| You can’t just take a Raspberry Pi into space in your pocket or an old soft scoop ice cream tub. It’s too spiky for one thing. What you need is a block of aluminium the size of your head and some mad milling skills to make the best Pi case ever. Dave Honess explains: The latest update to the Astro Pi project is the unveiling of the Astro Pi aluminium flight case that British ESA Astronaut Tim Peake will be using on the ISS. This will not be available to the public to buy because we’re only making a small number of them. We may however, in due course, release an object file so schools with a 3D printer can print one themselves. The Astro Pi flight case. The image below was taken from the CAD software that we used to model the case. The real thing will be made from 6061 grade aluminium which is standard for aerospace applications. This is the top view showing the opening for the LED matrix and joystick along with a quad of buttons with an adjacent pair. The face on the right is used to attach it to a Bogen arm so that the Astro Pi can be held in place, for example if the crew want to aim the camera out of the cupola window. The hole next to the joystick is to allow air to flow inside and reach the temperature, pressure and humidity sensors. The design may surprise you because it’s so big a bulky. It satisfies the safety requirements that ESA and NASA have in place for small payloads aboard the ISS though! This is not a 3d rendering! The most important of these requirements is touch temperature. There is a rule that any surface, that the crew can touch, must not reach or exceed 45 degrees Celsius. Our Jonathan Bell and SSTL’s Nimal Navarathinam did extensive thermal simulations to work out this design. That’s really hard maths to you and me! In space the process of convection doesn’t happen. On Earth the air warmed by a Pi CPU will rise as colder air is pulled down by gravity. On the ISS the air warmed by a CPU just stays there and bakes it. So the case has been designed for thermal dissipation in mind. There is a guaranteed level of airflow within all of the ISS modules which makes this possible. Those pillars on the base each dissipate about 0.1 Watts of heat. All of them combined with the surface area of the case ensure that the Astro Pi can never get anywhere near 45 degrees. Inside the case the Raspberry Pi is thermally joined to the aluminium by way of a heat conductive boss / slug. The view above shows the hole for the camera module in the middle too. So make a mental note that the camera faces in the opposite direction to the LED matrix when in flight configuration. You can also see the corner bolts that hold the two halves of the case together. The ISS crew are also really fond of bungee cords, the kind you might use for camping or mountaineering with those hooks on the ends, and so the four corner columns have holes to allow bungee cords to be used to lash the Astro Pi to whatever they want. So that’s about it for now. The only thing left to tell you is that we’ve now reached and successfully passed phase two of the flight safety process with ESA. So it’s only phase three to go now before we get the mighty flight safety certificate that says we can go on the Soyuz rocket with Tim! Between now and the phase three review all the testing will occur at SSTL and Airbus Defence and Space. Here is a brief summary of the tests we have to do: RTC (real time clock) Battery
Flight Hardware
Keep an eye on social media over the coming weeks for as it happens updates! Thanks for reading. The post Astro Pi flight case appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Astro Pi flight case
Monday, May 11, 2015
‘Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle’ Anime Announced
| The cast of Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace and Nyarko-san, took the stage this weekend at the Kanagawa Prefectural Music Hall to celebrate the 10th anniversary of light novel imprint GA Bunko (created in January 2006). The festival also announced new details for the previously announced A Chivalry of the Failed Knight and has now also announced that Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle light novel series will also be getting it’s own anime. Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle follows Lux, formerly a prince of an empire named Arcadia that was overthrown by a rebellion five years prior. Lux then meets a series of nobile girls, starting with the princess of the new kingdom after breaking into the bathroom of the girls’ dormitory. Senri Akatsuki began the light novel series under SB Creative’s Bunk imprint in 2013 and Kadokawa is getting ready to ship the 6th novel on June 15th. Fumi Tadauri launched the manga adaption in Square Enix and GA Bunko’s collaborative Gangan GA online magazine last year and Square will publish the second compiled volume on June 12th with Itsuki Watanabe handling the manga’s composition. Fans of the Spring release Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, will surely enjoy this new series and I can’t wait to hear more on it! Meanwhile, to keep us all tided over, here’s the first trailer release that reveals the main staff and introduces the main characters. ‘Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle’ Anime Announced is a post from: Good e-Reader |
