Today is the weekend of the Raspberry Pi 6th Birthday. In the past the birthday has been celebrated with a large Raspberry Jam in Cambridge (organized by Mike Horne and Tim Richardson). I have been to the earlier birthday celebrations, supporting workshops run by others, giving presentations and running workshops. For 2018 the birthday celebrations […]

Today is World Book Day. For the last few years I’ve been supporting my local school by helping run their book sale. Last year I dressed up as The Wizard of Oz complete with Wearable Electronic flashing bow tie. This year I am a little more subtle as I won’t be wearing a full costume, […]

The ESA European Astro Pi Project – “Mission Zero”, involved school children creating code that actually ran on the International Space Station (ISS). My son joined with a friend (both aged 9 at the time it was submitted) to create a Python program that ran on the International Space station during February 2018. Here’s his […]

I’ve recently completed an online Master degree with Georgia Tech. This has been a huge commitment in terms of time, but I’ve learned a lot. “University Master Degree – same as on-campus but it’s online” As an online course the cost is only a fraction of on-campus classes, and in my case my employer covered […]

I have written previously about a school computing fair that I helped support. I went along again this year as a way to promote STEM and in particular computing. As I work for a telecommunications company then I wanted to promote computer networking as a career option. I didn’t want to just talk about computer […]

I backed the MeArm Pi kickstarter project earlier this year, and just received the finished product. It’s a, laser cut, plastic robot arm which has a built-in Raspberry Pi. It is created by Mime Industries who have previously created a similar robot arm without the build-in controller / Raspberry Pi. It can be controlled using […]

In the UK, Year 9 (age 13 to 14) is an important stage which can influence the student’s future career. It is during this year that the students first decide on what subjects to pursue, and in particular whether they will continue to study computer science. I recently attended a computing and IT careers fair […]

Around Halloween 2016 Element 14 ran a Costume Competition for wearable tech projects. Boo! Pi Costume Contest I was already working on a Wizard of Oz costume so I submitted my project to the competition. You can find out more about the Raspberry Pi – PiZero NeoPixel bow tie here. My costume was one of […]

Another year and another Pycon UK. For 2016 the UK’s community Python Conference was held in Cardiff, Wales. It’s also the fourth year that they’ve included a special Children’s day on the Saturday. This included a day of kids coding on Raspberry Pi computers (Pi-Top CEED) and this year each child received a micro:bit to […]

During my visit to the Raspberry Pi factory arranged by RS I also entered into a competition to win a Pi-Top computer. After a close run vote, I won. So I now have a Pi-Top Raspberry Pi laptop. The Pi-Top is a similar size to a regular laptop, but involves some assembly and uses a […]