One thing I wished W|A did better was handling equations with variables in them. Let me
define a variable and use it (more than once) in my equation! This could all be javascript, just to make seemless the interface. The above (and below) screenshot show the printout for the same algorithm, which uses the 0.09% “rate” value three times.

Something like Soulver.app, at the very least, would go a long way into minimizing user error and increase organization. Maybe it is time to write a GreaseMonkey script?

INSERT INTO mburns_drupal.wp_posts
(post_author,
post_date,
post_date_gmt,
post_content,
post_title,
post_excerpt,
post_name,
post_modified,
post_modified_gmt)
SELECT node.nid,
FROM_UNIXTIME(node.created),
FROM_UNIXTIME(node.created),
node_revisions.body,
node.title,
node_revisions.teaser,
concat('node/', node.nid),
FROM_UNIXTIME(node.changed),
FROM_UNIXTIME(node.changed)
FROM mburns_drupal.node, mburns_drupal.node_revisions WHERE node.nid = node_revisions.nid;

Setting up proper backup and redundancy for web hosts will be a source of many future posts. To get things situated, though, I’ll be installing GRSecurity, a hardening set of linux patches to minimize our security footprint. Next, an application firewall like mod_security, to proactively catch scans, XSS attacks and SQL injection attempts.

If all goes well, our Portland development machine might even house a semi-pro FPS gaming team.

My improvedphpbb2 to Vanilla migrator script handles things like apostrophes in the names of forums and threads as well as actually working, which version 3 did not out of the box. To use this version, download it to a web directory, unpack it, edit the database authentication info in the mysqldetails.php file and visit the folder (”example.com/forum/migrator/”) in a browser. Click each link once from top to bottom. Clicking it more than that will be detrimentally start duplicating entries.

You may notice that the forum is really EN.forum.laptop.org, this is because it is for english speakers. Just like Wikipedia, the community forum hopes to have a wide selection of local forums in the native tongues of every deployed location the XO finds itself.

To get your feet wet, look at the current list of unanswered questions or check the other end of the spectrum with the most active discussions.

There just are not enough people pitching in.

-from OLPC Community Support Forum.

As may be expected, their are slight growing pains. The Support Forum is growing fast and we could really use interested forum members to “pay it forward” by helping answer questions from the 150,000+ new users of the XO laptop that are getting online for the first time with their new machine! Most questions are OLPC-specific (and we have great documentation), but a growing number are general linux questions with users discovering the Terminal activity and getting exposure to Bash for the first time. So, go register for an account help answer some questions and join this new, great community!

Why doesn’t facebook run an academic curriculum wiki? By encouraging its millions of high school and colllege student users to upload general class notes, proofs and terminology, it would build a broad body of knowledge. Structuring it into a comprehensive curriculum text. Google is doing it with their wikipedia-like Knol repository of factual knowledge. Facebook could enter the academic end of that market in a very big way.

Our setup is hosted at no cost by the OSU Open Source Lab. We are using <a href="http://phpbb.comPHPBB, mxBB, mail2forum and pjirc. Our fourm (phpbb) is synced with various support, project and community mailing lists, linking our newest users with the existing development circles. Suggestions, volunteers, and contributions welcome. Cheers!

All languages are welcome, but it should be noted that there’s a
need for those languages used in the ‘green countries’, which
are: Amharic, Arabic, English, Spanish, French, Hausa, Hindi,
Igbo, Nepali, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Thai,
Urdu, & Yoruba.

-Xavier Alvarez
The people doing One Laptop Per Child need help translating their free software and content. They have made a webpage to help them streamline the process for contributors to translate phrases. So, have you ever wished you could contribute to an open source project but got to intimidated by the code? Well, now is your chance.

Our first event was the Beaver Community Fair. Fun times and a great way to start off the term. Girls just *love* inflatable penguins taped to the tops of remote control cars.