User:Rostauber
OLPC you can ignore my email the day after I opened my XO-1. Somewhere in the wiki I had thought I read what I though said my G1G1 XO-1 was "no longer supported". So I emailed for help commenting i felt a little had. Also the XO right off struck me as tedius in some crucial areas ... which frustration I am dutifully overcoming. And naturally we USA softies are concerned about a program which is determined to put third-world children at a console cruising the OLPC Community rather than growing strong in leg and arm and spirit relative to their own real community and family experiences. And their eyes will suffer. But be that as it may, I feel OLPC people on the ground anywhere in the world will be all to the good regarding other progressive efforts there.
As little XO-1 works its magic I am working with it constantly in wiki and further than expected in Forth lessons, but let me say right now I do not intend to spend my remaining years reading code. I want to participate however, and prize these early hours gaining each stage of understanding based on use of the XO-1 and use of the wiki and the Community, what any child or adult would face and is indispensible to my usefulness, and what indispensible to what I want to attempt.
I am getting to love your keyboard but why isn't it glo-in-the-dark or lit by a single led? Without power management I use hi-contrast often, sometimes lighted up one notch. I'm getting shortcuts down. BUT no "alt-left" to backup and "alt-right" to go forward? And what made me think I was GETTING A TOUCH-SCREEN WHEN i SENT OFF THAT $400 PLUS? Why can't DELETE be DELETE in every context? And a manageable and saved "Favorites" list instead of all that Journal. The drop-down from BACK is nice though. I look forward to the Microsoft SD in 2008 just for favorites, XP-like shortcuts, wider scroll buttons onscreen, and permanent font and desktop changes. Scared of terminal. Glad I got a USB Key.
Just introducing myself. At 71 my short term memory sometimes leaves me at a loss for what I was trying to turn my thought to, usually to get a tool or check some thing, but only (largely?) when I am standing and moving about doing physical things, which is how I was positioned mostly in life as a self-taught mechanic when I did those which fed my ego and self-esteem and made me what I am today and were learned my hands-on experience. It will be interesting to see if navigating wiki and the Community and being involved with a new obsession (let alone trying a little code insertion) improves my focus.
I was slow figuring out Dos "Mode", and I always taught kids about making little .bat files. As the Book Clerk in a public HS, when the old XT IBM's came in nobody including me knew how they worked. I was quickly self-taught and got on top of Lotus as well doing lost-book lists for the students to save them $20-35 bucks a pop by listing by stamped assignment number those books that had been collected from the halls and rooms or otherwise retrieved or turned in. Then I ended up doing budget and inventory data input and reports.
So much for the past. What I want to do is participate in a spearhead action here in rivercity, in Soulard (STL) MO USA right under the STL Arch. My little nbeighborhood filled with nightlife and clubs is even now gentrifying quite nicely thank you ... more and more infants and grandparents, dogs on leashes, people with jobs. I have the time, the resourses, the well-situated commercial and residential property, with free attractive space therein, and I am a gadgets fool. I must presume OLPC only has time to deal with self-starters who will manage their own shit ... and oh, I also have a lot of shit that I've wanted to eBay for a few years now ... good stuff I won't list here ... which would easily make good cash AND good living/working space as our little XIO-1 starter group seeks to justify, support and debug itself.
I like the idea of a rubber case. A better seal and shock absorber and practical. Dark grey would be nice. AND a personal alarm do-dad so one can locate one's XO in a pile?
I'm old now and there's less reason for me to get excited about the world. But I think USA citizen interest in OLPC based on hands-on with the XO as a learning tool would promote USA confidence in the Project and Community. To go on singing to the choir, as various modes of resistance and corporate sabotage arise, intentionally or not, getting adults at home connected and knowledgable in soft old USA could well be of crucial importance, and in the short term, as affecting the rate of eager and able people leaning towards finding themselves actually IN a 3rd World country following through on what heretofor were laregly dreams. Hopefully a free-laptops-to-all-students craze will spread as children with such an opportunity come of age and urge non-partisan goals into the social adjenda. Probably be more a cell-phone, wireless to the TV, lit roll-out keyboard.
I was delighted to make my own USB Key yesterday and I put 653 on it, eventually writing over 650 ... or is the backup (hold circle game button on boot) still 650? Mine didn't work anyway though. Is 653 stable, or just official? Can I get back to 650 if I put the 650 .zip and .img files on the stick? Just trying to drum up some local contact, leading to OLPC activity in STL and some adults and teens considering heading out to help with whatever is going on in distant locations, including in water and food, housing, transportation, things which we Americans expect to be part of advancing "civilization".
A guy on eBay claims his XO-1 will USB to a printer. Is he not informed? XOs still bring over 500 on eBay but they also go for under 300 regularly. I can pass out all I can get. I fantisize a DOS-like file manager, to rename, copy, and delete, without going into Terminal, and to make ".bat"-type files that can autorun on boot. I guess Linux isn't into that though. I'll have to learn to config in Terminal. What a drag man. Forth is fairly un-learnable without experience using other code languages and syntax. Wher'd they get the name? Go forth and multiply?
