The MagPi issue 4 – out now!
The MagPi’s arrival every month is making me very aware of the weird things that happen to your subjective experience of time when you’re as busy as we are. The days have sort of dilated; from beginning to end, they seem endlessly, impossibly long. But the months are another matter entirely; I can’t quite believe that a whole one has gone past since the last issue of The MagPi, because it really seems only a few moments since I was writing about the last one.
The MagPi, issue 4. Click to visit the downloads page.
The MagPi, for new readers, is a community magazine written, edited and designed by Raspberry Pi fans. It’s available as a free download at www.themagpi.com, and it’s a great way to get to grips with learning how to program your Pi and how to get started on building hardware projects; it’ll also help you find out more about the community around the device and demystify the command line.
This month’s issue has a long interview with Eben and me (hence the cover picture – I’m afraid we don’t make great models), conducted over Skype at the end of a long day. The MagPi team have been kind enough to clean up our language, edit out the frequent “could you fill my glass please” requests we were making of each other, and excise the munching sounds we made over our bowl of Twiglets.
You’ll also learn to build a three-axis accelerometer (far more interesting than my maunderings about Ecco the Dolphin), find out what’s happening in Cornish schools, put together a Frogger-type game in Scratch, do some decluttering in LXDE, and much more.
Thanks for another fantastic issue, MagPi folks. We’re looking forward to the next one!
21 comments
justin smith
thank you liz and eben for answering my question on megadrive and super nintendo emulators and im sure i speak for all the people who asked questions they were all very informative and your right about echo the dolphin sonic is much better (:
Charles “onlyLinuxLovesUBack”
the mag is viewable as flash. Are you able to view flash on the raspberry pi ? maybe somebody could tell them to use html5 ?
liz
It’s also viewable as – gasp – a pdf.
Darren
Want an HTML 5 version, join the team and produce one.
Alien/ST-CNX
Now I finally have one of the little beasts, I can see that scribd works, albeit slowly. Just needs to be uploaded there (like the first mag was).
Jon Harrop
“we don’t make great models”. You look like Jason Stratham!
JRT
What a great magazine. This should be required reading for Pi owners.
Darkstar
I’m amazed nobody noticed that yet… but… shouldn’t that be “Ecco the Dolphin”? ;-)
liz
It should! Thanks for the spot – blame autocorrect. :(
reiuyi
This article is great, I always wondered what the hFE measurement on my multimeter was measuring when I stick a standard transistor into it!
ian
I don’t own a raspberry yet but I will be ordering one soon. I just learned about them only a few weeks ago. The more I learn about them the more I want one :) reading the mag makes me want it even more. It takes me back to when I was learning the computer as a kid on the old tandy trs80 ( lol, showing my age ) spending hours typing programs and experimenting with things I learned from computing magazines. It was a fun way to learn. I’m looking forward to learning more. Excellent work on the mag
Jamie
I entered the contest in page 11 fingers crossed.
Andreas Eriksson
Haha, the cover, it looks like Liz is waiting for Eben’s autograph. Lovely. :)
Nicolas_Ambrose
I really think we need to properly caption the cover pic. Here is my submission:
“Eben? Honey? We’ve shipped over 250,000 of these–I think you can stop autographing every single box. Eben…are you listening to me?”
yehnan
Hi, Liz,
Could you tell me who designed the Raspberry Pi 2006 Concept Edition? I believe he is the guy on the left of the photo, https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35616101/p_three%20stages.jpg . I’m writing introduction to rpi (in Chinese), besides cold electronic components I also wanna show pictures of real people and real names. Thanks.
yehnan
Someone told me his name is Robert Mullins. Sorry to bother you. You can delete my comments.
liz
That picture is Rob, but he didn’t design that prototype; Eben did.
That photo isn’t three separate designers with three separate devices; Eben designed the original prototype on his own, and designed the second and third with some other colleagues from Broadcom (Gert van Loo in particular) who aren’t trustees of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The final production board, based on those prototypes, was engineered for size and cost by another trustee, Pete Lomas, who has a giant brain and an ability to discard capacitors and shrink PCBs that you wouldn’t believe. There are a bunch of interviews with Eben and the others out there about the design process, and you’d be advised to read everything on this blog from the beginning too – Eben did much of the very first, Atmel work at our kitchen table when we were first married.
Rob’s one of our trustees, and is probably the most active of all of us in the education sector. He’s a lecturer in Computer Science at Cambridge University, and a top bloke.
liz
BTW – it’s probably a good idea if you swing whatever you’re writing by the Foundation so we can check for factual stuff!
yehnan
I wrote something about Raspberry Pi on my personal blog. URL is http://yehnan.blogspot.tw/search/label/Raspberry%20Pi However, it’s in Chinese.
paddy gaunt
Revealing part of the interview showing some sexual stereotyping: G.U.T. verses flapjack.
My money’s on the flapjack!
fos
I rather think Liz makes an excellent model.