iBooks Receives New Features on iOS 8.4
| Apple is the only major online bookseller that actually sells content on the iPhone and iPad. Amazon, B&N and Kobo all make readers visit their websites and sync the content, which is a barrier for mainstream adoption. This summer a new version of iOS will be released and it will add a bunch of new content to iBooks. The publishing industry has been embracing audiobooks in a big way. In 2007 a paltry 3,073 audiobook titles were produced and this figure rose exponentially to over 12,000 published in 2011. In 2013 over 20,000 audio editions were released and in 2014 over 35,000. Apple has an extensive audiobook selection in the iTunes store and the source all of their content from Audible. This summer, the audiobook experience will be changing as it will be fully implemented into the iBooks app. This will obviously be shift the buying experience from iTunes into the iBookstore. The second major change is that iPhone owners will have the chance to open e-books made with iBooks Author. In the past, these titles were only available on the iPad and often included audio, video and widgets. It really looks like the iBooks app is going to be a bit more intuitive for iPhones and to a lesser extent iPads. I know many readers that are going to be excited about these changes. iBooks Receives New Features on iOS 8.4 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
e-Book Revenue Increased by 11% in the UK
| The e-book market in the United States has been fairly stable in the last two years, but in the United Kingdom it is a different story. The UK Publishers Association is reporting that print revenues dropped 5% to £2.7 billion and e-book revenues rose by 11% to £563 million. This means that e-books now account for 35% of the overall book market, which is staggering. How many parents are forging print books and giving their child a tablet or e-reader? The exact figure is subject to interpretation, but there is no denying the fact that digital children's books are up 36%. "It is great to see digital growth continuing and developing in more sectors of publishing. The rise in children's digital sales, while perhaps unsurprising given 71 percent of households now own a tablet, is testament to the innovation taking place in children's publishing and the engaging content being produced," said Richard Mollet, Chief Executive of the UK Publishers Association in a release. At the end of the day, print continues to be the overwhelming popular choice when it comes to reading textbooks, kids books and novels. Digital though, is on the rise and with good reason. Amazon currently controls 95% of the e-book market in the UK, which means they are reaping the lion share of the £563 million. e-Book Revenue Increased by 11% in the UK is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kobo Glo HD 300 ppi Screen Comparison Review (1080p Video)
| The Kobo Glo HD is the second ebook reader behind the Kindle Voyage to use E Ink’s highest resolution 300 pixel-per-inch Carta screen, and the Glo HD comes at a much lower price. I wanted to put together this comparison review showing the Kobo Glo HD’s screen up close to show how it compares to […] |
Tips for Buying Kobo eReaders in the United States
| Ever since Kobo decided to stop selling their ebook readers in the United States from major retail stores a few years back, it’s been a lot harder to obtain Kobo’s devices without a trip to Canada. There are only a couple of ways to buy Kobo ereaders in the US. In this article I’ll explain […] |
Despicable Katie’s Minion Pi
| When we were at SXSW Create in Austin back in March, teaching hundreds of kids about Bash script, we met a young lady called Katie. Katie looks unassuming, but she’s actually an evil genius. Some guy who needs a shave, and Katie. Some of the other kids we talked to during the three-day event hadn’t done a huge amount with a Raspberry Pi before (although we saw a lot of young people who were using Pis at school or home for Scratch programming or Minecraft); but there were some real experts among the crowd – and Katie, who came along to tell us all about what she’s been doing with her Raspberry Pi, and to get some tips, was the sinister stand-out. Katie’s been using a Pi at home for some years for a number of projects, but her most ambitious yet is her Minion Pi, which she was preparing for a school science exhibition when we met her. Minion Pi is a customised Kossel Mini 3D printer driven by a Raspberry Pi 2 – Katie’s built a custom power supply and a custom user interface on an iPad using her phone as a hotspot, so the whole thing is completely self-contained. Why? She’s building an army of Minions, her first step towards world domination. (An important note: Katie is eleven years old. Like most of us here at Pi Towers, when I was eleven I was mostly making forts in shrubbery and chewing stuff that wasn’t meant to be chewed; not building complicated computing systems.) Katie made this board to explain how her project works. Click to embiggen. Here’s Katie’s diabolical contraption in action. (Printing Minions, naturally.)
