31 « August « 2010 « Hackers For Charity

This is reposted form the forums and the volunteer list. Sorry if you’re getting it through more than one channel!

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Hey everyone! It seems that we have a team from MD coming over to
Uganda and they have a suitcase they’re willing to use for us! It’s
just in time. We’re in such need of equipment, but we have very little
lead time — the gear needs to be in MD by this weekend (Sunday at the
latest).

If you guys would be willing to help, I would really appreciate it. I
thought of spending money to get some of this, but I’ve always been
VERY hesitant on spending on things I think might get donated.

I’m trying to build out some proof-of-concepts for the mEducation
“School in a suitcase” project we’re working on. Basically what I’m
looking for is:

“Portable” USB Hard Drives: 50GB or larger, USB powered, no external
power required. The larger the capacity the better, obviously. Include
cables if you have them.

USB Flash drives: 4GB or larger.

“QWERTY” Wi-Fi capable smart phones: Wi-Fi capability must work
outside US, although we have the capability of unlocking most phones
here.

Flash Memory cards: MicroSD / MicroSDHC / SD / SDHC: 512MB or larger.

Wireless USB adapters: With driver software if you have it. For our P4
and P3 laptops we’ve got.

Unlocked 3G modems (USB) or 3G routers

One MacBook (Just kidding).

2.5″ IDE Hard Drives (>30GB) for our Compaq EVO P4 laptops.

Thank you guys. If you have anything to send, please let me know and
I’ll get you the address!

Johnny

This post really has nothing to do with anything except, “huh… cool”. A silly kinda digital anecdote. My wife has been whistling this song for weeks. Neither one of us had a clue what it was. But it came up all the time. She would whistle the main theme, and then ten minutes later she would whistle a variation of it until thirty minutes later it became a remix far removed from the original.

It was funny. When we asked her about it, she told us it was from a music box her grandmother gave her. “It had a birdie,” she said, “like this.” And she proceeded to make a perfectly cute birdie with three fingers and show me how, exactly, it pecked.

It had some deep connected meaning to her  and I just had to find out what the tune was.

I thought of “Shazam” on my iPhone but somehow I lost it. So I Googled for “music box songs” and found this site. Jen’s whistle was vaguely familiar to me, and thanks to my vast knowledge of music box tunes (!) I skipped quite a few. Eventually I saw this link and I knew even before I clicked it that I had solved the mystery.

I unplugged my headphones to let the tune play out loud and Jen’s eyes lit up. “That’s the one!” she said, “How did you find that?”

I smiled and she continued.

“It had birdies!”

And again with the three fingered pecking birdie.

I knew then I couldn’t stop there. (Or maybe it was my years of Google hacking or the fact that a challenge was brewing…)

A Google image search for “music box love story bird” was next. There on the first line was a music box that fit the description. I clicked the link to find this site. I turned the laptop to show Jen and she lit up again.

“That’s the one!” she said.

“With the birdie,” I said, making my best attempt at the three-fingered pecking birdie. She didn’t even notice that I failed to properly emulate her cute birdie.

The pictures on the site were cool, but in the middle of the page was a broken link to a video that “Hellomrfox” Hannah had shot of the music box in action. Firebug pointed to a Flickr stream, and another link later, I searched Hannah’s Flickr stream for “bird” and eventually found this gem.

Even if you don’t care about the story, the video is worth a look. It’s so calming and.. unexpected. It’s darn near the same exact music box that Jen’s “Nanna” gave her when she was a little girl.Who knows, it may even be the same one.

And here I am in Africa watching Hannah’s amazing video of what just might be Jen’s Grandmom’s music box.

And once again, the Google hacking blood is flowing. If that’s all my years of hacking amount to, that just might be OK. Jen smiled in the midst of the madness.

And now, I’m going to be whistling that song for weeks.