Edward Andrew Robinson

So now that I have my XO OLPC computer I wanted to find something to do with it. As I said before its the web cam that really impressed me and so I decided to start playing with that. After jumping onto the #OLPC freenode irc room and asking them a few questions I was quickly able to write this python program.

• imagecapture.py
• imagefilter.py

Set it up as a cron job and upload pictures from outside my apartment window every hour. I’m not sure how long ill be keeping it running and if I play with the laptop and dont turn off the script I guess it will upload pictures of me.

Well for anyone interested the important code to take a picture is: [sourcecode language="python"]os.system(‘gst-launch-0.10 v4l2src ! ffmpegcolorspace ! pngenc ! filesink location=’ + filename)[/sourcecode] and I would love to hear what you have been doing with your XO.

Friday I got my OLPC XO laptop yes it took a lot longer for them to ship to Canada than the USA but I finally have it and will bring it to school all next week. Since all you lucky Americans got your XO’s a lot faster than us I’m not going to post about the specs or the software because everyone that got it before me has done that, but the computer works great so far, and the most impressive thing for me is the web cam, I have never had a web cam before so now I do.

I doubt after the novelty wears off that I will use the computer much but I still think it was a good purchase for the following reasons:

• I donated to a good cause and providing children in the third world with computers to access knowledge is a great thing.
• Its a bit of geek history, I think that the XO really kicked off the micro computer market and is responsible for other computers like the eeePC.
• Its really good fun watching people try to open it (I saw a great video of this and will add it in later if I can find it) and makes a great conversation peace.

I know I haven’t posted much lately and I do have something else I’m working on I promise to try and post soon.

So today I woke up and the first thing I did was order my OLPC XO from the Give One Get One program. I have had my hands on one of these a few times and they are great little toys and a good cause.

For me I think its a little peace of history (as well as a cool toy), despise the ups (could not find a link where they signed a country) and downs that the OLPC project has had I feel that they it has been largely responsible for the classmate pc and has even lent some credibility to walmarts gOS, and to a lesser extent Asus’s Eee PC.

So to me its a great offer and it only lasts till November 26 just in time for Christmas. I promise to post more when I have it.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1049354722405908055&hl=en]

Link to Google video.