sacramentalist | (no subject)

Current Mood: geeky

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I've increased my geek wannabe cred with this:

It's a Raspberry Pi -- A $35 single-board computer with an ARM processor. It's not fast, but the onboard codec can play 1080p H.264 files in realtime. You just get a board, and need to add an SD card and 5v microUSB adapter.

I got that acrylic case and a USB wifi dongle. Actually, I got two. One to run as a mini-server and one for projects. It has an output bus interface for external projects. Taking temperature. Controlling motors. Blinking lights. Who doesn't like blinking lights?

This is MUCH easier than interfacing my 68HC11. I don't want to write interrupt routines. Nobody got time for that.

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WOW .. I have no idea what that is, but it's purty.

Wait until I have BLINKING LIGHTS

I'm surprised

bertine isn't smacking you around for using the blink tag.

She's too preggo and in luff to use violence.

Hehehehe.

Or I was in a browser that doesn't support blink!

Yeah, this is a dialect of Geek i am not fluent in.

It's a little computer that runs on low power and can play videos. Won't run windows, though. Gotta use Linux or something else.

I keep thinking I should get one for Zach but he doesn't seem interested.

Maybe I just want one for myself.

I don't think you can use .NET on one :P

I want a low-power headless wireless DNS server for my DNS proxying purposes.

And another to play with.

Edited 2013-04-26 14:56 (UTC)

And that is the main reason I don't already have one. Ha!

Yeah, you have many more needs for this than I do. The only thing I would do is set up a place to play with php on it.

Edited 2013-04-26 15:17 (UTC)

You might be able to use Mono to run .Net stuff.

Yeah, most of that lingo means nothing to me, lol. But I'll bet if I showed this to my husband, he could translate it for me!

It's a little computer that runs on low power and can play videos. Won't run windows, though. Gotta use Linux or something else.

It's like an Apple TV you can program.

Someone from raspberry pi is at Penguicon this weekend. That's all I know. :P

No, someone who wrote a book. Whatever. It's all over my head anyway:

Maik Schmidt
Author of both Raspberry Pi and Arduino starter guides, Maik is fascinated with software development, electronics, and writing. He brings some of Penguicon’s most loved interests from an international perspective, currently a software developer in Germany who loves videos games, writing, and creating open source software.

I've thought of getting one of those, but I know I'll never do anything with it.

68HC11, wow I've not heard someone talk about those in a while.

I have an evaluation board in storage.

Cool. Back in the mid 90's before I was full time at the library I applied for a programming job for a place that did accounting and billing software for property management companies. They needed someone who knew 8080 assembler. Why? Because the company started the product way back on a CP/M machine. They still had large amounts of vital code in 8080 assembler which they ran in an emulator that ran on small VMS machines, at the time they were starting to work with a machine with the DEC Alpha chip. They made me take a programing test. Of course I aced it, partly because I knew 8080 assembler and partly because I had an idea of what I would have to know before hand so I got out the old Kaypro and made sure I wasn't rusty. The bastards made me come back for three interviews before the big boss started asking about my personal financial information. For example did I have a checking account? I said no. I didn't have a credit card either, I lived at home paid my few bills with cash or money order. That bastard then basically berated me for being too stupid to have a checking account and how could I ever program a bookkeeping system. I was too young, or stupid, or intimidated to say something like "I can add and subtract quite fine. But where on earth are you gong to get an entry level person who can follow a hexdump from a 20 year old chip?"

I recently found out that the company is still in business and the management company of my condo uses their software.

Impressive. I'd hate to do stuff at the hex level. Or even binary switches. Argh!

Assembly code or C would be ok with me. But now I can use python!

Load the GPIO module
Set the pin to output
Send a 1 to the pin
Profit!

Don't ask me to do that now. I've long forgotten whatever I knew. The job offer happened at a time when I was into playing with old CP/M computers with lots of incompatible drives so I spent a lot of time transferring software by doing hex dumps of using a PC as a terminal, saving the dump and then reentering the dump as a text file, and then turning it back to binary usually with BASIC program. Sometimes it was the easiest way to do things. After that job interview disaster I worked for two or three days at some local place that sold and repaired generic PCs. It sucked so I quit and thankfully the library took me back and I've been here since.

if I double posted something I apologize. I got distracted. It was probably the blink tag.

My husband got on a short while back, and he responded pretty well the same way you did. He was all nerdy geeky excited about it too. :D

G bought one of those a while back. He's been playing around with it and just recently conencted it up to the television so we can use it as a freeview box. He's also thinking about getting a case 3D printed for it.

I tell you this to forewarn you that it's a slippery slope of geekiness.

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