[Swansea Hackspace] Kit,money,turning up :)

[Ian Bullfrog]

Hello, a few questions and stuff.

Sorry about missing the grand launch-Im pretty crap with dates and 
unless I get prodded before and then on the day, I tend to miss things. 
nuts. feel free to prod me when things are on :)

so,
kit

Arduino, or Raspberry pi or both>?
Is there a preference of one over the other and why or whatever.IVe just 
picked up a book from Pontardawe library on the Pi and programming it in 
Python. Id like to try and learn Python, so that seems like a reasonable 
excuse to git it a try :)

which to get?

there are several Arduino boards that I have seen, not sure about 
raspberry pi,
but
I checked out maplins, then ebay (of course) big price difference. Do 
you guys also have a favourite source or can supply them yourselves from 
somewhere too?

Money.
can I pop along to a view events/meetins first to check that I like the 
set up and that I dont annoy you more than I usually annoy people? as 
the first meet would be a 20 quid sign up , then a tenner for the month.
both reasonable I guess, to pay bills etc, but Id rather spend it on a 
micro board, so that i could ACTUALLY do something with you guys :) then 
if I get along, Ill have to get a job, sell a child, ebay my life away 
in order to attend regularly :)
Im also a bit of a traveller so tend to be away and this can mess up 
continuity etc.
I missed the 14 months of gelling and stuff first and just rolled in as 
you got the space.

curses. - I missed the printer workshop on saturday. still , I now know 
where the venue is ( on paper) are there people milling around during 
the day or whatever as I will be going down to dragon art centre to do 
photography today so could check it out then. thats about 10.30 till 12ish.

and so finally, well done on getting it together! :)
I'll try and set alarms , cattle prods, paint signs on my front door and 
inside of my eyelids in order to turn up to the next meeing, as I dont 
use facebook or twitter, email is the way.feel free to annoy me about 
meeting times and venues.

ps does anyone fancy going to that techie festival that someone posted a 
link too on here?
-I think you get an Arduino board with an LCD display as a name badge 
that tells you whats going on too.
not sure if thats yours to keep after or you hand it back in, but sounds 
interesting anyway.

long mail huh?
:)

ciao for now
Schpengle