All entries for Friday 26 June 2009

Sugar on a Stick

Writing about web page http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick

Today I had a quick go of Sugar on a Stick, the liberated version of the software that runs on the One Laptop Per Child computers. It’s pretty good and I can see where it would come into its own if it’s wirelessed up with a classroom full of other laptops, all chatting and learning and stuff. For me the best thing was dancing back in time to that day, once a year, when the teacher would drop this round robot on the ground and get us to program it to move forward and turn right. That’s right, the LOGO Turtle. Consequently I had retro fun using the Turtle Art software that’s included with a reminiscent tear of joy trickling down my beautiful face.

Fig 1. Witness my procedural vector text rendering prowess.

There is also a 2D physics playground app where you can draw shapes and watch them fall over and basically smash shit up. It’s pretty good and I’m usually all in favour of smashing things up but I dunno; not sure if kids should be learning science and getting all knowledgeable. They might grow up clever and make us look really stupid.

If you want to try it you can find some old dusty computer that’s not running very well and maybe use this to give it a bit of life, or you can do what I done and use VirtualBox to make it appear as a little virtual computer in a window, inside my real computer. I know, creepy.

Nick Howes : 26 Jun 2009 11:27 |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem