.  powermgmt and devtree are listed even though they
haven't been updated in 9+ months while linux-2.6 is not listed, even
though it is updated fairly regularly.  Worsening the problem is the
statement "The other branches are no longer used, and can be
ignored.", which implies linux-2.6 is not used, for example.

I'm not particularly familiar with the reasoning behind different
branches so I am hesitant to do the updates myself.  Could a kernel
developer update the wiki to reflect the branches currently in use?

Denver
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Development kernel RPMs

[Denver Gingerich]

I am interested in testing out development kernels, but I don't have
the time to setup a development environment and re-sync and rebuild my
git tree every few weeks.  I see that the master and stable heads have
auto-built RPMs that are available at
http://dev.laptop.org/~dilinger/master/ and
http://dev.laptop.org/~dilinger/stable/, but there doesn't seem to be
a similar resource available for development kernels.

To clarify, when I say "development kernel", I mean a kernel that is
built from the linux-2.6 head at
http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=olpc-2.6;a=summary.  This appears to be
the head that most closely follows Linus' tree.

Would it be possible to setup an RPM auto-build system for the
linux-2.6 head as is setup for the master and stable heads?

Denver
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Re: Detecting MIME type of a shared file

[James Simmons]

Tomeu,

The zipfile.is_zipfile(filename) method solved my problem.  I was able 
to successfully share a Zip file between two computers running my 
activity.  Still some kinks to iron out, though.  I'll keep your 
suggestion in mind for the future.


Thanks,

James Simmons


Tomeu Vizoso wrote:


On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:08 PM, James Simmons
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 


Tomeu and Michael,

It turns out Python has a method you can pass a filename to and it will
identify if the file is a Zip file or not, based on the "magic number", not
the filename.  It seems to do the trick.
   



As a rule of thumb, I would first try to get a mime-type I can trust,
and only if I cannot (I get for example application/octet-stream), I
would try to sniff the type.

But in your case you may be right by just sniffing it.

Tomeu
 



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Re: [sugar] OLPC Usability Testing Class Project

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 11:24 PM, Frederick Grose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This note is a request for the broader community to consider potential topic
> areas that might be prime for some usability testing.
>
> (Here is a quick review of usability testing,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing.)
>
> Professor Keith Karn in the Information Technology Department,
> http://it.rit.edu/it/, of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in
> Rochester, NY will have 4-5 graduate students (from his class of 20)
> propose, and over the next 10 weeks, execute a usability testing
> consultation around the XO or OLPC project.  The class met for the first
> time on Wednesday 12 March 2008, and will meet, as a whole, every Wednesday
> 6-9:50 pm EDT through 21 May 2008.  This OLPC project team will be asked to
> review the wiki.laptop.org and then contact me as client representative.
> Because of the academic schedule, we need to review and select a testing
> topic area in the next 7 days and have a final testing plan prepared by 26
> March 2008.
>
> What usability issue is currently most timely and significant to the
> project?  Since OLPC is developing a new information and communication
> technologies platform, there are many possibilities for significant target
> users, subsystems, components, and activities.

I suggest starting first with observing general usage of the Sugar
shell and base activities (Browse, Read, Write, Paint and Journal) and
move from there to other activities. At this point, I don't think more
focused testing will be as useful.

> Please think about the project design needs, possibilities, and constraints,
> and suggest topics or issues here or to our wiki page,
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rochester%2C_NY#Project_ideas.
>
> We have a few G1G1 XOs in Rochester that we should be able to use for live
> testing with local children.  Larger scale tests could be performed with
> emulated XOs or hosted Sugar in the RIT Usability Laboratories. The class
> will be expected to go through the human subject reviews as required.
>
> Because so many cultural variables may be important modifiers of
> understanding user interactions with the OLPC project, perhaps there may be
> some more basic or common psycho-physical aspects of usability we could
> address that would be timely and significant for the project. Or, we might
> be able to recruit user participants from one of the recently settled
> immigrant communities in the Rochester area to delve into the
> internationalization and cultural domains.

Having different groups of children based on age and previous contact
with computers may be more important than cultural differences, in my
opinion.

> Some reviewers of OLPC have been critical of the shortage of reported
> usability testing results, so far, however, if we appreciate the pace and
> resourcing of the development, perhaps this is a chance to address any gaps
> or curiosities that you may have.

We have already had some feedback from the pilot tests, but until now
and because of time and other constraints, hasn't been as systematic
as we need. Having your commented observations about which tasks are
more problematic would already be extremely useful.

> We would welcome your thoughts (particularly on usability issues in the near
> term).
>
> Thanks to everyone for all their efforts!

I'm afraid now is not a good moment to ask a big involvement from the
Sugar developers, but I'm sure we'll make our best at answering more
concrete questions that you have.

