The raspberry pi

Some of you will have heard of the raspberry pi, but many of you will not.  Ours recently arrived, and is already making its presence felt.

It is a tiny little computer, about the size of a credit card, that comes with no peripherals (such as keyboard, mouse, cables or monitor).  It doesn't even come with a case - it is just the green circuit board with various ports attached.  Because it is so small and basic it is very cheap - just £25 - and the idea is that pretty much any family will be able to buy one, and children (and adults, if they wish) can use it to learn how computers, and programming, really work.




Our raspberry pi - we bought a plastic case to protect ours, but the pi itself is just the green circuit board

The designers of the raspberry pi wanted to see a resurgence in programming skills in the UK, which they felt was something that had been lost over the last twenty years.  Children at school today are very familiar with IT, but more and more as users and consumers rather than as programmers or designers.  The IT syllabus focuses a great deal on being able to use Powerpoint or Excel and evaluate the design of web pages but not so much on how these tools came about. The raspberry pi hopes to rekindle people's understanding and enthusiasm for programming and help them understand how the computers that we now all take for granted, actually operate.

We bought a plastic case to protect our raspberry pi, and have been able to add things like a keyboard, cables and mouse from leftover bits of computer we had lying around at home.  For a screen, we use the TV or the Xbox monitor.



Cam, with the pi plugged into the TV



In the picture above you can see Cam with the pi on the floor in front of him, a keyboard plugged in to the pi and the pi itself plugged in to the TV.

You might look at this little green circuit board and think "where on earth would I start?", but that's okay - there is, of course, a wealth of information out there about how to get to know your raspberry pi and what you can do with it.  We bought two books to help us out - one a user guide to the pi and one on a simple programming language, Python.

The raspberry pi website has a quick-start guide, and there are a plethora of Twitter accounts and online forums to help you too.

Cam had learnt about the Scratch programming tool at school, and now uses it on the pi at home.  It's a fun and quick way to start that doesn't seem to techy for somebody new to programming, but actually requires you to think about things in the minute steps that programming requires.

I love the fact that the pi is all about learning and not about consuming.  At thirteen, Cam is already a 'gamer', and would spend his every waking moment on the Xbox if we let him (we don't).  But I don't mind his enthusiasm for computer games so much if there is a core of knowledge behind it, and he has an understanding of how games work and an ability to create his own if he wishes.

We all know knowledge is power, and the raspberry pi aims to give the knowledge of how computers really work back to anyone who wants it.

10 things

There's so much fizzing about my head at the moment.

• Cam came back from yesterday's Closing Ceremony rehearsal covered in blue body paint.
• He has been rehearsing with some Very Famous People and is not remotely star-struck.  I am though.
• I have finished my first crochet project.  What started off as a blanket, morphed into a shawl, and then eventually ended up as a scarf - because I had become so bored with making Granny Squares.  I love the final article though.  Full details on Ravelry.

• Becoming a nurse means that I have to have a whole range of vaccinations.  Most of these vaccinations require blood tests first, to see what levels of antibodies I have for those particular diseases.
• This means that I have been stuck full of needles today, and have loads more to come over the next month.  I have a sore, bruised arm and am now very sympathetic towards patients who require endless blood tests and injections.
• I've made a rhubarb and orange cake today.  It smells very good indeed.
• I've downloaded the Isles of Wonder soundtrack, and it is much better than the grumpy review in The Guardian would have you believe.  It is quite wonderful in fact, and takes me back to the euphoria of the Opening Ceremony in an instant.
• I have been doing anatomy homework before I start University.  Did you know that the proper, anatomical name for your big toe is hallux?
• We're off to the Olympic Park again tomorrow - this time to see a whole morning of athletics.  Absolutely cannot wait.  We will be seeing Mo Farah in the 5,000 m heats.
• I never saw Downton Abbey when it was on the tele.  I have now got Series 1 from LoveFilm and can see what all the fuss was about.  The costumes and the hair are quite as wonderful as Maggie Smith.

Magic seeds

I bake a great deal of bread; several loaves a week for roughly the last ten years.  But this week I added sunflower seeds to soda bread for the first time, and made a new and startling discovery. 

The children and I got a massive shock when we broke open the just-baked loaf yesterday after school.  We stared at the bread and then at each other.

"What HAPPENED??" asked O, horrified.

"Cool!" shouted C.

