Episode: 4258
Title: HPR4258: Introduction and History of Using Computers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4258/hpr4258.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:09:00

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4258 for Wednesday, the 27th of November 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Introduction and History of Using Computers.
It is the first show by Newhost Solus Spider, and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Introducing myself to the HPR community and going through my timeline
of computer usage.
Greetings and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Peter Patterson, also known as Solus Spider, a Scotsman living in Kentucky,
USA.
This is my first HPR recording, and I thought I would start with an introduction and my
history of using computers.
I am recording this on a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra for running Android 14.
The software is audio recorder, but acts it, installed from FDroid, recorded to Og format.
Before I dive into these subjects, I let a thank a few HPR hosts for the encouragement
for me to get involved.
Although I knew of HPR via various contacts, I had only really listened to a few episodes
over the last few years.
Early this month, Mark Rice, aka Archers 72, was involved in a car accident here in
Kentucky.
Although we've been talking for about a year and mastered on, and he living 13 miles
away, it took his accident for us to get together.
We first met in person on Tuesday the 5th of November, in this University of Kentucky
hospital trauma ward room.
Our last couple of meets have been at Cardinal Hill rehab hospital.
He is the main person that encouraged me to record the HPR, thank you Mark.
Others were, Dave Lee aka the Lovebug, Kevin aka Kevin, and his son Alexander aka Locky
Boy.
I was born in Elgin Scotland in 1967 and lived there until moving away in my 20s.
My history with computers starts with me receiving an Ulrich 1 16k for Christmas 1983.
I upgraded to the Ulrich 1 48k and then to the Ulrich Atmos.
I loved learning basic programming, typing in programs from magazines.
During the 80s I owned and used many other 8bit computers, the Dragon 32, Atari 800 XL,
and 400, 8 Corner Electron, Amstrad PCW 8256 and PCW 8512, although they were actually
my parents' use for business.
Enterprise 128, my pride and joy which I only gave away in 2022.
In 1992 I moved to Aberdeen Scotland for work for Comma Electrical.
I purchased an Omega 1200 which I upgraded for hard drive and also owned an Omega CDTB.
I still have the 1200 but has not been powered up in way over a decade.
In 1997 I purchased an AST PC running Windows 95.
The plan was to get online and study with the Open University.
However, I realised I could not afford both the PC and course payments so that study
never happened.
I really enjoyed being online, meeting people from all over the world, mostly in IRC and
news groups.
Since I was in Britain I had to be careful of phone charges to try to keep my access
to the weekend and nights.
In September 1997 I met my future wife on IRC.
Her name is Arianna and was living here in Lexington, Kentucky.
We chatted mostly via email and ICQ and in October 1998 she visited me in Scotland for
three weeks.
At the start of the third week I proposed to Arianna at a Queen's view locked her
mole put lockery.
For some really strange reason she said yes.
I applied for Immigration to the USA and was granted a K1 visa, usually known as a
Fionce visa.
In May 1999 I flew out of Glasgow Airport and landed in New York Airport, New Jersey.
Before moving to USA I was given the title and responsibility as an official host for the
MSN network, sci-fi area, looking after IRC and news groups, Arianna also chatted in
the sci-fi groups.
Arianna and I were married in Paris, Kentucky, in June 1999.
Most of our wedding guests were all over the USA that we knew from MSN, that was such a
great time.
I received my work permit and started working with God's Pantry Food Bank in July 1999,
the day after a honeymoon.
I'm so kindly employed by the Food Bank and that could be a whole HBR episode by itself.
I had to share online access with Arianna for a while using her Gateway PC running Windows
98.
So when our first year together, a manager at work actually gave me his Gateway PC, so
we now had both online access at the same time.
So I continued using Windows for quite a few years, getting into communities such as other
sci-fi areas, Christian groups and the virtual avatar world's second life.
Arianna and I were very active in second life for over a decade in the Elf Circle group,
and even rented land on an island to make us home.
At the Food Bank I assisted with IT, maintaining the simple HTML-only website, and setting up
new users.
God's Pantry did have a contract with an IT company for support, but I became the man
on the ground, so to speak.
As we grew the responsibility, I got much more involved to the point where we hired a
full-time IT person.
I really did not want that job, as I was enjoying other duties I had, including purchasing
and reporting.
These days we have two full-time IT persons, and it would not surprise me if we hire a
fraud in the next few years.
About 2007, I started experimenting with Linux Live CDs.
Like many, I started off with nobics, but soon discovered Linux Mint.
In 2008, I installed Linux Mint as a dual boot on my PC, Loving the Exploration.
Recent Linux brought me back to the fine I used to have with my Amiga.
For Christmas 2008, my mom sent me a season 1 of Star Trek, the next generation on DVD.
With her being in Britain, I discovered that it was coded Region 2, USA was Region 1.
I really didn't want to change the settings on our DVD player, so I tried a disk on the
Windows machine, and of course it didn't work.
On a whim, I booted it until an experiment and tried, it worked great on BLC.
This was a turning point for me, and I soon moved fully over to Linux Mint, scrubbing
Windows off the PC.
In September 2016, I discovered Solus.
Posted out a live CD, and really liked what I experienced, especially the Budgie Desktop.
So after 8 years of running Linux Mint, and by the way for years I run the Linux Mint
Facebook group, I switched my PC over to seal Solus.
Back then I trotted a lot of Ikea Dark Endority to the point where I would call him a friend.
These days he is working with others on Serpent OS, and I've been following that progress
mostly on Matrix.
He and I kinda almost met.
In 2018 I informed Ikea that my wife and I would be touring Ireland, and we'd plan
stopping by at Tullymore to visit.
Well, he moved to England just before then, but we did visit the area and enjoyed the
town.
At the start of 2019 I was approached by Rocco, aka Big Daddy.
He asked me to be part of a group of Linux users discussing Linux together in the live
video show, broadcast on YouTube.
That's how I got started with the Big Daddy Linux live, and was part of the show for
a few years.
These days the legacy continues with Nathan Wolf, aka Cubicle Nate, and Linux Saloon.
Biddle, BDD, sorry, BDLL, as it was short name to discuss many Linux distributions
and software.
One distro was PC Linux OS.
I really enjoyed that explanation, and about that time I met Alistar Isart, aka Present
Arms, a really good friend.
Alim maintains the truncidestoc version of PC Linux OS, and I had it running on a laptop
for a few years.
In January 2023, Solus experience and infrastructure outage was lasted until April.
About March, I realised that I was not receiving any security updates.
Just that month before I started volunteer work with a company called Mission Assist,
Handling Confidential Documents, and knew that I had to do something.
So I took the step of scrubbing solders from my system 76 failure desktop and installed
PC Linux KDE Plasma instead.
In May 2023, Elena and I gave me her Razer 15 laptop to which I installed Solus Budgie.
That is the current systems I am running.
Fact about me, the touch jam podcast guys, Kevin, Andrew, Dave and Al, call me this superfan.
Mostly because I have listened to every published episode, including the Uncat feeds.
The easiest way for people to contact me is either through Telegram or Macedon.
On Telegram, the address is t.me forward slash Solus Spider, as t.me forward slash Solus Spider.
On Macedon, I am at Solus Spider at linuxrox.online.
I look forward to your comments on this site and any questions you may have.
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 podcast, 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 the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
License.