Katie’s made a very detailed build diary available (she warns me that the server it’s on is easily overloaded, so it’s possible you may have to come back later to look at it). Congratulations, Katie: this is an amazingly polished project. Please look upon us kindly when you are Despicable World Queen. The post Despicable Katie’s Minion Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Sunday, May 10, 2015
e Ink Carta Display Screens are more Accessible
| E-Paper technology has gone through a number of iterations over the years. Some of been widely adopted by companies like Amazon, B&N or Kobo and others were relegated into obscurity. The best new screen is called Carta and is currently employed by the Kindle Voyage, Kindle Paperwhite 2, Kobo H2O and Kobo Glo HD. In the near future, with Carta prices coming down we will soon see a ton of new e-readers adopt this technology. E Ink Carta first debuted in early 2013 and the primary benefit is a dramatic 50% increase in contrast over earlier generations of ePaper, giving e-Readers a contrast ratio close to that of a paperback book. It also offers a better refresh rate when you are turning the pages of a book. I think what I like best about Carta is that it has support for ultra high resolution screens. Until the last few months, Carta has been very expensive and could only be viable for the companies who sell both e-readers and operate their own digital bookstore. Due to the aging nature of the technology we will soon see new e-readers such as the Energy Sistem PRO+, Boyue T62+, Icarus and the new Onyx BOOX C67ML Darwin. The one trend I have noticed with all of these upcoming products is that they are reissues. Instead of these companies developing a brand new e-reader they are simply just adopting the Carta screen on existing products and often giving them the + moniker. I am eagerly waiting new products hopefully towards the end of the year that have been designed from the bottom up, with a high resolution screen and Carta e-paper. People want a 3rd party reader that isn’t locked into a specific ecosystem and runs a vanilla version of Android. This empowers people to be able to install any digital reading app they want. e Ink Carta Display Screens are more Accessible is a post from: Good e-Reader |
SEGA to Discontinue Tons of Mobile Apps for iOS and Android
| SEGA has been an early adopter of bringing its hottest properties to the mobile sector. One of the drawbacks of having so many games available on Android and iOS is depreciation. Some games no longer work on modern phones and others haven’t received any updates in a year. SEGA plans on scaling back on their portfolio and discontinue a number of titles. In addition to the games being removed from the aforementioned app stores, SEGA will also be pulling mobile titles from the Amazon App Store and the Samsung App Store. The changes will be taking place over "the next few weeks", with SEGA saying it doesn't have anything else to announce at this point. Some users have noticed that House of the Dead Overkill The Lost Reels seems to have already gone from Google Play store. Others have reported that Sonic Racing Transformed and Jet Set Radio is a bit flaky on Lollipop. SEGA to Discontinue Tons of Mobile Apps for iOS and Android is a post from: Good e-Reader |
10 Free Kindle eBooks for Mother’s Day, Plus eBook Deals
| Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! Below is a roundup of free Kindle ebooks with positive reviews for your reading pleasure. Once again, Amazon is running a big sale on Kindle books today only as part of their main Gold Box Deal of the Day. The sale includes over 50 titles from […] |
People are Losing their Trust in e-books
| The primary benefit of a print book is the clear path of ownership. Once you procure it from your favorite online or brick and motor store, its yours. There is no problem with loaning it out to a friend or rereading it for the hundredth time. e-books on the other hand is a convoluted nightmare. When you purchase an e-book from a retailer like Apple or Amazon, you don’t own it. Instead, you are merely licensing it from the retailer for an indeterminate period of time. If you break one of the many terms of service, the book can be taken away by the retailer, or if the bookstore goes bankrupt, you lose everything. e-books are often purchased by online retailers that act as agents for the publisher. They often provide the e-reading experience, from dedicated hardware to apps for Android or iOS. The terms of service that a retailers provide are often 50 to 100 pages of text. In some cases, they absolve themselves of all liability. The Apple iBooks store makes sure to let you know that “IN NO EVENT SHALL LICENCOR BE LIABLE FOR PERSONAL INJURY OR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION . . . DAMAGES OR LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE LICENSED APPLICATION, HOWEVER CAUSED, REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY (CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE) AND EVEN IF LICENCOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. ” Amazon on the other hand spells out the situation with daunting precision “Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Kindle Store and the Kindle Content, and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Kindle Store and the Kindle Content without refund of any fees. . . . If you do not accept the terms of this Agreement, then you may not use the Kindle, any Reading