Episode: 3702
Title: HPR3702: Easter Ogg
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3702/hpr3702.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:24:17

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3702 for Tuesday 11 October 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Easter Og.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 62 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, from Scotland another chat between Mr. X and Dave Morris.
Hello everybody, Dave Morris here speaking and I have a companion with me who we've done
this a few times.
Mr. X is on the line and we're going to have a wee chat.
So how are you doing Mr. X?
Hello everybody, I'm doing fine here just coming to the tail end of a fortnight's holiday
and it's been a very, very nice, well, one of the best holidays, nation relaxing.
I felt I don't need to do this time, you know, so it's been good.
Yeah, yeah, it's good to have it, it's really important to have a break, isn't it?
If you can get away from the hub of work or whatever, it's very important.
Yeah, it says, well, we were away, we went to visit some relatives, we meet up every
every year in the late districts, that was lovely and the weather was really nice.
It feels like everything would be in a way or done anything, the weather's been rubbish,
you know, we've been so unlucky this year, it feels, but this last fortnight's been great
and even back home, although the weather was a bit cooler and I think maybe across
the country it got a bit cooler, it was still pretty good, you know, so I had a smash
on time, so it makes all the difference in the weather's nice, you know.
Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, very much so my son, when he was a student at Harriet
Wharton University close by, he made quite a lot of friends, amongst the other students,
one guy is a Greek guy who's here with his wife, I'm not sure if they moved to Edinburgh,
but he was really interested in seeing bits of Scotland, so my son Tim and his girlfriend
and the Greek couple went to the Loch Lomond area, no, so we come before last, the camping,
you know, with tents and all that good stuff, absolutely chucked it down with the right
time, I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, they still have a good time,
what, didn't rain all the time, but they did have some pretty heavy rain, but, you know, it's Scotland, that is the way to do it.
Yes, it is and I'm sure I've told the story before about, I've, up that way and, fitting a tent
I've heard people say if you have a tent, especially if you don't know the tent, it's not yours, maybe you borrowed it or something, or it's new, then you really should rehearse it and you're back on it.
Yep, yep.
I just covered that the hard way too.
Oh, good fun, oh, good fun, yes.
So, hi, so we were actually just back yesterday, we visited the Stock Market, but Stockbridge Market.
We've been walking along the Water Elite, that's a lovely place, really nice.
I can't believe we've, you know, loved my whole life and never been down the Water Elite and Stockbridge Market or not.
So, we were visiting Stock Market yesterday and it was a bit smaller than I thought, but very nice merchandise, very, very posh.
And then we went for a walk along to the Water Elite, but then we got back, we were just left about three o'clock or something like that.
And, of course, it's, well, we know what's happened in Britain, you know, obviously the Queen died, so there was big gatherings of people and police on the bridges and stuff.
So, I think we got out just in time before it got very bad.
There's all sorts of warnings out on Twitter and whatever.
I get messages from the bus up on my phone saying, the centre of Edinburgh is more or less colourful, so it's really hard to get through and stuff.
So, we were actually very lucky because I actually used in, I'm using my phone to send, it seems that I've used that to get directions.
But it took a strange route and an even stranger route out, but it actually seemed to avoid all that there was, we've actually never got held up at all, so I thought,
it's like having a local taxi driver in your back pocket sort of thing, you know, so that was very useful.
Yes, that's great, isn't it? Yeah, I know, I drove to Liverpool for an old camp a few years ago and I was just getting in, I'm really slow in getting into phones and stuff, but I'd taken my phone with me and I had it plugged into my car, which is supposed to produce a USB charge.
But something went wrong in it, and the phone suddenly went with it, I'm out of charge, I can't do it.
And there I was just on the outskirts of Liverpool thinking I was supposed to be easy to find my way to the hotel.
No, no, no, no.
Well, I mean, I'm much slower to this than you, because I've only had a smartphone about less than a year now, up until then I had an old Nokia, so it's kind of new to me.
And obviously, when you're navigating with the phone, it does chew through batteries a bit quicker than if you're not using it.
We've got an old Garmin GPS unit, head unit thing, which I tend to use when I'm going journeys and whatnot.
So we're coming back from the late to sick, we used that to come back, and my god, it took us a very strange route, and it was a good bit slower as well, or going through single track roads.
No, it was horrendous, I thought, should've used my phone, so it was rubbish.
Oh, that's grim, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I have used maps to do that sort of journey.
I think I went to Lancaster, it's a bit south of the Lake District years and years ago, for a conference thing, and I drove down, and I thought, oh, I'll take a different route back.
I'll avoid the motorway, because it was, I think it was April, and there was still snow around, and it was, you know, potential icy.
I took a note, I went over one of the hills, Shaft fell, I think you can drive through, and that was the worst choice I ever made.
I nearly got stuck in a snow drift, it was blowing off the fields, it wasn't actually snowing.
There were several people who were stuck in it, and I'm going to have to get past.
I think the thing is, we had the relative behind us and the car behind, and so we were leading, and I should've known, because we turned off and they carried on,
and I'm guessing their road took them straight to the motorway, and then back home, you know, I should've done the same.
So, I was like, why are they going that way, you know, following my GPS, I was going, oh boy, oh boy, yeah.
Because you think, well, it must know a clever route that I don't know, and this is obviously a good way to go, nope.
It's where you hear all these tales of people being misled by GPS, maybe in the days, you know, a few years ago.
I've certainly, and I used to walk to work down an old, there's a lane that goes alongside fields and stuff from close to my house.
It's called Donkey Lane, because I think it was a driver's road from years ago, where people used to take animals in for market and stuff.
It crosses railway line, and that's only for pedestrians.
But I encountered a big trailer lorry, sort of stuck down there.
His GPS had told him to get to the place, the other side of the railway, he could go this way.
He was very puzzled about how to find the place, the other side of the railway line.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think on a previous issue, I shouldn't have known better actually, because on a previous route to the lead district,
it went up, and it got increasingly narrower and narrower the track, and there was sheep on each side and cows.
