Want to learn Linux? Try playing with a Raspberry Pi.

I’ve been playing with a Raspberry Pi (RPi) for some time now but haven’t made much headway until recently. I originally thought it would be a fun little device for mundane tasks like web browsing or simple coding. What I learned, however, is that it has some serious limitations so aspiring to be a simplified desktop environment is really asking too much.

I now appreciate that the RPi is a great way to learn Linux and develop simple circuits paired with scripted logic. The RPi makes this attractive by giving you the freedom to hack anything without fear you’ll do damage to the computer. If something runs amok, with a few keystrokes you can wipe out the memory, operating system and all, and just start over. Sure, you can do all that with your PC or Mac but the reinitialization is far more time consuming.

If you want to get your own RPi up and running quickly, here are a few resources that I found helpful for a fresh install. Beyond a keyboard and mouse, you’ll also need a WiFi USB dongle.

• Start by formatting your SD card with SDFormatter.
• Download the latest Raspbian image.
• Flash the uncompressed image onto your SD card. This is surprisingly more complex than merely moving the image from your computer to the card itself. Well-written instructions are available from Adafruit for both Mac and PC.
• Insert the SD card into your RPi and boot (i.e., plug in the power!).
• On your initial boot, the raspi-config tool will open. This is the best time to modify configurations that will make your life easier. Overall instructions are listed here but the highlights are as follows:
• Expand root partition to fill SD card.
• Open the “internationalisation options” submenu.
• Change your locale. Use the spacebar to turn off/on locales. For the US, turn off GB (en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8) and turn off US (en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8).
• Change your timezone.
Change your keyboard. This is a very important step. Unless you change these setting, your keys may be incorrectly mapped and cause you an amazing amount of frustration!
• Reboot the RPi upon exit.
• Connect the RPi to your wireless network by editing wpa_supplicant configuration file.
• Now that you have a wireless internet connection, update and upgrade Raspbian.

O Scale Cabin

This is the time of year when a visit to the local hobby shop shifts from RC cars to trains. On our recent trip my son eagerly picked out a new house for his Lionel train set we display each Christmas. Despite the seemingly endless stacks of kits standing before him, he quickly found one that he really liked: a small log cabin produced by Bachmann. When we arrived back home, my son tore open the box and proceeded to assemble the kit. Since it was little more than four walls and a roof, he was done in about 10 minutes!

Staring at a monochromatic chocolate brown building, my son’s charm for the kit quickly vanished. I asked if he would like to paint it and I was happily met with a smile and an enthusiastic nod.

To start we primed the little cabin with grey paint which was allowed to cure overnight. Next we mixed up several different shades of brown to paint the logs. This was followed with a wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade and later a drybrush with a khaki color. The doors were painted a dark crimson and later the frames were picked out with a bright red. The roof was painted much like the logs except with darker colors.

I think the final product looks great! My son did a wonderful job with just a little bit of direction from yours truly. Although this was a brand new kit, the plastic parts themselves were stamped with a copyright dated 1952. Who says you can’t make a nice model from an old kit? It may not be very detailed but with a nice coat of paint it sure looks good beneath the Christmas tree.

Cork Bases

I really do love making bases. It’s a fun little vignette for your figures and you can choose to take as much artistic license as you’d like. You can do so much more than just applying globs of glue and sand.

Here is one of my favorite techniques that looks great yet is easy enough for army building. I start with a ⅛-inch thick sheet of cork from a craft store. Next, I simply tear off bits with my fingers or a tweezer and then attach them to my base. I personally like to use several small pieces for each base and then fill the cracks and crevices with sand and small stones. The end result is a base reminiscent of a scarred landscape like the desert. The best part is that the base is entirely level on top making attachment of the figure absolutely trivial. I tend to pin the model to the base but a dollop of a strong adhesive like epoxy will work, too.

Shown above are a set of bases for my Ork army. I chose muted colors to ensure the model on top will be the central focus. I painted the entire surface Olive Skin from Reaper, followed by Blacked-Brown along on the sides of the cork. I later applied a brown ink wash and drybrushed with Terran Khaki and Yellowed Bone. I stippled a bit of Palomino Gold in there, too, but the effect is somewhat lost under the drybrushing. The edge of the base is Olive Drab.