London Show, Sat 29th October 2016

The RISC OS London Show
Saturday 29th October 2016
11am – 5pm
http://www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk/
£5 on the door, under-16s free

This year’s RISC OS London Show is now only four weeks away. It’s looking like being another bumper show!

Just a few of the things to look forward to are:

- The new Micro One from Ident Computer
- R-Comp with the ARMX6 and TiMachine
- CJE’s RapidO range and the first RISC OS laptop for 20 years
- ROOL with OS and documentation updates
- See the progress of restoring the BBC’s RiscPC on-screen graphics production system
- A new parallax scrolling lemmings-type game from Amcog Games
- The latest releases of RiscOSM, Organizer, RPCemu, Impression-X, and more
- Chris Hall with his new GPS software, with live links to RiscOSM
- New issues of Archive and Drag n Drop magazines
- Riscy Robots from Neil Fazakerley
- Retro games arcade – bring your (grand)children!
- The Acorn and BBC User Group with amazing addons for Acorn Atoms, Beebs, Electrons and Archies.

There will also be a full set of theatre presentations.

Keep an eye on the show website for the latest news: http://www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk/

Reminder that the show is this coming Saturday! Excellent preview here – http://www.riscository.com/2016/london-show-looms/

Sine Nomine Software will have updated map data and a new version of RiscOSM available at the show. If you have old SD cards which we supplied to you previously, bring them in for a discount off the new map data. Please remember the adapter as well as the micro-SD card!

We will also be showing ImpEmail at the London Show for the first time since we added the facility to take input from CSV files. If you need to send bulk mailing by e-mail, come and see what it can do.

In addition to our launch at the show of PhotoDesk 3.14 see here for details, attendee’s can also see our newly launched ‘pi-topRO’ The first RISC OS portable computer since Acorn’s A4 (launched in 1992). Full details here

The first RISC OS portable computer since Acorn’s A4 (launched in 1992).

OpenPandora? AI Touchbook? Connect-the-Pi-to-a-Motorola-Lapdock?

OpenPandora? AI Touchbook? Connect-the-Pi-to-a-Motorola-Lapdock?

You have a point and we still do offer our LaPi & PandaRO so may be the statement needs some qualifying! The OpenPandora and AI Touchbook were AFAIK never sold as a packaged RISC OS solution and at least one customer of a LaPi has now bought a pi-topRO. I can’t recall his exact words but it was along the lines that it was because it was a proper laptop. My next task is to precis the above into under 20 words for catchy headline!

I must say it is a very tempting proposition compared to my would-be-hacked Pi based desktop system!

My next task is to precis the above into under 20 words for catchy headline!

“Some say, the pi-topRO is the best thing since the launch of Acorn’s A4 in 1992.” Less than 20 words, not sure about the catchiness :-)

EPIC NEW RISC OS LAPTOP

Headlines need to be short and attention grabbing. So a mere six words and straight to the point. Don’t make it any longer than it needs to be. And when you have worked out what you want to say, rewrite a headline half that size. Once you have people’s attention, they can read the blurb. It’s grabbing attention that’s the hard part.

The word “epic”, of course, is a trendy word that is frequently misused. Such as this example. ;-) The headline works without it, but prefixing with such a word helps to lend a sort of “larger than life” mystique in the fewest letters possible. I mean, one doesn’t care that there is a new laptop style machine, one cares that there is this specific new laptop style machine. Grab the attention with the headline, then use the blurb to big up why it is “epic”. Start with a simple bullet list of all the reasons the machine rocks. More details and nerdy stuff can wait until page two. And you might want a photo that doesn’t look like a piece of cardboard from a box from China (a quick pass with some black poster paint?). ;-)

Every word has a purpose, there is nothing extraneous.
Epic – larger than life, this thing rules (etc).
New – of course it is, but you want people to part with cash so they need to know this is fresh and shiny.
RISC OS – kind of obvious, but ram the point home. After all, it is one of the main points.
Laptop – exactly what it says on the tin¹.

¹ For DavidS – that expression is from a Ronson wood stain (seal?) advert, that was advertised by cleverly stating what it was and then saying “exactly what it says on the tin”; something which is a bit of a meme…

Brilliant Rick! Did you used to be a copywriter in a previous life?

https://twitter.com/RISCOSbits/status/792369737950961664

Just last week I was looking for a Pi case with room for an SSD, and was amazed to not find any. I’m glad to see that something is available after all!

