Who ate all the Pis?
10/11/2012 I want a Raspberry Pi. I must have a Raspberry Pi. My home PC is drab. My Mac Mini is dusty. My iPad, which in my case I have not got, is a fatuous slab of plastic. Let me see the glimmer of the surface-mounted LED, and smell the green, green circuit board of 'Made in China'. But a Raspberry Pi is an example of that …
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Just clicked through that link..
TWENTY THREE QUID FOR AN HDMI/DVI ADAPTER????
I know Maplin can be expensive, but that's taking it to new levels. Apparently its connectors are 24K gold. I'd expect the whole thing to be gold plated for that price.
Re: Just clicked through that link..
Screw plating - at that price it MUST be hewn from a solid block of gold.
Re: Just clicked through that link..
I'd add "forged by Middle-Earthen dwarves, and steeped in unicorn blood for less-inhibited data transfer"... any thoughts on how Maplin will survive the year with this kind of pricing?
Re: Just clicked through that link..
The odd thing is that they will sell you a model B Pi, a keyboard, a mouse, a WiFi USB dongle, a powered USB hub, a USB power supply & cable, 4GB SD card with Rasperian Wheezey installed and a HDMI -> HDMI cable for £75. Looks like you could buy the kit, throw away the Pi and be under their RRP on the other bits.
Re: Just clicked through that link..
I've had reason to look in Maplins for various adapters and cables lately. Believe me, Verity is not exaggerating!
Re: Just clicked through that link..
And it's the same electricity! Mind you, there was a Reg article claiming that the video output from a Mac mini was much better run though an HDMI->DVI adaptor and then to a DVI monitor than direct to an HDMI monitor. Suggesting that the audiophiles have joined the computer age. Directional monitor cables, anyone?
PS Verity, I bought a cable with an HDMI connector at one end and a DVI one at the other from eBay. Cost four quid, including postage from whatever labour camp for disobedient children in China makes 'em. Works fine.
Re: Just clicked through that link..
"Cost four quid, including postage from whatever labour camp for disobedient children in China makes 'em. Works fine."
You know that strange, pink leathery cover on the cable....
Re: Just clicked through that link..
" any thoughts on how Maplin will survive the year with this kind of pricing?"
Yeah, just selling a couple of those DVI/HDMI adaptors will probably see them through 2013!
Re: "I mean, who would know?"
Word documents have a habit of containing metadata revealing rather more than their senders intended, e.g. the dodgy origins of a dossier claiming that a certain middle eastern tyrants had access to weapons of mass destruction. Another example was a quotation we once received for a batch of computers sold more cheaply by the same vendor to another university. The salesman never discovered how we knew, but we got a match on the price.
Re: "I mean, who would know?"
You may note however, that Reg articles are not made available as downloads of Word documents.
Re: "I mean, who would know?"
Nano I think might be easier than Vi or Libre Office (for different reasons)
Abiword
As title....or at a pinch Leafpad!
After installing XBMC on my Pi I discovered to my joy that I can control it through the TV remote (lucky, as I don't have a poser^H^H^H^H^Hsmartphone...
Re: Abiword
TV remote? Try the mobile phone apps and control via the home wifi. Who needs line of sight?
I use Yatse (android).
Now look what you've done!
I want a Pi, too... even when by now everybody who's anybody probably has one! Sniff.
Verity, once again: great writing!
PS: I like nano. Yes, I'm a wimp.
Fancy plastics cases...
Bah, pretty boxes. My Pi just dangles freely from the power cable, Ethernet-with-broken-latch and makeshift-PATA-cable-as-GPIO-extension-weighted-down-with-a-workshop-tool just like God intended it to be.
I'd throw myself behind a train!
Seriously, being technologically humiliated by the marketing guy?
Re: I'd throw myself behind a train!
I'd rather throw the marketing guy before a train. It gives karma points, you know!
Re: I'd throw myself behind a train!
Behind a train?
Was that an intentional joke..?
Re: I'd throw myself behind a train!
Would the train be reversing at the time?
Re: I'd throw myself behind a train!
That's a good way of derailing the poor innocent train. MTs are so thick skinned, they make the continental crust seem like tissue paper.
My PI
I use it as a media centre myself. XBMC runs reasonably well if a little laggy sometimes. I did get the older version with less memory but dont know if the new one would fix the lag issue.
The HDMI cable is stupidly expensive but people want them so they make their money while the technology is popular. I did intend writing a few simple games for it and maybe some apps but my gf likes the media centre so much I barely get a look in. Even to watch my movies!
It isnt easy finding like minded individuals wanting to make the board do stuff so playing becomes expensive and can be hindered from only 1 persons experience.
