TheXOVLog: Early Mesh Chat Bug (Fixed)

I'm FINALLY starting to post my videos of me messing around with my XO. Here's the first one--It demonstrates one of the bugs XO users (XOsers?) who got their XOs in December of 2007 had to deal with. On connecting to another XO for chat (or through a simulated Mesh network--xochat.org) the chat activity contained a bug that made the program virtually unusable. While the bug was eventually taken care of, it is a good indicator on how the XO's Sugar operating system was not quite ready for primetime.

TheVlog:Waiting for XO Day 4 p1

Check out the too-big-for-Utterz (8-minute) video here:

http://tv.thepete.com/…-day-4-pt1

I shot this back on December 17, 2007 and it documents my “adventures” on hold with OLPC for an hour, trying to work out what was up with my XO delivery.

Alas, this video was too big for Utterz, but the framegrab above is an accurate depiction of how I felt waiting for OLPC to pick up!
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Fricka's XO shirt!

Hey, here is the other OLPC XO-related T-shirt I got from Fricka's custom shirt store on Cafepress. It's got the colors of my XO's XO. :D

Got an XO? Wanna cool T-shirt like this one? Go buy one because Fricka donates her profits for these shirts to OLPC! Here's the link:

http://www.cafepress.com/…store.aspx

Check out her other T-shirt store here:

http://www.offlinetshirts.com/

And finally here blog is here:

http://www.offlinetshirts.com/blog/

Go Fricka!!
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Been Messing With My XO

So, I haven't been posting much because I've been addicted to tweaking my OLPC--as you can see above, I tweaked the file that tells the XO what XO icons should look like. The default is the XO logo with an outline, rather than the solid, colored XO logo, like the one on the back of the actual XO's display.

Sadly, every time I install an updated OS it seems to erase most of the apps I've installed. I've installed Opera, Comix (a comic reader), FBReader (ebook reader), Flash, and a few other apps three times :\

I've also discovered installing a developer build (an updated but unfinished OS for software developers) stops me from accessing Opera from anywhere but from inside Terminal, which isn't a huge deal but it does require I type the word "opera". SHUDDER!

I've installed Firefox, and while it seems a bit slower than Opera, it does sync up my bookmarks with the install of Firefox on my MacBook, which is very cool.

Flash websites do work in all of the browsers (including the XO's on-board browser, a trimmed down version of Firefox), but not that well, which is sad to me, but since I only use a handful of Flash-based sites (anywhere.fm, wixi.com,jooce.com, Startforce.com), I'll survive. Sites like Youtube and Utterz.com work reasonably well). Mplayer runs a STACK of media formats on the XO. I've played mp3s, mp4s, asfs, movs, flvs, and a few others.

This week, I'll be using the XO as my primary laptop, starting tomorrow with my Saturdaily writer's meeting--4 hours of sitting in a coffee house working on my novel on this tiny keyboard! Wish me luck!

If you're in LA on Saturday and have an XO, why not stop by Groundwork (on the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga) on Saturday around 5pm and we can Mesh!

This concludes my XO update for today!
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Fricka's OLPC Shirt IN ACTION!

Here is one of the shirts I posted about yesterday. It's from Fricka's custom T-shirt shop. Own an XO or want to support OLPC? Go here:

http://www.cafepress.com/…store.aspx

Check out more cool shirts here: http://www.offlinetshirts.com/

And check out Fricka's blog here: http://www.offlinetshirts.com/blog/

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Batman: The Killing Joke on my XO--SWEET!

That is the classic Batman trade paperback--"Batman: The Killing Joke". It's the Frank-Miller-written origin story for the Joker and it's *awesome*. It's particularly cool on my XO. In fact, my Mac's iSight camera doesn't do the XO's display justice at all (jealous much?)--the colors really pop and it's really easy to read, even at the lowest setting.

Oh yeah and I upgraded to developer build joyride-1522 so I have a sleep mode now! WAHOO!

