coffee.geek.nz

A couple good articles and threads today on how limiting who you hire for a job to people who make open source contributions means, in practise, only hiring men.

culture cat explores this from the angle that there are less women in open source. Geek Feminism blog talks on the culture of open source means women aren't welcome (amongst other things)

I want to add, what has been alluded to in the above blogs. Women have less spare time than men.

This is on average, and have been proven with multiple studies. Why? Women still do more of the house work, chore, errands. Women still do far more of looking after children. Worldwide, women have spare time in small chunks between vaccuming and collecting the children from school and cooking and serving the family meal. They perhaps shouldn't be, but they are.

I liked to come home from a hard day building things for telcos, to sit on the couch with a laptop and build the features I want to have into the open source projects I contribute to. I could spend as long as I wanted making code elegant and flexible, without giving any thoughts to budget and quotes. It was how i relaxed.

Our mission is to create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

We've now shipped these laptops to EVERY SINGLE CHILD AND TEACHER in Peru and Uruguay.

Wellington OLPC group meets to test software and hardware weekly. No prior experience necessary, just a methodical mind, to go through educational software for all ages, and seek out flaws. The software includes jigsaw puzzles, measuring games, and ebook readers.

We also love to find bilingual and polygot people who can translate, or checking someone else's translation - from popular languages like Spanish to more obscure dialects of Twi from Ghana. We translate things like children's activities and electronic firstaid manuals for the world.

Note: i'm not an offical spokesperson for OLPC - this is my own small rant

A couple things people don't get about OLPC (and perhaps open source too):

The design process is out in the open - you can see the ideas, prototypes, and half baked suggestions all being discussed for everyone to see. For those used to getting their technology from someone like Apple, Nokia, or Microsoft this can be confusing - they see something discussed, and then they see OLPC change their mind... and the confused person equates this with failure. It's not, it's just the organic process by which things are designed being exposed for all to see.

And their target probably isn't you - you are not their market (i'm making assumptions about who is reading my blog). If you're sitting in a developed nation somewhere with a wad of cash in hand wanting to buy laptops for your 2.4 children, sorry. Just have a read of the start of the OLPC mission statement: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop ..... The goal is both the poorest children (i.e. not your children) and it's mass deployment. You not being able to purchase one doesn't make it vapour ware. Every single child in Uruguay has one of these laptops. Very soon every single child in Peru wil have one also. That makes the project MASSIVELY SUCCESSFUL in my book.

Mike discovers there's a new CHEESE SHOP in Petone

Pamela the midwife has a blog post of thoughts and info on teenage pregnancy in New Zealand.

Mark Osbourne mentions Uruguay gave a laptop to every single child.

Vampire wannabies can buy bags of tasty blood fit for human consumption.

There's a Save Maranui fundraiser involving speedos.

Open office is spreading quickly all over Belgium according to The Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations.

Someone invented a Robot that loads and unloads the dishwasher

Rachel Alpine talks about need for plain language and official information

Live scribe, the makers of that shiny gadget pen i use alot are opening an app store of applications that run on the pen.

The prototype XO 1.5 laptops have arrived in Wellington - Some will be heading to Christchurch and Auckland in time for the weekend.

Grant with one of the XO 1.5 laptops

First thing we did - we pulled them apart. Inside in a new processor (faster), as well as a very different looking motherboard. We spotted 1Gbyte of RAM, and a 4GByte microSD card serving as the non-volatile storage.

They arrived with Sugar OS 0.8.4. This isn't a stable release, and the hardware is still being tested by people like us -- so finding a few things not working was to be expected.

We really like the new touchpad -- it's like you'd find on any "normal" laptop, instead of the fancy, kinda expensive one that the original XOs had. Now you'll notice the edge of the usable area if you stray too far.

There are some device drivers missing - such as the video capture - and the screen driver hiccups. But we did manage many hours of playing food force, which usualy crashes on the older hardware. Foodforce needs lotsa CPU and memory.

Some more structured testing will be this saturday's testing.

Auckland Saturday - 11:00 am @ The Windsor Castle 144 Parnell Road, Parnell - they have internet, Tabitha bring one of the XO 1.5 machines

he DigitalNZ API HackFest is making its way to Auckland. Telecom are kindly hosting this event for us.

