User:AuntiMame

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Revision as of 13:02, 22 September 2008 by AuntiMame (talk | contribs) (Formatting E-books)
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Portrait AuntiMame.png

Lego Mini-Me
from ReasonablyClever.com

Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!

@ olpc.aunti.mame
gmail.com
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Why AuntiMame?

Yes, its a real name. Just not very common. Its a variant of Mary.

Current Activities

Categorizing every file uploaded to the wiki.

  • [[Category:Media]] categories created
  • OLPC Legal
  • OLPC Hardware
  • how to deal with .doc & .rtf files?
  • Deal with all Category:Uncategorized_OLPC_Media
  • Apply a license to everything!

Graphics for OLPC wiki

Formatting E-books

Steps for re-formatting Project Gutenberg ASCII text files into "beautified" PDF E-books on a MS Windows machine using MS Word.

  1. download the the ASCII text file.
  2. open the ASCII file in MS Notepad.
  3. Select all & copy.
  4. Start MS Word.
    • Page size 6.75x9 inches
    • All margins .5 inch, gutter 0
    • Mirror margins
    • Use Bitstream Vera or DejaVu (Bitstream Vera variation) open font faces.
  5. Paste ASCII into new document.
  6. strip out PG small print
  7. Tools menu. Options. View tab. Check to view paragraph marks.
  8. Edit menu. Replace. More button. Special button. replace ^p^p (insert symbols) with "EndOfParagraph". Replace all button.
    • replace ^p with single-space
    • revert steps in #7 to hide paragraph marks
    • replace " with " (this will create curly quotes)
    • replace ' with ' (for curly apostrophes)
    • replace -- with emdash
    • replace (double space) with (single space). This will remove the extra space after end of sentence.

notes to myself

http://dev.laptop.org/pub/content/library/games/xo-color.xml

UI colors

more color stuff

Munsell

XO_colors

Colors

http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=6 all images uploaded to the wiki

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Special:Log/upload recently uploaded files

http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/CommonSense.php tool to find a category for a wiki image


MassXO notes

DVD to ogg theora on XO ??

  1. handbrake (to convert dvd to avi)
  2. ffmpeg2theora (to convert avi to ogg)

What's on the Velveteen[[1]] XO

I spent several weeks playing with upgrades and such and found myself with an overloaded XO, so in late June 2008 I wiped the Velveteen XO clean and reloaded 656. Here's what I did to revert this XO back to a "First World, Adult User laptop":

  1. Loaded 656 from USB
  2. Set the time
  3. Disable the hot corners.
  4. Install yumex, a GUI for yum. yum install yumex
  5. Install SeaMonkey, an all-in-one Internet suite (including firefox and thunderbird)
    • Installing SeaMonkey requires that you remove its exclusion from the XO's repository list. Follow these instructions for Firefox, but remove SeaMonkey from the list instead of Firefox.
    • After removing it from the exclusion list, you can install SeaMonkey using the yum package installer. yum install seamonkey
  6. Install Midnight Commander using yum. yum install mc
  7. Sugar-coat SeaMonkey using the scripts by the goddess CatMoran.
  8. Mod Write to enable access to the full AbiWord.
  9. Install the Sweet SocialCalc spreadsheet.
  10. Change the XO Guy.
  11. Add the MP3 drivers for Totem and Sugar-coat Totem.
  12. Connect to a Boston MA jabber server at bos.ma.us.xochat.org
  13. Install the Map activity that ties into GoogleMaps.
  14. Install the latest version of StarChart. Apart from the fact that its cooler than heck, I know the guy who wrote it and I made the icon. It may not help me with any work related stuff -- but I want it on my machine.
  15. Install the latest version of Speak. I have to have something that kids will want to play with.
  16. Install the latest version of Physics. It can keep my attention for hours, while I'm stuck inside an airplane. Until there's a solitaire game on the XO, this will be my favorite time-kill.
  17. Remove Acoustic Tape Measure, EToys, Measure, Memorize, NewsReader, Pippy, TamTam, and Turtle Art. They are all great activities, but I don't use them.
  18. Edit /usr/share/sugar/data/activities.defaults to re-order the Activites list at the bottom of the home page (paths can be found at /home/olpc/.sugar/default)