Thanks and good luck,

Tomeu
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Interested GSoC 2008 student

[Fred Imbeault]

Hi, this is the first year I know about Google Summer of Code, and after
some hours of research and some IRC chat, I found your organization. I like
your goals and challenges and would appreciate to participate in the
development of your applications. I am a student in computing at college and
next year I'm going in game programming at university. I don't have a lot of
open source developing experience, but I think that my knowledge in Game
programming could be a plus for me in some of your projects. I was looking
at your wiki and the Board and Cards Games project interest me a lot. I
already know python programming language but still need to experience PyGame
library but learning it should not be a problem as I already know some other
graphic library such as SDL. So I wanted to know if your organization have a
good interest in this project, I could work on some few good games and
implement nice AI if needed, I just don't expect to finish networking part
as I don't have great knowledge of network applications programming, but I
could still try it if I have some time left.


 I just want to know what people think about it!
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Re: Mermorize -- fixed

[Simon Schampijer]

To follow up on this:

the issue was locale related like described in #3165. I applied the same 
workaround for now, setting the NUMERIC locale to 'C'.

A new memorize package is up at:
http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/Memorize-26.xo

Victor, thanks very much for all your effort to spot this hard to find bug.
Simon

victor wrote:
> I traced the memorize bug and fixed it in games.py. I also
> optmised the csound code in csoundserver.py. I am not sure
> who needs to get this code. Could he/she get in touch with me
> privately?I'll give more details then.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Victor
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Interested in the Google Summer of Code

[karl]

Bobby Powers wrote:
> Great, I am glad there is some interest!  I just found your older 
> email thread, Don, [1] on ideas for Micropolis, and I think that what 
> I would like to do with system dynamic (SD) modeling can easily 
> encompass the visual programming [2] ideas you and others have talked 
> about.  I believe the backend to support an agent-based approach is 
> practically the same as what would be needed to create object-oriented 
> system dynamics models.  I've been reading up as much as I can on what 
> visual programming tools are available or in development currently for 
> the XO (I'm downloading an image right now to boot up and play with as 
> we/I type), it seems like turtle art is the closest thing to fit the 
> bill.  I haven't really played with it much, but it looks quite 
> impressive!  My first thoughts are that it seems very nice for 
> programming agents (like turtles), but its not as expressive for 
> constructing system dynamics models (see [3] for some ideas I had a 
> couple weeks ago as to how SD models could look).
Have you looked at Kedama which is part of the Etoys activity ?
It is quite powerful for programming up to 1 turtles in simulations.
http://www.squeakland.org/fun_projects/kedama/kedma_welcome.htm

Karl
>
> It seems there are two main ways I could focus my attention (not 
> necessarily mutually exclusive):
> 1. creating and expanding on a simulation engine that can access and 
> perform operations on spatial and nonspatial data, and integrate with 
> the unique features of the XO (collaboratively work on models with 
> data sets and layers from different machines, for example)
> 2. focus on modularizing micropolis, getting its core logic into a 
> form that is visually programmable on the XO (though Turtle Art, 
> something new of mine, or even through Develop python editing) and 
> adding some of the features Don had mentioned like programmable agents 
> that can edit the world
>
>
> I will also try to post some information on the simulation engine that 
> I'm currently working on to the web in the next few days, and look at 
> how turtle art works (to see if there is something that can be adapted 
> or at least learned from there).  Where do the communities interests lie?
>
>
> yours, Bobby
>
>
> [1] http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2007-March/001829.html
> [2] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Micropolis#Visual_Programming
> [3] http://www.bobbypowers.net/mockups.html
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:46 AM, Edward Cherlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>
> 2008/3/18 Bobby Powers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >:
> > Hi, I'm a master's student at the University of Bergen and I'm
> interested in
> > bringing System Dynamics to the XO.  Before I start, if there is
> a better
> > mailing list for this just let me know (I briefly looked through
> the other
> > ones liked from the Wiki, and this seemed the most appropriate).
>
> Welcome! This is the place.
>
> > System Dynamics (SD) [1][2] aims to help people understand the
> world by
> > explicitly modeling how pieces of it work and then performing
> experiments in
> > these models.  It is used around the world, frequently in
> majority world
> > countries, in development planning [3], for example.  More
> formally, its a
> > methodology for examining and describing the behavior of complex
> systems
> > with an emphasis on the effects that feedback loops and time
> delays have.
> > At a basic level you have to specify the mathematical equations
> for the
> > different parts of your system.   The same problems can be
> solved by writing
> > code in a programming language (I had a course taught in Fortran
> a year
> > ago...), but usually in SD the modeling is done using a visual
> editor where
> > you can show causal relationships, stocks and flows graphically.  I
> > personally think the biggest short-fallings of the discipline
> are the
> > barriers to entry: the current software is far from intuitive
> and all the
> > major commercial offerings (there are no FLOSS products)
> [4][5][6] are very
> > expensive (educational licenses alone are frequently > $500 USD).
> >
> > Will Wright studied SD and used ideas from it when designing
> SimCity [7].
> > So I have several things I would like to work on:  first is a
> core simulator
> > that can transform equations into code (I'm currently working on
> this for my
> > master's thesis, but don't have and funding. eesh): I'm using
> the JIT
> > library from the LLVM project to be able to do this.  Second I
> want to
> > create a Sugar modeling interface that makes it easy and fun to
> create
> > models and explore their results (collaboratively, I hope!), and
> third I
> > want to hook this into Metropolis.  I t