Episode: 2416
Title: HPR2416: HPR Community News for October 2017
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2416/hpr2416.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:38:35

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This is HBR episode 2416 entitled HBR Community News for October 2017 and is part of the series
HBR Community News. It is posted by HBR volunteers and is about 79 minutes long and carries an
explicit flag. The summary is HBR volunteers talk about shows released and comment posted
in October 2017.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared hosting
with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of HBR Community News.
This time it's October 2017. Joining me tonight is Dave. How are you Dave?
Hi Ken, I'm doing fine. Thank you. And it's almost one fire night over there.
It is yes you hear some noises off because some people are rushing for it and it's letting
off fireworks tonight. I think judging by the noises I have learned anything so far so we will
continue on. Okay. Alrighty the community news is a monthly look at what's been going on in the
HBR community. This is a regular show scheduled for the first Monday of the month. Basically it gives
us an opportunity to talk about every show that happened in the last month and to make sure that
we give at least some feedback on them. So starting with show 2391 which was HBR Community News
for last month and there were no comments on that show so let's skip merely over to the following
one. And before I do that Dave, I need you to pick a red or a blue, red or a blue Dave.
Red. And that is Van Dieu Brown, a beer from Belgium Dave.
How good for you. Good excellent choice. So yes, that show was Weather on Camp,
Server Rooms and IOT collection by JWP and aside from each of them needing to be their own show,
I thought it was an excellent summary of Hog Camp. Yeah, it sounded good. It was interesting to hear
about how things were at Hog Camp. Sounded like they have a good venue there. What was ITO
collection and get what that was? Did he mention that? It was in his title but I can work out
with you say Raspberry Pi. Oh right right. He was talking about his server room or something
of that sort. I don't know. Anyway, it's just me. I'm going to have to go and sell her a while.
All right, I've got a duvel or a duvel in the fridge here. No, no, I'm not going to break up.
You go get the following day, we had PW Gen Zork talking about PW Gen to set people's
passers at work. Very useful little tool I called. Yeah, yes, it sounded good. I'd not come across
this one. I think it's a Windows only, wasn't it? Yeah, but how would it be for if you're doing
system meaning? Yes, there are a number of others I used to use think called APG when I was in a
similar situation to the one he described. People, but I also wrote my own which is maybe not the
wisest thing, but anyway. I would I would one thing that did jump in my mind about the XKCD
was a horse patchy correct thing. You're only using five letter words is kind of dangerous
because then you can just use this list as a brute force attack and you know, it'd be trivial to
script that. So I know that a lot of password cracking tools are now designing themselves for
the fact that people are using straight words, rather than words with letters and numbers in them.
So yeah, yeah, whatever happens, evolution will occur and people will find a way around that
significantly. Yeah, exactly. Moving on to the following day, we had the law step-sode.
Bill talks about building an inexpensive transistor tester a year after the fact. It's been quite
a bit of that this month. So it's it's good that he managed to find the the audio. Yeah, exactly,
a lot. Yeah, even as a glass, I was just shouldn't throw stones, looking at shows that I still need to
send it. All right, well, it happens. It happens. Now, this was great. I always like to hear Bill
doing his his electronic stuff. You really feel like they're with him, knowing it's great. Yeah,
and he says in the comments to his own show, there seems to be a new version of these kits for 2017.
There are multiple options of ordering just the case, just the parts are the fully assembled board.
I might pick up the $16 kit with the Plexiglass case just for fun. Search for 2017 English,
DIY Mega, 328 transistor tester, LC or diode capacitor, ES or memory PWM, square wave frequency
signal generator. Oh, now the express. That's that's his password. Yeah, that's a good password,
too. Right now, somebody's gone through the HBRO Accommod list added to a dictionary attack. Anyway,
I still plan to try and flash this 2016 kit I have, then I can do a follow up episode to this show,
to which I replied. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And my bill comes back and says,
oh, Taskmaster, master, smiley face with the tongue out, I guess that is. I'm on it, buddy. I'm
waiting for an electronic shipment that should let me program the thing. An episode is inbound
in three, two. Although that said, these things are coming from the other side of the world,
so they do take a while. Yes, yes. But they're quicker than you imagine. Sometimes anyway.