Re: My PI
I've got one of each and the newer version is noticably less laggy running xbmc
Re: My PI
"The HDMI cable is stupidly expensive"
It's really not. Get it for about a couple of quid, five if you're in the mood for luxury.
Re: My PI
@Annihilator - dead right. eBay for the adventurous, CPC / Farnell etc. for slightly more reputable, even Amazon Basics.
Do a bit of homework and you'll generally find that for short cables, there's little or no difference between cheap and expensive cables. Go long distance at v. high resolutions and you *might* get some issues, data rate definitely falls with distance. That said, I can happily play full HD over a 5m cable that I paid less than a tenner for.
Re: My PI
One word on the pricey HDMI cable issue: "Poundworld". £1.99, as I recall - I have at least two of their cables, and no Pi>telly display problems with them whatsoever.
Of course, if that's one of the pound-shops that makes use of workfare: find another chain that doesn't (if one exists)...
Re: My PI
Greatly appreciated by me, maybe not so by my wallet :)
Cheers
Re: My PI
And if you need the cable *now* rather than when the postman next passes your house, then Currys Essentials hdmi cables aren't too much of a rip-off.
Re: My PI
You can also overclock the Pi (even the 256Mb RAM version). Also change the memory split so that 128Mb is allocated to the graphics.
Re: My PI
"One word on the pricey HDMI cable issue: "Poundworld". £1.99, as I recall "
So in fact, Twopoundworld. I'd recommend you report them to trading standards.
Re: My PI
"Currys Essentials hdmi cables aren't too much of a rip-off."
I hope they've got the road gritters ready in Hades tonight...
The green, green circuit board of 'Made in China'?
It's worse than that.
It's made in Wales.
What can you do with a Pi?
Here are a few ideas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuYLTudcOaM
WTF?
"Anyway, after a few minutes all the old Unix skills come flooding back: typing backslashes in paths that demand forward slashes"
You think that mistyping slashes is a skill?
There was a time when bottom left to top right was called slash, and top left to bottom right was a backslash. Then DOS came along....
Slash
Real DOS experts - and real Windows Admins - know that the forward slash is just "slash". Unfortunately, the ravening hordes of Windows _users_ always get confused. "h t t p : / /" you say. "Is that forward slash or backward slash? And which one is which?" they reply. For the 20th time in the same conversation.
Re: WTF?
There's no such thing as a "forward slash" - just slash and backward slash!
Re: Slash
On really old DOS (2.11?) you could define switch char
then paths became / instead of \ They dropped it on Ver 3.x something
Re: WTF?
You think that mistyping slashes is a skill?
<FoghornLeghorn>It's a joke, son.</FoghornLeghorn>
You paid WHAT for a DVI-HDMI adapter???
Try ASDA - £10 gets you one.
It still seems ludicrously expensive to me for what is, after all, two connectors and some wire.
Re: You paid WHAT for a DVI-HDMI adapter???
£1.65 on Amazon.
I've got to say though, it was really hard work moving the mouse and pressing 7 keys on the keyboard and I'll never get back the 10 seconds I spent retrieving that information.
Re: You paid WHAT for a DVI-HDMI adapter???
Alright alright. Here, have a beer, see if it helps.
Re: You paid WHAT for a DVI-HDMI adapter???
I bought one of these for my Pi, works fine.
Re: You paid WHAT for a DVI-HDMI adapter???
But do be careful to get the right one; DVI-I or DVI-D. Could make a couple of quids difference!
Re: You paid WHAT for a DVI-HDMI adapter???
"It still seems ludicrously expensive to me for what is, after all, two connectors and some wire."
Yeah, and I don't know why this iPad is so expensive - after all, all it is is a load of metal, plastic, bit of silicon, all mashed together into a rectangle with rounded corners.
PuTTY?
Real nerds SSH from the terminal but then I wimp out and use nano.
'I am going outside, I may be some time' it will automatically dock them £10. LOL
Re: PuTTY?
Frankly I'm disappointed that not only is Verity actually using Windows as her desktop OS at work, she's even admitted to using Word regularly. I feel cheated.
The highly accurate VI / fly exit comparison did make me laugh though, I trained quite a few students to use it (VI, not the window) years ago and well remember my own initial struggles!
vi...
"getting hideously stuck inside vi, unable to recall the correct exit keystrokes, and so trampling all over the edit I have just made."
That sounds like a normal vi session for me. The only thing more unbearable than vi's wonderful interface (do I hit "ESC" or ":" now?) is trying to reverse-engineer what RMS was tripping on when he wrote emacs. Nano is almost always the first thing I install on a new Linux box. It helps make life worth living as a Linux admin.
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