10am-5pm, Saturday 7 November 2009
Telecom, Hereford St, Auckland
http://digitalnz.org

DigitalNZ Search aggregates information about NZ digital content from more than 65 content providers and makes them available via an API. You can get a glimpse of what's inside at http://search.digitalnz.org

Come along and

* Make nice stuff using the DigitalNZ API
* Whip up some code samples to help other developers kick-start their own DigitalNZ API creations
* Consume pizza, beer and sugary confections

Some examples of things that have happened at other HackFests: http://digitalnz.org/widget-gallery?type=applications

We're not just looking for developers. Other people we'd also love to come along are designers who can help make the apps look shiny or people with great ideas for apps.

Bring yourself and your laptop. We'll provide the WiFi. This is a low-key event - feel free to come along for however long you can, even just a couple of hours.

Numbers are limited, so please RSVP to jo.eaton@natlib.govt.nz
I'd love to see some Kiwi Foo Camp people there!

More info:
http://digitalnz.org/blog/news/article-digitalnz-api-hackfest-auckland-7...

a teacher turned up, and we demoed Sugar and the XOs.

we started on the long list of activities to test for the Peru deploymen t- this deployment will mean every child in Peru has a laptop.

I started my takeover of the OLPC twitter and identica account, with a link to a BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/can_a_laptop_change_the_wo...

We interviewed one of our team: Tim McNarama. This is first in a series of interviews of OLPC volunteers around the world.

We got yet another round of free drinks again from the lovely people who run The Southern Cross bar

WellyNZTesters have issued a Call For Papers for the education miniconf we're running at the LCA2010 conference on mid January next year
http://laptop.org.nz/content/miniconf

If you want to come visit us in New Zealand, and can't afford it right now, you may be eligible for funding to pay for the trip http://www.lca2010.org.nz/media/news/89

We're testing the full activity bundle for the upcoming Peru deployment
http://laptop.org.nz/test-request

An Auckland group has started!

Some kind folks in Sydney are rounding up unused dust-gathering XOs from the LCA2007 giveaway, to ship to Wellington.

We've got a school server running.

CHRISTCHURCH HACKERS, GEEKS, TESTERS, and DIGITAL CULTURALISTS - this is where you find your people this weekend:

A reminder that, for those of you in Christchurch, there will be a
DigitalNZ API
HackFest this Saturday.

http://digitalnz.org/blog/news/article-digitalnz-hackfest-christchurch

We're running it from Cii/powerHouse, thanks to their kind
sponsorship.
10am-5pm, Saturday 12 September 2009
Canterbury Innovation Incubator/powerHouse
200 Armagh St, Christchurch

Bring yourself and your laptop. We'll provide the WiFi. This is a low-
key event - feel free to come along for however long you can, even
just a couple of hours.

RSVP to jo.eaton AT natlib.govt.nz

Every saturday a group of volunteers get together and play computer games.

We also eat yummy brunch, and we get often get shouted free coffee by the nice people who run The Southen Cross restaurant/bar.

No prior experience necessary. The only skillz needed is an equiring mind, willing to use the education activities, which really are alot of fun. Things like bridge building, or growing enough crops so your villagers don't die, or collaborating on writing a document using activity sharing.

More info at LAPTOP.ORG.NZ

I spend Friday afternoon at the aotearoa digital arts symposium.

I brought with me 50 DVDs of Ubuntu Studio. Alas i didn't realise they aren't live CDs, install only. Douglas rescued me as he brough with him 25 CDs of standard ubuntu januty so folks can try before they install.

The laptops that turned up were half windows laptops, and half mac os. All recent hardware and generally very tech savvy people as you expect from "digital artists".

Five people left with Ubuntu studio, - many more CDs handed out. Some turned up without a laptop, but took CDs with them to try later.

Also spent some of the time talking about OLPC, Freedom in general, and opensource that works on closed source OS like Audacity (audio editor) or Gimp (kinda like photoshop).

All in all, a good afternoon.

that's right - yet another episode of the mighty wellington super happy dev house

at the cross from 1pm sunday.

