- I got FreePascal and Lazarus installed on my Raspberry Pi using apt-get. Instructions here. (It’s trivial.) Alas, it’s not the current release, but a chap has posted notes on how to install Subversion on the Pi and recompile Lazarus from source. One caveat: The Pi has just barely enough memory to pull it off, and then only if X isn’t running.
- One interesting thing that I had not heard about and did not expect is that the Raspberry Pi has its own app store.
- There is a Raspberry Pi magazine, MagPi. It’s a free download (either HTML or PDF) and from the couple of issues I looked at might be worth your time if you’re a Pi guy.
- One interesting part of this Pi project is the 3D-printed case. The other is hot-wiring a SATA SSD into a USB hub for additional storage beyond what you can put on an SD card.
- Speaking of which: SSD prices are starting to go through the floor. I just ordered one and am about to see what it can do on my primary machine.
- Ditto e-readers, apparently: The Kobo Mini is now going for just $50. I’m impressed by the fact that they make no attempt to lock users into their reader. Sideloading can be done via USB link; there’s no card slot. How good their store is I have no idea.
- There seems to be evidence that obesity is influenced by gut bacteria. I would take this article a lot less seriously if if weren’t well-established that bacteria cause stomach ulcers. Obviously, it’s not the whole story, and more research is needed. My conviction that calories don’t count remains intact. It’s the kind of calories that matter, since everything depends on how the body processes them. (There are lots of calories in sawdust. Eat 3000 calories worth of sawdust a day and get fat? Try it and see!)
- Robert Lentz has drawn an icon of Albert Einstein. And Prof. Tolkien. Way cool. Now, can we have Origen too?
- The K-Cup coffee maker patents expired this past September. We have a machine and it’s handy, though my #1 favorite coffee isn’t available in a cup. Expect an explosion in K-Cup options come the new year.
- From the Please-Find-a-Proofreader-Right-Freaking-Now Department.
- Wow. They gave an End of the World, and nobody came!
Print Books and EBooks from Jeff Duntemann
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My understanding is that some K-Cup patents expired, but some others taken out at a later date (as they refined the design) are still in effect. In any case a lot of companies continue to license it from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters so they are either keeping the license price low or they still have something worth licensing for the time being.
And as far as the birthday threats go, I don’t recall that there was all that much to work with for “baby Jesus stories”. Well there is that bit about killing all the males 2 and under, but that might not make a great story for that age group. You don’t think they would actually Make Stuff Up and tell it to those “children 3 to 10 years old”, do you? Wouldn’t that be lying? Would promising to lie constitute a threat?
I got several very nice e-readers from Walmart for 35 dollars each. They have a 7″ color screen (800×400) and play many types of video files including the .flv files that you can download from youtube. These also have the Kobo software in them and read all the major ebook formats and play mp3 files and view images. 4gb internal and a slot for up to a 16gb micro SD. I power/charge it with a cellphone charger.
Lately I watch downloaded BBC documentaries from youtube while in bed waiting to get sleepy. This thing is so cheap that if I fall asleep and roll around on it and break it it’s not a problem. The 7″ color screen renders a nice image. I use the DownloadHelper Firefox add-on to download them to the reader. I downloaded and watched the definitive “Scrooge” film last night from youtube.. the 1951 version with Alastair Sim. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9P-LY409Rc
To find documentaries to download I use a search string like this “documentary bbc long”
Here is the link to them at Walmart… but they are sold out just now. I suppose they were snapped up for Christmas gifts.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Ematic-EB105B-7-eBook-Reader-with-Kobo-eReading-Software-Assorted-Colors/19599271
There’s a way of increasing the memory available to the CPU of the Pi, at the cost of memory to the GPU (meaning less/no graphics might be available). See http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt .
Yes, saw that–and it may be helpful in order to do a full build on the latest FP/Lazarus source, which has to be done from a terminal in any event. Will try it when time allows–right now I’m simply marveling at how good a Linux experience it is on an ARM6 with almost no resources at all!
I have just installed on my pc MSEIDE’s rich free pascal environment which, as I understand is partly FP based, and (in conjunsction with the GDB debugger and SQLite3) I find it is so much fun to play with.
I’ve heard of MSEIDE but have never installed it nor played around with it. When time allows I’ll put it on one of my lab machines and give it a go.
Of course the number of calories doesn’t matter for obesity.
Only the number of DIGESTIBLE calories matter, the rest comes out at the other end, having served a minor function as diet-fiber.
That’s where the wood analogy fails. Wood contains many calories (just burn it), but in a non digestible form. (Cellulose like, too high molecular for us since we miss 4 stomages like cows have to digest it).
You missed my point a little. The word “calories” says nothing about what the body does with the material containing the calories. Fat and sugar both contain digestible calories, but the body reacts to them in different ways and rates. The knife cuts finer still: Fructose is not digested the same way that glucose/dextrose are. Fructose calories are converted to triglycerides in the liver and don’t affect insulin levels at all. Glucose causes an insulin reaction. So I hold that the word “calories” is mostly meaningless when trying to compare dietary strategies. What you need to know is how your body responds. The sawdust example is just to get the attention of the knuckleheads who sing “One calorie is like any other calorie!” without having any least knowledge of what the body does with them. Such people are legion.