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Custom Nano, Fricka’s shirts & My Book!: Yay!...

Custom Nano, Fricka’s shirts & My Book!: Yay! Everything got here! Wahoo! My custom NaNoWriMo Winner shirt, the two OLPC XO shirts Fricka designed (along with a sticker) and my first novel “TheKey” al arived today. I’m so psyched. Watch for posts showing off what these items actually look like. :) More at Utterz.com

XO Screencap 3: Weee! Isn’t this fun? I’d upload a...

XO Screencap 3: Weee! Isn’t this fun? I’d upload a video shot with my XO, but I can’t work out how to convert OGG to anything without dragging the video onto my Mac—what a drag. Of course, if Utterz could support OGG, that would be so cool!! The cap above shows the homepage for Gnash, the opensource Flash player that comes on the XO. I had such high hopes for this thing but my ignorance of Linux has stopped me from working out how to configure it to play mp4 nd mp3 files. It handled FLash reasonably well, but it’s supposed to do more :( More at Utterz.com

Second XO Screencap: XO screenshot number 2! WAHOO! The above is...

Second XO Screencap: XO screenshot number 2! WAHOO! The above is a cap of my Neighborhood screen slowly populating. The circles are (mostly) wifi networks—I’m connected to the blue one toward the left, just below the middle of the screen. I’m hoping they do something to improve the visibility of the network you’r connected to. A little white circle doesn’t help much. The XOs are other XOs that my machine sees because it is logged into the xochat.org Jabber server. At one point, before my XO had connected to any network at all, I saw three other XOs, so I’m wondering if there are other folks, at UCLA maybe, who have XOs. I live less than a half-mile away from UCLA, after all. More at Utterz.com

First XO Screencap: Been meaning to post this forever, but Opera...

First XO Screencap: Been meaning to post this forever, but Opera wouldn’t do anything when I’d click on utterz’ “choose” button. Now it works fine (after a reinstall of Opera). What the screencap shows is Meebo in action on the XO in Opera. I tried it, it works. Sadly, in typical XO-fashion, it’s hard to multitask with any speed. Then again, I haven’t given it a really testing, but hope to soon. More at Utterz.com

Waiting for XO: TheVlogs: 01

OK, so, I meant to start posting these videos much earlier, but at some point decided I should cut them all together into one documentary-style(ish) video. However, I quickly realized that it would be a while before I'll have time to do so.

But why should I let the clips all rot on my hard drive when I can upload them and see if anyone enjoys them? So, here's chapter 1. Shot on Monday, 12/17/7. Alas, I managed to misplace the video my wife shot of me reacting to the FedEx truck blowing me off a week before my XO would actually arrive. I'll post it if/when I find it. Please feel free to comment and tell me these vids are boring or not. ^_^
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I CAN HAS XO

This one's for PixelFish, who I know enjoys the XO and the lolcatz. Now she can enjoy both! And I hope everyone else will, too.

Yes, it's the now obligatory shot of my XO with my cat. :) Actually, I have two cats, Ecks (pictured) and Zaphod, but Zaphod is to fidgety and never sits still.

Check out all of my XOtos (XO + photos? Get it?) at my Flickrset:

http://flickr.com/…517252762/

I'll be posting vids as time permits over the holiday week of me in various stages of getting my XO. Some are pretty damn funny, actually. But there's too much footage to cut right now--I had a helluva time getting the XO online at my favorite Internet cafe, but did manage to get it online. Turns out you need to grab a script from the XO wiki when you want to log into a WPA-encrypted wifi network.

Here's the forum that talks about getting the XO to connect to a WPA-encrypted net:

http://olpcnews.com/…/index.php

Here's the page on the wiki that has the instructions I used to make it work (though you don't need to edit the script--just copy it onto your XO and run it):

http://wiki.laptop.org/…al_Setting

Thanks to Wayan Vota for posting the thread and to Torokun for posting the solution that worked for me.