And it got to the point where we weren't sure we could carry on.
I think it even came off tarmac, and was on like, you know, just rubble basically, and furrows in the field, where I'll end of a might go, you know,
it's just getting really dodgy.
And we met this chap in the field, and he said, so it's just go to, oh yes, it goes that way.
And I'm like, you can just have two look at this, you're saying, why the hell are you going this way to get there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fun, that sort of thing.
In quotes, I think that fun.
Yeah, yeah.
It's an interesting experience, you need a four-wheel drive in some ways.
Yeah, yeah.
So we put it up, up a last of topics to talk about, and I just added one here,
it's morning, actually, because we tend to always talk about this.
So have you had any DIY issues?
That's period.
DIY issues, wow.
Domestic stuff and stuff related to the house.
I just got my house painted, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
This is a semi-detached house, but it's a Scottish style.
I think pretty much Scottish style.
Well, let me tell you why I think that, because a lot of the outside of it has been mortared,
and then stones have been chucked on it.
Oh, yes.
It's called Highlands.
Yes, yes.
We could explain that.
I'm quite bad for assuming people know what would mean that, of course, yeah.
In England, it's called Pebble Dash.
The difference is that, and you do see it, you do see it that way in Scotland.
I mean, on places like old castles and that sort of stuff, it is pebbles, you know, like beach pebbles.
Yes.
More rounded things.
But on the houses here, they must have got some sort of hardcore material to use.
They must have had, maybe they got pebbles, and then they put them through a machine that crushed them.
So it's all that the mortar is embedded with these bits of stone, some of which are like razors.
Yes.
If you ever have a horse and knock into it, you know, a bear arm or something, you will end up with several cuts.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we've got a very narrow pathway that was in the back of the house, in front of the house.
And obviously, the whole stone side of the wall is as hardling as you talk about it, and it is sharp.
I tried to avoid it, and also we've got a rough to bring the buckets in from the front to the back.
And there's a tap, an outside tap on the outside of the wall.
And I've cut that a few, because you're carrying this bucket, and you're pulling it from behind.
So you're looking forward and it's behind you, and you're conscious at the tap, say, but sometimes you forget and you catch it.
So, yeah, that was one of the things I was going to lead on to that.
I now have a lick outside tap.
Oh, no.
So I must have banged it.
So I had to go fixing that, took it to bits.
Of course, Mrs. X was making a teen all the time.
She said, oh, how long would you be?
I'll just be ten minutes or so.
I had to span it out and all that.
And I had an olive that I got for these.
And olive is a, well, it's a pummer's fit in, isn't it, for sealing two pieces of pipe together, sort of thing?
Yeah.
It compresses it and makes her seal.
So I had some olives that I thought I could put into it to replace the one that was, I've assumed was damaged.
But when I opened it up, there was, there wasn't an out on all of it.
And it didn't have, you know, it wasn't the right shape for it.
So no, I don't know how it works, how it seals.
But I just, at that point, gave up snow.
I don't know what this is all about.
I'll put it all back together again.
And the pipe position had moved, and the leak had reduced greatly.
So it's just a tiny, tiny weep now.
So it's an awful lot better.
And that's it.
I'm not doing any more than that.
That's the end of it, you know.
So, yeah, I've gone outside tap as well, which you can't turn it off enough.
I think it just needs a new washer in the valve.
It's not a thing I want to do.
Well, funny, funny, you should say that.
Because we had a tap in the bathroom that was, you could use cream.
In the middle of the night, what the hell is that?
You know, it was getting tighter and tighter to try and turn it off.
This needs to get looked at.
And I was going to get the top off as a pain in the backside.
And still looking at YouTube videos and they were saying,
you know, if you can't get this off, maybe you should just call a plumber.
You know, because that's the easiest bit to do.
So I couldn't even get that off, you know.
I've got a very similar to get it off.
Actually, I could use kind of more grippy things than I might say.
Not really damaged it too much.
And then there's a kind of, when you take the top off,
that you'll bit your hand on, below that is a kind of cover that you've got to unscrew.
Now it's not, I just explained it.
It's curved. It's narrow at the top.
And it's very shiny.
So there's nothing to grab onto.
So how do you grab the thing?
You're using player things with the paper around about it.
I sat to mark the tap.
I thought, no, no, no, no more of that, because I'll just wreck it.
And I asked a colleague at work and he had this kind of rubbery thing,
which I thought it was a card tool.
But it turned out that it was actually for removing like tight lids or whatever.
But anyway, this took off.
So that was the biggest obstacle.
And then you've actually got to get to the,
where you think the washer would be.
And people say, well, you know, it can be very tight.
And you've got to support the tap because you can twist it.
And then you'll split the piping underneath the, you know.
So, yeah, so I'll be expecting that to be really difficult.
So that was supposed to be the hardest bit.
But that was actually quite straightforward.
So I got that out.
And then again, talking to my colleague who gave me the tool.
He says, how old is your tap?
I said, oh, it's such and such.
She said, well, that's a modern tap.
Now, now I want to have a washer.
It'll be a whole new module, module.
What do you module?
So it turns out you've got this whole insert bit,
which has got the washer.
And it can't take it out.
And so I took that down to the, to the plum place, plum center place,
down the bottom, down in, down in, in dark.
He's basically a local place.
And I said, if you've got one of these, not even know me,
you call it.
He said, oh, yes.
He said, well, they're, they're all different shapes and sizes.
I said, what?
So he had this box with all these wee boxes and compartments,
different diameters, different depths.
And even the stock at the top said, different sizes.
And they said to me, now, do you have the screws?
Oh, yeah, I've got the screw.
So he put the screw for it back in the box.
So I got it back to the house.
We went to the fitter.
And although my screw fits, it comes loose.
I thought, damn, I should have taken the screw.
What a nuisance.
But I've actually got it.
I've got a piece of what I definitely said.
No tons off the work.
Pain.
You'd think it would be a dead easy job, you know, just,
just to change a wash or not.
I guess that's.
Yeah.
Madness.
It used to be easier.
