Episode: 3879
Title: HPR3879: HPR at Hillend
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3879/hpr3879.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 07:13:56

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3879 for Thursday the 15th of June 2023.
Today's show is entitled HPR at Hill End.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 46 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is Mr. X and Dave Morris have lunch and record a chat.
Hello everybody and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
This is another one in the chat session series between myself and Mr. X. Mr. X is like
Hello everybody, we are all well.
I just had a lovely meal of us here, scamping chips and some peas that was our honey sweet
cheats today and you had?
I had fish and chips.
It was a pretty good food.
It was good.
Originally we were just going to have a light brunch when we came here but we were tempted
by the menu and we went for it so it was very nice.
So we got a list of things that we want to touch upon so we will have a go up there.
Of course.
I'm talking about chatting the first thing on the list.
Yes, well I put chat GPT on the list because it's pretty much a hot topic.
I'm not sure that I have a huge lot to say about it except that I'm not actually used
it per se.
My son's heavily into it because that's his area of work working for the bank that he
works for.
But I know that you miss the acts of you being using it a lot a bit, not a huge amount
but it is quite impressive but we've actually, I've gone over to the dark side and it was
more, I got an offer that I couldn't really refuse to speak and I've now got an iPhone
to offer it for about a year or something like that and of course you can link that.
There's like shortcuts that you can link to chat GPT and you can ask it to respond
them and what not.
I've been using it for various things, one of the things we go dog walks and what not
and I might say to you know, tell me the history of such and such you know and for example
we were at Muscleboro Harbour and I was an area local to hear and asked what's the history
of time of the history of Muscleboro Harbour and it started with a spiel you know and Muscleboro
Harbour was one of the earliest oldest Harbards in Scotland and the 17th century was used
for blah, blah, blah, blah and then developed into this and blah, blah, blah, blah.
It was like having a virtual guided tour of Muscleboro, that's as fast as it is.
You know, we've used it in various places we've been to, it doesn't seem to know very
much about the setting though, I did try it one more time.
Given that it has to go and find this stuff and he's probably a bit out of date with all this
information, doesn't it because I don't know when it snapshots where we don't.
There was a 20 or one or something like that, I mean, just one thing, something like that you know.
This is the place we've just had lunch at is quite an old place I think, isn't it?
It's physically old but and it's been around for a fair number of years in my knowledge.
Yeah, it's quite handy because obviously you like to take your fuller companion with you
so that's all I know, and it's pleased to drop off after you've been a nice walk at the
Helen ski slope over there. We're in a sort of quite popular walking area and skig,
we're near the ski slope. Yeah, as we've been supposed to slope, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I've done for fun, tried it, I asked a couple of questions right up
a python script to do such and such and came back with the root python script for various things
and I tried and it's quite impressive what it can do. But I think on one of my upcoming shows
I gave links to, there was a TED talk where the inventor of the thing basically talked about the
history of it and how it came about and whatnot, so it's got worth a watch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've not done that myself yet but I definitely need to research a bit more
come to understand it a bit more. I mean, there's lots of talk about it being a worrying move towards
AI but it still think GPD is the thing. Maybe the thinking behind artificial intelligence
potentially has problems but I'm not sure that they're very clear at the moment.
Yeah, that's a set, well, I think the the inventor of a second of the chapter name,
but he basically said, you know, the way he saw and I don't know whether it's necessary
valid or not, but he was saying, well, there's no point peering off forever in case it does
something bad, you know, you basically just keep an eye on it and if something goes wrong,
then you're you're active. It's better that you start to sooner and keep a tablet rather than
keeping it under lock. Yes, and then suddenly this super duper thing comes out and I've got no
control of it sort of thing. So that was halal argument, but whether that, yeah, I don't I don't know.
I've heard those sorts of arguments too that, you know, it needs to be monitored and considered
carefully, but I mean, it's going to happen whether we want it to or not, so it's good to do it
or in the light of day and watch what's happening. There was a video I was showing my mother last night
actually and it was there's an app you can get it's called Annie, I think it's called Annie and
or call Annie and it's available on on I don't know if it's available on Android, but it's available on
there's probably some or ones on Android, but it's available on Apple and Apple Store and it
basically get an avatar and it the head moves and blinks and whatnot and there was a video
that chap speaking to it and it's it spawns much quicker than I don't know how to do it, but it
spawns pretty quick and so it sounds quite fluent and the chap was just having a conversation,
you know, what do you like? Oh, I've got hobbies, hobbies, all I play games, what games do you play?