Now if I can just work out where the browser saves files, I'd be doing well! Ah, the joys of early adoption!!

To anyone who has emailed me in the last day, my apologies for the lack of replies--I've just gotten this great new laptop and on the same day my router died! It's been a hulluva couple of days ^_^

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MY XO MADE IT!!

I'm so excited I didn't even care about proper lighting!
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MY XO HAS ARRIVED!!

Unboxing live on http://tv.thepete.com/ at 4:30PM PT! Be there! (Or
watch it later, I guess. ^_^)
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The FedeXO Truck is ON THE WAY!

In just a handful of hours, I will be "Waiting for XO" NO MORE!!!

Yes, the time in which you will have to endure crappy puns like the one in the title is almost over!

Who am I kidding? Once that thing gets here, I'll have been XOfied! And any time you read something I've posted about it, you'll be getting a glimpse into the XOniverse! But don't get mad if I sign anything "XO" because it probably just means "kiss" and "hug" which is actually what the XO was named after.

Awwwwww!

ANYway, in case you missed my post about this yesterday, I'll be broadcasting the unboxing of my XO live at http://TV.ThePete.com/ at 2PM Pacific Time--unless I just can't bear to wait--which might be the case. Of course, if you miss the live broadcast, I'll be posting the video at http://TheTech.ThePete.Com/ and my Utterz page as soon as I can tear myself from my XO. ^_^
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Me Re-enacting my XOcitement to FedEx updating.

This is me re-enacting my shock that FedEx updated their info on my XO delivery.

"WHAAAAA?" is what I said.

It's still slated for delivery tomorrow, but the record on FedEx.com hadn't changes a bit since my XO left Chicago on Tuesday. They should really do progress reports. I mean, what if something absurd happened?

OK, watch for an unboxing video tomorrow! Live on BlogTV first and then here. I'm guessing it'll be around 2 or 3PM Pacific Time.
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MY XO IS IN BLOOMINGTON, CA!!

OK, so I'm kind of excited, though this is really no major deal since I still have to wait until tomorrow to get it, but my XO laptop is in Bloomington, CA!!!

That's in Riverside!!

It's an hour's drive away!!

Unless it's an empty box, nothing can stop my XO from reaching me now!!

I just have to work out a way to remain calm between now and tomorrow afternoon when it arrives. I'm expecting it between 1:30 and 2PM because that's about when I've seen the FedEx Ground truck drive by every day since last week.

What? I'm not anal! I just notice things like... the average time a delivery truck from a particular courier drives by. There's nothing anal about that!

Is there? O_O
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OLPCXOLPotD: Friend of ThePete Gets Her XO and Mine is On the Move!

WAITING FOR XO: Day 5.

OK, I've been super busy on the OLPCNews.com/forum over the past couple of days. So much so that they've gone and made me a moderator. Wow--sounds like some 1950s scifi supervillain: I am the MODERATOOORRR!!

Anyway, so I've been missing a lot of non-XO related stuff to blog on, so be sure to take some time away from celebrating that fictional--I mean--messiah guy's birthday next week to catch up on what I've been reading/hearing about over the past several days. There has been a lot of screwed up stuff going on that I think is important for us all to know about and it ain't makin' DrudgeReport or CNN.com. But that's next week.

TODAY, one of my pals over at Utterz.com, she goes by PixelFish, got her XO delivered today. Check out her Utterz profile to see all of her pics and her 9 minute first-day-audio-review of the XO is a pretty good listen, as well.

She was pretty excited about getting it today--I'd probably get in trouble if I mentioned the things she messaged me during the day today (RANDY!)--no, I'm kidding. But she was very excited, so much so that she started posting her own version of the LOLCatz pictures. For her it was all about where her XO really was. Check out the first one she posted:

PixelFish also did a great Star Wars-related one, though the best one was when she theorized that her XO was on that damn island with Tom Hanks. Luckily, her XO was shipped by ground from Illinois, so, the worst that could have happened was that it might have gotten stuck in the snow on the way to Boston.