I have done this, um,
living in sort of flats.
And that sort of stuff in the past.
I had bought myself a few tools for, for doing this type of stuff.
And, um, there was, there was a point where you could insert a tool into the tap
and just grind the base where the washer sits.
I don't know quite why it got eroded, but that was the thing you recommended to do
to get a bit of fit for a new washer.
And then you put your new washer in and everything's wonderful.
You know, you don't grind it much, but just to smooth it out a bit or whatever.
I don't know if you get a build up of corrosion on it or something,
but, yeah, but that's not the way anymore.
So it's all, you have to buy a new one.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, well, Mrs. Exo, we'll just get a new tap.
I'm not buying a new tap.
It's a perfectly good time.
It's the time to get it fixed, you know.
But it did work.
It's all working now.
And it's very light pressure to seal it now.
It's a, I'm very pleased that got here.
That's good.
Although I'm kicking myself and not taking the silly brass screw that came with it,
you know, because the one I've got doesn't quite a lot and nips up tight enough.
You can't put any pressure on it or it comes just again.
So it's obviously not quite the same size, you know.
But it's good to have to get that.
That's the main thing, I.
I had a tab in my kitchen that was.
It was a weird design where there was a sort of plastic thing over the top of the,
a bit the move to, to, to, you know, the two taps either side of a single.
Oh, it always came down.
And the plastic thing detached itself from the, from the metal bit underneath.
And I bulged it in all manner wise.
I just drilled holes in it and put screw into sort of jam it into.
Until I just completely drove myself mad.
I had plumbers in doing gas boiler work and I said,
guys, can you just put everything?
So hopefully you won't cost too much.
But can you just replace that bloody tab, which they did?
And it's, what, what a difference it made.
Yeah, sometimes it's just worth biting the bullet and getting it done properly.
You know, it's, this is it, this is it.
It took me all of about 15 minutes to do it.
That's right. That's right.
Well, we're, we're a disaster.
I'm a mother's house where we touched our valve and it all went everywhere.
And we're sad to leak and whatnot.
And we've got, I'm looking very short because we're obviously the only forever.
But it turned out that you can just tighten a nut on the front of the valve.
And that that seals up again.
Of course, not having any plumbing experience.
I didn't know that.
And the plumber said, maybe you should just get a plumber next time.
Yeah, but that cost a hundred pounds.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Quite a lot of them around these, these parts.
If you call them out outside normal hours, they will do you a,
you know, you get an extra call out charge.
So you can be looking a fair bit of cash just to get somebody into.
That's right. That's right.
Unbung your drain or something.
Yeah, you could probably, it's probably, I, I, I, I, if you're that way in clean out,
a pretty good profession to get into.
There's probably a lot of call for that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
I guess, I guess just them, as you get older, you know, your knees and whatnot.
And your flexibility to sort of do that.
You know, maybe, maybe come up with my problem, I suppose.
But I'm sure I, I'm sure I heard a story about it.
Was it a, was it a, a chap who was a, was it?
I was a recent scientist or something.
And he was talking to this gas fitter.
And it turned out the gas fit was making more money than him.
I said, I'm in the wrong profession.
He actually, I said, I think, you know, he did change.
He was a story about that and he changed profession.
And it was, yeah.
Very happy.
It has been the case for a few years now.
I think that if you, because I was, I was indoctrinated as a kid.
And I put that, I say that deliberately because the message was, go to school, work hard, pass all your exams.
If you can go to university, if, and come out of that and you'll, you know, the world is your oyster.
Yeah.
You learn tons of money.
Don't go down the trade route.
You know, you don't want to be doing all that sort of getting lucky and, you know, and being out in the weather
and all this sort of stuff.
And so, but that's not true anymore.
No, it's not.
It probably never was.
But it was the sort of prejudicial thing, I suspect.
Yeah.
Maybe, maybe.
Yeah.
So the trade people in this region, he where I live, there's several of them up and down the street here.
They're doing really, really well.
Yeah.
I'm sure they are.
I'm sure they are.
Ah, dear.
So we've actually not really got into any of our topics yet.
So maybe we should go to topic one.
Sorry, I'm coughing because I'm laughing.
Yeah, topic number one was that we were just going to talk about COVID.
And the fact that everybody has, as I put this, a vested interest in it, having gone away,
is telling us that it's gone away.
But it hasn't.
No, no, you can back to that yourself.
Yes, yes, well, we, so we went to, so we were on holiday.
We went to the synth, synth, synth, synth bees was.
And before we went, you know, we're up until that point.
We've been very, very careful and done all the right things.
Catch away from people and we were masked and blah, blah, blah.
We were invited to a wedding.
Now, we're not the most social people in the first place anyway.
But so we went to this wedding.
And I mean, I didn't know anybody at this wedding.
But it was fantastic.
I really, really enjoyed myself.
I thought, you know, we drank chat with people.
And of course, there's Kaley's.
Hello, goodbye.
Hello, goodbye.
You know, swapping hands.
So Kaley's like, how are you doing?
How are you doing?
How are you doing?
How are you doing?
Yeah.
When I was at school, right, in the 1950s, then, you know, primary school, then we all did
Scottish country dancing as it was called.
And I love it.
It was those sorts of dances, you know, around a structured thing around a circle or whatever, around a room.
So, yeah.
But you need to be there.
Yeah.
So imagine you've got 50 people and then swapping hands.
Hello, how'd you do?
Hello, goodbye.
Hello, goodbye.
Swapping all these partners as you go around touching hands continuously.
You know, I think, well, obviously, we know what's going to happen.
I mean, if I hadn't got COVID, I would have been, you know, utterly amazed, you know.
So, yes, I got COVID.
But what amazed me was that my wife didn't.
So, I don't quite understand how that was.
And, you know, I ended up going to send bees and then I sat down.
I sat having symptoms and whatnot.
And then tested positive.
But she didn't test positive and remained negative.
And we stayed in the same small apartment.
And although we were in the car, we had the windows down when we could.
And it was cold and blowy and windy.
