I bought a Raspberry Pi 400 today. It is a microcomputer put into a keyboard as a nod to the old Commodore 64. It is cheap, well built and portable. A lot of people still haven’t heard of the Raspberry Pi foundation and the great work they do, as well as the great products they sell. I have a lot of work to do coming up in regards to preparing and painting walls at my Dad’s old place. I have a game plan in my head but I need a couple of weeks to celebrate my Dad’s life and meet some old friends who knew Dad when I was growing up. Then it is a matter of doing some much-needed work. I should have some time off coming into the new year and be able to stay in the mountains for a few days here and there to do work. It looks like my Dad’s memorial may be expecting bad weather this coming Sunday. We will still go ahead regardless.

It always takes me a while to get a good game plan. There is so much I want to get stuck into, yet realistically it won’t happen until early December. Possibly even late December depending, but the best way is a little bit at a time. The Raspberry Pi 400 is actually for my Dad’s old place and I want to get a few things in there but not much until the main work is done. In the meantime, I need to keep well-rested and be prepared for a bit of physical labour.

…..a few hours later…..

I was thinking over the past few days about my ongoing interest in early Modernist art. It comes through in my graffiti art and drawing. I was remembering some exhibitions I saw when I was younger. I saw some early works by Braque and Picasso and they stuck in my mind. I wish I had better managed the little money I had and got the catalogues back then. I probably would have lost them in my many moves as the housing boom (or should I say crisis) kept rents rising. Also, Morandi who I just got confused with Modigliani, just the names not the art. I saw a show of his work and one work struck me. It was a landscape with one errant mark that seemed to break the illusion of space. I liked that and it was only one work although I enjoyed all of the work.

I set up the Raspberry Pi 400 and I realised how great the format is. If it had more RAM I would use it for heavier work like video rendering. At the moment I did a new drawing, I was looking at drawings by a few Modernist artists. I realised that I need to collect all of the art books of stuff that I love. That will be my new year’s resolution. I also had a dream last night about how important memories are. I thought of old friends and people that I miss. I tend to dream of people who I haven’t seen in decades or don’t really see much of. I was thinking of my Dad. I want to frame a few photos of him. Also, the day before I had a dream about painting. I was hanging out with an artist who was painting away on any and every surface. In the dream, I wanted to be as focused as he was. I wanted to be as prolific.

Also, I upgraded to Windows 11 a few days ago and realised it is a lot like Linux now. It is like a blend of what you expect from Microsoft with an appearance of a modern Linux distro. Also, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) can now run Linux GUI apps which means that you can have a hybrid system. Linux is still far more configurable and can be tailored to a lot of different use cases unlike Windows but at least if you have to use Windows you can use familiar apps from Linux.