So the following day, 2395 Obamacare and all the pieces of the puzzle just slotted right in there,
I was stuck in, I was late on the train train delays and I was listening to this episode and I was
going, now I know why we had all the preparation episodes by Ohuka. This was for something that was
in the news so often. This was the best explanation I've ever seen about Obamacare. And I don't know
how independent it was, but to me, it was very clear. Yes, yes, it was, it was a great capping off
the old series, I thought, and I certainly did get some better idea of it, of what's gone behind it.
Still don't fully understand how such a situation can come about, but that's probably me or
anything else. Yeah, yeah, but it was, it was a very good explanation of what they're at least
the idea behind it and what they're trying to do and the history of it and stuff.
Yep. So the next day was information underground, state of independence, and I don't know if
you know this, but information underground used to be a podcast that was hosted on Gofer,
no less, by DQ, Lost and Blinds and Tattoo. Their latest episode mentions Gofer quite a lot,
and I hadn't quite picked that up, but not surprised from what you say, yeah, yeah. I really enjoy
these guys, these guys show. I think it's one for putting on the stereo and the front room,
you know, with a, with the blazing fire and the, and the glass of brandy or something with the
feet off, perhaps, you know, with a hypothetical cigar listening, listening to the wireless
and having them talk. Yes, I find it's hard to concentrate if you're trying to do something
else at the same time you need to, you need to give it more attention than I tend to give a lot of
my podcasts. So that's, that's good for them. Yeah, I struggle with this one because it is
difficult to, I just start writing comments back about stuff I wanted to say, and then they
address them later in the show, and it's just one of these ones that you really want to be,
want to be there. Like, it's like, these types of shows remind me, I don't know if you ever were
in this situation, but, you know, you're out on the west coast of Ireland somewhere and there's a storm,
yeah, and you've been, and you've been blocked off, so there's no way home, and the only thing you
can do is stay in this pub that's open all night, and there's a massive big fire, there's a
non-limited supply of drink, and you're sitting, you know, that's sort of warm, chatty feeling that
you get, there's no way the guards are going to be coming in. Yeah, that's the sort of atmosphere I
get when these three guys are talking about. Yes, yes, not a scenario, I know particularly, but I get
the picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, the dude, an awesome handle, if you've ever heard it,
the struggle is real. Finding your audience is really hard, especially when not only do you have
to compete with your contemporaries, corporate or independent, but you also have to deal with everything
in the past as well. If not, there is a lot more noise, but you do have a lot more control
of what you do with your art. We kind of didn't even summarize what the show was about. Do you want
to give it a go? My notes on it really saying that it's the sort of trials and tribulations of
independent art and independent artists, that it was really the picture that I came away with,
but I probably didn't give it enough attention actually. I was thinking it was like you've got
an audience, how do you grow your audience, and especially now that's more mainstream media
taking advantage of this, how do you compete? And I guess the best thing is to do what you do,
and then get spread the word. Yeah, it's a relevant point in today's world.
I mean, like my son wanted to go into music as a career and then realized that nobody particularly
wanted to hear his music or anything like that. So the prospect of actually making the living
out of it was actually zero for those sort of reasons they discussed, I guess.
That's the same if you look at Branko. Yeah, it was the same thing. He was essentially sponsored by
his brother, and during his lifetime nobody particularly bought his work. So a lot of the
struggling artists, you know, the struggling artists mean is a thing really. So modern
all the wise, this is a, this is kind of a problem that's been going on for quite a while.
So there's more of them and more competition and so on, I guess.
