This has been a long time coming. Way back in May I received my back-ordered Raspberry Pi, snapped a blurry photo on Instagram and got excited.about the possibilities. So excited that I registered this domain with the plan of sharing my adventures. Unfortunately, none of those possibilities made it much past the “I’ve followed some instructions and made a bootable SD card, but when I plug it in nothing appears on my monitor screen.” stage.

In July I got a bit further. I bought a little plastic box from Mod My Pi so I would be less worried about carrying a bare circuit board around. Once again I got excited on instagram. This time I was able to boot linux and get a display using HDMI on the TV in the living room. I had worked out that my previous problems were partly due to a lack of “oomph” in the micro-USB power supply I had been using, and partly due to compatibility differences between the different displays.

While sitting cross-legged on the lounge floor in front of the TV brought back some memories, it did not really seem a comfortable way to develop things using the raspberry Pi, so back on the shelf it went for another few months.

Now though, things are different. For the first time in about 20 years I am working professionally as a C developer. All those years of C++, Java and Ruby seem a strange and different life, and all the C skills I had developed have come flooding back. procedural, low-level code is fun again! Over the Christmas break I have decided that I will spend a few solid days, in among the festivities and family time, getting to grips with the Raspberry Pi, and see how far I can take it.

Wish me luck!