Bring a laptop - the silverstripe opensource CMS crowd will be there doing their awesome thing, which you can join in on, or bring your own todo list.

Bring a laptop and few dollars to pay for wifi. (and bacon and eggs and milkshakes and cookies and beer).

more details at http://superhappydevhouse.org.nz

The sound on my laptop has been uber quiet everysince in compiled in a kernel module to make my apple airport express work (the one Geoff gave me, so i'll blame him).

Ubuntu forums people have been very helpful, suggesting a multitude of ways to adjust volume from aumixer to alsamixer to kmix and back again, but they all have it set to maximum already.

So -- very very quiet sound, i seem to be stuck like this.

Last night i dreamed palm put out a competitor to the eeepc.They almost did once. The Palm Foleo was a solid state laptop form, running linux. It got cancelled strangely. This was pre-olpc. Why was it cancelled? It's clear now that it's the future. The credit goes to ASUS for bringing cheap, light, robust laptop to the world. Not OLPC. OLPC only ships to a tiny fraction of the world, which leaves me put out because NZ isn't one of them. Shipping most anywhere is easy. It's the back of chile that's hard, not New Zealand.

Another MiniHappyDevHouse will be happening on the first of June - this one is themed "Hello World" - in obscure but awesome languages ;)

A few people will be giving lightning talks on some really obscure languages, how you code a "hello world" program in them and some of their unique features.

And of course, there will be coding, beer and wifi - assuming you bring your laptop :)

Remember to visit the June projects page and list what you will be working on!

• When: 1st June, from 1pm 'til you're bored
• Where: Southern Cross - http://thecross.co.nz/

last time i wanted to hack some sugar (that's the olpc's cute cute name for their environment) it took AGES to compile and pull down all the dependencies.

I don't want to pull down all that data over cafenet, which is both expensive (comparitively only, cafenet is cheap for "normal" activities, like a couple git pulls) and that would hog the limited bandwidth at the cross (they didn't expect 50 users on a Sunday when cafenet wifi-ed that place). So i'm setting it up early and then i can share what i built with other linux-x86-ubuntey users.

this gadget is nifty -- at work.. It works flawlessly. We run linux @ work, so i had to borrow a mac to program the durn card. Once done I was away uploading photos automagically every snap.

I've always used my palm + keyboard as my poor woman's laptop... But 2 weeks ago i ordered a laptop online.It's a lenova, with 12" screen... I ordered it on their website,and there's still up to 3 weeks until it arrives...it cost 3x the price my palm TX, and i have to wait over a month to have it :(

I place an order, and 2 days later i get this emailYour Lenovo order: Order # CA###### has been receivedFrom: lenovopc@au.lenovo.comTo: 1hooewl@my.lenovo.com, 1sahar@my.lenovo.com, empsale@au.lenovo.com, lenovopc@au.lenovo.com, brenda@catalyst.net.nzDate: 15/03/07 17:06  Dear Brenda Wallace,Order informationThank you for visiting Lenovo. Your order has been received and transferred to a Lenovo Customer Representative. This e-mail confirms receipt of your order to Lenovo.......

The company corporate loaned me a laptop for the event, and i eagerly installed edgy, resizing ntfs partitions to fit it in there - - then alas, i realise it doesn't have wifi!!

This morning i have another laptop on loan, and I'm franticaly trying to get wifi working on this toshiba.
took me a while, because somehow aptitude couldn't find any kernel headers for brand new my edgy eft.

next sunday, the 14th, i'm off to linux.conf.au
That's a whole weeks conference on linux.

It's in Sydney this year. I'm leaping on a plane, with 2 awesome ladies, penny, and a random sysadmin person who doesn't have a blog.

after the conference i'm staying the extra weekend in sydney, as well as the monday, which is Wellington anniversary..

Check my photo stream on flickr during the week..

I'll also try and blog a bit about the things i see, do, and learn over there.

To any and all my clients who may be reading this... i don't have a shiny new laptop, so i can't be working while in Sydney.. send your outrage to my boss ;-)

Tree hugger posts about a new laptop from LGuses a bio fuelcell, and an oled display.http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/lgs_ecolaptop_c.phpif it was fair trade too, i'd be in love