Episode: 3948
Title: HPR3948: Cleaning up my mancave and talking about Creativity
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3948/hpr3948.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:47:56

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,948th for Wednesday the 20th of September 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Cleaning Up My Man Cave and Talking About Creativity.
It is hosted by night-wise, and it is about 27 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, night-wise sets up his podcast, Rig in a Messy Attic and Talks, about the stuff lying around.
Hey there, Hacker Public Radio.
This is nightwise from thenightwise.com podcast.
Checking in, with a little bit of a sound scene tour because I am cleaning up my office.
Well, not my office, my office is clean.
I am cleaning up my man cave.
My man cave is a little attic up above the office of my company that houses a lot of equipment that is needed but not in daily use.
And when I say needed but not in daily use, I mean that there is quite a bit of stuff here that I don't really need anymore.
One of the things I have got here is my Retro Computing Collection.
My Retro Computer Collection.
I have got some interesting stuff here and I am cleaning it up today.
A lot of what I have here is things that I have collected over the years.
I have got a Toshiba Labretto.
I have got an ASIS EE701 notebook.
I have got a Toshiba Satellite with XP out of the box OEM.
I have got my father-in-law's two main workstations which were a dual Pentium 500 and a Pentium 200 MMX right here.
And some other stuff.
So today I thought it would be a good idea to kind of go through those.
To kind of take a look at those and talk to you guys about it while I am doing it.
So talking about the PCs that I have but I also have some other stuff here.
Like for example, some old Macs.
Let's see what I got here.
I have a G4 Quicksilver tower.
I have got a G5 iMac, the 17 inch version.
And I have got a 21 inch iMac Jewelcore which I have installed diet pi on.
And which serves me quite well as a little terminal to connect to a Raspberry Pi that I have running inside the house.
I got some other stuff here because a lot of retro stuff that I got I got from my father-in-law as he was cleaning up his office.
He retired and he said goodbye to his IT background.
He said, you know, I'm done.
I'm through with this. It's time for something else. It's time to retire.
And he basically donated all the stuff that he had lying around to me.
I still have to go down there because they're going to sell their house and I have to collect the rest.
Now, this man taught me everything I know about computers.
He helped me get into the business by showing me how to install computers, how to work with them.
He was a big nerd and a very big tech-efficient out of him.
And he collected all kinds of things.
And as he's cleaning up his office, I could take my pick so I've got some beautiful things here.
Let me see. Aside from the computers that I mentioned, I also got some OEM stuff.
In my hands right now, I have the box of a Sound Blaster 16.
Sound Blaster 16 and I'm going to see if there's a year on this.
So this is the first 16-bit digital audio card which easily installs on your PC,
AT and who is 100% compatible.
This is a beautiful thing. The original address of creative technology is still on there.
So with the phone number in Singapore and in those things.
It comes with three quarter discs, three and a half inch discs included.
There's no year on this but I can suffice that this is from the early 90s.
It's a beautiful box that I love to keep hold on.
Because it comes in the original Sound Blaster colors, those blue and orange.
Because I've got one that is even earlier, the Sound Blaster Pro is also a box that I have.
It doesn't come with a cod. It's also from Creative Labs.
This one works under DOS and tells me about its features.
This is an earlier box from an earlier model. It comes with a big five and a quarter inch floppy.
Also the facts numbers of it are all on there.
I'm so sad that these boxes don't really have a year on them but I would guess this thing would be from the early 90s.
The reason my dad, my father-in-law, kept all these boxes. He was kind of a box dude.
I took him over. I said, I'll keep them if I can, if I'm loud.
I'll store them for prosperity. That's what I did.
I've got some other stuff here. One of the things I've got and this is quite unique.
It's one of the boxes that you've got from our first ISP.
In Belgium, the first broadband ISP was called SkyNet.
Go figure.
This is actually the first broadband subscription over ADSL that they signed.
Here are the original documents, everything inside, how to install the modem, how to get online.
There's even an ad that explains how the included CD of two cows.
Remember that? How that works.
It's a great box. The subscription in the time was called NetRunnerGo, which was nonstop internet over ADSL.
It was a big thing back in the day I managed to keep hold of that.
But aside from that, I'm falling over my own equipment here, aside from that, the man also had a general amount of boxes.
Boxes with equipment. Sorry, not boxes with equipment. Boxes with CD-ROMs.
I've got about five or six big shopping bags full of them, which I still need to sort through.
I'll just go through these because none of all of these boxes were originally purchased.
Let's say none of them were. This was a gigantic collection of pirate and software.
If you remember crazy bites, if you remember twilight, if you remember those bootleg CDs filled with software, I've got them all.
