User talk:MitchellNCharity/Old

Random late-night brainstorming

• Angle measurement (as mentioned elsewhere). Converging lines to eye at edge of screen. Surveying demo. Some simple reduction software. Couple of kids could survey room, field, get size info, build 3D model, etc, very quickly. todo: see if i can get hands-on a laptop for a couple of minutes to get a feel. Oooo, camera as high precision angle measurement tool? have textures ready for 3d then too.
• Timer. Beep a second, 10 sec different one, etc. Measure velocity, etc.
• Order of magnitude feel for numbers. 200 dpi means lots of dots. 100 distinct dpi? Slider, exponential, 1 to say 100,000.
  • Fractions. Big square. 1. down to 1/100000.
  • Combined range. 1 is 1in or 1/2in.
  • Circle graph. Colaborative slicing, each kids controls a slice, excess region for leftover. Or break apart/reasemble?

What infrastruct exists for distributed dynamic ui?

• Mouse runs from machine to machine. Hiding, appearing. Fur can be painted. Whose machine is it on? Carry messages?

In general, what infrastruct for graphical agents moving between machines? Animals, numbers, etc.

• Painting with sound effects is apparently very popular. Paint activity have sound? Stamps, etc. Add? Sharing custom stamps as community activity. Saving also key. Art gallery app?
• How much parallax is needed to do cloud height measurement? Velocity.
• "Appropriate tech" build-it receipies? barometer (thread), humidity, ...?
  • water droplet magnifying glass
• big picture
  • ephemeris. orient laptop by sun. hold laptop in orthogonal positions (up, down, left, right, etc) - see through earth, solar sys, etc.

enough computes for simple 3d astro syms? ss, local stars, galaxy. at least pretty rotating anims of each.

angle measurement + solar system model + sky observation + model solar system school yard

• • see through earth could be a neat demo. can use camera as horizon sensor?
• what is the state of doing fermi questions with <5th graders?
• camera edge detection (w+w/o multiple machines) -> good model formation? (3d, velocity, position, etc). anything cheap enough? just how much computes do we have?
• nonmesh communication protocols. sound, light. interesting collaborative hackability?
• can kids create their own versions of the icons?

otherwise personalize the on-screen space?

• can information about users be encoded in the XO icons? activity level, battery state, activity-specific info (instruments, etc).

can kids program? might be worth some effort to have such a high profile part of the environment be at least a little kid programmmable.

XO "skins"? another tradeable item.

"Or keep it intentionally crude, and make it easy for kids to create them. High res permits nice icons, and much lower effort creation (getting a few large pixels to look good is hard, gimp pull-down menu 3d effects much less so). Perhaps the option of "stencils" or something to "play within a theme", distort/art-ify existing icons?"

• cross and parallel eye stereograph software. 3d drawing infrastruct in general. squeak have 3d env, or all just 2d?
• keep reminding yourself - very high resolution.
• 3d/2.5d drawing effects.
• shading, things crawling under screen background. eg, numbers wandering around, adding themselves. letters face shifting.
• kids are in tight sync with their own pc. allows pervasive customization. need backups or one's world, product of "years" of work, getting lost would be traumatic.