User:DancesWithCars

What's With the Name?

A biking persona and trail name...

Name Conflicts

There is a previous biking DancesWithCars out west (Northern America) somewhere rumored to have passed away... This joker on the east coast, is not that person, and NotDeadYet...

Attends DC Learning Club meetings

Since owning a G1G1 machine, started attending OLPC Learning Club DC meetings, to get support, find out what's in the community, give back, have some fun, etc..

Jerry provides some activities for the group's kids when the lectures get too adult, i.e. brings a WowWee Tribot on occasion and resists any long streams of information, i.e. Lecture, as he also has the attention span of a gnat, and needs notes, websites, camera snapshots, etc as accommodations to remember...

Parental Supervision Required

DancesWithCars does not claim to be Adult besides his ever increasing adult age (45, sigh), so everyone else might want to provide adult and parental mentoring on occasion, (but he will resist...)

He is an Uncle of two children aged 10 and 5 and asked *his* parental unit for holiday gift money to buy an XO on the G1G1 Program in 2007), hoping his relatives would also for the kids but alas did not... He anxiously awaited a surprise green box delivered to his subsidized apartment doorstep (lucky not to have lost it) on St. Patrick's day over a year ago...

Life has not been the same since. Every time opening up the laptop, he gets 'is that one of those...??' "yes, an OLPC"

When around children, after checking with parents for OK, usually say something like "the good news is you can try the machine", "the bad news is that I'm taking it with me when I leave"

and then show Activities like Speak, Record (not saving), TamTam Mini, etc depending upon the age and interests of the little person and adults...

Solo Machine

Having one machine didn't try meshing unless at LearningClub events, but was usually to distracted to concentrate. Later tried some on Lending Library machines.

Touchpad Problems and DC Repair Shop

He later found his touchpad didn't work well and after some talk with the youth run DC repair shop, quickly bought a Targus mini mouse at a local office supply store to make his machine useable, bought an extra battery from the repair shop, and still wants to make a DynoHubSolarPowerCombo for Bike Touring. Googling DancesWithCars will probably yeild a CrazyGuyOnABike.com tour journal describing some of his crazy tours (in state, C&O Canal, etc)

Batteries Required

Received an XO 12 V car adapter as a gift from a visiting XO presenter. THANKS! (forgot name, please remind me)...

Has been drooling over power options, solar panel (tried at Nortel one winter through a window, and worried about the hissing sound).

Catalogging Accessories and Options

Takes pictures of various accessories that work with XOs, mostly seen at Learning Club DC some later found available from XOExplosion, and general marketplaces, mostly wondering what will work with it and collecting info for others to try...

Flexible keyboard

Having gotten the XO mail order in the G1G1 program, I didn't realize I'd be crunching my fingers so close together, so one of my first purchases was an adult size flexible keyboard capable of rolling up and hopefully not breaking when rolled up in a backpack for long commutes...

MicroCenter in Vienna had one in the discount bin, and probably carries a large selection.

Others are seen with a small keyboard but required sending to Amazon or online shopping...

Mini Mouse

Targus makes a notebook mouse (TODO: lookup UPC, exact names, put up a photo, etc) that is small enough for kids to hold and not so big to take up much space in a backpack..

There are third party clones seen at MicroCenter which are cheaper...

Some Assembly Required

Having gotten back into electronics with the purchase of an AdaFruit.com Arduino Starter Kit and some sleds/shields (Motor, Wave, Eth, etc) and learning that Sun's Java 32 bit version works on 64 bit Fedora 10 with and RXTX update, and some fussing, and even loads on 32 bit XO but menus and windows are in a weird position and acting and have yet to get functional...

Sun's Java didn't run with the older version, but 802 build seems to at least start, but is not connecting yet..

Soldering

With a clear glass teacup on his knee up too close to his very nearsighted face (NEED SAFETY GOGGLES! and PARENTAL SUPERVISION) soldered the Arduino 9Vold battery compartment (badly), Proto board, Wave and will work on the others later...

Leaving OLPC Learing Club a month ago, went to RadioShack and got a helping hands (alligator clips and magnifying glass on a weighted base with soldering iron cage and cleaning pad plus too much other stuff... Expensive and impulsive purchases... Too rushed and not planned out well enough.

Projects

DC Lending Library Setup

NOTE: This may be superceded by any official versions...

Helped (arguable) setup the machines with olpc-update -frvv 802, doing grunt work across the 25 machine and making policy recommendations for distributing across the whole DC region, living in the remote suburbs and not owning a car, biking is not always an option and long distance, difficult carrying, etc...

Will probably describe a manual process of opening up the boxes, figuring stuff out FOUND PATH ADDITION on 656 version necessary in the wiki...

/usr/sbin/olpc-update -frvv 802 767 build was superseded since Jeff's previous installs...

Docs.google.com spreadsheet could create a checkout form.

Took about 1 hour per machine. Normally I would have made a formal burn in/ test process, does everything work? But finding stuff during the upgrade process described above and elsewhere...

Serial numbers also found on XO batteries (Two companies BYD and GP) and chargers.

Kid Project

As checking out two machines to loan to relatives, and learn from the experience, described here... UncleCrazy

Hardware Learning

DancesWithCars Hardware Learning

One of the library machines had an I Beam touchpad pattern and very/ almost impossible to use without the same MiniMouse described elsewhere...

Jeff suggested using this machine to learn hardware on, as it already had issues...

Learning to open the case, what the parts are and where, plus troubleshooting and repairing to be learned...

Other Affiliations

Does Linux and Open Source in the adult community

since finding Fink on an 'old world' Mac Beige MiniTower enabled using X Windows, but 6 Gig HD and booting issues suspended it's use...

got help from Kjcole in first starting out with Yorktown HS Libre Users Group back in the RedHat 8 Road Tour and Stallman visit days...

became 'webnewbie' of DCLUG.tux.org and has been going there since 2002...

created a (book) library for DCLUG.tux.org (public libraries had too old info, not that good selection and difficult to checkout and return on time, so created my own, with tux.org support),

With DCLUG Tux.org, Kevin, Sarah and others showed XOs at FOSE (Federal Office Systems Expo in 2008 and 2009) but lost some information in the translation since we don't actually sell the machines, but showing Linux on other (cute and very public green) hardware...

Accidentally wiped the hard drive on my 64 bit Averatec laptop with the XO School Server ISO in a mad rush before demoing at FOSE2008, and whined about it on this wiki, but forgot his login, to continue the thread and account details...

He has yet to hack a kernel, and doesn't actually program much anymore, since losing his favorite lab machines, Symbolic Lisp Machines to post cold war DarkSide mothballing...