Well, I play these kind of games. Do you like these kind of games? Yeah, I quite like these kind of
games. How do you find them? It's like a two-way conversation. I mean, it was just astounding,
you know, it's very natural. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, but it's an impressive engine which is filled
with human knowledge and also human modes of thinking and speaking. So it's not too surprising.
Considering that the original Eliza, the thing written in Lisp way back in the 1970s or before,
convinced a lot of people that it was sent in, that they were talking to a real person.
This is way, way, way more convincing than that. It's not too surprising that we're
easily convinced by it, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it certainly was. I'll play with
definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My only worry is that bothers me for the future is how it could
be subverted to spread misinformation. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because you get on mass,
like, huge amounts of information that's all rubbish and it's fun, fun enough. It's slightly
cut, maybe because it controversial in your viewpoint, but my father-in-law, a member of my family,
it's had a view about the population and it's a commonly held view, certain countries having
a large population and near to blame, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I have given them before reasons
why it's not as black and white as that. And of course, I was showing on this chat GBD thing and
I said, oh, well, look, there are talks about population. Why are you asking that? I'll do that
then. So, just what would you want to say? Why is it when they talk about a capitalist climate
issue? Why did they never bring up a population? And it came up with a several point thing about why
population is not really the most important reason. And by the time it's, oh, that's, oh, you
can see that. So, it convinced them. I couldn't convince them, but chat GBD was now able to convince
or yeah, he said, yeah, probably just knew what the force was good, but hopefully that was
that was proper information. Yeah, people love it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I was asking about
Massabot, for example, it could have been a Lord of all rubbish. It may have been all this
harbour and, yeah, you've got to check these. Yeah, absolutely. So, thank you. Putting too much
belief into it is a dangerous thing. So, yeah, but that's the future. So, we'll leave that
topic, I guess. It's going to come up again no day. You were mentioning your use of audacity,
you have any problems with it? So, I was asking, first of all, what the fourth version was,
I knew there was a fourth version, and I know there was slight concern in some quarters about
having seen data and all that. And that, these as I tend to be a bit of a pragmatist,
and I don't just know, bother too much about it. I knew it was quite a lot, so I just
carried on using audacity. And obviously, things certainly changed over time, and they've changed
the file format that audacity uses and other bits and pieces. And what I've been finding recently
is that at some point during the last couple of shows, it's been mixing the show down into one flat
track, generally almost at the end of the process. So, I'll lose my project, which,
thankfully, I'm at the end, so it doesn't matter, but it's kind of annoying. So, that's the first
thing that I've kind of worked at. It's not, it's not, I'm not quite sure why it's doing this, but
I seem to have lost my project on the other flat track, which I know can't move and sit,
you know, they can't change things, which is annoying. And then, what's the other thing now?
So, I'm going to ask you what you used. Oh, that was it. So, I noticed that a number of my
shows, maybe the last couple have been a bit distorted, but hot, you know, as if the audio's a bit
on a loud side. And I thought, hmm, it's just something to do with this audacity thing. And I had
to listen to my, well, listen to the MP3, I generally had an MP3 and just try it, listen to it
through first. And then, once I'm happy, I write a flat out, which I don't review, and I send it
to HPR. And after a second, when I went back and I listened to MP3 and it seemed okay,
and I listened to the flat, which I sent to HPR, and it was also okay. So, I can't understand why
well, last couple of shows have been a bit distorted. So, I don't know if there's been
different leveling or something has happened recently. Yeah, it's hard for me to comment, I think,
because I'm probably on a different version to you, because I run devian testing.
Right. So, I'm on devian bookworm at the moment, and all of the stuff that comes with it,
bookworm's not officially released yet. So, I seem to be on an audacity 3.2.4,
which you may not be. But I did notice the changes. It now seems to be doing more work to
keep the state of what you're doing. So, if things crash that you can get back to them more easily,
I think. Because it seems to be writing a temporary file while it's running. I tend to use audacity
in one monitor and have dolphin open in the other one, right? Just because it's easy to see all the
files that belong to what I'm doing. And so, I noticed that their files pop in up, and then they
vanish as I shut it down and stuff. So, there is that.
Something to do with that, that's maybe combining the project. But I still don't know why it's
also, and it's not like, because I saved the number, obviously, when I'm creating a project,
I must save it multiple times. And I can't remember when I generate the flag or the MPT,
but at some point, it flattens the file, and I lose the project. I don't see that, but that's because
as I start up the thing, I wrote to you that I use my zoom H2N, which is what we're recording on now.
And it tends to produce a fairly low level. I'm not sure if I've got the gain wrong or something
on it, but it doesn't pick up everything that's been said very clearly. So, one of the first things
I do is to noise reduce it, then I amplify it, and then I merge the audio into mono.
But there's a zoom recording there, doesn't it?