Well, there was enough, like, were there not thousands of local, you know, musicians who never
rolled a thing down, you know, went from house to house at the time, you know, maybe so, maybe so.
Yeah, the guy has changed in the pub that time. Exactly. And most famous in his local area and then
he died and everybody else died. End of story. God. Yeah, again, this is the sort of conversations
that's probably best to have at four o'clock in the morning on the west coast of Ireland in the
storm. Anyway, the next day, Urban Astronomer night show. This was you taking advantage of our
our CC, CC creative commons, attributions, or creative commons thing where you can put in
other shows into the feed to alert people to them. Yes, yes, yes.
Do you want to get a rundown? Why don't you? Of the show. Yeah, well, this is a podcast
called the Urban Astronomer, which is a guy based in South Africa, who is, the works in the
astronomy field, although he doesn't have a qualifications per se. I think he's still working
towards them, actually. But so he does what I thought was a really nice podcast. And he tends to
interview quite a lot. And he has some really good interviews, the very interesting people. And
he says the technique of interviewing off very well, I think. And this was a show where he was
interviewing somebody from another astronomy podcast, who had recently been in South Africa
to one of the big radio telescopes there, I think. And so yeah, it was sort of a podcast,
doing a podcast about a podcast. And you know, there was nested to the nested level.
I get an appropriate for the west coast of Ireland four o'clock in the morning, believe me.
To which Kevin O'Brien says, enjoy the show. I'm a long time science and space geek and I
quite enjoy this. If you like this, you might also check out the astronomy cast and the link to
astronomycast.com and the planetary radio, the planetary radio.org or such multimedia or such
planetary dash radio. They are both on my pod catcher. Kevin should do a show about what's on your
pod catcher Dave. Well, yes, yes, he has done one, I believe. What's this? I don't remember
with him being on his list, but it's hard to remember these things. Well, top up is always a good
thing to do, I believe. Anyway, so I replied, should I do my reply? I said, I said thanks.
Hello, dear. No, I said, sorry, sorry. I don't know what makes me do. It's okay. It's okay.
I used to work with a nourished guy and we were always doing that to one another. So it's something
great. Anyway, thanks, thanks Kevin. I said, I listened to astronomycast myself and recommend it to.
I actually get the raw version before they edit it and I've given the link to that. Since it's a
music to hear what goes on behind the scenes. So yes, it's fun. I also greatly enjoy the weekly
space hangout and it's another link. And of course, awesome astronomy, which was the podcast that was
being inside the urban astronomy podcast in this case. So there's a link to that in case you didn't
spot it elsewhere. And I say I shall check planetary radio, which I haven't ever listened to thanks
the pointer. And it's in my podcast now. I haven't listened yet, though.
Okay. And the following day we had operator with I will go over my autohakie script. I used to
give our free money in GTA dropping. Apparently that's not just cold. And this was a show about a way
he figured out to get the money and give out virtual coins in this game. And the rather hilarious
response he got back from the guys, the creators. And the video says, legally, I love that their
notice is trying to sound sinister and fit and official, failing a boat. After all, Anilaya
worth their soul, their ways, starts their cons, correspondence with deer, so on. So I really enjoyed
this episode. I find automation in games to be a natural reaction to developers introducing
more green grind and busy work into their games. I think it's fascinating that you're overcoming it
with intelligence instead of brute force. Oh, yeah. It's very impressive. Where he's done that.