Rather than slather butter and jam on to it as we had planned we went rumamging on the internet.  We learnt that if you add sunflower seeds to soda bread, they turn a deep and vivid shade of green because the acid in them reacts with the alkali in the bicarbonate of soda.  The internet also claimed that they were still perfectly safe to eat, so with varying levels of apprehension we slathered butter and jam on, and tucked in anyway.

The internet was right - they are absolutely fine to eat. I was right too, in that sunflower seeds make soda bread even more delicious.  I do find the shade of green (which has turned almost black in the day since I made the loaf) rather unnerving though.  Today I went back to what I know and made a plain wholemeal tin loaf.

Kew Gardens and science experiments

Now we are back from our holidays, G is doing a great deal of training for his half-ironman race in September. This mainly involves getting up well before 6am on Saturdays and Sundays and going on a three to four hour bike ride out into Essex, then coming home and heading out for a run or a swim in Victoria Park. The rest of the day is then spent eating bananas and dozing under a quilt.

So I've been thinking of good lone-parent things for me to do with the children while G is training or asleep. This week I asked C and O what they would like to do at the weekend. I vetoed a request to go to Kidspace in Romford (look at the link and you will understand why) and then a plea for an all day Wii tournament.

Once C and O realised that the phrase 'anything you like' should actually be 'anything you like that Mum will like too' they came up with two great suggestions that really surprised me.

C wanted to go to Kew Gardens for the day and O wanted to spend a morning doing science experiments.

Despite being over the far side of London, we go to Kew fairly often. I love Kew but assumed that the children merely endured it. I was so pleased to find out that I was wrong!

We saw:

• beautiful, waxy waterlillies
• a flowerbed full of pineapples
• and a very self-satisfied peacock.

We took crayons and sketchbooks along and were pleased to find we had vivid enough colours to do the peacock justice.

And a visit to Kew proved even more alluring for G than a 90km bike ride. He postponed his training for a day and came along too!


This morning we woke up to find G and his bike long gone. After breakfast we settled down to some science experiments. We had chosen three to do:

• A citrus fruit will float with its skin on, but sink when peeled. Is this true?
• Turning milk into plastic (an experiment suggested in this excellent book)
• Baking a cake using condensed tomato soup (an appalling suggestion from the 2008 Blue Peter annual, that C and O BEGGED me to do).

We did the citrus fruit experiment with a grapefruit and a lemon. Both floated very happily with their skin on and sunk immediately when they were peeled.




And what are you going to do with a peeled grapefruit and lemon other than eat them?


C and O both love eating anything really sour - they will eat segments of raw lemons with lip smacking enthusiasm. I can hardly bear to watch - ack!

The turning milk into plastic experiment was more dramatic. This is what we did.

• We heated up half a jam-jar full of milk in a small pan until warm (not boiling).
• Next we added 2 tablespoons of vinegar to the warm milk. Cue loud howls about the disgusting smell!
• Then we strained the curdled milk through the foot of an old pair of tights suspended over the jam jar for ten minutes. We were left with lumpy bits of rubber-like resin. It felt a bit like playdough.
• We pressed the rubbery stuff into a cookie cutter, then un-molded it and left it to dry out on the windowsill.

It looks a bit like raw Wensleydale cheese but it doesn't smell. The book says after two days it will have hardened into plastic. I am thinking we should have compressed it a bit more - it still seems quite crumbly. When it is dry, this plastic will be casein, which knitting needles are sometimes made of. Very cool.

And then the cake. C was my chief helper for this one. O said she thought the whole idea was "completely gross" and went off to build a playmobil world for her Sylvanians.

Once C and I started mixing the ingredients we were inclined to agree with her. The cake mix smelt utterly disgusting and was a very unappealing orange colour.

It was your basic cake recipe: cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, add flour and baking powder, mixed spice and raisins. Spoon into tin and bake. But we also had to put a whole can of condensed tomato soup in with the eggs. Ugh ugh ugh. The smell! The orangeness!

C remarked that this was no longer a science experiment but a religious one. If this cake turned out to be edible it would be a miracle.


We baked the cake, and amazingly after about 20 minutes in the oven the kitchen started to smell rather good. When we took the cake out of the oven it had lost its alarming orangeness and was a dark brown - like a chocolate cake.


We ate some (rather nervously) for lunch, and incredibly it tasted really rather good. O was not a fan, but she admitted that was because the whole concept of a cake made from soup was not really doing it for her. C on the other hand liked it so much he had a second slice!

We are going to give G a slice when he gets home, later this afternoon...will he guess what the secret ingredient is?