We couldn't, something we couldn't do because a lot of our stuff we do in Hollywood is outdoors.
Anyway, because we've got a dog.
We couldn't go into any, any houses or, you know, cafes because I obviously had COVID and didn't infect anybody.
There was a beautiful wee railway station.
Something like, oh, I was like, set back in history, a beautiful wee station.
And we looked forward to go on to that with plant to go on that.
I couldn't do that either because I didn't want to pass it up on COVID to anybody.
But we made the most of it about what I can't understand how my, how my wife never caught it, you know?
Yeah, I don't know.
I've heard all sorts of discussions about, you know, the relative susceptibility of people.
I think it boils down to different people have different immune systems, you know.
No, it's built differently, but it's had different experiences.
There was a discussion I heard.
I listened to an immunology podcast, which I don't fully understand, I have to say, but, you know,
sort of picking up a little bit along the way.
They were talking about how COVID is a coronavirus.
And coronavirus is a pretty common.
And in fact, there's several, I think, at least one anyway, which is responsible for the things that we call cold.
Right.
So if you've had a cold, this is the argument.
If you've had a cold in the not too distant past, then you might well be, your immune system might well be set up to...
Planned out.
Coronavirus is more effective.
I hadn't heard that.
I thought that would make sense, yeah, of course.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think any research has been done into that specifically.
Not as yet, because there's still tons to do to understand COVID itself and anything, you know, all the variants.
Yeah.
And I have to deal with those.
But definitely some of the things I'm hearing from that sort of route, the virology and the immunology route, is that your immune system...
will actually go and, you know, having been exposed to viruses, it will not only recognize the aspects of the virus that were immediately presented.
But there seems to be some sort of process which, once the antibodies have gone and that sort of stuff, your immune system is still sitting there cogitating you on what it's seen.
Actually, there was some talk of it actually being able to predict, if you like, to put it that way, some of the variants that might occur.
So, people being less affected, once their immune systems were primed, to less affected by some of the variants, if you know, if they've been vaccinated particularly.
Right, right.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, I'd never heard that.
That's something to bear in mind.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I've not had a cold for what seems like a very, very long time.
So, yeah, that may be the case.
And I wouldn't be surprised if my wife has had the cold.
And well, that's got any bearing on it.
Who knows, but it's very interesting.
Well, it might also be a genetic thing.
You know, you might just have a different metabolism in some ways.
I don't really know.
Did they not say they were looking for people who hadn't caught COVID and thought they should have something like that?
And they want to study why these people seem not to be so susceptible perhaps.
I don't think they were looking for people like that, I believe.
Yes, yes, I think so.
I've only heard sort of speculation about it.
I don't have enough time really to follow it up in any great detail.
But these are some of the impressions I've got.
I did buy a book on immunology, but it sat on the shelf in the other room.
It's actually open, yeah.
I'll get to it soon.
Is it quite deeply thing?
No, it's actually a book.
You know, it's a sort of glassy-ish sort of book.
I think it's designed for students starting up in the subject.
Right.
But I think I will find that it's a bit sort of thing you don't want to try and read too much in one goal.
Because you need to sort of sit and think and think, what the hell does this mean?
What does that mean?
Right, right, right, okay.
Do some research around it and stuff, but there was a recommendation from the immunology podcast.
I do that for students, really.
So I thought I'd give it a shot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's staring at me.
Of course, the thing is, you know, you're talking about the,
when you were talking about how possibly having a cold might change in the virus.
And how it doesn't need to be the exact same virus for it to be primed or well.
I mean, I remember having a discussion with somebody about the flu job.
And saying the very same thing because they say to me, oh, you know,
oh, they don't always get the right flu job anyway.
So what's the point?
It's not at all because even if they do get the wrong one, it still gives protection.
So it doesn't need to be an exact match to be effective.
And even if it just reduces the numbers, it's still worth what we are doing.
But on that vein, you know, thinking about that, you know,
we're thinking about a fact that we had no flu flu.
There was no very flu.
There was no flu outbreak basically last, last Christmas.
And you think, well, what we're doing now, it's almost almost kind of guarantees
we're going to have, you know, and then on top of that,
we're taking no precautions for COVID.
It sounds like a bit of a risk before a disaster to map the map.
I know it's the lack of masks everywhere when the actual number of infections
is really, really high.
I've stopped watching as much of the sort of day by day statistics about COVID.
But I do follow the Zoe group, ZOE based in London.
And they're doing, I signed up for them.
You could send in your health status and they would, you know,
whether you had tests and what the results were and all that sort of stuff.
So they do some quite good statistics.
In fact, they're more up to date than the government statistics in a lot of ways.
Oh, yes, I think I've heard of that.
They were saying that the number of cases,
otherwise people catching it as you did, but not having a particularly bad time of it,
it was massive, it was higher at one point in the past month or two,
than it had been the worst time in the early stages, you know.
Right, right.
But, I mean, yeah, I mean, for myself, it was,
I was a bit shivering in the AKB, but I didn't think I was in,
I went to bed a little bit in the cottage, you know,
or I wore something like that.
But other than that, I managed to stay up.
You know, I didn't need to go to my bed and stayed and bedding like that.
And I wee bit of a cough.
The cough seemed to get worse towards end, actually.
And I strangely seemed to lose the taste of mint tea, which is a bit strange.
I thought we had faulty, you know, bad tea.
And in a turn down that it wasn't, it was a fact, I'd lost the taste of it.
And even now, I don't have it fully back.
I don't think, but my taste hasn't been changed in any other way that I can perceive,
which is very strange.
And my colleague at work, he, he had, you know,
what was in there was something like salt and vinegar crisps.
And it took one and it tasted awful, putered and it,
oh, horrible, but I'm not back here, it's off.
And then Delta then he's covered and found an old one,
from an old batch that he'd had, and they tasted exactly the same.
And then he realized, oh, it must be, you know,
twig, then it must be covages.
It's changed the flavour of salt and vinegar crisps.
It's bizarre, you know.
Yeah, I know, I know.
I'd certainly heard that story from many people.
