My Christmas Present

Mega-shout-out tonight to “S P” for a very generous tip. Thank you!

I got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas, and I spent the evening getting to know it. The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive computer on a very small circuit board. The gift included a plastic case made to hold it, and here it is on my floor:

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My goal is to use this as a media center hooked up to my TV, but until I get it connected to my home network, I can only play with the built-in software, such as the calculator and LibreOffice, an open-source office software suite:

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19 thoughts on “My Christmas Present

  1. fkaWaldenPond December 26, 2015 / 9:15 pm

    So, are you going to use this to replace a regular desk top computer to stream, download tv?  Say I have a standard Dell desktop, what would the Rpi do instead of my desktop?  Is it a very inexpensive kinda hobby computer? It is kinda fascinating.

    • Not That Mike The Other Mike December 26, 2015 / 9:40 pm

      The main advantages of the Raspberry Pi over standard desktop PCs would seem to be size, price, and low power consumption. It can run various flavors of Linux and supposedly Windows 10 as well. Once I add WiFi, I will be able to tuck this away behind my TV and stream movies stored in my computer down the hall.

      • fkaWaldenPond December 26, 2015 / 10:05 pm

        Huh, so for say about $60 Cdn instead of having a big smart tv, you can have a regular ol’ box tv (ya, I am one of the last few who still owns one) who could use this connected to my home wifi and stream?  But, I would still have to download on my main pc, correct?

        • Not That Mike The Other Mike December 26, 2015 / 10:13 pm

          Right, if your older TV has some way to accept input from an external source, this could work with some fiddling about. If your TV has an HDMI input, then you can run an HDMI cable from the Raspberry Pi to the TV, which sends both picture and audio to the TV. If your TV is older than that, you may need additional devices to convert the signal into something your TV can accept.

          Yes, you need a standard computer to handle a few one-time setup chores, chiefly downloading the operating system of your choice onto a Micro SD card so that the Pi can boot up (the Micro SD card is not included with the Raspberry Pi, so that bumps up the cost a little).

          • fkaWaldenPond December 26, 2015 / 10:59 pm

            I should probably just suck it up and purchase the expensive tasteful console furniture…along with the darn smart screen–but! didn’t get the bonus as promised… (at least I have a job.)  As an aside, really lovely hardwood floors ntmtom– if that is laminate, looks good too. 🙂

            • Not That Mike The Other Mike December 26, 2015 / 11:30 pm

              It’s a laminate. Thanks! You wouldn’t have to break the bank on the TV. If you have a TV with at least one HDMI port, you can select from a number of devices, like Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku. These devices are getting very inexpensive — the Chromecast is USD$35.

          • fkaWaldenPond December 26, 2015 / 11:08 pm

            Oh, re the calculator face reading 666– this always cracks me up as I spent when I was like 17 or 18 a really weird,  sloppy weekend in Montreal with a best friend and a very god-knows-what-he-was-high-on-tag-along-friend who kept pointing out the numbers 222 and 333 etc. on building addresses loudly exclaiming, “My gawd, 222! that is one third of the mark of the devil!” or “Holy sh*t, 333! that is one half of the mark of the devil!”  It still gives me the snerks. 😀

             

  2. Arne December 26, 2015 / 9:50 pm

    Just testing the new text-editing features.

    Not
    That
    Mike

    The
    Other

    Mike

    • Not That Mike The Other Mike December 26, 2015 / 9:55 pm

      Oh yeah, I was going to mention that I added that today. I think we had the ability to do multiple paragraphs before this, but the other features are new:

      The last item on the toolbar will let you expand the editing space so that it’s not so small.

    • Arne December 26, 2015 / 9:56 pm

      OK, so Bold, Italic, Underline and Strike through works.

      But not align right and center.

       

      • Not That Mike The Other Mike December 26, 2015 / 9:59 pm

        Center- and right-aligned text seem to be working for me, Arne. Thank you for testing it, though, since I hadn’t yet.

      • Arne December 26, 2015 / 10:01 pm

        OK, I tried to combine bulleted and numbered list with align commands and that didn’t work.

        • Not That Mike The Other Mike December 26, 2015 / 10:06 pm

          Yeah, lists and text alignment usually can’t be combined that way. The text alignment will default to what is set up for the list items, which will almost always be left aligned.

  3. beemoused December 27, 2015 / 7:11 am

    Oh, boy!  New toys!

    Thank you, NTMTOM!

     

  4. Haha December 27, 2015 / 2:56 pm

    My dinoputerishness is roaring it’s ugly head.
    Off to happily clear my brain and look at the other funny posts.

    I’m glad you are having fun with your new toy. 🙂

  5. Haha December 27, 2015 / 2:57 pm

    And now I want to snack on some pie 🙂

  6. birdcage December 27, 2015 / 3:38 pm

    There used to be a farmer’s market near the cottage my parents rented that sold the most delicious raspberry pie …

    • joods December 28, 2015 / 1:08 am

      Raspberry pie…oh my yes please!

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