Yeah, you can see it's got the left and right.
Yeah, I just recorded mono stuff, things. So, yeah.
So, there's not, and then at the end, I export to Flak.
But you might only have one track anyway. I tend to have two tracks cause, well, I historically started,
I historically added my theme tuney bit at the beginning, which I don't think anyone really
does anymore, but I've just never removed it. And so, therefore, I need the two tracks so I can
blend it in. And as I said, the last two shows this flattened it out.
Yeah. So, as you say, I only have one track. I'm confusing track and mono stereo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Not the last ones, but it's not quite too true.
Unless you have multiple tracks, you won't see that.
Yeah, I don't think I've had to do that much in recent times.
I've done that where I've merged other people's bits and bits from other
different shows and things, but I haven't done that recently.
But what about the starting thing, you know, it seems to be fine, as far as I can.
I know I've had issues with the volume control, been a bit sensitive, the recording level,
been a bit sensitive, and the volume setting in Ubuntu.
But as I see the fact that it's, and I assumed I've set the volume too high,
then we're not sent it back at this point. I don't want to get to the bottom of that.
I'd expect a bit more of that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's changed.
We can talk offline about this. I'm happy to try stuff out if that would help you too.
Maybe to drop it a bit more, give us a bit more headdreams so that it doesn't
just go with that, and I'll be with you.
Yeah, and I said, when I was writing to you about this, I tried tenacity, but I couldn't see
what advantage it had over audacity and it seemed that all the fuss about audacity,
monitoring stuff seemed to vanish. I don't think it was quite as...
A bit of a half-t, a bit of a fail format with the tenacity.
It's now saves it in a different format, because it used to create a folder,
a separate data file. I think it was a whole series of data files in the folder,
but it's now just one file.
I'll still get the multi-files.
No, I just got one file on that, so.
Maybe we'll next see me upgrade. You'll get that, maybe.
Strange and magical things going on here.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, well we'll come back to that one if needs to be another point.
What was next subject?
We were going to talk about some sort of COVID-related thing with this guy called Dr. John Campbell.
Dr. John Campbell, aye, aye.
Because you were asking me.
My mother was actually asking me, would you think that that's as well?
I said, I haven't really been lasting time watching them very much recently.
So Dr. John Campbell, you're with him, would be explained.
Well, he's a YouTuber, and he has been producing YouTube stuff quite a long time.
He's a nurse educator, and he's got a doctorate of some kind in education for nursing.
And he's done quite a lot of YouTube stuff relating to that subject.
Yeah, and I'm teaching nurses stuff.
I can't remember I came across him before you mentioned it to me.
I may have done, and I think you actually recommended them to other people as well.
Yeah, and there was a lot of use flintest and stuff he was giving to you today at the beginning of the year.
He was doing some really great shows almost on a daily basis,
where he was looking at the state of knowledge on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 and stuff.
And, you know, the spread of the disease and explaining what viruses weren't explaining about vaccine.
He seemed to be producing some amazing stuff, yeah.
Amazingly high quality stuff.
I definitely recommended him at that particular point.
But then he seems to have gone off the rails strangely enough.
And he, as time went on, I'm not sure exactly when he started doing this,
but he was quite keen on the idea of using either Mectin,
which has been pretty much categorically proved not to be effective in regard to.
I mean, people do take either Mectin for parasites.
It's a recommended thing.
I think the site could use, you actually sent me a link to a chat who debunks things.
And he said in that video, which I watched this morning,
that at that point, because he would be looking at the view counts of John's videos.
And he had shot up at that point.
Yeah, yeah.
And he had said it, it was bubbling a lot.
So he's been working.
That was very instantly.
He showed a video of him when he was much younger.
And the numbers of views were been low for a long time.
And then Covid struck.
And he got a huge upsurge.
And obviously, if you start this,
the implication was he may have been making about money from this.
And then, of course, it dropped a lot.
And then this thing picked up again.
And maybe whether that's going to do with it.
Well, yes, certainly the comments about it.
And there have been lots of comments from the world of science and
biology and stuff saying that this guy is milking the system.
And he's not being honest.
Basically, he's gone well off the rails.
And he was pushing Ivermectin.
He was pushing Vitamin D.
I'm still not quite clear where that stands.
I don't see any particular evidence that that helps.
And although it's good to be taking Vitamin D,
especially if you live in the north as we do during the winter.
Right in the sun.
A bit more, maybe.
But he also had a thing about excess deaths,
which is another one of these conspiracy.
That's one of the things that my mother picked up on, which had been worse.
And if you think of that,
I said, well, I haven't been watching it.