Preinstalled stuff I removed

  • Etoys yum remove etoys

Stuff that might be cool to add to the Velveteen XO

gqview yum install gqview - an image viewer


What's on Aunti's Joyride XO

I recently upgraded by joyride 2170 (I think) to the release candidate joyride-2301. The olpc-update command appeared to throw a lot of errors -- but it complet4ed the update. The system hung trying to shutdown/reboot with an init error, but a manual power off/on brought the system up fine. And the software update utility launched automagically -- sweet!

notes about 2301

to get an activity to appear in the circle home view, it must be made a favorite in the linear home view

Creating a Personal Activity Pack

I was recently (July 2008) asked by a novice user to reconfigure their XO to make it an "adult PC" that was still kid friendly for her 6-yr-old. I decided to install the latest build (703) so when and if she decided to upgrade again she wouldn't loose all her activities. But then I remembered that 703 has a bug that will corrupt SD cards, so I opted for 708 -- which is the candidate for the next release and has the SD card bug fixed.

Here's how I created a 708 (next release candidate) build with a customized activity pack by follow in these instructions. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customization_key

  1. I formatted (FAT32) a USB thumb drive on a Windows machine.
  2. On that same Windows machine I downloaded the customization key http://dev.laptop.org/~mstone/customization-2.zip and unzipped it to the root of the USB thumb drive.
  3. I downloaded the 708 img and fs.zip files and placed them in the root of the USB drive.
    • I surfed the Activities page and downloaded the latest version of every activity I wanted to add to the XO. The .xo file for each of these activities was placed in the /bundle directory on the USB drive.
      1. Journal
      2. Browse (even if you don't use it to surf the web its necessary for other stuff to run...)--note: 708 doesn't seem to like browse-94.xo. Use browse-92.xo.
      3. Write
      4. Calculate
      5. Terminal
      6. Watch and Listen (Helix Media Player w/RealPlayer codecs) -- it launches but the mp3 codecs still need to be downloaded. hmmm. maybe its caused by the added security of 708?
      7. At her request I added the following games for her child:
        • Cartoon Builder
        • Childsplay
        • Colors
        • Flipsticks
        • Pacman
        • Speak
  4. I inserted the USB drive into the XO and held down the 4 game keys (circle, check, x, and square) while powering up the XO. The XO chimes, then the screen says to release the game keys. The XO flash (i.e. the hard drive) is erased, the XO reboots itself and my custom build was installed. The XO then powers down. I removed the thumb drive and powered up and voila -- a custom 708 installation!
  5. I also used yum to add SeaMonkey and Midnight Commander. Both must be launched from the terminal.
    • SeaMonkey -- seamonkey
    • Midnight Commander mc
  6. Disabled the hot corners

Great. Can you make a separate activity pack page that includes all of these? --Sj talk 17:48, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Adult (Business) Activity Pack

  • Basic System Requirements
    • Journal
    • Browse
    • Terminal
  • Stuff adults use....
    • Firefox
    • Write
    • SweetSocialCalc
    • Midnight Commander
    • Read
    • Calculate
    • Record
    • RoadMap
    • VNC Launcher
    • X Activity ?
    • RSS feed (when it works)
  • Toys adults might like
    • Pysol (Davewa mentioned this solitaire game) or Peg Solitaire ?
    • media player (which one actually works?)
    • Read ETexts ?
    • slideshow or flickr or viewslides
  • Content Bundles that adults might use
    • bible
    • koran/quran

How to automatically do this stuff?

  1. run yum during install (to automate midnight commander, etc.)
  2. add clock to frame
  3. keybindings hack for Write/Abiword