Speaking of Illinois, my XO left Chicago this morning at 11:30am. Have a look at proof:

So, seeing that the FedEx website estimates my XO will be delivered on Friday, 12/21, I flashed back to when I first drove to LA from the east coast. It took me six days and I took my sweet time. They're coming from Chicago, so, that should mean it'll only take them three days. Since my XO technically left the Wheeling warehouse on Monday, that means it should only take about three days from then, which was when FedEx first picked it up. That would put it into LA on Wednesday or Thursday at the absolute latest.

Suspicious, I decided to confirm this with a quick visit (and screencap) at Google Maps. Here's what I found:

A DAY AND FIVE HOURS???

WTH???

So, by that measure, if my XO left Chicago this morning, assuming it took Google's route of course, it should arrive in Los Angeles tomorrow (Wednesday) at around 4:30PM--WAIT--no--that's wrong. My XO left at 11:30AM Central Time. That's 9:30AM Pacific Time, so that means it should be in LA tomorrow by 2:30PM!

I can see it now:

My XO arrives Friday afternoon. I take it out and immediately get cross with it:

"Where have you been, young laptop?!?!"

"I was coming from Chicago!" my little XO would reply.

"ALL WEEK?"

Then the XO would look up at me with it's adorable little, dual mode display and my heart would melt. I'd take it in my arms and... and...

AHEM... sorry...

ANYWAY, so, that's the OLPCSOLPotD for December 18, 2007! Day 5 of "Waiting for XO!"

Thanks for reading!

OLPCXOLPotD: WAITING FOR XO: DAY 4: My XO Has (Sort of) Shipped And XO PR0N!

OK, well, it's been several days of suppressing frustrations that would have resulted in a double-barreled verbal assault on a for-profit corporation, as I play the "Waiting for XO" game. Mind you, it's only day 4 of the 10-day window they promised us Day 1 Donors (D1Ders=we ordered our XOs on November 12, 2007, the first day of the Give 1 Get 1 program). So, I'm exhibiting the anxiousness associated with being a gadget freak and a gearhead and not the patience of a rational adult. That said, I'm not threatening to demand a refund like at least one person did on the OLPCNews.com forums.

This is especially true since I've been able to talk with Courtney. Who is Courtney? She is the helpful, warm, friendly and very patient representative at OLPC I ended up speaking with after I got fed up with calling FedEx every day and getting no useful information. Courtney was able to both give me a confirmation number (that I can effectively use as a tracking number) and confirm that my order had been "sent to shipping." That means that my XO has begun its trip to me. I confirmed this with the FedEx website. Check out the screencap below:

So, I don't have a delivery date and my XO is still in Illinois as of this post, but from what I've read on the OLPCNews forums, the theory is that it will arrive 3-5 days after it leaves. So, by that logic, I should be looking for an XO on my doorstep sometime between Thursday and Saturday. Which is fine, but not as cool as getting it last week. I have to decide if it's even worth it to unbox the XO live on BlogTV.com or not, now. I mean, what's the point since so many people who ordered XOs already got theirs?

In other news, I found the Flickr pool for OLPC XOs! It's got loads of great pics of the XO in various stages of existence. From shots of just the OS to the prototype, to early builds of the laptop, to G1G1 XOs in the hands of their new owners. Check it out:

I can't wait to add mine to that pool.

Sadly, there is a brick to report today, however. The first DOA XO fell into the hands of Charles Hoey, who guest blogged today about his experience at OLPCNews.com. Here's a cutting:

So, I was a first day donor (bought online about two hours in) and finally got my XO this morning... and it is DOA! No lights, no power.

Like many of us, I've been reading the blog posts from folks who'd gotten theirs already, and I've been dying to get my hands on one. You can only imagine the horror as it slowly set in that I wasn't doing anything wrong, but that my XO was actually completely non-functional (no charge lights or power up or errors, no activity at all).