My son and his girlfriend had COVID since we last talked,
which was in May, by the way.
And they, they, they were both a little bit under the weather for a couple of days,
but they, they soon rallied.
They didn't get much on the way of taste things.
It just affects different people different ways, I think.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, I've certainly heard of a lot of people saying that they, they have that.
Yeah, I mean, if it, I could have easily missed it.
If I, if I didn't have a hand taking mint tea,
I used to, like, mint tea in the morning sort of thing,
but before I start work, then I wouldn't have,
I've noticed, I think, really.
I like, you know, we're talking about the lack of masks,
so we, you know, when we were at the St. B's and the late District,
there's no mask wearing, actually, they're almost, almost none.
And, and work is the same.
Nobody wears a mask in a low.
It's a facial company policy that when you're moving around,
you should be wearing a mask.
But it gets to the stage where I was one of the last ones to,
I still won't mind towards, you know,
but we were longer than most people did.
It comes to a point where you're the only person doing it,
and you get self-conscious, which is that.
And a colleague of mine, he went even further,
I think he's still occasionally wears it, you know,
but it's, it's trying.
It's so clear.
It's so unnecessary.
I liked him, I had a week, a week, a week quote here,
which was someday on a site I was reading that was suggesting
while you get over it and just, you've got to learn to live
with this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And so this site was Richard Murphy,
who's, who does a tax research.
He's big on, on fair taxation and whatnot.
And he said, as comment was, now, was it,
why do you think we should live with excess deaths of maybe 1,000 a week
and 10% or more of hospital beds taken up by COVID,
helping create a massive cancer crisis?
How is that living with this?
Isn't it more like killing people when, when simple things,
like wearing a decent mask compulsorily
and requiring decent ventilation could solve so much of this?
And that's true, absolutely true.
It's so simple to, you know, and you can still have normal
daily, loving without lockdowns and stuff,
but it's just crazy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's also quite, it's quite bad for people who have immune
compromise.
Yes.
Because, you know, it means that the COVID is,
the virus is around everywhere.
And it's really, really hard to get away from it.
However much you yourself mask, the, you know,
the masks are not 100% impermeable or anything like that.
And so you stand, you stand a much greater chance of being able,
of, of catching it and it being damaging to you.
You know, absolutely.
Yeah.
To deal with it, you know.
Yeah, it's, it's just, it's just crazy, but that's,
that's the decisions that have been made, you know, so yeah.
Yeah.
I did go out and buy a pack of the, what do they call K,
something 95s.
Oh, yes.
Which is a tighter, more enclosing mask.
Right.
I wear one when I'm on the bus and when I go to the supermarket and stuff.
But, yeah.
So yeah, I've managed to stay free, but I don't go out now.
No, well, I mean, we still don't, I mean, a lot of the stuff we do is
outdoors, any day because I was with a dog.
And when we go shopping, we do a clicking collect, which means we,
we go to, you know, what outdoors for the car park is and they basically hand
the food out and they just place it in your backyard car.
So we don't go, regularly go into shops.
Although I did go shopping recently out of pure desperation because
it's just getting silly now.
My clothes are getting sold and so holy that I,
I'm going to buy this really.
So I'm trying to get close to fat.
Oh, my God.
It's a, it's a nightmare.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've recently, this year, I got given a tech tablets for diabetes.
I got tied to diabetes and they give you all sorts of weird, wonderful tablets
to control your sugar level and all that business.
But I tell you, they gave me a new one that just recently out, I think,
which not only helps to control your blood sugar levels, but it also makes you lose weight.
So since I started, which was tail-in-the-last year, maybe,
I lost about 10 kilos, which is quite a lot.
And so none of my clothes fit anymore.
Oh, cranky.
Oh, no.
I need a big belt to stop my trousers for.
You know, we've got, so we have kind of clean rooms in the factory where we work.
And they've got these lockers.
And they're a bit like the lockers you get in swimming pools where you, you know,
turn the key and you get to your locker out.
But they're very thin narrow lockers that hold one of these garments that you place over.
They're a bit like these garments that are a dentist might wear, you know,
it's like a light blue thing.
And so they had a stack of these from floor to ceiling.
And there must be like, I know, 20 or 30 slots from floor to ceiling,
each one having a garment on it.
And well, they used to, so they have very sizes, you see.
And I was looking and they're very, very top.
And the very first one you open up is small.
And then the next one down was a medium.
I think it was two slots from medium.
And then there was about three or four for large.
It was a bit 10 for extra large and a bit 15 for extra, extra large.
That's sick.
Yeah, yeah.
I tell you something, doesn't it?
But you know, the thing is, when I go shopping, it seems to be the same.
It's, it's, you'll get one medium, one or two mediums.
You're very, very lucky, you might see a small, but it's nearly all mediums.
And what's not all mediums is odd medium, lots of large, even more extra large.
It's exactly like in the factory.
So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's infuriating.
You know, it's, basically if I can get any small sizes at all and they fit,
I just take them regardless because it's a little choice.
Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's quite a thing, isn't it?
Yeah.
Good to see you.
Yeah.
I was happy to find, because I'm a terrible hoarder.
I tend not to throw things away.
Or me too.
I have trousers that I couldn't really comfortably fit in anymore because I put on, you know,
my weight was a bit high and I put them away thinking, well, maybe I'll, oh, yeah.
And they fit me perfectly.
Yeah.
Very good.
So, that was a good move, wasn't it?
Yeah, that was a good move, yeah.
I'll do the very same.
I'm just exactly the same.
But, yeah, on, on that vein, funny, you should say that.
So we were, we were, we were visited, we were on holiday.
We've been, you know, I guess, holly, you do visit more places and do more things.
Our, our, our, have been doing.
And we visited Ikea, which is a, it's a, everyone must know what Ikea is.
Surely.
How do you describe Ikea?
I think it's everywhere, isn't it?
Yeah.
Across the world.
Yeah.
So, so we're going to explain what Ikea is.
So, we went to Ikea and we got a, a unit that, because, uh, message extra.
