My kid and the penguin

One time, on our way to the hospital, Tin and I were talking about the skills that our baby needs to develop. She wants the baby to be exposed in music; she wants her to learn how to play piano (I want her to learn how to play violin).

I shared her my plan - at a very young age, I want her to learn Linux as the operating system. I told my wife that since we are going to have one TV unit in our place, the PC should be placed in our bedroom and can serve as a media server. But it should be running in Linux; this way, our baby will have to figure it out how to use it. And if she wants to play computer games (most of it are running in Microsoft operating system or Windows), she has to figure out a way how to use Linux instead. Linux do not run non-Linux applications, however, there is an application that mimics Windows and let Microsoft-based applications run; but it takes a bit of know how (which I am not even familiar with). So if she can figure this out, she'll really learn a lot about computers.

Also, Linux has a security feature that can restrict the usage of a user. So I plan to teach my kid how to use it for basic purposes; and if she's creative, she has to learn security stuff. She will learn how to run OpenOffice (instead of Microsoft Office Suite), compose graphics in GIMP (instead of Photoshop), browse the internet thru Mozilla or Lynx (instead of Internet Explorer), or archive files thru Gzip (instead of WinZip). She will definitely learn TCP/IP by heart!

By exposing the kid at the early stage, she will be more exposed compared to the other kids of her age. She might not take computer science (which I won't force her to), but it will definitely help her early development.

I joked that by the time she reaches high school, she'll know how to develop applications; and by the time she finishes high school, she can crack her way through networks. And this was the point my wife told me that with this plan, I should start saving money for our kid's bail bond!