Cool. Cool. Yeah. Moving on. Moving on. Husing super glue to create landmarks on keyboards. Now
speaking of lawyers, Dododomi has haven't my lawyers come down because, you know, he's infringing
of my intellectual property rights there with the left earbud tank. Yes. Yeah. Hey,
shaking those boots now. I'll tell you that for another. Jan says HBR2399. Hi, thanks for the
effort. You have been working on a mainframe. Please consider podcasting on how things are done
in the world of mainframes. Thanks, Jan from Germany. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
When people say mainframe, because to me, they were, they were, everything was mainframes,
and I started programming. So I'd like to know more about what mainframe, what manufacture,
what operating system. So yeah, yeah, definitely like to know more. The Dododomi says shows on
the mainframe. I've considered doing some shows on the mainframe so far I haven't because I'm
lazy of using work assets for non-work reasons. I would need to do that. However, I do have a show
in the works on my favorite editor, the hybrid editor, XE, which works like standard mainframe,
ISPF editor. I also do a show on the mainframe emulator, Hercules. They're related topics I could do
without using work resources, rex and cobalt come to mind. But it's not likely I'll do a show on
my day-to-day work on the mainframe. Well, right there, I heard four shows, Dave. Well, I would have
thought there was tons to say. Yeah, I mean, the work thing is definitely a thing you have to be
careful of. However, I've asked work from time to time and they know with permission, they don't
particularly have a problem if you, you know, make sure you go to HR, make sure you go to your managers
and stuff, and so long it's generic. They're actually quite happy because, you know, I think
it encourages people to come and work for them because they're a cool hip and trendy.
Yeah, yeah. No, personally, I can't see why any, unless it's highly secret or something.
Yeah. I wouldn't be a noosh, but there you go. But still, I saw an episode on the editor,
on the emulator, on two languages. There you go. Already four shows. Shane Shannon says,
great episode. Thanks for the idea. I often work with people who are learning to touch type,
but who do not have the feeling in their fingertips? I'd be suggesting your hack to them
so that they can feel the F and the J keys more easily. Do you know, D.D. Dummy says in reply,
accessibility. Shane Shannon, I hadn't considered the accessibility use. I'll keep it in mind,
but what it's worth, the landsmarks I added are still holding up, which is interesting to know.
Super good. It's pretty strong stuff. Yeah. Cool. Good, good, good, good. Fast forwarding to the
following day. My commute to work. Dave, not this Dave, the other Dave, the broadcast Dave,
records an episode across his entire commute to work. And this was inspired by Mr. Ex's show.
And he went through the cars that he had. And this is warming to me. So it is this type of show,
I must say. I'm beginning to warm to it. It's, I find it fascinating. Yeah, I enjoy this,
this type of thing. What a lot of cars are. Yeah, but the poor, you are the poor cars,
you know? Well, yeah, yeah, I know. I, yeah, I was so poor I didn't have enough money to buy
a new one after buying the, you know, another one after the, he thrust that originally boy,
you know. So the turnover rate wasn't high. After the Ferrari, you know, one doesn't do.
He was, he was, he was much more upmarket than I was. I think mine was, first one was a
Persia 104, which is recorded. This is my series. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Did mine mumble just crash? No, you're still good. You're still good. I can hear you.
Excellent. Music theory, Harry Curie. This is by the dude. And lovely introduction there to some
of the concepts of music theory. Yes. Yes. This is, this is good. It's, um, yeah. I, I found myself
flandering a bit because there's a lot of information there. And I found it a bit hard to follow.
But I'm getting old. So, you know, it's probably me. Don't be, don't be afraid to, um, to do
individual shows and things. Don't assume that people know, um, yes, there will be people who
know more than you on a particular topic, but I guarantee you the vast majority of people will
always know less than you on a particular topic. So don't be afraid to fill out the, um, the
acronyms and stuff. So, um, well, we continue sending in shows similar to this. Yeah, I'd like to hear
more on this subject, particularly. Yeah. Be good. And the following day, we had to put,
now, Dave, this is the abuse of the network that we have here. People pushing their proprietary
games on us, trying to vlog stuff. Absolutely terrible. Oh, yeah. Oh, the spammers, they're here.
