Hello everybody
Happy new year. Let's hope 2021 is rather better than 2020 and we see
the back of this pandemic.
Traffic on the list has been very healthy in the last month or so.
In fact it has been busier this year than perhaps any other to date.
I guess this may well be because a lot of us are stuck at home more than
previously, because of localized lock-downs to help prevent the spread
of this damned virus.
I am continuing work to completely update and refresh the Web site. It
is long work because the site has become very stale. And also the
version of Nikola I was using had fallen behind leading-edge by several
versions, so I had to completely re-write the very long configuration file.
The new site will be somewhat trimmed down than before, and focus on the
Raspberry Pi, and remove old and now incorrect data about Arduino in
particular.
I will also remove any references to Banana Pi and the Beaglebone Black.
I still have some examples of each, but these two SBCs have been
somewhat overtaken by newer versions of the Raspberry Pi with ever more
and more RAM, and faster clock speeds. I personally never touch either
the Banana Pi or Beaglebone Blacks any more. I still hack with Arduino,
but this is of less importance here.
Still present there will be:
* Textual board description of ALL versions of the Pi including the new
Pi 400.
* GPIO pinout tables.
* How to write a memory card on both Windows and Linux.
* How to run a Raspberry Pi 'headless' with SSH.
The above will be available as separate pages, and will also be linked
in a 'Quickstart' page.
I shall be updating old blog posts, removing stale links and culling out
of date and incorrect items.
Gone are:
* The very lame 'FAQ' page.
* Any page of links. These get stale very quickly.
* The page about Ohm's law. I can put it back if folks want it.
* The page about pull-up and pull-down resistors. Same here, I can put
it back if requested.
I have removed the electronics related pages because we are not able to
access diagrams, which makes electronic discussion very difficult.
At a later time I will be putting back:
* nano editor reference.
* Emacs and Emacspeak reference.
The above two I personally use a lot, and would like them in a place I
can come back to easily.
I would also like to encourage use of Emacs and Emacspeak.
Feel free to suggest on the list, any guide or reference pages you would
like to see on the site.
Remember, the site is not designed to replace or beat any of the
excellent Raspberry Pi content anywhere else on the Web. Rather it is
specifically designed for those visually impaired or blind folks who
would like to hack and learn with our little friend, the Raspberry Pi.
I also intend to update pages with improved SEO tags, to make finding us
easier for other VI people.
Because most of us on this list are visually impaired to one degree or
another, there are very few, if any, photographs, and NO diagrams.
I may occasionally post blog items with some photographs, for example
for my 'Vertical Webcam with a Raspberry Pi and a Surplus Photographic
Enlarger' project. But such photographs will not appear until I can get
some help to take and crop them suitably. This will probably not happen
until the pandemic has passed, with any significant risk of catching
Covid-19 or any variants that appear in 2021.
Perhaps most significantly, there will be no images for download from
now. This is because they go out of date very quickly.
Creating and posting accessible images requires:
1. Download of a new image from where it originates.
2. Installing accessibility tools and probably a GUI desktop as well.
3. Cloning the Pi into a new .img file.
4. Uploading a very large .img file.
5. Providing a sha1 sum on the downloads page so that downloaders can
check the validity of what they got.
The fourth step is particularly tedious, as I am not keen to upload an
image and then not check I can successfully download it and get it to boot.
Scripts and Ansible
However, I will now be putting scripts on the site, and they will be
available to view via proper listing entries, like other pages, and
there will be download links.
Eventually, when I get some problems solved, there will be scripts for
installing both console screen readers and Orca onto desktops.
There will also be other helpful snippets I use and discover.
When my Ansible code is a bit tidier and more thoroughly tested, I will
blog about that.
Have a happy and safe new year.
Mike Ray
Creator of the raspberry-vi mailing list and the raspberryvi.org Web site.
--
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when
there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery
===========================================================
The raspberry-vi mailing list
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/raspberry-vi
Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry Pi
Foundation.
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views and
attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect those of the
Foundation.
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