Oh, well, you know, we could, we could put on these units, uh, underneath the, in the wardrobe,
you know, she was fed up with, um, stuff flying in the bottom of the wardrobe.
And, uh, I was, well, she told me first home about it.
But I've got the same unit once she proposed where I've got my printer and router and
the other species.
I said, oh, you're mad.
That'll never fit.
Well, you, we're talking about it.
Yes, it will try it.
No, it won't.
I took my zoom tape out.
I took my zoom.
It went back to the, the, the wardrobe and, and I couldn't believe it.
It, it, it, it, just fitty.
Oh, could you write it?
That's bad.
My apologies.
You are quite correct.
So, do you know what?
Quite fancy.
One, two.
So, we got two.
And we'll have an awful job.
It just fitty with, you know, about two or three millimeters to spare.
Just squeeze it in.
We've gotten both in.
But anyway, well, while I was, the point I'm making is when I was doing that, I was clearing
out my side of the wardrobe and I came across as big box and I knew I had some missing pieces
in it.
It had a, there was a six.
I think it was six.
Sion, three C's.
The, um, Sion, what they called them are, um, Sion organizers.
Yes.
Sion organizers.
And, and various states have disappeared.
In fact, one of them was just the motherboard and I had a note on it saying that I replaced
it with my existing motherboard back in 2012.
I thought, well, what, what are you saying?
These now.
So, I've now gone from seven Sions down to one.
It's, what, since it's in my bed, the rest got chucked out.
Which one, which one is it that you're, you're talking about the organiser?
Because we, we had them at work.
I think they would, they were made available to us.
We had the ones with a keyboard in a sort of thing that slid up that would come up.
You, you pulled a sort of sheath off and there was a keyboard underneath it.
Was it, was it anything like that?
So, so, the, the, the five, so did I mention?
So the five C's are one where the keyboard comes out a little bit, moves out a little bit.
I, where the three C's are one before that, the, the, the keyboard doesn't come out,
but they, I think the button bar would rotate to something clever happen with the button bar.
I, I prefer the three, I think it was a better size compromise.
I also didn't like the fact that five, the battery lasted a bit a week, where is the three lasted about three or four months, something like that, you know?
Yeah, I had, I was saying earlier, I'm not sure if it, if it got recorded or not.
I was saying that at work, we had some of the original Sions, which was like a sort of calculator shaped thing with a,
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
So maybe you had one or two that we could use in various contexts.
But then we bought for the department, bought for people some of the, the fold up ones.
Right, right.
We had two of them here. I gave one to a guy at, I'll come because he was,
the guy who was really, he did an HBR show on, on refurbishing it and getting it working.
Ah, so remember that.
Is that Sion 3, I can't remember what it was, he's number two out of my head really class.
Yeah, yeah, so there was a three, there was, there was, there was quite a few, there was a three, there was a three C,
but there was a three as well.
But, and I had the, I think it was the two was the one that was like a, it's like the, the, the checker's guide to the galaxy on the TV program,
the slides up. So I think a, a character thing funny enough when I, when I got that,
so when I got that sign to the, the one that's like the character thing that slides up the, at the time prior to that,
I had a tario, a tarade dip, tario, tario dip portfolio, I think it was called,
which was a bit like a sign 3 C was way way before that.
And it, it was an 80, 80 or some sort of PC processor on, on an early version of the dose.
It was rubbish. It kept crashing and losing, and stuff, so you would, you would load contacts into it,
and it would crash and lose everything and had to load it again.
So, and it was quite an expensive thing. I was of 120 pounds, there was a lot of money back then.
And I, I sold that, and I got an old, it was old at the time, an old second hand sign 2,
which was much more basic, much more, much, much cheaper. I mean, it was a fraction of the cost,
and it had, it could only do capital letters, it couldn't do lowercase, or I think, or I was a very primitive display.
And I thought it was going to be rubbish, and I discovered it was fantastic, and it never, ever crashed, never, ever lost a bit of information.
So, you know, it shows you that the software that goes with the device, it is, as an important, if not more important,
than the actual hardware, Atari was really sophisticated, but it was rubbish,
where the, the, the sign software was just so good. And of course, all the sign software was, I thought, was, to affect, you know, very, very clever.
Yeah, I just checked actually, and the one I had was a, was a five, a five.
I think they were kind of forced to take that route, because of the pressure from Microsoft, because they were coming out with their windows,
was a windows CE machine or something like that, which I believe that Bill Gates had said to one of the team, you know,
when, when the 3C came out, they had the kind of, because if they'd fold the keyboard at some degree,
they said, well, you know, I did not do that, because we thought it didn't think it was possible, was the answer.
But in respect, they were, maybe two clever, because all the 3C's, everyone I've got, has got a broken hinge, they all failed eventually.
That's what happened to the, the five, one of the five's I have.
Yeah, yeah.
The, I just kept it for spares, and that sort of stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, because the screen just, is killed, because the, yeah, the ribbon cable between the,
right, the main, the screen here gets, gets destroyed.
Yeah, that, that, that, that's what happened. I had, I got a Nokia N8, 10,
Clatu had one as well.
I loved it.
Lovely, we'd device.
And if I, I think it ran the simbine or a variant of the simbine operating system, which was what the sion ran, I believe.
I think I could be wrong.
No, I'm, I'm, I'm, maybe I'm confused about that.
But anyway, you know, you could SSH from SSH, SSH, SSH into it.
So, I could SSH into my server or whatever and start and stop my podcast.
Which is how I used to do things.
But it's slid in and out the keyboard.
And of course, I've actually, there have been cable in it failed.
And I, I looked at, I, I, I, I, I, I, I looked at, I, I, I, I, I, I, I looked at, I, I, I, I, I looked at, I, I, I, I, I looked at, I, I, I, I looked at, I, I, I looked at, I, I looked at, I, I looked at, I, I looked at, I, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at, I looked at,
Where there was a Nokia on the little hinge open devices, which is really sort of an organisation.
A caramel in which what model it was. It wasn't a phone.
Then there's a record anyway.
