So I got my Pi a couple of weeks ago, and although I've had plenty to do in the real world, got to fiddling about with it a bit.
First thing was that I realised I bought just about all the wrong cables from the supplier when I ordered the thing, which was a little baffling - but not altogether insurmountable. After finding a short phono-phono lead to plug it in to my front room telly, and using a disused blackberry charger for a makeshift 5V-700mA supply (which seems to work fine - anything over 700mA should be good apparently), and imaging the latest Raspbian OS on to a new SD card, I plugged it all together.
So the thing actually works.
But it wasn't connected to the internet, so I needed to bridge the wifi from my laptop to the ethernet and on to the Pi, got online, and marvelled as I went on to look at all the esoteric Linux nonsense that I was expected to do to get my wifi adapter up and running.
I edited a document with Vi and now I feel capable of
anything.
And sure enough, it all seemed to work.
Right about now the Pi is sat on the top of my TV, plugged in and running, and connected to my local wifi network. I am having a little hiccup though, because it doesn't seem to want to work 'outwards' although I am definitely connected, as I can ssh in to the Pi from a computer sitting on the same wifi network.
But this is fun, despite years of Windows blunting me to the joy and intricacies of typing commands out.
First step will be getting a working Raspbmc or OpenElec media thingy up and running via the wifi, but I am sorely tempted to figure out how I can use the GPIO pins, Python and a battery pack to do some rudimentary robotics.