Application, or the Service.” In contrast, the print edition of a book has a more simpler copyright notice. It makes perfect sense and is not not written by an army of lawyers. "No portion of this book may be copied, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, including recording, photocopying, or inclusion in any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher and author, except for brief excerpts quoted in published reviews." In the last few years the entire e-reader and e-book industry has experienced massive setbacks. The Sony Reader Store was the first digital bookstore that was incorporated on a series of e-readers. They had a good run and closed up their online store in the US, UK, Europe and Australia last May. Hundreds of thousands of customers suddenly woke up one day that could not buy books anymore and had to deal with another company. Diesel e-Books, Txtr, Scholastic Storia and Blinkbox Books have all closed in the last calender year, leaving customers in a lark. It is my belief that consumers are losing confidence in e-books because so many stores are closing and taking their purchases with them. In other cases they are sick of all the Apple anti-trust and Amazon vs the world drama. Others are pissed they can’t loan out e-books to friends or find themselves locked into one specific ecosystem and can’t transfer their purchases to other phones they buy, due to DRM. Major publishers are also reporting diminished sales when it comes to e-books. In a recent financial earnings report Simon & Schuster stated that e-book sales only increased by one percentage point in the last three months, while HarperCollins said sales were down 3%. In the last few years I have gravitated away from exclusively buying e-books and am buying print again. Apparently, I am not alone. Nielsen BookScan, which tracks what readers are buying, found the number of paper books sold went up 2.4% last year. As Publishers Weekly puts it, "the 2014 figures are further evidence that print books are selling better than they have since sales of e-books exploded in 2010." The paper tome apparently hit rock bottom in 2012, but has since rallied in categories from children's books to adult non-fiction, and formats from trade paperback to hardcover. In the end, its hard to have any faith in e-books. People are Losing their Trust in e-books is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Disney’s Secret War Against Star Wars Expanded Universe
| Disney has been engaged in a secret war against the Star Wars Expanded Universe in order to sell more books, comics and toys. In April 2014 Lucasfilm and Disney Publishing stated that the existing expanded universe no long happened. Any of the books and comics that transpired after Return of the Jedi are not considered canon. 17,000 characters in the Expanded Universe are officially purged. The entire Star Wars community was up in arms when Disney said the EU is no longer canon. It was a bitter pill to swallow for Timothy Zahn, who was best known for his trilogy of books after Return of the Jedi. Heir to an Empire which focused on Grand Admiral Thrawn and Lukes future with Mara Jade. Comic book publisher Dark Horse has been heavily involved in the Star Wars universe for the last decade. On December 2014 they bid adieu to 28,353 pages of comics and the Star Wars license was transferred to Marvel, a subsidiary of Disney. Why did Disney really say the Expanded Universe did not happen? Well, its a ploy to sell more books, comics and toys. Disney ironed out an agreement with Del Rey Books to publish a series of new novels, starting with Star Wars: A New Dawn, by bestselling author John Jackson Miller. Set prior to the events of the animated series Star Wars Rebels, this novel tells the story of how two of the lead characters of the series, Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla, came to cross paths. To tell this important backstory, Miller benefited from contact with series executive producers Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg and Greg Weisman, who together ensured this tale will be part of the Star Wars canon of storytelling going forward. It on September 2, 2014. The latest book to be published was written by Paul S. Kemp and is entitled “Lords of the Sith.” It takes place only a few years after Anakin Skywalker’s fall, which leads to some very notable, insightful moments as we go inside Vader's head and see the anger and hate that fuels him. But just how removed is he from the man he once was? That question leads to some of the book’s most memorable moments. Meanwhile Marvel has been working on a number of new comic book series, which has been drawing critical acclaim. The three series currently in production is Star Wars by Aaron and Cassaday, Star Wars: Darth Vader by Gillen and Salvador Larocca, and Star Wars: Princess Leia by Mark Waid and Terry Dodson. All three take place in a timeframe immediately following the end of the original Star Wars movie – A New Hope. Many people thought the Expanded Universe was stretching a bit thin and the best titles were the early ones. Many of them are still available in your local bookstore, which really says a lot about their staying power. Will any of the new books and comics have the same type of longevity and staying power as the EU? What will happen to the largest Star Wars Wiki, Wookiepedia? Will more Star Wars Mobile games get canned? Was the main decision made just to sell new stuff and say “hey, the old stuff sucked.”