It wasn't one of those. It is a flat it is a flat a thin flat tab, maybe there's a bit that hasn't been cut.
A knot creation. possible.
A knot cushion is quite small anyway.
A knot. A knot. That's quite small anyway.
A knot. That's quite small anyway.
And you've got the keyboard under and you slide it forward.
and so the screen goes forward and it shows that the keyboard flat, keyboard underneath.
So it's almost like two halves and one slides up sort of thing. And yeah, they say you could,
you know, you could run, I'm sure they've done some of this at Linux on it, and it was,
you could SSH in and out of it sort of thing. And yeah, it was, it was, I was very sad when that,
but it was, it was, because it used a stylus to take the stylus outside and touch it to control things.
So to launch the terminal program, for example, you needed to use a stylus and when that's
not working, it made it difficult. And then I just thought, well, there's no point. I just
could just keep up on the thing, unfortunately, you know? Yeah, yeah, there were some nice devices
around them in those sort of times. And there was a determined effort to get rid of keyboards,
wasn't everyone had to go touch screen. And then what broke the mold, of course, was a triple EPC,
with a small laptop, yeah, laptop, which I've got mine. Yeah, me too, me too. I've got a,
what was it? 1100 or something? Is it? Yeah, yeah, it's in a bag through in the other room,
actually. I was saying, people talking about putting BSD on things. I've always wondered about
playing with BSD and Claudio Miranda, who's, you know, him, he does stuff on BSD from time to time.
He has a triple EPC and he put one of the BSD flavours on it. So I was thinking that would be
quite cool to play with. Yeah, well, the, I've been very, I did, at the time when I got the thing,
I did a few tweaks and changes to it and whatnot. But I kept the original Linux, it was on the
triple EPC. I did see different versions and there's a kind of Ubuntu version. There's a whole
slew different versions, I think, and it's heyday. But the thing I didn't like about it is the boot
times were so much slower than the original one, because it boots really quickly. And for my
use to, to use it to control audio playing and all that, I wanted to come up quick, quickly.
Yeah. So I just kept, I kept it so still, the only, the only thing I use it for is occasionally
to, to SSH into my, my PI, to, to move us a track up or down or delete something or, you know,
but I don't use it terribly often, but that's all I use it for. But even for that, it's immensely
useful, you know, so. Yeah, yeah, the, I'm as, I'm as good wake up my triple EPC, actually,
now you said, said that, it, it would be, I actually installed CrunchBang. Oh, that's right, CrunchBang,
yes. That's right. Beautifully on there. It was really, really nice. All right, right. And there
was a point, after I retired, I set up a small business of doing a bit of consultancy work. And
I ended up doing a few, few consultancy jobs back at my, my old piece of work, which just seems
a bit strange to me. Anyway, and I used to use that as my sort of portable, I didn't have four
size laptop, but it was quite adequate for taking to the site and then plug in a monitor into it.
Absolutely. And possibly even plug in a key, a separate keyboard into it. Yeah, yeah. And then,
you know, it's not the most powerful thing in the world, but then for doing a bit of editing of
something locally and then dropping it on to the client's system. Of course, absolutely,
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the battery in mind is completely good. If I'm plug it,
I think it turns off a little bit, 30 seconds. It's so bad, the battery now. But it's always,
it's always on, on, on mains, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's very, very usable. It's,
it's a real shame. And I remember that CrunchBang. That's right. But I think that was going to be the one
that I was thinking most to put on the triplet PC ever in the end end. I'm not doing it. That's
forgotten about that. I miss CrunchBang, I must admit. I think I had that one in my little app
tops as well, though. Yeah. Oh, it was great. I was very, very sad when it, when it disappeared.
That was Philip Newborough who did. Right. Of course.
And a few HPR shows for us in the past. Yeah. So yeah, he's, but you know, life gets in a way.
Of course. Of course. Of course it is. Yeah. Not in time itself. I think, but he, you know, a lot
on his shoulders. Yeah. Of course. Of course. No. Full and, no, absolutely not. Full and
sandable. Yeah. Yeah. It's a shame. So yeah. So we're, we're, we're, we've not really got
through very many of our topics. Yeah. So we want to go one minute. I'm not quite sure.
Half, half of number two, we've written down Sion and, and stuff on that one. So we sort of
done some of it. Done a bit of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I'm, I'm just getting
messages from my son. So I got telegram on this machine with the sound turned off.
He's, he's in Barcelona at the moment with his girlfriend. All right. And he just said,
I was too hot. 31 degrees here. 70% humidity. Wow. Wow.
Wow. We'll be back in Scotland again.
Well, I think, I think I think I'd, I'd, I'd rather have the heat myself at the end.
Yeah. I love the heat. I'm just, I think I've seen before I was born in the wrong country. I'm
always flimming cold. Well, actually, we were driving to the, when we were driving to the,
um, the market yesterday, uh, I was sent to the, to the MSX. So my, my hands have gone cold again,
because I think what happens is when it gets below certain temperature and it's not that cool,
it's still quite warm. Then the, the blood flow must stop. My, my hands go cold. Um, I think I've
got quite bad circulation in my hands. Uh, so the rest of them can be fine, but my hands just get
cold. Yeah, it's, it's, it's strange. It, uh, it happens. I, I go for a periodic, uh, blood test
and, uh, they just take a, you know, a pinprick and take a drop of blood to do it, but they,
they check my hand temperature. And sometimes I go in there and say, we had to be cold. You
should need to just warm them up with it for we can reliably, uh, get the drop of blood that
is needed by the, by the machine. So it's right. Right. It happens. It happens. I don't know quite
what I do. Yeah. Thank you. I meant to see what, what, you mentioned telegram. I mean, I've heard
it shows you how I don't do any social, uh, type stuff, but what, what, what, what actually,
I've had obviously heard telegram of what I actually, can you describe a telegram, actually,
is I, how, I might not know, not know what telegram is. Well, it's, it's, um, it's a social network
and it is a, it's really a messaging app, which you can, you can join, um, for, for free,
and you can make your own groupings. We, we have a family, uh, channel that, uh, both my kids and
the sounds go friend drone and myself. And we, we, we, we, you know, it, I just switched one of these
things. It's like, like, the whole, the whole host of these things, of course, yeah. It's like,
made tricks. It's like, uh, WhatsApp. It's like, it's like all these, these things. Yeah. Like,
we moved away from WhatsApp to telegram. All right. Because we, we, we just didn't like the whole
WhatsApp thing. That's owned by Facebook, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I can understand that.