This, this dude from, I don't know, the other side of the world trying to, trying to sell his
cheap kit here on us. We were not having any of it. Um, unfortunately, yeah, of course, I
just, um, tattoo, which is Kickstarter, uh, in order to get the game going. And unfortunately,
it didn't meet its target, which was a pity because I did bag it. But I was wondering why he didn't,
didn't do something like Andy Google and just take as much as he got. But he's already done a show
on, there's a show in the queue about lessons learned from the Kickstarter campaign. So,
perhaps he'll address it there, feeling that I'll, uh, I'll send my comments to after that show.
Do you want to read my values? Uh, yes. Yes. Um, he says intriguing. I've never really enjoyed your,
sorry, start again. I've really enjoyed your talk. I don't know why, my friend. It was only a
cover T. And we, I've really enjoyed your tabletop gaming series. And this show fascinated me.
I think I'm going to have to listen to it again because I didn't really follow how the game
blow worked. That was not necessarily a fault, though, as while listening, my brain power is
taken up with making dinner, which got complicated as the recipe required improvisation around
ingredients I lacked. Anyway, I digress. I love the idea of the game and we'll give
serious consideration to the Kickstarter. Any chance of a summary or audio, even video of an
actual game? Yeah, well, I very much doubt that this game is not going to get produced. It's just
going to be slightly delayed. Um, so, yeah. Yeah, that was, I was trying to follow on a,
and I wind it, rewind it. That's a word, yeah. Rewind. Rewound. Thank you.
Yes, I ruined a few times and found it difficult in spots, but it seems intriguing.
If nothing else, I want to be, how cool would it be just to, you know, I know the designer of this
game. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm fascinated with the, the process of designing something like that.
I don't, I think I probably missed, missed a few brain cells when it comes to games because I,
I don't fully get the thinking behind it. I'd love to understand the better. So the following day,
we had amateur radio roundtable three, where I, I sort of just shut my mouth pretty much.
Well, I don't know. I thought that was, that really made the program, made the episode.
I've, you were asking questions that I would have asked, um, and I was interested to know the
answers to. And the, the, the issue of, so there's all this stuff floating about in the air. And
there's this radio thing that picks it up. Well, how does it get from there to there? And what the
hell's going on? Because this is not a thing that's, that's, um, talked about and explained all
that well, at least not in a way I've ever understood. So I, that, that, that seemed to be the, the,
the thing you, you were trying, you were looking for analogies for how it worked, weren't you? Yeah,
exactly. But, and that's reasonable. It's reasonable enough, but I don't think I can prepare it enough,
or had them prepared enough for it. You did floor them a few times. It's certainly
true. But I thought they rallied brilliantly. They, they came back with some great answers.
What, I was just more on ask. What are you? Yes. They're, they're a great guys that has to be said.
They're really. Confucius says, you know, he who I asked, who asked the question may look
a fool for the moment, but he who doesn't ask the questions a fool forever. So ask the bloody
question. God. Did he actually say that? Something like that. I was paraphrased. No, no, it's,
it's, it's, that's what, that's what's in my head in here. There, there is, there is a confusion
saying that it retains that. Yes. Cool. Okay. What he said, that's why I did it, you know,
it was all a show. The following day we had open source gaming, Meridian number one,
that implies a series. Don't you think? It does. It does. Yes. Yes. Depends. It implies more
sure coming, Dave. A series is going for you. Yes. Yes. Meridian 52, the first 3D graphical massively
multiplayer online role-playing game. And he added commons giving links to both servers.
I'm not, I'm not a gamer of myself, Dave. I must say. No, I'm not. I, yeah. Since games got more
complicated than asteroids and stuff, I've really sort of been left behind by them, I think, really.
No, I think, yeah, just when I lost so many hours on Lemmings, I thought, yeah,
would become an addictive habit or no. I did use to play on the BBC Micro stuff. Like,
there was this one called Chucky Egg, which is, you know, all those platform games and nonsense
like that. But yeah, and then they got more complicated than I could deal with, so I gave up.