Disney’s Secret War Against Star Wars Expanded Universe is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Google Play Unveils App Pre-Registrations
| Google is making it easier to generate buzz around an upcoming game. The company has just unveiled pre-registrations that will enable developers to post all of their pictures, descriptions and version numbers. This new feature was spotted being used by publisher Glu Media for the upcoming movie-based third person shooter Terminator Genisys: Revolution. The game is already listed in the Google Play Store, and users can click on the “Pre-register” option so they can get an alert when Terminator Genisys: Revolution goes live. Users also have the option to unregister the app just in case they lose interest. I think pre-registration is a very good idea. It allows the app to get indexed on major search engines, even though its not available yet. In the past, developers had to wait for a specific release date before the app entry was made. Google Play Unveils App Pre-Registrations is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Happy Scratch Day 2015!
| A quick blip of a blog to say Happy Scratch Day! Help! I’m trapped in a white box. Fetch the magic wand tool! We’re huge fans of Scratch here at the Foundation. It was designed to teach young people how to program but it’s a great learning tool at any age: you can build your first program in minutes and pick up fundamental concepts very quickly. Whilst having fun. Sneaky! Raspberry Pi Scratch workshop. Yes, that is Mitch Resnick at the back! If you’ve never tried Scratch before then today is the day to boot up your Pi and have a play. If you are Pi-less then you can use it online, but you’ll be missing out on the best bit of all: physical computing with Scratch. It’s probably the easiest way to hook up sensors, LEDs, buttons and motors to the Pi, and resources such as our reaction game and Santa detector are great intro projects for the weekend. Connect buttons, sensors, cameras, LEDS, goblin sticks and other gubbins to your Pi The Foundation has supported Scratch since our early days and we’ve put a lot of resources into making Scratch on the Pi better, faster and funner. We’re just putting the finishing touches to some new stuff that we think you’ll find really exciting (I’m excited anyway :)) so watch this space. We’ll have some news this summer. We’ll also be at the Scratch 2015 conference in Amsterdam in August so if you are there come and talk to us. Raspberry Pi Scratch workshop. A young man shows adults why flying hippos are essential in LED traffic light projects. I’ll finish now. My sesame seed bagel has just popped up (and you know how easily they burn) and I’m stopping you from making things. This weekend, give the repeats of Thundercats a miss and go and have a play with Scratch instead—it’s a beautiful thing. The post Happy Scratch Day 2015! appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Friday, May 8, 2015
Sentai Filmworks Acquires Two New Anime
| Sentai Filmworks, a North American film distribution company, has recently announced that they will be distributing two new anime to be shipped soon, My Love Story and Triage X. My Love Story, known in Japan as Ore Monogatari, is a surprise hit shoujo about a fairly unattractive gentle giant who suddenly gains a love life when he rescues a girl from a harasser on a train. The series premiered in April in Japan, and Crunchyroll has been streaming it since. The manga, drawn by Kazune Kawahara and Aruko, has been licensed by Viz Media. Now the anime will join the manga in North American distribution, as Sentai will first release the anime through a series of digital outlets, shortly followed in home video. Triage X, by comparison, is a raunchy assassin anime. Based on the manga of the same name, the anime follows a team of sexy nurses (and other hospital staff) who assassinate people they deem undesirable, or 'cancers' to society. The manga is drawn by Shōji Satō of Highschool Of The Dead fame. The series also premiered in April, and has also been streamed by Crunchyroll. Sentai will be releasing the anime the same was as My Love Story, first through several digital outlets, followed by a release on home video.
