Life with Pi

Can you see that small box to the left of the monitor, just by the HP logo? That is a Raspberry Pi. Chances are you won't have heard of this little box of tricks, unless you're a bit of a geek or, perhaps, live or work with someone who is.

In our office, we have two of them, one to run our office Spotify account and another one to watch the first, to monitor what's being played for our office charts (I know, I know). A friend of mine, who lives abroad, uses one hooked up to his parents' router in the UK to enable him to watch iPlayer.

Basically, it's a little computer that runs a skinny operating system. You can buy one for around £25, although you'll need to provide the monitor, keyboard and mouse to programme it.

This week, one entered our household in the form of Dan's birthday present from his mum and me. Thus, following on from his grandad and me, he becomes a third generation developer (not that I've done any of that for a long time). I have to say, watching him with the instruction book, I suspect he's inherited his patience and learning style from his uncle (also a developer) and not me.

I reckon it's eighteen years since I bought my first PC, which ran Windows 95 and which was probably less powerful than the Pi despite costing nearly twenty times as much.

[Nerdy bit] What I find interesting about these little devices, apart from the technological progress that they represent, is the fact that when I see them 'in the wild', they are usually to be found quietly getting on with (typically) a single job that has been dedicated to them. This is quite a different idea from having, say, one powerful machine that does lots and lots of tasks. In a funny way, they remind me of Lego, with their versatility and also their modesty.

**UPDATE** Judging by my Twitter TL after posting this, it's only people I meet in RL who haven't heard of them!