I've got the entire twilight collection of which I'm very proud that I do. They're all here.
They're all nicely stored and they are all collected and they will all be safe for prosperity.
My project was that one day I'll really build a Windows 98 or Windows XP computer just like the ones I had back in the day.
I never got around to it, at least not yet, because I've got a lot of other stuff to do.
But yeah, I kind of kept hold of them. One of the things I do need to do is clean up and throw out the ones that I don't need because
the little space I have doesn't have the room for everything I need to store here.
So I need to clean up and throw quite a few of these out. But they are pretty damn cool.
The reason I'm actually cleaning up this pick style, I'll just put those back here. See if I can put those.
There you go. These things are heavy. The reason I'm cleaning up here is because I want to use the room
for something different. I've got a nice desk here that I would like to clean up because I want to set up a podcasting rig and a podcasting rig that is what I call ready to go.
A podcasting rig that is completely pre-installed, that is completely configured, and that is completely ready to roll out at a moment's notice.
Because what I want to do is podcast a little bit more. Right now I'm podcasting on the little mobile microphone that I have.
But I want to set up a studio here that I can access at the drop of a hat. And the reason is you might have heard this already.
The acoustics here are fantastic. The entire place is wood paneling. There is a big mat, big rug on the floor.
And well, there is no reverb here whatsoever. So it's perfect for doing what I want to do, i.e. recording podcasts.
But in order to do this, I have to do some cleaning up. There's still a lot that needs to go and still a lot that needs to be set up.
But today, that is going to be part of what I want to do. I want to set up some stuff here. So I've got everything ready to go.
So I'm moving aside a beautiful G4 iMac. And it's the model with the flexible screen, you know, with the lambshade model.
It's part of my collection. Runs OS 9 is completely configured, has a lot of classic games on there, like X-Wing versus T-Fighter and Star Wars.
Star Wars, dark forces. And managed to get hold of it thanks to a neighbor down the street who was actually throwing a couple of these out.
So I decided I would get one. To play that game, you need a joystick. So via the powers of...
Oh, to be the horn switches, the Belgian version of Craigslist, managed to get hold of a sidewinder precision joystick.
I've got that line around here as well. And yeah, I've got that machine set up. And if I want to do some retro gaming, I just grab hold of it and use it.
Which is pretty nice. And there's quite a bit of stuff here. Also stuff I really need to clean out.
That's here to get stuff done. But for today, I am focusing on getting a podcasting studio ready.
So as we dig through retro stuff, let's talk about the future. Let's talk about the present.
Let's talk about recording podcasts and how to make it easy.
One of the things that I already mentioned is that you've got to have stuff ready to go.
You have to be able to flip a switch. And if creativity strikes you, be able to hit that red button and record.
And that's a very important factor of creativity. Is that the barrier of entry? That's the work I'm looking for.
It has to be very low. It has to be something you can do on a whim.
Because when we take a look at how we sometimes waste our time on stuff like social media and stuff like that,
the reason we are so drawn to our smartphones or to the internet is because it's so easy.
You just pull out your smartphone and boom, you're good to go. You can start doing whatever you want to do.
And that's not always productive because then you end up scrolling for hours on nine gag.
While you could have spent that time doing a podcast, contributing to the community and learning something.
So today I'm doing that. Today I am working on just that, doing a podcast, studio setup in my little home office here.
To make sure that I've got everything working and everything's ready.
So what's this setup? What's this setup, dude?
Let's see what the setup is. We have here, this is Hacker Public Radio.
So I've got a Dell XPS-15 running Ubuntu Linux.
It's a great little machine. It manages to grab hold of its second hand, of course.
A while ago, I had a dude in Esnu, which is a town on the French-speaking part of Belgium, pretty close, who had it.
And he said, I bought it for gaming and it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. It's slow. It's terrible. I want to get rid of it.
I had a, I think, a Ryzen desktop lying around, which we used for streaming during Corona, during the COVID era.
That was becoming redundant fast and I was cleaning up and I thought, I always wanted an XPS. They're great machines.
How about a trade? And he thought it was a great idea. And so did I.
So we decided, let's do a trade. Let's swap these around and do it that way.
So I drove up with my little desktop tower. We met at the train station.
And here we were. Two happy dudes who each got new gear. And we're very happy about their new gear.
And I'm spraying some stuff across my desk to clean it up.
We're really happy with their new gear. And I was kind of taking a chance because I knew it wasn't, you know, the machine wasn't great for gaming.
But that's not what I wanted to do with it. It was just, you know, to have an XPS 15 with a nice big screen, which was all nice to work with.
And I got it home. Booted it up. Fans went crazy. And then nothing. Well, nothing. Then it booted up into windows.
