[Olpc-philippines] Introduction

[Mel Chua]

Welcome, James! What's your wiki(.laptop.org) username?

The best way to get started is to pick something you're interested in 
and just jump in (...like all open-source projects, really).

Since you're interested in developing, the first thing I would do is to 
grab a spare partition and install Fedora Core 7 and sugar-jhbuild to 
emulate the laptop, as you suggested (see 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulation - or as we usually abbreviate wiki 
pages here, [[Emulation]]). Emulation itself is something that could use 
some work, if you're interested in diving into virtual machines and 
development tools rather than enduser apps.

Playing with Python sounds great. Keep in mind that the XOs won't have 
visual studio .NET installed ;-) If you have experience developing 
distributed apps, one thing you might want to look into is pipes on 
python, the thing that allows python applications to easily collaborate 
over the mesh network.

On the more Philippines-specific side, one thing that doesn't exist that 
will eventually be needed is a translation effort. There's no content in 
Tagalog, no games in Tagalog or about Filipino culture, and so on. If 
you or someone you know is inclined to spend a few hours pitching in to 
put Tagalog words in ZdnekBroz's dictionary project or whipping up some 
Filipino-themed content/games, that would be awesome. (Imagine playing 
patintero over the mesh.)

-Mel (currently in San Juan, off to Cagayan de Oro in the morning)

James Shields wrote:
> Hi folks.  My name is James Shields.  I signed up to help about a month ago,
> but due to a couple of family tragedies, I'm only able to start helping now.
> 
> I've developed software for various machines since the early 1970's.  Now, I
> specialize on .NET development for Windows boxes.  But, I can pick up other
> languages as required (I'm considering downloading the tools for Symbian
> OS60 so I can make nifty applets for my Nokia N95).  In the past, I've
> worked with PCs, Apples, Commodore PETs (that's going way back), early DEC
> PDP machines, military avionics, embedded microprocessors in medical
> monitors.
> 
> I really like the idea behind the OLPC.  And, now that they've reached the
> stage where I can help (software), I want to help.
> 
> I'm planning on picking up two XOs for myself with the Give 1 Get 1 program
> (so, buying 4, getting 2).  Not sure which units they're be ... C-1?  B-4?
> In any case, I should have two laptops here when that program hits.
> 
> Until then, I'll emulate the machine under Windows.  There's a new Python
> release for Visual Studio .NET, I might look into finding a way to use that
> to make apps and content for the laptops.
> 
> Really, whatever the team needs, I'll try to do.
> 
> James Shields
> 
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