Hello Friends of Woodbridge Primary School!
These last two days we have been struggling to come up with a name for our little computer and then build a shell for it.
Before we even started, daddy explained a few simple rules that naming in general should follow.
To begin with, it would be a good idea not to use a real person's name. We do not want people who like it to feel they are connected to a real person. .....we know, it sounds like a stretch, but it wouldn't be the first time unfortunately! :(
The second rule was also very simple. The name should be no longer than three words! The reason is simple. We would like people to remember it. Complicated names are hard to remember and may discourage some from spending time with them! :( We will try to keep it as simple as possible!
Georgios started with simple names as you can see in the photos below and his creativity peaked with the name "clever box". In total and up to that point Georgios came up with 21 names. Computers are not really clever things, but Georgios found this name good enough for our little computer. Clever box is short and is not related to a person and therefore does not bend any of the rules! ...then daddy pitched in the idea of a single word, and that was "alpha" (22 names in total! 😁 ).
- Please don't blame daddy for his involvement; after all it takes two! -
That confused Georgios A LOT! Alpha meant nothing to Georgios. However it was obvious somehow to him, that this word was related to the alphabet. Only this time, it was not the aplhabet he knew but from the greek alphabet, which is daddy's mother tongue. Daddy explain to Georgios that this, despite being in a foreign language, would be something that all people around the world could recognise. On top of that, it had several meanings, most of them being positive. Alpha was used initially as a number, which was number 1 (before tha adoption of the arabic system we all know and use these days). In that sense, alpha also meant "top", "best of the best", "the beginning", "early" and in some cases "raw". It took Georgios a while to digest it and then he kept repeating it, until a bit later it changed his mind. In the end, the name we decided to go on with was "aplha".
The first 12 names can be seen above. While with No.12 Georgios meant "cheap", chip also works fine. I didn't want to correct him. When people are trying to be creative, spelling comes second! Zebra also looks unsual 😄
All of the names, I personally found "ant" the most amusing one! Orange could have some potential... After all, we all know that apples did rather well! 😉. No. 22 is "alpha". Georgios placed it down there, as if he wanted to isolate this from his own ideas! 😄
With the name sorted, we decided to go to bed.
The next step is equally challening. We now have to build a shell!
But with the right tools, "stocked with patience" and imagition switched to position "on", I guess nothing is impossible. Sometimes we need to remind that to ourselves.
We starting by creating a pattern. This was daddy's idea. It's always easier to work this way.
One of ideas was to use our lego bricks. Which apparently worked really well! (our plan b was glue and cardboxes)
We created a base large enough to house the little machine.
...and quickly started building around it. I have to admit that we spend much longer than we realised. We did all sorts of crazy things. We even had a chimney at some point (which collapsed!), flowers and internal columns where we shouldn't because it was just... fun! ...and then it hit us!
We decided to make a racing car out of it! So we got four wheels on and added a pair of aggresive looking teeth (after all it wouldn't classify as "racing" without the right front bumper!) The little brain of our computer was still sitting comfortably in the car. But something was wrong. We got carried away (again) and forgot to leave openings for the cables of the connecting devices.
No.1 is the power brick, No.2 is to connect it to the telly (the hdmi port), No.3 &4 are the mouse and keyboard ports (usb ports). Removing a few bricks brought us back in the game (lego bricks are very forgiving with stability I have to say!). We also started thinking about snag fit. It shouldn't be hard. A few bricks here and there and it would stop sliding when plugging in the cables.
This is daddy's little twist. It basically anchors it down to the floor of the car, as we found it floating in there when pulling the cables.
The "front" now looks cool. You may be wondering why we have a garden on roof... patience our friends!
Power port on the left and tv port on the right: check!
and yes... you guessed it right! the garden is nothing more than storage. This is where we will store our power brick, when it's not in use!
A shim down there and "bob's your uncle"!
Look at how cool it looks! Personally it remindes me of mad max! 😂 Georgios of course only sees a cool truck!
One last check with all the cables in place!
And our little computer is practically assembled! All we need is to prepare a "boot disk" or in other words an operating system, but that can wait till tomorrow. It's getting late and our excitement will probably not help when we go to bed.
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When Georgios went to bed, I prepared the logo for our computer. It will be waiting for him tomorrow.
At this point, we would like to thank all of you who spent your time watching our project come to life!
Big thank-you to the people who donated for our school!! We really appreciate it!
Stay tuned for our next steps! It will be as interesting as the above (if not more)!
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