Yeah. So Nokia 6 Review, an excellent little show, actually, because I prompted me to do
maybe a show on my, my own form to give an idea of what the options are out there. Great.
No, it's, it's a good subject. It's a great subject. I was amazed that Tony
found his OnePlus 1 was inadequate. That's what I've got here, but it's probably because I don't
want to know that it's inadequate. And the Nokia 6 ended quite interesting.
Very nice. I like the dual sims, seems to be a thing though. Yeah, very useful. My daughter has
has a bare phone, and she found the two sims when she was away in Romania, with a work
fantasticly useful, you know. And there's a comments there. Do you want to go through that?
Yes, indeed. The Kuvmo says, great show. That's a great price for a well-powered phone.
Added to Amazon Wishlist. Very nice. So the following day, we had Shane Shannon putting
ends onto Cat 6 Ethernet cable. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. People stand in over you just as your underpressure
who has not been there. Absolutely. Are you done yet? Would you like a cup of tea? Would you like a biscuit?
Yeah, obviously it's not finished. Oh, one time. One, one, one. Sure. No, no, it's, it's a,
it was a great story. I thought he, he told it extremely well. Okay. He has a good delivery to
the early nice sort of calm, quiet way of speaking. Funny thought that they're now recommending
straight through cables, because there's a reason you have their twisted in to contract the
electrical interference on both sides. If you do the, if you do the switch to pass,
the twisted pass, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. That the twisted pair, that the signal going down one,
on one wire is contracted by the equal and opposite out of phase signal going down the other side.
So it's less prone to picking up noise or than a straight through cable would be, but I mean,
it's in the church, you know, it's not running through the center of a data center. And it's,
is not cat six shielded in some way as well. I think it is. Yeah, no, I've got some ready to work
to do things with him. I've known to do it yet. Well, we know harm if there was a data center
wireless person could do a show on the benefits of the different types of wiring of a,
of a ethernet cable. As we were always, yeah, always advised to use the, the,
TVO's ARB type. Well, yes, cool. The last episode, Bart, do you, and my bill takes talks about
flashing firmware with the 80 mega three to nine P chip to get a transistor test kit working.
Yes, well, this is, this is the puller up that we, we heard about earlier. No, we had expected,
yes, it's, it's quite a, quite a follow up to this very exciting stuff. Do you want to do, Mike's
comment? Yes, scrolling down. I was actually gazing at the show there. Anyway, Mike race says
AVR dude fuses clone programmers, et cetera, cracking episode, brilliantly time for me as I'm
just starting down the path of AVR programming. I bought several programmers, USB tiny,
LibUSB, USB, USB AVR, AVR, ISP2. A lot of them seem to be less than perfect clones of known
designs, and they spit out like error messages that you can suppress with the minus capital F flag
and then carry on working. Fuses are confusing, but there is an online fuse calculator. I'll look it
up and post a link if you haven't found it. I didn't know about AVR due, due deaths, I think it is,
and I will look at it, but a lot of GUI programs are written with inaccessible toolkits like QT.
Oh, it's still inaccessible. I don't know, but Mike would know if anybody would, I think.
Arduino IDE is itself inaccessible, so I stick to the command line. Take a look at
Arduino.mk, which is a make file system you can use as programmers to avoid Arduino IDE.
It's interesting. My first project is an audible logic probe, had a logic probe with LEDs for
years, but that's used to me now, of course. I'm jealous of all the little gizmos now appearing
with cheap and colorful displays like your transistor tester. And I replied, can you hear me?
Yep, and I replied, ordered my first real soldering project. I hope that thing is programmed. Oh, yes,
I do. Yes, yes. I mean, to any program yourself would be a bit of a bit of a blow, I think.
