Wednesday, March 28, 2012

I Like Pi

Raspberry Pi, that is.

I know I'm late with this - it's not remotely news anymore to anyone who's in the know, but if you haven't heard about the Raspberry Pi project over in Jolly Olde England, then you need to read up.
This is a project trying to get kids to learn how to code (that's how to program computers, folks, it's not like they're teaching them Morse Code or Semaphore or the Secret Handshake of the Freemasons or anything!) and it has resulted in the creation of a fully-functional computer in a package about the size of an Altoids case or a cigarette pack. It's pretty amazing - it runs a couple flavors of Linux, can put out 1080p HD TV video, and is an all around brilliant product as those guys over there in the UK say all the time - like Harry Potter and that red-haired kid in the movies and all the guys on the Guinness commercials and everything.
So one of the really cool things is that the computer comes with nothing ready for it - you're supposed to learn how to write programs to make it do whatever you want - but you'll be able to share your programs and get programs from other people all over the world using this little machine that only costs something like $35 (yes, that's really Thirty Five Dollars) for the whole shebang other than the external connections you'll need like a keyboard and mouse and your TV for a monitor since it has HD output built in for that.

So just take my advice and run over to the Raspberry Pi website to find out about it and then you should go ahead and order one and learn about coding instead of just being a user of other people's codes like most of the Excel jockeys I know who couldn't write a program or even a macro in Visual Basic to save their lives or analyze their data, but it's not that hard and you can get a real sense of accomplishment and admiration for the coders who put out all those applications you use every day to do your jobs and all that.


Posted by Gyro Gearloose

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