But I mean, the point I was making without looking at it at all,
is it even if there's some link to some degree,
the point is that the vaccination has saved far, far more lives
than it could possibly have in any way affected.
And so, yeah, it's,
yeah, I've never got one yet.
I guess we'll put some links into this other YouTube channel called
Debunk, The Funk with Dr. Wilson,
who's a molecular biologist and does some pretty,
pretty powerful stuff.
And he has done several shows on why John Campbell is wrong.
So we'll put that in the notes and you can maybe go and have a look.
Well, I'll watch it.
Yeah, yeah.
And John really enjoyed the match.
Yeah, he's doing some really good work.
I think he's a very interesting guy to listen to.
I was going to, I was just about to watch the one about face masks
because I've just recently heard something on the local,
I think it was BBC Radio Scotland and they were,
they sometimes bring in people that,
they don't challenge them and they've clearly got agendas and you think,
you know, it's obviously a face mask is going to have an impact.
To some degree, you know, I suppose a thing is that Covid has become more and more transmissible
and that's a thing, it's so transmissible.
It's, yeah, yeah, the transmissibility has, I don't know how much it's varied,
it's certainly airborne and it's been transmissible to quite an incredible degree.
Although not in the way that we were, we were led to believe,
at least the guess is worse than it would, you could easily pick it up off,
off surfaces and stuff, stuff about washing your vegetables and your milk.
But I mean, it's definitely born from the supermarket was, you know,
it was a good idea at the time, but it doesn't prove to be particular,
yeah, particularly true, but airborne spread is definitely happening, you know,
big time. So it's, yeah, it's, it's been fascinating watching it.
I think it's because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's as a speed of a spread, it's a,
it's a, it's how quickly the person who's infected can then re-transmit it, is that
or what, what makes Covid so?
Yes, yes, I think so. I think if you have it and you're asymptomatic,
which is one possibility, yeah, but you can still spread it,
yeah, then anybody you're in contact with will.
And that's, and that's, it's not the deadliness of it, it's how fast it can transmit.
And that, and, and that's why anything you do to slow the increase is so important.
And that's why face masks and that stops overwhelming the health service.
And that's, that's the crux of it, isn't it, so.
And I mean, now things have changed because the majority of people have been vaccinated.
And therefore, if they get it, it doesn't prevent infection.
Having the vaccine does not prevent infection. It prevents diseases.
And that's what most vaccines do, you know, so it's still spreadable.
You could have it after being vaccinated, be, not even have symptoms,
or have mild symptoms, but you're still spreading the damn thing.
Yeah. And, you know, if anybody else who couldn't have a vaccine, say,
who's immunocompromised, gets it, then that could kill him.
Yeah. And we have, I have a member of the family who has made that choice.
And of course, I guess everyone who is a human nature that, if you have a belief,
if you see or hear something, it's ten things that I believe so much.
So, of course, they've been, say, watching GB news.
And of course, that's one of the debunking things that they can bring up a bit of GB news,
other things that they've been saying is just a choice.
There are many, many channels of misinformation, which, you know,
for all manner of reasons, for money at the bottom.
Yeah. Yeah.
The bottom line, I think, absolutely. Yeah, yes.
So, okay, so that was really just something that had come to light.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it really bothered me that somebody who I'd been admiring in his work he'd done,
although I'd actually stopped watching him for quite his last years,
sometimes, because he seemed to be talking, talking a hand degree of money.
This is the thing that, for my mother, asked me about it.
I said, well, I don't really know what to say.
I mean, I watched a little bits of it, but I actually spent a time dig into it.
It sounds plausible.
Yeah.
But on the other hand, I'm stuck.
Is she somebody who's built a degree of trust?
Yeah, yeah.
And I was thinking, well, even if it is, what I say to my mother at the time,
I said, even if this is a case, if some of these x-ays,
deaths, we're down to, which it doesn't prove a bit listening to somebody who knows,
who would have talked about that debunking person, but even if it was,
the number of people that it could possibly affect would be far smaller than the people
that it has saved.
And any education that you take has a risk.
Yeah, of course.
So, you think, well, what I'm, I'm a safer, you know,
walking off this plank of wood about 100-foot cliff,
or not better staying where I am, or you're better staying,
yes, it's all blue and obvious.
So, it's all through a better probability, you know,
whatever choices you make in life, you know.
But when the species are very bad at judging relative risk and things,
especially when things have got complicated,
they did with, you know, in terms of the science and all the other things that we've seen.
So, it's still a huge, huge, huge subject that's, you know,
information is being gathered about it all the time.
And, but the misunderstandings are still growing, I think,
because there's also tons and tons of misinformation getting spread.
Yes, I know.
It's a cherry picking, that's what the problem is.
