23rd December, 2007
Posted by Sayamindu 4 months, 3 weeks ago
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Exams
End semester exams are over. Only one more semester to go before I graduate. Yay!!
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Hyderabad
I’ll spending Christmas in Hyderabad - and will be probably there fpr most of the week as well. I will be online though (hopefully), except when I’m travelling (it looks like I’ll be coming back by train - a 30 hour journey).
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New Camera
I finally decided to replace my aging Canon A95, and thought that I would move to a DSLR. Kushal had got a Nikon D80 a few months back, and after playing around with his camera for sometime, I decided to go for the same. I also bought a 50mm prime lense to go with it. ..and I’m having fun with it
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OLPC Translations
I must admit that the rapid progress of the OLPC translations has somewhat surprised me. The project is barely over a month old, and we have a very active and enthusiastic community growing up very quickly. I think that the decision to use Pootle has worked out very well for us, inspite of the initial pains, primarily due to-
Low barrier of entry for translators
You need not worry about VCS access, or having to understand PO files - you simply create an account, and start to translate the strings.
This of course, requires that the language coordinator has to be extra careful before pressing the “commit” button, and check that all the translations actually make sense before they go into the master git repository at dev.laptop.org. But in some ways, this is also applicable to translations being done via other methods as well, and Pootle has a system where the language coordinator can actually approve each translated string before it is integrated into the PO file. -
Support for offline translations
This is very important, because it is wrong to assume that volunteer translators have good quality internet access all the time. Pootle allows you to download PO files, and upload them (with options for either merging the translations, or overwriting them) when you are done.
In the end however, all of this boils down to having an active l10n community, and I would really like to thank each and everyone of the translation community for pushing things so far. You all rock :-).
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Low barrier of entry for translators
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A report on XO deployment at Peru
Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what the Internet can do for them.
Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska — the youngest of her six children — has meant to her. Miluska’s father, it turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1.
“We never imagined having a computer,” said Arrendondo, a cook.The entire article makes for a fascinating read - it is available online here.
