On or about 20 Jun 2001, Simeon Johnston is alleged to have said:
> "Troy.A Johnson" wrote:
> 
> > Cool! Thanks Bill, this is interesting stuff. I was planning on making
this
> > machine into a play thing for my son (17 months, but _loves_ to bang on
> > the keyboard and move the mouse). I may consider using an old x86
machine
> > for this task instead...
> 
> Try out Babysmash.  It locks the machine until a special key command is
used.
>  It
> displays random objects on the screen in various colors.  Pretty cool. 
The
> key
> command would be very hard to press acidentally.
> Works on all MacOS's as far as I know.  Been a while since I've used it
> though.

I just hacked together a little ncurses program that displays a big letter
on the screen.  It would have been easier to do by just running an xterm
with a montrous font, but Dad was a little bored when he started coding. :)

My 3 year old always asks to "type the letters" and has been for almost a
year now; we're not worried about reading, since the correlation between
what he types and what he says has been high since he was about 15-18 mos.

It's funny how when Mom and Dad spend a lot of time on the phone or looking
at the "infernal screen" how it's mirrored by the little ones!