Cool! Although I can’t see much on twitter…will there be a full product page on the RISCOSbits website or is it just for sale at the show…?

Mmm. A photo of the inside would have been better. But maybe that’s just me. ;-)

Hopefully somebody will have an after-show report out soon for those who didn’t go…

Various show photos tweeted here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/riscoslondon?src=hash

Thanks for another well-organised show folks!

From the show site: 2016-10-25 – Another new exhibitor, Bitshifters, will be showing off some amazing Teletext demos, including a YouTube video converter!
Now that sounds interesting. Kitten videos expressed via the medium of teletext!

Ah yes, I saw that running and wondered what it was.

Various show photos tweeted here

I, um, have pretty much never used twitter before¹ (don’t even have an account). What I got was a small jumble of things (maybe three screenfuls?) with three photos from the show below some photos from last year (Paul Fellows, for instance), and then more stuff from last year (nice bruise there, Vince). Then suddenly a BigTrak (yikes! I remember those!) from 2012.
Is that correct or am I doing something wrong?

¹ Once, a few years ago, when this site was not working, I thought to look on their twitter and they said they knew so I didn’t bother saying “hey, it’s broke!”. That’s my one and only prior experience with tweets. As you might have guessed, I’d find it horribly annoying to make a decent message the size of an SMS…

Did you used to be a copywriter in a previous life?

Used to write the unofficial (and extremely sarcastic) school magazine. Unlike Frobnicate where I could waffle for as long as I felt, I was constrained by the memory size of the Beeb plus only being allowed to print (photocopy) to a single page, or two if insulting reporting Sports Day. Of course, what they meant was a side of A4. But they said “single page” which to me meant both sides. ;-) And while I don’t remember anything about using EDWORD now, I do recall it supported some of the funkier text behaviours of the standard fx80 like condensed and bold and such.
So quite often I’d write a bit in my usual style and then massacre it to dump¹ as many words as possible. This is also why my lexicon can be interesting at times – our language confers upon us the ability to say the same thing various ways, meaning there may be a more succinct method of writing something (fewer letters). Admittedly, it was a bit of a lost cause in a place catering for learning difficulties where the majority were dyslexic, but never mind… ;-)

¹ dump. Candidates: jettison, delete, disgorge, eliminate, remove, expunge, omit, drop, discard, extirpate… You get the idea. Shortest words: dump, omit, drop. Best phrasing: omit. Best sense of action: dump.
I don’t tend to revise my writing these days, I can just let the spew smack you right in the forehead instead. It makes life easier, because going through that process for every single word is mind numbing.

At the top, click on “Latest” (which will in turn take you here).

Just last week I was looking for a Pi case with room for an SSD, and was amazed to not find any. I’m glad to see that something is available after all!

It wasn’t on sale at the show, merely on show! It’s a bit expensive as far as Raspberry Pi cases go, being about £100 for the case alone. Add in £50 for a reasonable mSATA (it stalls during boot without one) and £30 for a Pi and it’s not a cheap system.

Although still around the same price as other cased non-RISC OS Raspberry Pi media units out there which may or may not work with RISC OS (Five Ninja’s Slice anyone?).

It’s worth noting that the mSATA is connected to the USB bus, so doesn’t offer radical speed improvements over a USB drives, although it does SEEM faster – I’ll benchmark it later and post the results.

Are people still interested in a Pi-based machine at that kind of price?

There’s a picture of the insides here

There is a set of custom connectors to attach USB, HDMI and power to the ‘motherboard’

I would say that people prefer software today, or hard+soft solution, as hardware is non proprietary, and available on several websites (even this case).
So all will depend of the price and availability…

Other subject:
I’m curious about the level of integration of GeminiX.

I’m curious about the level of integration of GeminiX.

It fits nicely inside a podule slot on a RiscPC or in a PCI slot in more modern hardware!

I realise that’s not what you meant!

With additional software and configuration, it can be as operationally integrated as the PC-Card. But it is not a co-processor in the traditional Acorn PC-Card sense.

or in a PCI slot in more modern hardware!
I realise that’s not what you meant!

If it’s PCI, no. If it’s PCIE and with support for Titanium… You have a potential first buyer :)
To get a modern PC card for modern hardware will be really appreciated (for me).