QuickGuide: Installing a XO activity using removable media

Here's a quick tutorial on installing a package from a usb thumbdrive or sd card:

1. On a computer with internet access download a .xo package onto your removable device.
   
2. Insert your usb drive or sd card (usb ports are under the "ears, sd slot is on underside of monitor)
3. Wait a minute for the device to mount.
4. Using the web browser activity, go to "file:///media"
5. Find your device and click on it.
6. Find the package and click it. The main Sugar frame should come out , then hide again.
7. Wait a minute or so , and your activity should appear in the XO launcher.
8. Enjoy
   

Results from first day

The XO seems to have some strange issues with my wireless at home and I was only able to get it online for 30 minutes but in that time I learned several things.

1. You can share activities across the whole Internet
2. Google Video does not work (due to gnash lacking .flv file support apparently) Maybe I can install regular flash?
   
3. Normal computers can connect to the XO's mesh network (though it crashed my network card after a while).It shows up as "olpc-mesh"
4. Support for WPA appears to be very finicky

After trying for several hours to get it back online, I decided to try a firmware upgrade using a USB thumbdrive.At first it was giving me an error about "wrong machine type" but I found that taking it in 2 firmware steps worked fine.

Then I decided to start messing around with gasp , and I figured out several things

• In some areas of the system ,gasp works just fine natively but if it is part of an activity it needs(or rather pygame does) the olpcgame wrapper.
  
• Its better suited for building activities then being an activity itself
• Someone has already mentioned gasp as a useful game development tool on the game development page (this certainly was not me)
• Pippy example code would be really sweet.

Then ,just for fun , I decided to find out if it was possible to get activities installed without internet access.The answer is that yes it is possible,but you still have to go trough the browser(only to your usb drive instead of a website).So installed Sim City, which runs great.
Of course the nostalgia ran out in about 10 minutes,but it was still fun.

Well, hopefully I can figure out my networking issues and dig deeper into this great device.

Introducing the XO

Thanks to Jeffrey Elkner,Micheal Connet and our friends at Nortel for allowing me to test the XO laptop and attempt to get some of our learning activities working on it.

Information on the laptop
Color: Green(only color available at the moment)
Hardware Revision: B4-15
Software Revision : Unknown now(but working on it :) )

Current Plan for first day:
1. Change language to english
2.Investigate Pippy
3.Attempt basic gasp compatibility (draw a window. or activity)
4.Check out some of the basic networking capabilities of the XO