StopWatch activity

Benjamin M. Schwartz bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu
Wed Nov 14 02:45:31 EST 2007


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1. Project name             : StopWatch
2. Existing website, if any : http://dev.laptop.org/~bemasc/screenshot.png
2.5. Download: http://dev.laptop.org/~bemasc/StopWatchActivity-1.xo
3. One-line description     :  The most ludicrously awesome stopwatch ever
conceived.
4. Longer description       :
StopWatch is a multi-user Sugar stopwatch activity.  Features include:
10 Stopwatches per instance
Named stopwatches
Easy to use in ebook mode (with icons indicating the functions of the game keys)
Obsessive accuracy.
Draws 0% CPU when not visible on-screen.
Supports saving and loading from the journal
- - If you save a StopWatch instance in which some watches are still running, and
then resume it from the journal half an hour later, it will be as if the watches
were running the whole time.
Crazy sharing:
- - Unsynchronized system clocks are handled automatically.
- - Sharing is based on a state-machine model, designed so that the effective
reaction time of the group is the fastest reaction time of its members,
regardless of network delays.
- - Completely decentralized, so that any member (even the initiator) can leave
the group without messing anything up
- - Coherent, so that members' displays never disagree.
- - All members can edit names, which are updated in real time.
Localization: numbers will be formatted according to the user's locale, even if
different users are in different locales.  Names may be in any character set

5. URLs of similar projects : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Stopwatch
6. Committer list
  just me.

7. Preferred development model
   [X] Central tree.

8. Set up a project mailing list:
   [X] No
9. Commit notifications
   [X] No commit notifications, please
11. Notes/comments:
I should thank mncharity for inspiring this activity.  I wouldn't have done it
otherwise.

Philosophically, this activity is complementary to Acoustic Tape Measure (and
Ruler).  The ability to measure space and time is the starting point of all
quantitative learning.  Concretely, with a string and a rock, these activities
allow you to reproduce Galileo's pendulum experiment, the starting point of physics.
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