Mario Talavera Writes

Has just posted their schedule for their Orlando stop.

I was fortunate enough to have gone to this conference a few years ago. Always the skeptic, I was surprised by the sessions I attended and the wonderful speakers they had lined up for the event. Some, like Bruce Tate, made a big difference in my view of our craft.

Anyways, the conference seems to have grown quite a bit and prices seem reasonable. Maybe this is the one conference I go to this year…

It would be awesome if Microsoft eases OLPC problems and helps speed up program adoption.  I would try Windows on the OLPC; maybe it would even allow me to install lots of games and educational software for my son.

Everyone’s biggest concern on this is that Microsoft is going to corner the OS market ‘globally’.  I think Microsoft HAS cornered the OS market a long time ago.  I also think it makes other OSs better.  There is definitely room for more than one OS but all the bickering could very well kill this program and then everyone looses…

Why is it so hard to take advantage of this? The only negative effect would be an exclusivity agreement between OLPC and Microsoft. That would really suck.

Having watched the video a few times; I cannot even tell that its true… The OLPC laptop does not have much power to deal in such a speedy way so to say.  Soo, either good engineering getting XP on it or good editing for video.  See for yourself.

I am reading some fascinating background information on the OLPC program at radian.org. The comments are very good as well.  I am left with mixed emotions. It is well known that the OLPC Program has not been a raging success as we would have hoped.

The article talks about a scenario, not unlike that of software development on big projects, where egos get in the way, many people have multiple agendas, and finally, the key people in the project become so disenchanted with the situation that they feel drained and let down.

I think the challenges outlined in link parallel the state of software development in many places. Places I’ve seen, places I’ve worked at. The common outcome is usually that the primordial purpose of a program/project/initiative gets lost in the midst of bickering, ego driven agendas and communication failures.  People loose sight of what the problem is and focus instead on supporting past decisions instead of evaluating current concerns.

I have been following this program since I saw Nicholas Negroponte’s video at Ted with a lot of interest. Thou I believe there’s many different ways to help those developing counties besides ‘giving children laptops, I completely respect the idea of enabling children (our future) to compete on a level playing field as they grow.

If this is the original idea of the OLPC Program, maybe they should have started in the US. There IS a big educational divide in our nation which does impact us. They could have set up smaller, less ambitious programs and learn from them as improving education for our children as well.

They have already changed he notion of little, low powered laptops. Every manufacturer is bringin small devices to market because of this. It would be a shame if that is all that comes out of this program.

I hope they find some way of bringing themselves together and proving half the world wrong.

According to OLPC WIKI, power management on OLPC is a work in progress. Lots of things ’seem’ to be a work in progress in OLPC.

Using the OLPC does use very little power, however, when I close it, it does not go to sleep (suspend) as I would have assumed. I think this is a defect since this project is so consiensious on power saving.

Maybe the WIKI states how things ‘ought’ to work instead of how they work at the moment. Looking at the ticket system for power related issues paints a different picture. Indeed, there are plenty of issues being worked on that are related to power in the OLPC.

I’m hoping for the best, most likely, I am doing something wrong and draining the battery by my own doing… I did get this OLPC on EBAY, perhaps previous owner didn’t condition battery properly? I doubt this is the issue because of all those tickets on power… I hope an update alleviates this any day now.

One little annoyance to me is that the OLPC comes with an ‘always on’ mode for all corners of the desktop. Mousing to an edge automatically brings up an outer frame where one can manage olpc. The uppermost-right keyboard key does the same thing and it is more convenient an not intrusive.

The behaviour is a bit like an Expose Active Screen Corners (on Macs) that cannot be configured. This is a bit annoying because the screen is rather small and it does not take much to activate outer frame.

Luckily, another quick search in the OLPC Forums and it turns out that these can be disabled without too much trouble.

In terminal, go into ’su’ and navigate to the following directory:
/usr/share/sugar/shell/view/frame/

And edit (I’m using nano, just like pico) eventarea.py commenting out lines 56 and 57 to look like this:

# invisible.connect('enter-notify-event', self._enter_notify_cb)
# invisible.connect('leave-notify-event', self._leave_notify_cb)

Changes require a restart to take effect. After the OLPC boots up, voila, no more hot corners. This is awesome. Now I just use the keyboard key to bring the frame only when I want to and not by mistake.

Reading on the OLPC is delightful. The battery seems to last a long time and, unlike the Sony Reader, can be done in complete darkness. I am making the screen as dark as possible, just one click before the blacklight turns off.
Still, it feels a bit like one is reading in a very old laptop tft screen. Doing a quick search on the OLPC Forums aturned out the following. In terminal activity, first login in as ’su’ (no password is necessary) and type the following:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/dcon/output

The one liner above makes the screen grayscale WITH the backlight on. I think that text looks much better with lights off in this mode. I am trying this tonight for reading and it looks way nicer than ‘dim color mode’ for text.

Finally, adjusting brightness up or down reverts screen to normal. Neat!

Mario Talavera Writes