Thankfully, Charles is, so far, the only person to have had FedEx deliver a brick. Let's hope it stays that way.

Finally, I'd like to close today's OLPCXLPotD with an XO-related pet peeve. Yes, I already have one despite not even having an XO yet. Mainly, it's the name of the laptop, itself.

People think that because the non-profit org that is behind the XO laptop is called "OLPC" that you call the laptop "OLPC." This, from my point-of-view, is not the case. OLPC stands for One Laptop Per Child, not Overt Laptop Personal Computer, or something. Yet, I'm seeing people all over the place referring to the diminutive green and white laptop as "the OLPC".

The acronym OLPC represents the concept behind the laptop--the laptop has had several names over it's two years of development, but it's final name--the one it has on the back of the display of every new laptop made is: "XO."

I'm not suggesting a world-wide campaign against the calling of XOs by the acronym "OLPC." I'm just trying to help people understand what's what. I could refer to my MacBook as "an Apple" but that would seem pretty vague to me. So, know your phrasing! Or I'll call the English police on you... or some crap. :)

OLPCXOLPotD: XO STOLEN, DELIVERY CRITICISM, GUILTY FEELINGS

No, the guilty feelings aren't because I stole an XO :P I'll explain everything, one at a time.

1) What's worse than not seeing that green-icon-festooned XO laptop box on your front porch, yet? Seeing on that green-icon-festooned XO laptop box on your front porch that is empty. Ugh, it pains me to even blog about this. Bob writes on his blog about how when his wife got home on Friday she found a box addressed to him. Turns out (as you can see from one of his pictures to the left) that the XO and its power adapter were stolen from inside! How incredibly lame is that?? Someone couldn't just steal the whole box, they had to steal the XO and send the box on its merry way!! FUCKERS!!

Too bad we can't all have Ican Krstic deliver our XOs to us. Lucky Uruguayan kids!! ^_^

2) OK, so, this brings me to my frustration. While my XO hasn't been stolen, it also hasn't been shipped. I remember the night of November 11--around 11:30PM, I was thinking to myself about how I'd like to go to sleep around midnight for a change and how I actually had most of my work done. A half-second later, I remembered that the next day was November 12--when the Give 1 Get 1 program begins taking orders for the XO laptop (SWEET!). Orders were to go live at 6am ET, so I tossed out my plans for an early (for me) bed time and stayed up until 3AM PT and right at 3AM placed my order because the site had claimed that it would be first come, first served. In fact, one email I got from the OLPC people seemed to suggest that each XO laptop was being built as each order came in (no, manufacturing isn't that fast, obviously, but you know what I mean). However, after perusing the OLPCNews.com/forum last night I quickly discovered that people who ordered their XO over a week after I did have gotten their XOs already. Of course, I'm jealous and I'm also happy that they're getting theirs so early, but why the hell did I bother staying up until 3AM on the very first day to place an order? Why did they claim "first come, first served"? Why does the OLPC wiki say that the XOs will ship via UPS when they've shipped FedEx Ground? Why isn't anyone getting tracking numbers??

What's even worse is that these $400 machines (that's our effective cost) are being left on doorsteps signature-free, where any dickhead neighbor could just walk off with one. LOVELY.

I'm beginning to think that the whole delivery/distribution thing has been nicely botched by whoever is in charge of it. Between random people getting theirs first (so much for 1st come, 1st served), no tracking numbers being emailed and no signatures required upon delivery, to me, it's amazing more people aren't in poor Bob's situation. I just hope he gets his XO and no one else has to find themselves in his situation.

3) Now comes the guilt. OLPC is a non-profit that exists to help put educational laptops in the hands of underprivileged children around the world. I should be giving them a break for getting this far. So I feel guilty for mentioning any of this. Except that, well, how do they expect to change the 3rd World if they can't even deliver smoothly to the 1st World?