I know, I know, it's very, very hard to, to follow.
Yeah.
Unless you're, you're sort of learning about the pros and cons,
understanding of virology, the understanding of immunology, et cetera, et cetera.
Which, you know, I try and do, but I must admit, I'm not really,
I'm pretty achieving that.
No, no, no, no.
So, yeah, yeah.
Okay, leave that one, man.
Yep, yep.
Yeah, the next thing is...
Well, I've got down here, Doctor Who, yeah, the same document we're both, we're both.
Yeah, yeah.
So, it was really, but I made a note to, to, um,
the strikes here that I'd been to see the Doctor Who exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in April.
It finished at the end of April, sadly, and, um,
I'd actually met up with, uh, with a friend and, and, uh, another,
who, a person who's also another HBR host, and that's Andrew Conway, McNallow,
and, uh, and a friend of his who'd come over from Glasgow, and we had a, we,
yeah, we, we, we booked.
It was a ticketed thing.
So, it was a cost money thing, although the museum was free, um, but, uh, it was,
it was amazing. I, I have seen Doctor Who since it started, because I'm older.
Yes, so you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have died behind the sofa when it came on,
and I was just being a bit puzzled at the time.
Oh, we hadn't got a sofa at that point at all.
It was hard up against the wall probably, but yeah, but, uh, I, I, I, I would have been of an age where
I'd have been quite scared of the, of the, the monsters and stuff.
Yeah, um, yeah, the dialects, particularly.
I think I, uh, started watching it around the, the, the John Pitt Wies of, um, and, uh, I,
I obviously really liked it then, and, uh, a bit of the Tom Baker as well, um, and then, like,
yourself, I could have, well, I actually, I think some of it got to, like, Silveston McCoy,
and all that sort of thing, and I kind of lost a bit of interest at that point, and, uh, me too,
me too, yeah.
And, and then, like you said, until I came back and then you were, you, you couldn't wait for it to come
back and, well, Silveston McCoy as a, as a comedian, I think it was great.
Yes, he, he, I, I wouldn't want to watch him a huge lot, but quite an amazing person,
but I didn't see him as Doctor Who, and somehow or other, the way, the direction he took Doctor Who
and just didn't appear, I just lost interest at that point.
So, uh, I think, I think really the, the, the trouble I have with some of these things is that,
the, the, the got to act, if, if the actor doesn't act in a way that you'd expect,
somebody to act in a certain situation, then the illusion's broken.
And I think that's what, yeah, he was, he was hamming it up as, as Silveston McCoy,
fair bit, seemed to me, but, uh, as many, because I'd seen him in, in other roles before,
I don't know how much was him and how much was me, but, uh, yeah, and then there was a,
a movie made of it with the, with the idea that, that, um, uh, there would be a, uh, spin-off
American-based thing that was, that was the hope, I think.
Right. Um, I forgot. Um, McGann, was it, uh, yeah, I think I've, I think we've seen that one as well.
Well, McGann? Yeah.
Which is actually quite good. I enjoyed watching that, but I think it was shown as a,
the run-up to, um, bringing back the, the Doctor Who TV series, because I remember seeing it
somewhat before that, I think coming, coming this order or something, it would be Doctor Who,
and before, before we do it, you're going to look at this movie.
I thought it was quite good, and my daughter was around, I think she was at university at that point,
and we used to sit and watch, we watched the, the movie and quite enjoyed it, and then when the
series came back, we, uh, we, we really enjoyed that, um, yeah, for a, for quite a few iterations of
the, of the Doctor, who was the first guy, um, who was it? All these hoovians, is that, is that
a cop who was, yeah, you know, of course, it's such a, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember him saying something
like, um, it was, uh, Billy Piper was, was this companion, and he, and she said, how come you
got a northern accent? And he said, well, all planets have a north. It was something to
affect him. I might not have got word for word, but yeah, yeah, he, he didn't last all that long,
well, he did a fantastic job. He did, yes, I liked him, I must have met him. Yeah, I, I, I,
and then we had, um, tenant, uh, David Turner, yeah, yeah, um, was, was that next, yeah, and I,
I think we, we stopped around about Matt Smith, 2013, according to my notes here, um,
what's, what's quite funny, there's, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a colleague at work who
is a huge hoovian fan, and, uh, and of course, he must have followed the, all these sort of things
on, uh, and various forums and all that. And, uh, he said, you know, oh, there's, there's rumors
that they're going to, we're going to have a woman, if they have a woman, that's it, I'm just
on them, they can just stick it if they, if they have a, a female doctor, they can just,
no, they're deadly serious, and I can remember finding out, of course, that's, you know,
yes, I'm just, tucked them, they can go and stick it, you know, that was a funny thing.