Yes. It's a, I mean, I do use WhatsApp, but I understand where you're coming from.
But it does the same sort of thing. You can send pictures over it and you can send audio,
you can send video and all that sort of stuff. So, and I've got it on both. I've got two phones,
I've got an old smartphone and a OnePlus one, which I use for podcasts, but I've got Telegram
running on that. And my newer phone on there as well. So, so when I get a message,
it goes to my phone and the phones think, oh, we better tell him that guy on that on the
desktop over there. So I get pop-ups from that. Right, right. It's amazing. KD,
which does that. Oh, yes. So I get told the phones bleep the messages pop-ups. I don't miss much.
I want to. No, no, no. Well, it's better that than missing something absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, Telegram's pretty good. I don't know any particular
downsides. I don't know. Is it, is it run out of Russia? I'm not sure. Is it? Oh, I don't know.
I don't actually know the details of it. No, no. I've had people mention it. Yeah,
nothing about it. So it's, it's, I'm doing a thing I usually bow not to do, which is there's an app.
I'm using the app because it gives me what I need to be able to talk to my family who are not
going to be on matrix at the time. And I don't want to be on Facebook. And, you know, but,
but quite what the, the, the background of it all is, I've sort of ignored, I guess.
Maybe I'll be looking in Wikipedia, but I'll see what they say about it.
Yeah. Yeah. I've been avoiding doing that in case it says don't use it.
I do, I do, I do, I do really like Wikipedia. It's such an invaluable resource, you know, it's
and I've tried to make sure I give them something at the towards Christmas time sort of thing,
because yeah, it's one of the worthy projects out there that you really feel you want to
want to help out. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That one on the Internet Archive.
Oh, yes, it's an archive. Yes, yes, good point, very good point. Absolutely. Yes, yes, of course.
Yeah. So, do you think, because we've been going now for about an hour in real time,
we'll probably hopefully be somewhat sure to, and we make the, the final recording, but not
of our slot, I suspect. So, do you feel that maybe now is the time to, yeah, to, to wind down?
I think, I think it probably is before, before all the lessons fall asleep, so I think I
have to go over the first place because it's a bit like the, the new year show.
Oh, I'm going to do like those. There's a bazillion things to talk about, which, you know, which is,
which, oh, yeah, I enjoy them, and obviously they haven't, haven't heard the latest one.
No, no, no, yeah, all right, depending on my student, I'm way behind, I'm way behind, I think
because of the whole day and all that. Yes, I take it, I don't know, who is it that I should
usually know? Who is it that's responsible for pulling all, pulling it together and getting
the show, other, I think you should have, obviously, but who, who pulls the, the actual,
new year shows together sort of thing? Well, it used to be Ken, and I sometimes did a bit
towards it and stuff, but there's a guy called Honky McGoo, who does some, he's a bit of stuff,
he also runs a podcast called Linux Logcast, and he was very keen that this should continue,
and Scott behind making it so every year, and he takes on board the whole audio and does the
editing on that. This year, he had a helper to come and help him with the notes, the notes that
go with it are amazingly good, really, really good. The guy who goes by the handle, HP Lovecraft,
he, he, he, he, he, he, he was obviously listened to everything that was said, and I went and
looked up the links for it and stuff, so it's absolutely full, really, really good links.
So, it's incredible. Yeah, I love to listen to the new year shows. I kind of forgot about it,
and obviously, I mean, I don't know what, it must take a heck of a lot of work to pull together,
and what else, because I'm sure do we not normally like myself, I'm snowed under these days,
I'm, I've not been able to post any shows, but I'm guessing this is the, the, the new year shows
were a wee bit later this year, so maybe things have got difficult for people, you know, and
understand the bristle. I think they're on the ground about the same time this year,
I think it takes Honky a fair bit to, to, you know, obviously,
interle� you, all these other, other work and stuff, but of course, of course, you know,
we applaud him enormously for doing it. Absolutely. So, yeah, it's usually, I think the joke was,
oh, it's, it's August, it's time for the new year show.
I don't know who made it to, but somebody did it. Yeah, yeah, so anyway, it's, it's terrific, and
really, really enjoy it when it comes, it comes out, so I'm looking forward to getting the next one.
I'm actually, I'm, I'm listening to, I'm on 3, 6, 6, 8 at the moment, so I've still got a wee bit
to go. I'm, yeah, I know, I'm way behind the podcast, it's, it's a, it's a nightmare trying to
keep up with them, and I don't want to drop any, because I'm enjoying the ball, but, but, yeah,
oh well, just turn up the speed until I can manage the shows too, wasn't,
yeah, right, so, I suppose, thank you very much, it's lovely to, to chat again, we missed,
we do it again, because I'm done when, yes, and we look forward to it.
The year has moved on, and we're, and you're not too busy, once you get back to work. No,
let's hope that, I think, things get a bit, become a bit more sane, because it feels like
things have not been seen for a long time. Yeah, oh absolutely, yes, yes, we could, we don't
want to go off on that subject. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, because that, that's, it's another
three hours, and that one, that's absolutely, that's really good. So thank you very much,
and goodbye to everybody, and don't forget to listen to Hacker, public, radio, everybody, bye.
Bye. Hi everyone, Dave here. I'm just adding this bit of audio to introduce the post script
of this show, which is the recording of Music Of The Sion series 3C that Mr. Xenmy. I have
noted the details in the show notes, so, enjoy.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work. Today's show was
contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording podcasts,
you click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hosting for HBR has been
kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive, and our syncs.net. On this
otherwise status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
License.