Sentai Filmworks Acquires Two New Anime is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Digital Accounts for 31% of Simon & Schuster Revenue
| Simon & Schuster is experiencing massive growth with e-books and audiobooks, more than any other publisher. Digital revenues represented 31% of S&S's total revenues for the first quarter of 2015. S&S CEO Carolyn Reidy said that while sales of e-books rose by one percentage point in the quarter, sales of digital audio had a huge quarter driven by sales of both new and backlist books. She also noted that with the rise in e-book sales in the quarter, e-books accounted for about 26.3% of all revenue, higher than any share the format represented in 2014. Meanwhile at HarperCollins digital only accounts for 22% of their revenue, down 3%. Other publishers such as Penguin/Random House did not mention e-books during their recent quarterly earnings, which makes me worried. Digital books and audiobooks seemed to have plateaued and we ware certainly not seeing the explosive growth from only a few years ago. Basically the people who want to read e-books already are and the people who aren’t, are still buying print. There is little crossover between the two book types and this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. Digital Accounts for 31% of Simon & Schuster Revenue is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Deal Alert: Get a 9.7″ Kindle DX for $103
| I came across an interesting deal at Amazon today. As mentioned earlier in the week, a number of Kindle ereaders and Fire tablets are on sale this week for Mother’s Day. Today Amazon added another Kindle to the deals list. This time it’s the Kindle DX that’s on sale, which is really strange since it […] |
Another Raspbian Desktop User Interface Update
| Hopefully the dust has now settled on the first batch of changes to the Raspbian desktop which were made available at Christmas, and you’ve either a) decided you like them, or b) decided you hate them and have rolled back to a previous version, never to upgrade again. If you are in group b), I suggest you stop reading now… The next set of desktop changes are now available. The overall look and feel hasn’t changed, but there have been a few major new features added, and a lot of small tweaks and bug fixes. The new features include the following: New Wifi Interface Connecting to a wifi network has been made much simpler in most cases by including a version of Roy Marples’ excellent dhcpcd and dhcpcd-ui packages. If you look towards the right-hand end of the menu bar, there is now a network icon. This shows the current state of your network connection – if a wifi connection is in use, it shows the signal strength; if not, it shows the connection state of your Ethernet connection. While connections are being set up, the icon flashes to indicate that a connection is being established. To connect to a wifi network (assuming you have a USB wifi dongle connected to your Pi), left-click on the network icon and you should see a list of all visible wireless networks. Select the one you want, and if it is secured, you will be prompted for the network password. Enter the password, press OK and wait a few seconds for the wifi icon to stop flashing; if you then left-click the icon again, the selected network should be shown at the top of the list with a tick next to it, and you are then good to go. If you right-click the network icon and choose the Wifi Networks (dhcpcdui) Settings option from the pop-up menu, you can manually enter IP addresses – choose the SSID option from the Configure drop-down, select your network and enter the IP addresses you want. From the same dialog, you can manually enter an IP address for your Ethernet connection by selecting the Interface option from the drop-down and choosing eth0 as the interface. Once you’ve clicked Apply, you may need to reboot your Pi for the new settings to take effect. Speaking of rebooting, the first time you plug in a WiFi dongle, you will need to reboot your Pi to have it recognised by the new UI. Once that is done, with most dongles, you should be able to hot-plug them, or even to have two dongles connected at once if you wish to connect to two networks. (A few dongles won’t work when hot-plugged – the Edimax dongle is one, due to a bug in its driver. The official Raspberry Pi dongle and the PiHut dongle should both hot-plug without problems.) If you prefer to use the original wpa_gui application, it is still installed – just type: wpa_gui in a terminal window to open it. New Volume / Audio Interface Next to the network interface icon on the menu bar, you will see a volume icon. This works exactly the same way as on Windows or MacOS – left-click it to drop down the volume control, which you can then slide with the mouse. There’s a mute checkbox at the bottom to quickly mute or unmute the audio output. (Note that not all devices support mute, so with some external soundcards this may be greyed-out.) If you right-click the volume icon, a pop-up menu appears to allow you to select which audio output is used – on a standard Pi, you have the choice of HDMI or Analog. If you have installed a USB audio interface, or an external soundcard, these will also appear as options in this menu. To allow more detailed control of any external audio devices, we’ve included a custom version of xfce4-mixer, the mixer dialog from the XFCE desktop environment – you can