Before Make Magazine

In the corner of the factory there was a rather large machine sitting there unused. There was a sort of hodgepodgeness (if that's a word) about it. My boss Bob explained to me that this was a CNC machine that he had built himself. Wow! So before the company had money to purchase the industry standard Excellon drilling and routing machines he had decided it was possible to build his own, and it worked. I think that's really impressive!

BASIC for the Raspberry Pi?

What's Raspberry Pi? It is a cool new single board computer about the size of a credit card. It runs Linux (it can run other things) and it only costs $35, or $25 if you don't care about networking. You only need a micro USB charger or batteries to power it, a keyboard and mouse, and an HDMI compatible monitor or TV set.

This new device is aimed at schools, but the appeal of such a device is obviously very broad. I went to their forum and mentioned the idea of producing a version of BASIC for the RP. The reactions were mixed. Seems like that crowd is strongly committed to Python. That's okay, I've got my hands full right now with Liberty BASIC and Run BASIC.

Perhaps in the future I will have a chance to do something. It would probably be my first open source project, based on Squeak Smalltalk.