But I felt something was really wrong with this machine. So I decided to open it up.
Oh, boy. The amount of lint in the intakes of this machine were enormous.
They were gigantic. I would like, what's this? I mean, what is this?
How come that this thing is filled with half a mattress of dust? And instead of blowing it out, which is the general approach to, you know, clean up lint if you want to.
I ended up literally, well, just trying it out. I used pliers to get it out. I had to use pliers to get it out.
And to really get wads of lint out. So after cleaning out the machine, and I never blow out dust from the machine with my mouth.
You got geeks who go like, I learned that the composition of that dust is mostly human skin.
And when you buy a second-hand machine, another person's human skin, dead skin cells basically.
That's basically dead skin cells. So another human's dead skin cells, not really on my top five of things to breathe.
So I decided to take my little air compressor that I had lying around and take that out.
And do something with that because it didn't really feel like breathing another guy's skin, dead skin cells.
So after that, I did a little install, installed windows on it at first. It came with no AM install. I did a no AM reinstall.
That's the second thing I did. When I buy a second-hand computer, I always wipe it. I never trust it.
So got rid of the basic OS there, and make sure that that was out of the way.
And then I did a little upgrade. So I went online, got me two bars of 16 gigs of memory, and one terabyte SSD drive.
And the whole thing cost me about, let's see, what was it? I think 150 euros.
Smashed that in, and you know, waited to see what would happen.
And long hold, the machine behaved annually. It's a really great, fast and responsive machine because right now, this thing has become a little bit of a beast.
And it's a great machine for running Linux. And I did a show about this, by the way, about my Dell XPS 15.
So I might be a little redundant here. But it does run Linux better than it runs Windows, which I talked about.
So today, I'm using that machine, which I might have mentioned in another show, to turn into a podcasting studio.
I'm putting in some cables here. I've got an external, let me see here, an external display, which is a Dell XPS, sorry, a Dell precision monitor.
Or is it Ultra Sharp? Ultra Sharp, sorry. A Dell Ultra Sharp. I love Dell Ultra Sharp's, I've owned multiple.
And I have always found them to be reliable and nice to work with. They are also really good when it comes to quality. They are incredibly durable. And I love working with them.
Right next to that, on my little Wii microphone stand, I've got my microphone, which in this case is a road NT USB, the big one.
I got this microphone years ago, still used it to this day, because quite frankly, it's one of the better mics, it's not one of the better mics I have, but it's one of the more convenient mics I have. And I'll tell you why.
The reason I like this microphone so much is because of the fact that it is so damn convenient. It's a microphone, a decent microphone, and a sound card all in one. And with the added value that it's incredibly easy to set up.
There's not a lot of work to get it all going. And it works pretty great, and you don't need a mixer, and you don't need any of that other stuff. It's just, you know, open it up, and boom, it works.
So that's one of the reasons I've got it mounted here in my office, just installing it as we speak. There you go. And that one is connected directly to my XPS.
Now, this is me setting up the software, the hardware. There's, of course, also the software to consider. And one of the things that you have to take account with is when you want to take away any hurdles to your creativity is that you've got to have the software set up as well.
So when I log into this machine, I immediately get, I immediately get audacity popping up. So it auto starts when I start the Linux machine. I just want to make sure that I can do my stuff right away.
The second thing is the link to archive.org, where I store the nightwise.com podcasts, and the link to the upload section of hacker public radio, because, you know, that's where I upload these shows.
So I record, I don't do a lot of post processing. You might have noticed that. And I just upload. And that's the way I try to be as creative as possible with the gear that I have.
So my setup here is almost done. The next thing I need to do is clean up the office. That for me is a very important one, because it's incredibly important that whenever you want to do something, when you ever want to start on something.
As I said, take away whatever clutter there is, whatever boundaries there might be for you doing your thing. And also that means having a completely clean office. This office is spotless.
It's completely clean. There is nothing on it. Just the microphone that I can pull down to start. And I have to fire up the laptop. And I'm good to go.
So audacity has been launched. The monitor has been connected. At least I thought I did.
And the monitor is connected. It's not on the right input yet. So I'm going to fix that. There you go. HDMI one.
It's detected as a second display. It works great. The bunju is staring me in the face.
I think it's time to start my little recording here and to start the podcast that I want to record.
Just quickly fix a detail. Oops. But I still want to have an order. Maybe got another stand a little bit later on.
And then make sure my little podcasting studio is completely ready. So if you want to record something for HDR, do the same thing I did. Have a setup ready to go.
Make sure that there are no distractions. There is no clutter in the way. And just do your thing. This was Nightwise for Hacker Public Radio signing off.
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