I, I never was saying it about, the, the few, the few little bits I saw,
they look really good, yeah, I'm sure they could, I could, I could probably go back and watch
some of these again, actually, yeah, um, but, uh, yeah, going to the exhibition, it brought back
so many memories and stuff, you know, found that the three of us who were going round the,
the, the exhibition, we'd all been in, uh, to the doctor, who's stuff from, from the early stages,
depending on, on our different ages and stuff, and had watched it for a while, and then got a
little bit cheesed off, possibly because the writers had changed, or the showrunners had changed,
and, and, uh, you know, the themes and so forth had got crappier, or, you know, um, and then,
we'd maybe come back again when, when it restarted, and, and watched some of those and enjoyed them,
and then things have gone a little bit off, off the rails again, yeah, it's actually, that's just
exactly what happened to me, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's still, it's amazing, it's
lasted, yeah, and, and, but through this, that, this, uh, uh, uh, hoovian chap, I saw one of the,
so some of the, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I've never seen before,
so, and I've watched the very first episode of the doctor, you know, and, yeah, it's quite a,
quite a menacing character, and there's, there's like one episode where they pick up a, uh, a person,
and at one point, uh, uh, he's a, his, his assistant, uh, looks away, or someone else, and it's,
so they meet the, I can't exactly what happened, but basically, um, the doctor picks up a rock,
and you can see him thinking, that, that, the implications, I'm going to, I know how they get,
their mothers just bat them over the head with their rock, you know, and obviously they'd never
do such a thing in the, and, and, and, and later series is better than that, but it was a better,
a menacing character, you know, yeah, yes, yes, he was, he was, he, he, yes, the actual character that
he played was, was quite dangerous, seeming, and, and aloof, um, which, you know, he's not,
not a, an entirely subrosing thing for a, for a character who was an alien, and, uh, he's,
seems to be hanging out on the earth quite a lot and stuff. And then of course you've got the,
fantastic, uh, uh, soundtracks and stuff, you know, the, and, and what was her name? Was it
Delia, Delia Smith? Delia Smith, it was, it was, it was ready for it? Yeah, it's a workshop,
I still think some of these analog sounds, you can't beat, you know, and of course they,
the tar, was that not, the string from an old piano or something like that, and I had to re-verb
and, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was, there was all those tales about that stuff. And then it, they had,
they had like, many, many feet of tape running in the corridor, and they were sticking bets together,
to tie me up the sounds, stuff that's in loops and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, I was so, so taken with that,
I had a, I had a reel to reel tape recorder at that particular time, and I remember, uh, it was
um, quite a narrow gauge, some portable one, a German one, and I remember I had a splicing kit
with it, so you could, you could make tape loops, you know, rounded, and I shiny jam jar,
I remember trying to make, uh, loops, maybe my, um, one, my, my, my, my, by, by, by, by recording her
secretly, and then, and it's ready, it's ready. What's something like that? Well, we, we, we,
actually, I, I call it a work, he was a, he, he, he actually was in a band, I mean, as, as a lot of
people do, they sat on band, I know, they're myself, but he, um, so he, he, he'd gathered pieces of
equipment and fall over over the years and played the guitar and whatnot, and he, he gave me this
reverb unit, and then, so it was a big suitcase thing, and you left the lid on it, and it had a,
tape on it, it was running around the loop, and you could adjust gain and speed them, what not,
and you could, you could add effects, but it's all done using magnetic tape. It's quite, quite fast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it records, and then, there's, it plays around, and it changes speed
in the games, and, yeah, it's quite, quite something. That stuff was, it was amazing. Yeah,
it's, yeah, I never got heavily into it, but I did start sort of tinkering with it a little bit,
and that's, obviously, having this big suitcase little thing in your lap, that's, you know,
it, and it's very limited what it can do, but it, it sounds different from, from a, a digital reverb
unit, it's, it's, it's quite unique, sort of, sound to it, you know, but I don't, I didn't even
know such a thing I existed, you know, I'm guessing, I think the Beatles notes, I sort of,
did a lot of that sort of stuff, and one other was a thing on, on, it was a, it was a device,
which, um, um, strawberry fields, you know, the, um, the beginning of that, it's, uh,
Oh, you think of the, the, the melaton, melaton, yeah, and I had no idea what that was. I know,
I know, and then, and then I watched a video about it, I'd recommend people look at that,
and the melaton, yeah, and, and it's loops of tape that are maybe, yeah, my goodness,
complicated. So it's, there's some sort of mechanism that, you, you hit a key, and the tape
is sort of lifted up to the playhead. That's right. And, and play, please, yeah, a flip,
or whatever it is. Yes, it sounds, it doesn't sound like it sort of stitched together,
bits, no, it is all sort of quite seamless, isn't it? Yes, I, I know, I, I, I've always been fascinated
by musical instruments stuff. I do quite enjoy looking at that. There was a series on YouTube,
which was that there's a, uh, Swedish band called Vintergarten, which means Milky Way actually.
