First, the case. Created as a single piece of aluminium with a plastic base-plate, the Argon One is more than just a means of protecting a Raspberry Pi: it includes a daughterboard that pulls the HDMI and analogue AV ports to the rear for neater cabling, another that adds a fan for active cooling and a smart power button while also bringing the GPIO header out with colour coding and silk-screened pin references on the case itself, and a magnetic cover to hide said GPIO port when it’s not in use.
More importantly, though, it’s one of only a few cases that actually improves the thermal performance of the Raspberry Pi when installed. Even ignoring the fan, which makes little practical difference to operating temperatures, the difference between uncased and cased is an impressive 24°C thanks to the use of the upper half of the case as a giant heatsink. The only real problem, and it’s one creator Argon Forty claims to be working to resolve, is the hefty voltage drop from the fan-and-power daughterboard: unless you’re using the Argon One 5.25V Power Supply or a similar compatible, expect to see frequent undervoltage throttling.
Scratch 3, meanwhile, has proven itself a worthy upgrade for the popular block-based visual programming environment first created at MIT. While switching the stage and script area around and shuffling a few of the block colours is unnecessary and potentially confusing, new features including integration with translation and text-to-speech APIs and an easy extension manager are definitely welcome – as is the departure from relying on Adobe’s Flash technology. Sadly, though, at the time of writing Scratch 3 still did not support the Raspberry Pi, though work is in progress on that front.
Finally, Mission Python: as the author of a few books myself I know only too well how tricky it is to walk the line between introducing concepts in a friendly and approachable manner and being patronising, as well as trying to aim a publication at a broad age range. Sean McManus, who is no stranger to bookstore shelves, proves it can be done with Mission Python as he walks the reader through creating a game in Python using the Pygame Zero wrapper around the Pygame library. The result is colourful and fun without being in any way condescending, and a definite recommendation for anyone interested in flexing their Python skills.
All this, and the usual selection of articles not written by me, can be found on the shelves of your nearest supermarket, newsagent, or digitally via Zinio and similar services.