20% Time 5/12/08

This week is a little different because of my hectic schedule.  During Tuesday, I had to take my AP Environmental Science test and wasn’t able to spend the normal amount of my time looking up new tutorials.  However, since I have been looking into several open source programs from the open disc.  The one in particular that I have been really interested in is a 3D animation program called Blender.

I have actually found plenty of very interesting tutorials on my usual haunt: tutorialized.  I was originally going to post an actual animation, but my video card can’t handle the game engine on blender (you use that for physics, like domino stuff).  Then, I tried an animation using key frames.  I just had a simple take off and landing of a rocket using a cone, cylinder, and particle emitting planes (particles are really fun with key frames).  In the modeling area (just the usual 3d editing screen without the actual render, just shapes) it looked ok, but it took to long to render and position the ‘camera’ to fit the whole thing in.  So I tried to take a screen-cast of the modeling animation itself, but my RAM gave out. 

Here I just rendered a specific frame, the default background is sky blue.

Finally, I gave up on the entire idea of being able to upload a video and switched over to jpegs.  I found another tutorial by super3boy that showed you how to make grass.  It was actually really easy.  Just start off with a plane, add particles, and change to static.  From there, just apply the amounts to determine the height, and direction of the blades.  Then by copying and rotating a couple times.  Finally, make one final plane and turn it brown, along with the previous to green.

The outcome is really cool for the amount of time it takes.

OLPC’s Founder Nicholas Negroponte

Today in web class, I saw  a video of One Laptop Per Child’s keynote address by the company founder Nicholas Negroponte.  This ‘company’ is becoming known throughout the country because of their humanitarian work of creating and supplying $100 laptops to students in third-world countries. 

The founder, Nicholas Negroponte, made sure to bring up the crucial point that the ‘company’ was involved in an educational project, not a laptop project (It was just that the laptop is cool so more people focus on that).  The the nonprofit company OLPC wanted to make sure that their “clarity of purpose” was to be always toward a humanitarian view and not a buisness view. 

I also found that the computers were made with the most affordable programs, parts, and original ideas to create the most affordable, workable computer possible .  Another reason for their stance of being nonprofit is that it gives some pressure to the big companies to help out in manufacture.  However uncomfortable, those companies need that extra pressure to put down their prices becuase most electronics would not be so expensive if companies did not renew their features every eighteen months. 

cc some rights reserved

“OPLC Children’s Machine XO Laptop Computer” by DCMetblogger

For the actual video of the keynote address, click mediaberkman.

I ended up liking the laptop’s overall functionality because of all the new things that have never been done before.  The laptop itself took a long time to become as greatly developed as it is.  First of all, the screen is completely different than anything in the market today.  It has a dimmer for the backlight within the screen that when turned of, and out in the sun, the readablitity is reportedly better than a piece of paper and a resolution better than our own laptops now, but in black and white. 

cc Some Rights Reserved “OLPC Screenshot: Home Screen” by Karindaziel

For the computer itself, there are some even more interesting things in it.  For the actual design and programming, the anntenae can swivel past the screen to get massively better reception than today’s laptops, is dust-proof when closed, the keypad is water tight, and their are three different touch pads.  Really, though, the greatest difference in these “XO” laptops is that they have what is termed a “mesh network interface”.  It is this ability that makes the computers a great asset to students in third-world countries.  In short, the interface allows kids to see who is nearby with a computer and be able to interact with them (download apps, chat, cooperate on a project).  The OLPC laptop also has absolutely no moving internal parts, and is completely free of heavy metals and so is envirinmentally freindly. 

As Negroponte said, the hardest part of the whole project is the launch.  The company many times needed to get advice form buisness people, only to have to do the exact opposite.  The first assembly line for the computers is opperational, and now they only need to get more countries to accept their help. 

cc Some Rights Reseved “Adaptors Aloft”  from Dean Sharski andCnet