A while ago, I wrote a piece outlining why the One Laptop per Child’s XO computer was not for the average user. It essentially boils down to the fact that the XO uses a graphical environment, Sugar, which is totally tailored to classroom use and eschews anything outside that narrowly defined context, including what most […]
computers
Naked geeks are easy, Easter is hard
By Eric Pettifor I commented to a friend the other day that Easter seemed early this year, and he replied in disgust “Yes, first they move up daylight savings time and now this.” While the ever-changing date of Easter might seem arbitrary, it is actually carefully calculated. Obviously, it was of great concern to Church […]
Brando Lives! (I’ll drink to that)
This post is being written on the OLPC XO laptop. Why, didn’t I already make the point that it could be used to do actual work here? Yes, but I’ve got a new, small, usb keyboard for it (yes, I am keyboard obsessed), small enough to fit into a laptop bag accessory pocket, yet big […]
The XO Laptop: Not for you
My One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO laptop arrived last week, and I have been playing with it since. For those who haven’t heard of this little beasty, intended to be given to children in the Third World, here is a video introduction by David Pogue of the New York Times. The Give One Get […]
Googling Camelot
The use of aerial and satellite photography in archaeology is nothing new, but not long ago if you told the average archaeologist he could get it for free, he likely would not have believed you. Today, of course, we all know about Google Maps (or Google Earth with its fancier interface), and the surprise isn’t […]
One for me, one for the kid
Here are a couple of things from the top of my Xmas wish list. The GlobalLink The GlobalLink was a device used by the characters on the TV series Earth : Final Conflict. The show had one good season before it was dumbed down and limped on for four more before being cancelled. The GlobalLink […]
Gubuntuk
For some time I laboured under the mistaken impression that I was running the Kubuntu operating system on my computer at work. I had installed Ubuntu, and then the KDE desktop environment, and Ubuntu with KDE is Kubuntu, or so goes the conventional geek belief. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that, as I discovered […]
Mom and the MacBook
My mom is a Linux-using grandma who travels a lot. Recently she required medical attention while in another city, and wound up in hospital for several weeks. I felt very sorry for her. Yes, for the medical concerns, of course, but also because she was cut off from the internet. Even her brother, my octogenarian […]
Wormholes on the web
Recently an exploit was discovered on the web that allowed bad web sites to hijack the accounts of clueless Second Life users via a script that would grab the user’s login info from wherever it’s stored in Internet Explorer. I refer to the victims as clueless not only because they use Internet Explorer, but also […]
Waxing musical
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Ecclesiastes,1:9 While the media on which audio is recorded have changed over time, the signal recorded on them has not, other than maybe some […]