access this either under Device Settings from the volume right-click menu (the option only appears if there is an external audio device connected) or from the Preferences section of the main menu, where it is listed as Audio Device Settings. From this dialog, select the device you want to control from the drop-down at the top, and then press the Select Controls button to choose which of the controls the device offers that you want to display. Pressing the Make Default button on this window has the same effect as choosing an output source in the volume right-click menu. New Appearance Settings There is a new custom Appearance Settings dialog, available from the Preferences section of the main menu, which works with a new custom theme for Openbox and GTK called PiX. This allows you to set how your desktop looks (colour, background picture), how the menu bar looks (including an easy option to move it to the top or bottom of the screen) and how window title bars look. This groups together the most useful settings from the original Openbox and LXSession appearance dialog boxes, which are now hidden in the menu. They are still on the system, so if you would prefer to use them, access them from a terminal window by typing obconf or lxappearance, respectively. (Note that using both the new dialog and the old obconf and lxappearance dialogs may result in strange combinations of settings; I’d strongly recommend you use one or the other, not all three…) Other Stuff There are a lot of other small changes, mostly to the appearance rather than functionality, and some minor bug fixes. For example, dialog buttons have a cleaner appearance due to the removal of icons and shortcut underlines. (The shortcuts are still there – just hold down the Alt key and they will appear on the buttons.) By popular demand, you can now set the foreground and background colours of the CPU monitor on the menu bar – just right-click it and choose CPU Usage Monitor Settings, and you can colour it however you like. Also back by popular demand, the ability to use an arbitrary format for the menu bar clock (right-click and choose Digital Clock Settings) – it should also now resize and align properly if you do so… Various other applications have been updated – the Epiphany browser has had speed and compatibility improvements; the Minecraft Python API is now compatible with Python 3, and there is a new version of Sonic Pi. How Do I Get It? If this all sounds good to you, it’s very easy to add to your Pi. Just open a terminal and type: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade Updating will overwrite your desktop configuration files (found in /home/pi/.config). Just in case you had customised something in there for your own use, the original files are backed up as part of the upgrade process, and can be found in /home/pi/oldconffiles. The new network interface is a separate package – we know that some people will have carefully customised their network setups, so you may not want the new changes, as they will overwrite your network configuration. If you do want the new network interface, type: sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-net-mods You will be prompted as part of the install to confirm that you want the new version of the network configuration file – press Y when prompted. (Or N if you’ve had a last-minute change of mind!) As ever, user interface design isn’t an exact science – my hope is that the changes make your Pi nicer to use, but feedback (good or bad) is always welcome, so do post a comment and let me know your thoughts! |
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Steven Spielberg Bringing Brave New World to Syfy
| Steven Spielberg’s production company, Amblin, is set to adapt the classic Aldous Huxley novel, Brave New World to Syfy. The 1932 book is considered one of the top 100 novels written in the 20th century by Modern Library. Brave New World is set in a world without poverty, war or disease. Humans are given mind-altering drugs, free sex and rampant consumerism are the order of the day, and people no longer reproduce but are genetically engineered in “hatcheries.” Those who won't conform are forced onto “reservations,” until one of the “savages” challenges the system, threatening the entire social order. “Brave New World is one of the most influential genre classics of all time,” said Syfy president Dave Howe. “Its provocative vision of a future gone awry remains as powerful and as timeless as ever. Promising to be a monumental television event, Brave New World is precisely the groundbreaking programming that is becoming the hallmark of Syfy.” Syfy has undergone a resurgence lately with some fairly captivating programming. 12 Monkeys is their most popular, but they have also produced a number of classic novel adaptations that will be coming to the small screen, including Childhood’s End, 3001: The Final Odyssey, and Old Man’s War. via Outtplaces via Hollywood Reporter Steven Spielberg Bringing Brave New World to Syfy is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Energy eReader Pro + with Carta Screen Released
| Energy Sistem has introduced an updated version of the Energy eReader Pro, called the eReader Pro +, that upgrades the screen from E Ink Pearl to E Ink Carta. This is the same upgrade as the Boyue T62+, as they are the same device with different brands. Carta screens are E Ink’s newer display technology. […] |