Archives de catégorie : General

Maker kids

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The kids I met at Maker Faire (…) have only known a world where a “maker” was always a real thing one can be or do. (…) The average maker isn’t just a 35 year old guy, it’s becoming a 10 year old girl or boy with a 3D printer. (…) These kids are living in a time when there’s $25 Raspberry Pi computer or an Arduino inside of just about anything. (…). Parents (…) talk(…) about how installing Linux on an old iPod or making a TV-B-Gone turned their kid into a different person, more curious about how the world works, and how they went on to pursue art, science, engineering. (…) I think the kids today will (…) “copy” our willingness to share and see the benefits of open source not only for technological advancements, but for social good.

Phillip Torrone in The Maker Movement Belongs To The Kids Now… at MAKE

It’s not all about Copy Rights

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When you realize that people are paying, not for the music or the singer, but for the opportunity to be surrounded by thousands of other people who share an interest and have an excuse to enjoy themselves, then it doesn’t seem so insane.

They could honestly be paying $75 a ticket to watch paint dry, as long as there were thousands of other people getting really excited about watching the paint dry too. In pop music, particularly, it’s an event where the quality of the ‘merchandise’ is less important than the culture that surrounds it.

Amanda J in a comment to Every Concert Is A Hologram on MAKE

Install Lubuntu 12.04 on a Eee PC 701 4G

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UPDATE: Install Lubuntu 13.04 works also…
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The Asus Eee PC 701 4G is one of the earliest Eee PC. Lubuntu is a lightweight Linux operating system based on Ubuntu but using the LXDE desktop environment (no, it’s not related).

Knowing that Ubuntu 11.04 & above needs some workaround as the installer requires more than 4 GB free space, I was reluctant to upgrade from Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04.

None of that! Lubuntu 12.04 works straight from the box. You just need to use the alternate distro, not the desktop or the server flavors (with the alternate , i.e. without graphical installer, you stay well below the 4GB limit). Then install Lubuntu on USB Drive, boot the Eee PC on USB (Shift+F10), choose install, answer the questions, et voila! After rebooting, and for further sessions, just choose the ‘Lubuntu netbook‘ session at startup.

Known issues:

  • Lubuntu uses alternative software to save space and memory. Default browser is Chromium, interesting (learning curve should be smoother than xxxterm…)
  • Mplayer doesn’t work, crashes all the time. Problem solved by installing vlc.
  • As I kept my /home from the previous install (using the standard install settings), but changed my password, the keyring is still using my old pwd, and at startup I am prompted for the keyring password. I haven’t found the settings for the keyring on Lubuntu. Yet. [update 30 May: solved by reinstalling lubuntu with correct password]
  • I had too many kernels left from previous installs. Lubuntu crashed with the first kernel update for lack of space on the 4GB SSD. Solved with a reinstall & messing with grub.

Just in case, help is not far away:

Overall, an excellent resurrection for that inexpensive subnotebook that is very convenient for traveling. Having a keyboard beats a tablet everyday. With XBMC, it rocks (but is heavy on the battery, so it’s more for the hotel room than the plane/train travel)!
For this, prefer a cheap Archos/Anova tablet. You can find a HT 7c for less than € 90. It is nice to use in public transport, has twice the battery life, autosleeps nicely. But

  • its default video viewer is strict on encoding. you better have repaired your videos with Avidemux before starting for a London-Auckland;
  • Android 2.1 does not allows streaming of Youtube videos. And that model is outdated that all attemps to port 2.2 have been stopped in favor of more recent models (who will soon fall under the € 100 mark at retail price). So bad.