Sorry for lack of updates

I've been busy setting up Pidgin and the Google Talk Video Chat / Skype plugin. More on that later.

A real update is that there is now a 100 ft Ethernet cable going from the router to my bedroom for "convenience".

Blown away by the GPU

The VideoCore IV is awesome. The fact that it is present in a $35 computer sweetens the deal.

That is my Pi playing the video, FYI.

Some pictures and info

I've had my Raspberry Pi for 3-ish days. Except on Thursday, I didn't have time. And on Friday, I had little time and I spent most of it writing a corrupted image on mostly incompatible cards. I ended the day buying an 8GB Sandisk Class 4 card. I woke up the next morning, redownloaded the Debian image, and flashed it to the card. I booted it up...and it worked perfectly fine. Yay!

So, I had lots of fun today. I built a case, and had fun reading a nice blurry screen (a portable DVD player  with video input -- the screen has been broken for a while and is always flashing.

Some pictures:

I spent a lot of time working on the floor for no reason. Also, that black computer on the ground is bridging its WiFi connection to its Ethernet jack into the Pi. I've yet to even order a powered hub, so I can't get WiFi on the Pi for a little while. This actually is a perfectly reasonable solution.

The case is a rough draft and made out of a matchbox.

Raspberry Pi is fun.

It arrived.

It arrived. Life complete.

Raspberry Pi components part 1

So, basically the Raspberry Pi has two standard video output connectors. There is a composite video jack and an HDMI connector. Both of these connects are associated with televisions. However, HDMI provides the same video signal as DVI-D, so a passive adapter can be used. I have a monitor with DVI-D input, which is great. While these adapters only cost a few dollars, you still have to order one and that involves stressful things like shipping and well, money. I thought I was going to have to make a purchase, but searching through my magic drawers and cabinets, I found an adapter that came with a video card. This fit the bill, and was $0, technically. (One of the great things about Raspberry Pi is using recycled tech.) The only problem is the genders of the connectors are "wrong" so it requires an HDMI cable + adapter instead of a DVI cable + adapter. (Hopefully you understand what I mean.) I have an HDMI cable I can use, so not really that big of a deal.

Shipping

I saw this today :)

 Then saw this...

I'm very excited!