Cross Dominant

#“Learn electronics with an Arduino and @Raspberry_Pi on an old Philips TV” Been slammed with work for two weeks (will never complain about that!) which means blogging has been a bit light. But the big excitement yesterday was my ARDX Arduino Starter Kit arriving from Seeedstudio. If you are not familair with Arduino, it is an OpenSource hardware platform forelectronicsprojects, tinkering, robotics, home automation etc etc etc. The blue board above is the heart of it. »

#“Sorry Google, Plus Local without a Platform won’t save Google Plus” 6 days ago, I posted this on Google+ The response from a Googler was that “I don’t have anything new to share right now”. The following day, Scoble stated that he had heard they will announce a Write-API at Google IO. Instead, they make the blindingly obvious step of merging Places with Google+ Pages to make Plus Local. A totally sensible move. »

#“My 70 year-old Mother has out-hacked me with Sugru” My mother isn’t obviously technical but she is incredibly practical. This is a woman, who at the age of 12, was sent to live with her widowed Grandfather, to take care of him! Nothing fazes her. As she lives in Kilkenny, she always found the Sugru story interesting (Jane, the inventor, is from Kilk) and bought a packet to see what it was about. »

#“Lego Case and Sugru for Raspberry Pi” My 8 y/o daughter and I put together this Lego case for Raspberry Pi. All design concepts are hers and she built it. My job was to make it all fit and not wobble. Which of course we did using Sugru. The case is a lot bigger than the RPi but that gives us expansion opportunities for USB hubs and battery packs. »

#“Quick update on Eken T02 Tablet and where is Scribblenauts for Android?” I asked my 8 y/o daughter on Monday if there was anything she didn’t like about her 88 Tablet after a week of ownership. I assumed she’d gripe about the touch sensitivity of the screen, which I still see as a problem. Nope, she had a single criticism - the battery only lasts a couple of hours on a charge. »

#“Node.js Chat Server running on Raspberry Pi? Hell yeah.” Why? Because we can. Compiling took a few stabs but not particularly hard. Runs perfectly. Not much else to say. You can try it here. No guarantees I’ll leave it running as it’s sitting on the world’s crappiest DSL line. »

#“Motorola S10-HD are brilliant Bluetooth running headphones” The lovely people in Mobile Fun in the UK, home of a bajillion mobile and iPad accessories,contacted me recently. I’m a long-time customer of theirs and I’m a huge fan. Their Dash Genie in-car phone holder is a wonderful thing that just works. They asked if I wanted to review anything on their site and I cheekily requested a pair of Motorola S10-HD headphones. »

#“Alleluia - How to specify which Google Account in the URL” I have been driven demented by Google’s multi-login feature since it launched. Every damned tool of theirs seems to do it differently. The good ones let you flick seamlessly between accounts (Google+). The awful ones won’t let you select an alternative (yes you Picasa Web) and if you logout, you logout of everything. And of course, they always default to the one you don’t want (hellooo Google Reader). »

#“Connecting to your Raspberry Pi desktop over the network” sudo apt-get install xrdp Then run Remote Desktop on your Windows 7 PC to view the RPi desktop. Works just as well with VNC. Simples. And works surprisingly well. »

#“Rough n Ready Unboxing and Booting of Raspberry Pi” Sorry, very busy, so zero production values in this video. Three snippets jammed together but I go from closed delivery packet to fully booted and operational Raspberry Pi with browser running in a few minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-c07VNczZE Few immediate thoughts: Shockingly small. You don't realise just how small until it is in your hand It just works The CPU is fine but I think the 256MB RAM is going to be a problem fairly quickly. »