Issue #6 — Lumberjack

Hey everyone

An interesting point came up this week when someone asked Liz (by tweeting a question to the @Raspberry_Pi account) what age is appropriate for a child to start using a Raspberry Pi. Her answer was that “if they can use a mouse and have the manual dexterity to type without getting frustrated, they’re old enough” which I thought was a good way of putting it.

At the Manchester Raspberry Jam there are regularly children from about 6 who are productively using the Pi – sandboxing in Scratch and Minecraft, some even playing with Python and using the GPIO with some guidance. There’s some cool ways of using Scratch to interact with the real world – Simon Walters has a Python project for handling the GPIO from Scratch, and has run some great sessions for kids building Scratch programs to control Raspberry Pi powered robots.

This week we spotted a fantastic tweet from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. He simply tweeted This is super cool. “I started to learn python…” with a link to the video of Amy Mather‘s talk at the Raspberry Jamboree. He must have discovered the video and been inspired by her enthusiasm. If you haven’t seen the video yet, we urge you to do so. It’s fantastic.

Have a great week!

Ben & Ryan

Picture of the week

Ryan picks a winner in the annual Cambridge Dress Like a Lumberjack competition

News

• Clive at Activate! 2013 (raspberrypi.org)
  The Video of Raspberry Pi's Clive speaking at Activate!
• 1.5 Million Raspberry Pi (theage.com.au)
  Over 1.5 Million Raspberry Pi have now been sold over the world
• Notes from the Cambridge Raspberry Jam (raspberrypi.org)
  Liz and Eben visited the Cambridge Raspberry Jam

Projects

• Raspberry Pi/o (blog.upverter.com)
  A 1" x 2" Raspberry Pi GPIO Reference Board
• Tether Your Raspberry Pi to Your iPhone 5 (daveconroy.com)
  Dave Conroy explains how to tether the Raspberry Pi to the iPhone 5

Articles & more

• Brazilian techies to wait longer for local Raspberry Pi (zdnet.com)
  The Raspberry Pi Foundation discusses about getting the Pi bigger in Brazil
• Raspberry Pi as vital to UK as the Spectrum or BBC Micro (techradar.com)
  David Braben explains why the Pi is as vital as the ZX Spectrum or BBC Micro
• Cambridge Raspberry Jam! (railwayelectronics.blogspot.co.uk)
  Jonathan Pallant write-up of the awesome Cambridge Raspberry Jam
• A computer for $25? Yes, Twenty-five dollars! (blogs.abc.net.au)
  Eben is interviewed by ABC Sydney about the $25 computer
• Running The Raspberry Pi On Batteries (daveakerman.com)
  Dave Akerman shares his knowledge on getting the most out of battery life
• How to give your Raspberry Pi a Static IP Address (modmypi.com)
  The ModMyPi team explain how to give your Raspberry Pi an static IP address.
• Laika Summer Robotics (project-laika.com)
  The Laika team visit Highgate school and build programmable Raspberry Pi Robots

Contact & Submissions

This newsletter is curated by @ben_nuttall. Tweet links to @rpf_weekly or email weekly [at] raspberrypi.org