Walter Bender

I was at OLPC for several years and now I am a volunteer on the project. My home page can be found here: [1]

Email: walter AT sugarlabs DOT org

To do

  • get Frame test set up in Peru/Uruguay/Paraguay</srike>
  • New Activity templates
Much of the information that is consistent across activities can be held in activities.s.o. (dfarning 22:28, 16 June 2008 (UTC))
  • Follow-up with Linux Foundation
  • Draft membership agreement for Sugar Labs
  • rebase Turtle Art on SVG
  • ask SFC for pointers to lawyers in SA
  • start writing NSF/USAID proposal
  • local-labs proposals
  • USF proposal

Done

Recent writing about Sugar and learning

(I also blog the weekly Sugar Digest.)

The slides from a talk I gave about Sugar at the Women2Woman conference are here and here.

gitorious

I'm documenting the process of moving Turtle Art to git.sugarlabs.org. Marco has posted instructions here, but of course I didn't have them at hand when I started. So far:

1. I created an account on git.sugarlabs.org by selecting the register link on the home page.
2. I created a new project by selecting the new link on the project page.
There were lots of questions I didn't know the answer to, such as what tags I should be using, but you can answer most of them after the fact... I did screw up (at least) one thing: I hadn't noted that the project name needs to be all lowercase... but it was easy to change.
3. I am not sure how to push my project.
Morgs pointed out that if you go to http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/turtleart/repos/mainline it tells you a "push" URL.
git remote add origin gitorious@git.sugarlabs.org:turtleart/mainline.git
# to push the master branch to the origin remote we added above:
git push origin master 
# after that you can just do:
git push
4. I finally looked at Marco's instructions and so I added the pootle user as a committer.
5. Where should I put the .xo bundle? And the source tarball?
there is a script for generating and posting changes that covers all of these details.

I had a bit of trouble pushing a new change to gitorious today. I had to use the --force flag for some reason. We suspect it may have something to do with the fact that one of the files I pushed is a binary file. Will report back what I find. (Seems to work fine when there are no binary files to add/push.)

git push -fv

I have been trying to use release.py with no luck so far either. (It has a dependency on the feedparser python library, which is easy enough to install.) It complained about a mismatched tag, so I used the --version flag to force the same version number as in my activity.info file. Then I got this error:

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "../release.py", line 325, in <module>
   main()
 File "../release.py", line 314, in main
   release.tag()
 File "../release.py", line 170, in tag
   subprocess.check_call(['git', 'commit', '-a', '-m' , '%s' % message])
 File "/usr/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 462, in check_call
   raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', 'commit', '-a', '-m', 'Release 26']' returned non-zero exit status 1

Is this because I did the git commit and git push by hand before running release.py?


A few notes re moving to the Sugar Labs infrastructure:

  • use git init to create a new project
  • source packages now go in
shell.sugarlabs.org:/upload/sources/sucrose/fructose/

Sandbox

 
Spiral Home View
 
Fermat Spiral
 
Modifying TurtleArt

Floss Manual

<img src="bookstore.gif"/> <style>

@import url("http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.css");

</style>

<script src="http://en.flossmanuals.net/bookstore/bookstore.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
 FM.init({"paging":true,"preferred":["OLPC LAPTOP USERS GUIDE","SUGAR USERS GUIDE"]});
</script>

Portfolio

I am making a "TurtleArt: inspired portfolio tool. See TAPortfolio for more details.

 
first sketch of the portfolio tool
 
another sketch of the portfolio tool
 
almost to Version 1.0
 
clap to advance to next slide
 
type to advance to next slide

I added a "view source" for Turtle Art that exports Logo.

 
a Turtle Art project
 
the UCB Logo version

Some procedures for setting up the palette and the shade functionality:

to tasetpalette :i :r :g :b :myshade
make "s ((:myshade - 50) / 50)
ifelse lessp :s 0 [
make "s (1 + (:s *0.8))
make "r (:r * :s) 
make "g (:g * :s) 
make "b (:b * :s)
] [
make "s (:s * 0.9)
make "r (:r + ((100-:r) * :s)) 
make "g (:g + ((100-:g) * :s)) 
make "b (:b + ((100-:b) * :s))
]
setpalette :i (list :r :g :b)
end
to rgb :myi :mycolors :myshade
make "myr first :mycolors
make "mycolors butfirst :mycolors
make "myg first :mycolors
make "mycolors butfirst :mycolors
make "myb first :mycolors
make "mycolors butfirst :mycolors
tasetpalette :myi :myr :myg :myb :myshade
output :mycolors
end
to processcolor :mycolors :myshade
if emptyp :mycolors [stop]
make "i :i + 1
processcolor (rgb :i :mycolors :myshade) :myshade
end
to tasetshade :shade
make "myshade modulo :shade 200
if greaterp :myshade 99 [make "myshade (199-:myshade)]
make "i 7
make "mycolors :colors 
processcolor :mycolors :myshade
end
to tasetpencolor :c
make "color modulo round :c 100
setpencolor :color + 8
end
make "colors [
100 0 0 100 5 0 100 10 0 100 15 0 100 20 0 100 25 0 100 30 0 100 35 0 100 40 0 100 45 0 
100 50 0 100 55 0 100 60 0 100 65 0 100 70 0 100 75 0 100 80 0 100 85 0 100 90 0 100 95 0 
100 100 0 90 100 0 80 100 0 70 100 0 60 100 0 50 100 0 40 100 0 30 100 0 20 100 0 10 100 0 
0 100 0 0 100 5 0 100 10 0 100 15 0 100 20 0 100 25 0 100 30 0 100 35 0 100 40 0 100 45 
0 100 50 0 100 55 0 100 60 0 100 65 0 100 70 0 100 75 0 100 80 0 100 85 0 100 90 0 100 95 
0 100 100 0 95 100 0 90 100 0 85 100 0 80 100 0 75 100 0 70 100 0 65 100 0 60 100 0 55 100 
0 50 100 0 45 100 0 40 100 0 35 100 0 30 100 0 25 100 0 20 100 0 15 100 0 10 100 0 5 100 
0 0 100 5 0 100 10 0 100 15 0 100 20 0 100 25 0 100 30 0 100 35 0 100 40 0 100 45 0 100 
50 0 100 55 0 100 60 0 100 65 0 100 70 0 100 75 0 100 80 0 100 85 0 100 90 0 100 95 0 100 
100 0 100 100 0 90 100 0 80 100 0 70 100 0 60 100 0 50 100 0 40 100 0 30 100 0 20 100 0 10]
make "shade 50
tasetshade :shade
to tasetbackground :color :shade
tasetshade :shade
setbackground :color + 8
end

The project:

to ta
clearscreen tasetbackground 21 100 setpensize 25.0 make "box1 0.0 
repeat 300.0 [ tasetpencolor xcor / 6.0 tasetshade heading forward :box1 right 91.0 make "box1 :box1 + 1.0 ] 
end
ta

Turtle Art variables

Following the lead of Luis Michelena, I've added named blocks and stacks. I plan to add push and pop next, which should greatly expand the range of possible constructions.

 
to square
 
reworking the graphics

Turtle Art push and pop

While it is not the intent that Turtle Art be a full implementation of Logo, but there has been some discussion on teh Sur list about adding some capability for passing arguments to stacks. (and to support recursion). I have added a FILO and push and pop blocks to enable this functionality. I am looking for feedback. regarding this choice.

HBS-style analysis

  • our points of difference
  • our points of parity
  • their points of difference