Housekeeping-type post – book compo results, awards, dinner.

We won another award! That’s three in two weeks; we’re very shocked and very pleased. This is the BASDA Theo von Dort award, which Eben was given at the Software Satisfaction Awards 2012 ceremony we were embarrassingly late for last night (we made it for the awards, but we missed most of dinner thanks to a gridlocked A1). Thank you to everybody at BASDA who voted for us – and especially to Kevin Hart, who must have been having kittens when we didn’t turn up initially.

On the right of Eben is Gyles Brandreth, who made my night when he gave Raspberry Pi a shout-out when he started his after-dinner speech. I can die happy now. Apologies for quality – photo taken with my phone, and the digital zoom is pants.

If you want to vote for us in another set of awards (we’re up against Sir Alan Sugar in this one, and he’s been raising support via Twitter, so I am perfectly sanguine about posting a link here), the voting for the V3 awards closes in a couple of days. We’re up for project of the year, and we’d really appreciate your vote!

We’ve finished judging the book contest! The summer coding contest results will be coming within a few weeks too; we’ve checked all the output, and poor Rob, now freshly off a plane, will be combing through the code over the next little while as well. Sorry for the delay on both; the book contest was late because we’ve only just got the box of author copies. We weren’t able to choose a single entry to win, because there were so many great ones, so the winners are (in no particular order):

Colin Cameron
Dan Ringer
Paul Harrap
Mark Hamersma
Piglet

Can you all email me with the heading “I won a book!” at liz@raspberrypi.org, including your real names and addresses?

We had a board meeting! There’s not much content I can discuss here yet from that meeting, but I thought you’d like to see what the Foundation’s trustees look like when full of Cambridge University roast beef and port. Here we are in the Wilberforce Room at St John’s College, some of us a bit tiddly, enjoying the dinner that represented the aftermath of the meeting.

From left to right: Martin Cartwright (finance director), Prof Alan Mycroft (university), Pete Lomas (hardware genius), David Braben (Elite, Frontier, BBC Micro), Eben Upton, Jack Lang (university, business school, chair of board), Alex Bradbury (not a trustee, but our lead developer and generally way more smiley than he is in this picture). Dr Rob Mullins is missing, as the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted. He was at home looking after a poorly child.

I should point out that most of our working life is not, in fact, conducted in suits or black tie, in the midst of a lot of silverware and expensive crystal, despite photographic evidence to the contrary. (Right now I am drinking from a mug that says I ♥ Vegas and sitting on a beanbag.)

 

 

 

 


The Raspberry Pi User Guide is here! Win a signed copy.

It’s here a month earlier than the expected publishing date because the typesetting elves have been working their tiny hats off. You can now buy the Raspberry Pi User Guide, written by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree, in good old-fashioned book form, with pages made out of paper and everything, which will please those of you who were holding out because you don’t like e-books.

Raspberry Pi User Guide

The User Guide serves as an in-depth manual for the Raspberry Pi. It’ll teach you the basics like where to plug the cables in and how to turn it on and use the terminal, and then lead you through learning how to configure it, how to program, how to set it up as a web server, how to use it as a media centre, how to use the GPIO to read buttons and flash lights, and more. I’ve got a copy (already coffee-stained) on my desk, and it’s fantastic; Eben, Gareth and the editorial and production teams at Wiley have done a beautiful job.

If you’d like to win a copy signed by Eben (I may be able to get Gareth to sign it too if I see him in time), just leave a comment below saying exactly what you’d like him to write in his dedication to you. The best/funniest/most tear-jerking will win a signed copy of the book – and some highly sought-after stickers if Rob has any left after his tour of the US. I’ll announce the winner next week.


A nice shiny photo of the rev2 board – and User Guide news

A couple of things today: Eben and Gareth’s Raspberry Pi User Guide is now available in full as a Kindle download from Amazon, and there is a big discount at the moment – it’s only £3.99. The paper version is expected later this month, along with other electronic formats, probably on the 21st.

The user guide is basically a full manual for the Raspberry Pi, and will take you from working out how to plug the thing in to a point where you can write your own software and do your own physical computing (sensors! robots!) with the device; you’ll also find out how to set up your Raspberry Pi as a media centre and much more. (And thank you for the great review, Jim M!)

I’ve also got a high-res picture of the rev2 board with lots of detail from David Siepp at Farnell for you to goggle over. Not much to say here – other than enjoy!

Click to enlarge

I’m going to bunk off for the rest of the day – it’s been a hell of a week.


Preorder the Raspberry Pi User Guide

We got cover artwork (possibly not the final version, but cover artwork nonetheless) through for the Raspberry Pi User Guide yesterday. This book, written by Eben Upton (Eben, if you’ve been living under a rock, is our Executive Director and the main force behind the Raspberry Pi project) and Gareth Halfacree and published by Wiley & Sons, should be out soon as an e-book (ePub, Kindle and PDF) and as a physical thing made out of trees. Here’s a link to pre-order on Amazon.

Inside, you’ll find everything you need to get started with your Raspberry Pi, including an easy introduction to Linux for total beginners, a guide to getting your SD card working, programming in Scratch and Python, using the Raspberry Pi as a home media centre, using the GPIO to do some physical computing (driving things like lights and motors and recognising switches and sensors), a beginners’ soldering guide, and much more.

The way Wiley & Sons are releasing the book, which is written with the assumption that the reader doesn’t have any technical knowledge (yet – we hope they will by the time they’ve read first few chapters and used the examples), is a little unusual. It’s being published in e-book and physical form in the UK and US, but they’re also releasing a cut-down, abridged version in e-book form only which you can buy at a reduced price. The short version just includes the first six chapters (some of which have been snipped a bit): the chapters on getting started with your Raspberry Pi. Be aware that this abridged version won’t include any material on hardware, or any of the intermediate projects; but if you’re an absolute beginner who wants to save a bit of money, it might suit you.

We’re really excited about the way this has turned out. Eben’s had plenty of journal publications, but this is only his second book. And the first one doesn’t really count, because it’s a rhyming dictionary