No product called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, apparently.
The king of amusingly named products, Andy Marks of RISCOSbits, has come up with the goods once again in time for this year’s London Show, with a new interlocking acrylic case for the Raspberry Pi, suitable for the credit card-sized computer with or without a PiSSDup add-on board – another of Andy’s products.
It’s for the Pi, it’s made of acrylic, it’s interlocking, and it’s ace1, so if you pull together the parts of that I’ve highlighted, it’s easy to see that the name can really only be one thing, the Pi-Llock Ace – and it’s also easy to see how it could cause confusion with that double ‘l’ in there making it look like it should have some kind of Welsh pronunciation.
The case is not like your common or garden interlocking acrylic case, and is instead “bolted together with decorative but functional metal pillars” – which, let’s be honest here, are the best kind of metal pillars to have. It tidies up the otherwise messy Pi by bringing all of the ports out on one side, and comes with an optional adaptor kit. Andy says it’s likely that the Pi-Llock will form the basis of new, lower priced ROKits in the future. There should be a couple on display and, subject to the laser cutters he uses being able to produce them on time, there may be some on sale.
Those who have been paying attention to London Show news will have noticed that when details of the theatre talks were published, one of the presentations is listed as “Sine Nomine with RISCOSbits.” Andy informs me that his role in the talk will be more of a Debbie McGee one, with Matthew Phillips taking the lead. I don’t think that means Matthew is branching out and has joined the Magic Circle, but he must be really starting to sweat by now, worrying about what sort of dress Andy is going to wear.
The actual subject of the talk – or that part of it, because Matthew is certainly going to discuss the latest version of RiscOSM, which now supports contour lines – is something Andy has been working on with Matthew and a couple of other contributors, with the Pi-Top in mind, and which he says “is really quite useful to RISC OS users.”
There will various things from Andy’s existing range of, er, RISC OS bits available – PiPODs, Absolute Zeros, SodPODs, vinyl and cardboard skins for the Raspberry Pi, the last ever PiSSD! machine, and a few other custom one-offs machines. The original 40GB RiscPODs – a 40GB hard drive in a natty ‘Acorn’ branded case with a selection of emulators allowing RISC OS to be used on other platforms – will be available for a special offer price of £20, saving £15 off the original price.
And for anyone opting for a PiSSDup kits available – which allow decent, reliable and fast solid-state storage to be connected to the Raspberry Pi – one lucky customer could walk away something a little special: One randomly selected PiSSDup kit has a free mSATA drive included!
- Well, judging by the name it could be – though Andy informs me that his choice of name is to help avoid any accidental mispronunciations. I’m really not sure how “ace” helps avoid that double ‘l’ being pronounced the Welsh way, though. Unless I’ve misunderstood how it could be mispronounced. Ahem.