I think it's a vintage garden. I think it's Swedish for the Milky Way. Anyway, it's entirely
the same point, but they, they're a band, very innovative, um, and play really interesting music,
but the guy who, who leads it, um, uh, made a machine, which he called a marble machine,
which has got a, um, it, it, it, it, it became incredibly complicated, had a drum with pegs on it,
which were bits of Lego, and as the drum rotated, it did various things to the mechanism,
let marbles see down various channels, the channels, and then at the end of the channel, they dropped
onto a sort of xylophone, um, nine-brophone type thing, and also a guitar, and I think there was
a drum element to it as well. He did all that, and he's really heavily into it. He's still doing it,
I think he's still, he's come up, he's trying to work on marble machine three at the moment.
A huge engineering challenge, but he did a series where he was going around, um, there's a place
you tracked in, in, in the Netherlands, I think you tracked, where there's, um, a museum of mechanical
musical stuff, so he was going there, and doing an episode of every few weeks, uh, with the museum
stuff, but they were looking at these things and looking at the way they worked, and that sort of
stuff, found that fascinating, and I remember going to a fancy music museum, in fact two have
been to. There's one in Berlin, um, I can't remember where it is or what it's called, but it's
stuffed with very, very bizarre musical instruments, some of which are mechanical. There's also one
in Brussels, which is another musical museum, which I've just my nose in, because I'm always in
Brussels for them, and can't go, I don't know, yeah, one day I'd like to go and visit that.
Actually, there was, I know, I can't bother, there's a, oh well, I'm going to, I shouldn't even
start still, because I can't give you the facts. There's a museum somewhere rather that we're
going to, and a waste coast near where some relative state, and it's, it's a really local place,
and it's just stuffed with stuff, you know, it's got the gramophone, and, and, uh, and what, and it's
got a battle organ, so, uh, I had a, I had a go with a battle organ. It was amazing how much effort you
need to, to, to do these things, you know, and to try and keep the speed constant, it's really,
really difficult, but I thought, oh, it's quite unique, and how many people get a chance to play a
battle organ, but it only comes into this, this museum, if you happen to be there, and if this
feels a bit warden, because I've got a ton of people have played it, you know, yeah, it's quite,
quite amazing, so much this stuff out there, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's really good.
So 42 minutes in, yeah, shall we, um, shall we go on to the, the last item, or shall we skip that one?
Well, we've, we've been saying, when we've done these in the past, uh, we've got various things
that we could talk about in regard to YouTube. Um, and I suggested we don't talk about, um,
maybe one or two each, maybe just the one actually at this stage in the game. Did you want to,
do you want to do that? Yeah, we could do that. Um, yeah, yeah. I had a, um, we already mentioned one
really, so debunked, debunked Wilson, yeah, yeah, will, I will be adding to the list. Yeah.
But I tell you one channel that I have been watching that recently, that my son pointed me
to, which is called little Chinese everywhere. And it is a, a young lady who is, she is a,
she's got a ge, sorry, geography degree, human geography, I think. And she got it in Switzerland.
And in order, and she's from China, and she said she was going to go home from Switzerland
by, uh, doing, doing an overland trip. So she's going to mapped out the route to take across
Europe and into China from, uh, from Switzerland. Yeah. So I've forgotten all the places she's
been to, I particularly remember watching the one about Georgia, there was, there she did two or
three episodes in, um, in the, the country of Georgia, which is a pretty amazing place. Yeah.
And having experiences and it's just, if you like that sort of thing, if you interested in
the different countries, she was in Romania as well. And anyway, if you interested in the different
countries and the people and, you know, just durable in general, that is fascinating. I mean,
I mean, they, they debunked the funk thing, I watched a couple of those and really liked that.
