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This past weekend we had some family visit, and not surprisingly, playing with all our tech was a favorite activity for all the kids.

I installed the Activity version of TuxPaint, which Sam has played with for several years on my Linux and Mac computers. I had previously installed this via yum, but starting it up on the command line was difficult for Sam, so this is a welcome addition to Mr. Laptop. Sam has become quite proficient with Sugar and has even started using some keyboard shortcuts.

It's been a while since our last post. Yes, this is mostly due to having too much fun with Mr. Laptop and other Christmas presents to have time for the blog. However, Sam's explorations have provided a wealth of things to write about.

With our holiday travel plans on hold, I thought I'd get a video out for a project that Sam and I did last summer.

We read about Vibrobot in Make Magazine volume 10 and thought that we could kick it up a bit. Our version used two AA batteries, included a switch and had a glue stick for the offset weight. This gave ours a bit more power and speed that what is shown in the video in the above link.

I was going to post about some of the problems we've had with Sam's OLPC XO. All of the issues so far have been software related, which is good because that's way easier to fix. I had been thinking that this machine was a bit underpowered, until I got the Watch & Listen video player working and started to realized where some of the performance bottlenecks were. This machine just needs a bit of work, and that's the fun part right?

At any rate, I'm not going to make that post now...

Sam got to open his "Big Present" last night. He absolutely LOVES his new OLPC XO. He's even named it "Mr. Laptop"! :)

One of my main motivations for creating this blog is to discuss our experiences with the one of the most sought after bits of tech gear going right now, the OLPC XO laptop. I was able to get an order in early in their Give One, Get One program and Sam's laptop arrived on Tuesday afternoon. Sam doesn't yet know that he's getting this machine, though he's been rather vocal about the fact that he needs a new computer after his aging old purple iMac died a few months ago.

What is a SalmonDad? Well, it’s a bit of a long story, but it boils down to this….