November 19th, 2020
The Journey Continues
It's been a week and a couple of days since I got my first Raspberry-Pi. So far I am learning a bit more. Yesterday was spent downloading a new copy of the Raspberry-Pi operating system and installing it on a much larger SD card.
The card that CanaKit sent with the operating system was only 32GB card and it failed to pass their own speed test. While shopping yesterday I saw the SanDisk Ultra Plus microSDXC UHS-1 128 GB card on sale for $26.00 so I got one.
After using my windows computer to down load and install the Raspberry-Pi operating system, I removed the original kit card, and installed the new one. Boot up was a bit slower, and of course I had to go through all the set up screens again. Fortunately I did not have a lot of things yet installed.
Speed test results of the new card:
I am not really a tech type person any more so I don't know if those are good numbers, the important line to me is the last one Test PASS. At 128 GB I should have enough room for at least a couple of years of computing.
I had to re-install a the few programs that I had found earlier, I really like the Libre Office Suite program, so of course that went right back on, I am still not sure about the GIMP program for picture editing, but I went ahead and re-installed it also. For simple image manipulation, I found a program called Mirage, it is just a pretty basic thing, but it is good for screenshots and cropping editing screen shots with out going through all of Gimp's menus.
For a web browser on my Raspberry-Pi I am using Vivaldi. So far I kind of like it and have not run into many issues, One start-up surprise this morning when I started it up:
Last night when I re-installed the Raspberry-Pi operating system I wanted to create a user other than pi. I guess the start up of the software defaults to the user pi, and not who was last using the computer. Kind of a pain since I want to use my created user name and not pi, but it just means an extra minute to log out and then back in with the user name you want.
I am going to have to move some pictures over to use for my background, I really am not that impressed with the ones they have available.
Programming Efforts
Learning how to program is not an easy thing, I have been working to learn a little bit of python 3 programming. I have learned to import a window, a button, and text. So I was able to build the "Wanted Poster".
So what did I learn.
- How to get a window to play in, and how to change the windows background color.
- How to import Text to play with.
- How to use an image.
So what did I not learn?
- Why I have to import a a window(app) from guizero. Can I import a blank window from something or somewhere else?
- What is the purpose of the from. That so far has not really been explained very well in the on-line booklet I am following. I am thinking that understanding may come later.
The lesson ended with just the *wanted!!! text and the picture. So I do feel that I learned a little bit in that I was able to figure out how to add Dead or Alive under the picture, so some progress.
There are a lot of resources for learning on line, but there is no one to ask when you have a question while learning. Sometimes feedback can wait, but in a lot of cases immediate feed back can help understand a concept quicker.
End Notes
Not much I have learned to import and use buttons learning new stuff is time consuming.My comment efforts on Hive have been a little lacking, and I hope to make up for it in the weekend, if I don't it's because like last night I got lost in learning.
Thank you the effort to help me get more eyes is appreciated.
It all sounds like mumbo jumbo to me...A nice reminder that I'm clueless about all of this stuff! :)
It is a lot to me right now also, but I did manage to get lots of games to work under dos by playing with settings, then the same with windows, and now I have a learning bug to figure out python 3 so I can make my own desktop widgets, and try to get away from the big corporations a little bit. Plus it is winter, and it is cold up here right now, not damn cold yet but that will happen.
I picture you huddled in your house, fire going, hot chocolate steaming away next to you...Thirty feet of snow piled up on the roof. Lol. You'll get it done. What better way to while away the winter?
I really don't like milk or hot chocolate, but I have had a very rare beer this week, I think only my 4th of the year, I used to like the fire place, but things changed with the lung issues as concerns smoke of any kind. I do though enjoy still practicing with making nice home made soups, just got done with a nice cream of potato soup in fact.
Snow, now that is something I am growing concerned about. It is getting pretty cold, ground is frozen, and if we do not get that foot of snow soon to insulate the ground that means a lot of frozen pipes, frozen shallow wells, and broken water mains.
One year with no early/timely snow resulted in a water main breaking in Soldotna, man it was a mess. They are forecasting some snow for us in the next few days, I kind of hope we get it.
It's interesting to hear about the problems people face in other parts of the world. Here's you talking about frozen pipes and broken water mains and here's us moving into the sort of heat that buckles train tracks and melts roads. Odd huh? I hope you get the snow.
I hope so too. I think it is that differential heating and cooling that keeps the world spinning, or it could be that everyone up north turns west to fart, because they are always looking to the west. And the wobble is from every one south looking north and spitting at Europe and Asia. okay bad examples, sarcasm failure I would say.
Lol...It might be a bit malodorous if all those west-farters let rip simultaneously...And all that spitting, no thanks. Let's just agree that the world is flat and doesn't spin at all!
Not that I think it's flat of course. I'm not one of those looney birds.
Python does not include a window application in the default library, but guizero is a set of functions to simplify access to window functions for beginning programmers. Tkinter library is installed with Python, but is much more complicated to operate.
I have seen some tkinter stuff about, once I get through the book I'm going through now, (it came with the raspberry-pi operating system), I plan on checking that out also.
here are some Tkinter resources:
https://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter
https://realpython.com/python-gui-tkinter/
https://www.python-course.eu/python_tkinter.php
https://www.python-course.eu/tkinter_canvas.php
https://likegeeks.com/python-gui-examples-tkinter-tutorial/
So I collect links for stuff I want to learn....
thank you, there are so many links out there it is nice to see ones that someone has found useful.
I feel that a lot of good tutorials are set up a bit like that where the lesson says to do this one thing and leaves out one other thing that the user will be like "oh, this needs x as well and I think this tutorial taught me how to do that..."
For example, a wanted poster without a "bounty"
A lot of the lessons almost seem like failure is programmed into them. I can understand some of that, to try and get people to think and to experiment. I found a nice on-line reference book for python 3, but kind of lost its location with the reload of software. But I'll find it again.
Hey, @bashadow.
I bought my first Raspberry Pi about two months ago now, too. I also started learning Python. Unlike you, I haven't done hardly anything with it. The CanaKit version I got came with the 128 GB card. I've also got some various electronics that I'm supposed to be able to plug into or use with the Raspberry Pi, if I ever get the gumption to do it. I spent a couple years considering the purchase only to shelve the whole thing.
As you say, it can definitely takes some time (which is fine as you're learning), but in the end, there's only so much of it to be used.
Good to hear from you Glen, hope all is going well there. It has been fun and busy making trying to learn. I want to try and get away from the big corporations, like google and microsoft, plus I needed a winter activity.
The Raspberry-Pi is not that good for image processing, but for everyday surf the web it works fine, it plays video's and I'll have to check and see if it will do movies from amazon prime. But I mostly got it to try and learn a little bit about programming, so I don't crash and burn my desktop, even though it is getting old.