That’s right this site will be no more quite soon. I’m moving to a self-hosted installation (again). Here’s hoping I’ve a little more savvy than I used to and do it right this time.
It can be found here!
Thanks for reading (all twelve of you anyway).
I struggle to come up with a different word for review because that isn’t really what this article is. I didn’t receive a complimentary unit for consideration because I’m not important enough. I didn’t get the voltmeter out and do a technical breakdown either. What I did do was register, pre-order and pay for one of these marvelous machines. From the time of ordering to arrival in my postbox the whole process took exactly 70 days. Not bad going for one of the most precious and coveted pieces of hardware to hit geekdom in many years. I digress, however.
No, rather than being a review this is something far more personal. I didn’t review the Pi, I spent time with the Pi. Not even bringing home a brand new custom-built PC, a spanking new PS3 or a slick netbook held as much excitement for me as seeing that diminutive white box in the post. The axiom ‘less is more’ is something I’ve always trusted and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have manifested that idea perfectly.
The Pi in all its glory.
On the tech websites and forums enthusiasts have likened the fervour and wonder inspired by this device to the micro-computer revolution of the 70′s and 80′s. The thirst for tinkering, it would seem, never died but merely remained dormant; hidden by a shimmering GUI and the ever-rising expense of home computing.
“Roxanne, you DO have to turn on your red light… provided you’re a single board computer”
No more than an hour after unboxing my Pi I had scoured every cubby and storage space in the house for all the tech junk I thought I’d never use again. My search bore fruit in the form of an old USB hub, a USB keyboard and mouse, a microSD card I used for ROMs on my old DS Lite, a microUSB charger from a now-retired smartphone long since hawked off on eBay and a pile of Lego to fashion a bespoke housing for the circuit bare unit. The geek equivalent of testosterone coursed freely through my veins as I duly hooked up all the input devices, flashed the software to the SD and had a little bit of a pray that it would all happen without any clouds of smoke appearing.
The boot screen finally appears
With the power cable inserted I crossed my heart and plugged that baby in. A lot of screen flickering and an agonisingly long wait followed. Just when I thought the gremlins had reared their ugly little heads the boot screen exploded into life. It worked! This tiny collection of silicon and metal made things appear on a 720p screen! I was a little flabbergasted and I found myself musing on the bold progress and ingenuity of mankind. Big things have small beginnings indeed. My next thought wasn’t quite so profound: ‘I wonder what cool shit it can do!’
My first Hello World program on my Pi!
Alas all I could muster from the depths of my trivial computing knowledge was a simple Hello World program written in C. It was a start however. I had only begun to plumb the depths and documentation was thin on the ground.
All in all a great little piece of hardware and something that belongs in every classroom possible. I hope to put together some sort of project involving the Pi at some point in the near future. Any ideas would be appreciated! Who knows, your idea could be the one that causes me to blow it up! Wouldn’t that be a privilege?
I’ve decided to foolishly undertake something that is usually only suggested in a high-horsey and scolding kind of way by health professionals and plain arseholes alike: giving up cigarettes.
Rather than the usual nonsense of the third day being the worst day and the cravings only lasting a second – all of it LIES – I’ve been bombarded by restlessness, irritability and cravings for everything from biscuits to coffee to housework all day long. Everything they tell you is, of course, abject falsity!
Cold turkey works about 3% of the time so don’t even bother with that. Take all the Nicotine gum, inhalers or lozenges you want. Fuck it, mainline it into your eyeballs if you need to just don’t take that little puff. It’s all the lovely stuff in a cigarette like chemicals used for embalming dead bodies and the same shit that kills you in a housefire that you need to avoid.
Don’t be afraid to get angry. Scream your little heart out into a pillow. Take the cravings head on and stare them down, maybe even flirt with them a little bit just to create an uneasy tension between the two of you. When a craving comes along just let it wash right over your frustrated noggin like wave on a rock. Think of it like this: when someone is trying to convince you to do something you know you shouldn’t do but kind of want to do (like go out drinking on a weeknight) what do you do? You repeat the word No over and over again like a mental patient, maybe grimace a lot and put your hands over your ears and say “Lalalalala I’m not listening” even though you really are.
How effective is that? Not fucking very. What you should really do is say “Yes, I really do want to do that thing but I can’t because I’m a broke motherfucker and would rather not eat baked beans until payday.” Same thing with smoking. Meet the urge head on and tell it who’s the boss. Man up, grow a pair, etc etc.
I’m all out of cutting insight for the day so now I’m going to go throw stones at cars and hope that stirs up some wonderfully distracting drama for an hour or two.