So I'm always on the lookout for things to, to, to, to watch because I do sometimes work from home
and I might have a, a wee break and I see what a 15-minute half-hour break and I said, well,
what, what, what kind of watch sort of thing. And, uh, yeah, that, that, that's, that's something I'll
definitely add to my list and, and, and look forward to who, uh, to looking at, you know, it's, um,
there was, there was, there was, there was, there was, there was a odd, odd episode of
a started watching of, um, was a bald and some bank apps and all that. And then I, I think, yeah,
I think I found out that I think I saw another video where somebody said, you know, there might
be some controversy about who he is and some of these background. Yeah, I only watched one or two of
them, but maybe there's a lot of Chinese, uh, a lot of Chinese everywhere. It might be a very,
a substitute sort of thing and, uh, yeah. Well, she did get back to China because I'm,
I'm looking right from the beginning and then she's doing a, she's in,
her next project is to go over the entirety of China to every province and do and record her
visits there. So the one my son pointed me to was there's, um, a town in China near the,
the Yangtze River, um, where the, the town is built either side of a really narrow gorge.
Wow. So she was showing that, you know, there's lots of bridges going across and there's sort of
houses built with gaps underneath because the river rises from time to time and floods. Oh,
and, and yet people are living in, in this, this thing and it's all, it's all really
technologically quite, quite, quite good, uh, considering, you know, their compensating for,
for the, for all matters. But you should just, just look at it from the point of view of
for me, really. And amazing, amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't, I don't realize how much variety and,
strange, it's always a bit stuck in your bubble and, yeah, yeah. It's a huge big bottle, though.
And I definitely watched that. Absolutely. Check, check, if you look at some of them recent,
the more recent ones, have to see if you can find the, in fact, I should maybe recommend
that particular one as a starting point, unless, unless you, you're particularly keen to,
to, to, to, to follow up track through Europe. I've done that sort of thing before. I'll start
half with your, uh, I'll show, and one way to the end of it. Well, that was really goodness
up looking at the back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll stop there. Have you got,
have you got anything you want to? Um, so there was, no, what did I have? I had a,
so there was one thing. Yeah. So there was a, um, a YouTube video there, again, just recently,
oh, I'm not going to watch because I've only had things to watch, which is silly because there's
so much to, the, what happens is you get a, a, a space of time to, a, a break-over, as you've
got, no, I've got so much time. So by the time you find something, you, you've, you've not got
anything to watch it. So, but there was a, a, a, a, Ron Matino, I think he's, is, M-A-T-T-I-N-O,
and he's, as they call it, deep dives into various topics. And I've only watched one or two
of these shows. Um, but the first one, and it was, it was one of these that was suggested to me by
YouTube. And, uh, and it's something I've never really, I think I've heard something mentioned
before, but never gave it any of your great thought. And it was about, you know, finding mobile,
private, mobile phone batteries, uh, have, um, tablets just, comfortable, not start.
Fides have three terminals in it. I think you've got a positive and negative,
fiding me the middle one. I'm thinking it'll just be sense or something like that,
voltage sense or something like that. It wasn't just quite sure what it was about.
We want it turns out that it is, um, my tablet will not turn on. I don't know what it's doing.
What it turns out to be is that, um, there's, um, a, a, a, a, a, electronic device called
a thermistor. And, uh, it, it uses a temperature and a, a resistance changes with respect to the
temperature. So it's used so that the phone can have an idea and monitor the temperature of the
battery pack. And so that is so that when you, it's charging, I think it's too hot, it backs off
and stops charging. Without that, you have catastrophic failures. And I think it's blow up.
So, of course, if you buy some knockoff Chinese, uh, battery, it turns out to put those, the
sensors in them. So yes. So, but I mean, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it goes into
in great detail. I thought that's, that's fascinating. I never knew that. You know, it showed you the
voltage from my, from my, uh, DVM and putting into a, a fridge and what's, you know, changing and all.
It showed fulling the phone by doing X Y and Z. And I thought, that's, that's fascinating.
That's what I got my monitor. The next one I've watched was about USB. I had no idea at all how
usb worked and well I knew it was a kind of seal connection but I didn't know
anything more than that that was fascinating I recommend that and the final one
I started watching was about the 555 timer but I never got to do that it was
quite complicated so yeah yeah but yeah well worth uh okay yeah well worth a
watch yeah so what was that called so that was a Ron Matino R-O-N-M-A-T-T-I-N-O
okay I must have missed oh yeah that was just got put on left I started in the end
our notes are the shared notes sort of accumulated quite a lot of stuff yeah it's a
bit of an issue made but yeah yeah it's hard to have to see I never chuck things are we I'm
really bad I just my days get worked oh yeah I have the same same problem but yeah okay that
that sounds really interesting I'm always fascinated to know more about about these types of things
yeah yeah so yeah okay good stuff so I think that's for what we add on now 50 oh that's
for me 50's probably ideal yeah yeah if we start another YouTube video we might
tend and that's each would bend up maybe going over the yeah yeah yeah yeah that's
probably we call it quits at that point yeah all right well that's been done thank you very much
put your whole enjoy there and until next time with all that's an nonsense so yes don't forget
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