Yesterday we received our very own XO laptop from OLPC to play with. We'd seen one up close at Squeakfest last August, but now we've got time to get to know it and show it off to others. Here Paula's trying Squeak Etoys on it: As you can see next to her 15" MacBook, the XO is made for little hands. I was very pleased with its performance. Fedora & Sugar booted in a minute and Etoys loaded in about ten seconds which is plenty fast enough. Also very impressive was the reflective display. You really can read things in...

So here I am, with three months of research, and nowhere to use it. Over the summer, I immersed myself in the writings of Seymour Papert and the works of Alan Kay and Mitch Resnick, both of whom drew inspiration from Papert. I've been walking around with a running dialogue in my head, inspired by the same ideas that launched OLPC and countless other efforts. So what's Papert's point? What's the common gist of the half-dozen books he's written, starting with "Mindstorms" in 1980? Okay, I'll give it a shot. Seymour Papert thinks that we're programming our kids in school...

Now starts a new week, a new month, a new season. Behind me the falling forward feeling of the Saint John pilot proposal. Behind me the ingratitude over my UFS and histbeth efforts. The "why of waveplace" still holds, though it may not take form in the way we had planned. There's still the spirit of Papert, which is worthy of our passion. There's the rightness of OLPC, which sorely needs our support....