Mezmerize me.

OLPC Summit T-Shirt

Summit is now over, and I’ve been asked so many times about the t-shirts.
They are not just randomly designed, they actually have an idea behind them.

OLPC is for kids, right? I remember, when I was a child, I loved the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, especially his ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’. That’s where the font of the t-shirt message comes from.

Can you guess what the message is about? Well, it’s not that hard when you know that XO icon is not a letter, just a decorative element. Don’t worry, I won’t keep you guessing for long.

There is a phrase that greets you every time when you enter Terminal Activity, ‘Hello, Children Of The World!’. I took the word ‘Children’ and wrote it in the Dancing Men Script. I know it could be just the word ‘Children’, no matter where it from, but I like to think I took it specifically from the phrase you see in Terminal.

This is basically it. If you were at the Summit in San Francisco this year, and got the t-shirt, I hope you liked it.

OLPC XO experiment

I recently went on a two-week vacation to St. Petersburg, Florida. It was going to be a calm and even boring time: swimming in the ocean, getting tan, doing everyday yoga and gathering energy for the rest of the year.

In terms of making this vacation less boring, I decided to take OLPC XO instead of my regular MacBookPro with me. I planned an experiment: go and see if I, a geek and a technology lover, can really work and live on this small green machine. And if I can, then how it would look.

XO is a really exceptional piece of technology, but it’s definitely not your MacBookPro. It is much slower, interface is different, especially in Sugar [Learning Environment], and made for a completely different purpose. And on top of all that, it is Linux, not an all-polished Mac.

Most of the things I do day-to-day on my MacBook, especially when on vacation, don’t require a 2011-ish extremely powerful machine. I do write a lot, but it can be done using any text processor on any platform. I do read a lot, but there is Kindle, and for internet I can use any browser, even the no-tabbed one supplied with XO. I do take pictures a lot, and this is a kind of tricky. My perfect-shooting-machine Sony NEX-5 saves images to RAW-files, and I used to edit them in Aperture. And I do use Photoshop sometimes as well.

Well,—I decided, I can live without this for two weeks. I will take photos indeed, cannot live without it,—but I will take a large SD-card, and a spare one, and a spare another one, and edit everything when I am back home.

So, it was set. I packed my green small precious monster, and in a couple of days started my unboring experiment.

One Laptop Per Child

A few months ago I was surfing the web looking for the interesting stuff that happens in the IT-related area. This is how I learned about OLPC.

The odd thing is that I didn’t hear about them earlier. The great one is that I finally did it.

OLPC is a non-profit organization making the education accessible for all children. What they basically do is building and bringing laptops to schools in countries that wouldn’t be able to afford this otherwise.

The whole idea is fascinating and great. It’s not only about laptops. It’s about knowledge and education, and that is an important part of the whole OLPC philosophy.

Their existence triggers a lot of questions and even ‘holy wars’. Opinions are very polar on this matter. Many people think OLPC does a good thing, providing education for kids who couldn’t get it otherwise. Others don’t believe in this ‘greater good’ and try to find a catch in the whole idea.

One my friend said—”OK, maybe bringing laptops to kids in Nigeria is a good idea. But don’t these kids have bigger problems to worry about?”. I can say—certainly. In some places there is no electricity, somewhere else is a war ongoing. Not having enough water to live certainly is a much bigger problem than not having a laptop.

You can describe a lot of things that are much more important than having a nice electronic device to play with. But nothing is more important than a good tool to solve problems, and OLPC is one for sure.

Look at the bigger picture: these laptops give kids education and knowledge that is priceless; they help them learn to read and give access to the worldwide pool of information of how to solve almost any problem. It’s not just the information—it is patterns, rational thinking, faster learning. Our minds will never be so flexible, innovative and creative as in childhood, so it is a crime not to give kids a chance to learn.

If somebody has problems with water you can go and fix it for sure, if you have all necessary tools. But this somebody will then be dependant on you, on your knowledge and authority. If you give that person right tools and resources, and show how to get more resources, create more tools and use them—you will help creating a free individual that can do nearly everything by himself. It is giving a fishing rod and helping him learn to use it instead of just throwing in a basket of fish.

Knowledge is power and knowledge is everything. You can’t just restrict certain countries and people from being educated, free, powerful—it’s one of the natural rights people have and should know about.

That’s why I think OLPC does a great thing. This small green laptop gives hope to many kids around the world. And this open community gives everybody a chance to help, in many ways. I am just happy I can contribute to this project now.

P.S. OLPC Mission Statement on YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2

XO Keyboard - fixed!

I finally did it!
The keyboard behaved strangely from the very beginning. First, I didn’t know if it’s a problem, or a normal behavior. Then I began to realize I had some kind of a hardware problem, since it couldn’t be normal.

So I took a deep breath, got a screwdriver and a manual and opened my tiny green laptop.

And-you won’t believe this-I fixed it finally.

There was a small thing like a breadcrumb or a tiny piece of wire stuck in the keyboard. It was the reason of all glitches I had. Now it is gone, and the cursor keys work just fine.
Also, just in case, I made sure I didn’t break anything else.

I am so happy I fixed it!

Btw, a big post about OLPC is on the way.