And I build the replies, thanks, Mike. Yeah, I can tell I'm just scratching the surface with
this AVR programming stuff. I'm sure I'll be messing with it more in the future. I'm not sure AVR
due desk is necessary. It just helped me find out quickly. There was a verify option. I'm sure
the GUI is just setting some flag for AVR due, I don't know about. And he says to you, nice, Ken,
you ordered one nice. It's a fun project to solder up. And the best part is when you're done,
you'll have a useful piece of test equipment. Yes, and he replies, we will expect to show about
the build, Ken. Yep. Yes, yes, spite a bit, I think. That might not be flagged as clean in the feed.
Yes, no, good luck with that. So Shane Shannon, three guys, three questions,
a clinger word from the word, cool tools, utility closets, Ken and Robin talk about stuff,
and the good stuff. Morning show, nice, from the nice recommendations there for your podcast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The three guys, three questions that followed through to see you, they were asking
questions off and stuff. There's some interesting people being talked to there. No, no, not that one.
It's the cool tool, I think, is the one I've thought up. And there's some interesting people
interviewing there. I followed up all of them. They clinging on word from the word, did the
movie. And I started at the following day, RPG counter note, Lost and Bronx, offers his thoughts
concerning tattoos, recent episode about RPGs. And I was expecting flames here, but yes, good,
good point of view, actually, the whole experience of it. There's more, the more social aspect,
I think, is where he was. Yeah, yeah. Does some really thoughtful stuff to Lost and Bronx?
All three of them do. And that's the impression on the ground. On one hand, I think, oh, I'd
love to be there. And in the other hand, I don't have the vocabulary for it. Yeah, yeah. It's an
interesting, yeah, it sounded like it was going to be strong disagreement from when you read the notes.
It's just a very interesting counter, yeah, counter point. Yeah, yeah. Another good reason to get
into RPGs. And the OLF 20, oh, no, no, can we talk about that yet? And the OLF 2017 report
always liked to get these in from OUCA. Yes, yes. And he does a lovely job of it too. Yeah, he really
gave a good, good sort of description of his, his, I view point of being there and what he saw
and so forth, which is, yeah, that's good. From our roving reporter type of thing, it's very good.
That is the thing. So the next day we had co-op Paradise with the information on the ground
to discussing a server cooperative. Yeah, that sounded a most interesting thing to do. I've never,
never particularly said such a thing and haven't wanted particularly to do it by myself. But
that's, yeah, it sounded like a really good solution to many problems. That's why they were talking
about Gofer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There wasn't quite clear where they liked Gofer so much. I'd
like to hear why, but we ran it at the university. I worked out for a few years before the web
started to grow. It's all right, but it's pretty boring. Yeah, but I think that's the point.
It's just boring. It always works. Yeah. Easy to page. There's nothing very little to get wrong.
Yes, there were a bunch of other things that were being called campus-wide information systems
prior to that. And we ran one, which was, you know, you could just go there and find out
stuff about the bus time table and things of that sort. And, you know, when the next meeting of
the such-and-such committee was, and, you know, it's all open-stable, and Gofer did the job well,
but it's fairly, fairly uninsvaring. It's so retro now, you know, you know what I mean?
Web 2.0. I'm still on web version. You know, I'm still on Gofer.
Yes, yes, yes. It's a, it's a very thing. It's just I've been there.
And done that. So I'm just sort of jaded probably, or, yeah, old fart or something. I don't know.
The following day perfectly time. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. There was a comment.
There's a comment. There's a comment. Windy gold. Yes. And although it's a November comment,
we do these, don't we? We do. We do. Fascinating. It's the first time I've ever heard
of the concept of a server cooperative. What a superb idea. Very pragmatic compromise between
self-hosting and going with a corporate service. I would listen to an entire week of shows
discussing this different aspects of this arrangement. Well done. Yep. Yep. Don't know. You want to,
you're still a lot to running a server. Or is there? Well, keeping the secure and stuff.
When is out there in the world? I personally have not wanted to do it. Having spent my work in
life defending university service. And I had a team to do it. And I didn't really want to get
into that on my own anymore. So, you know, anyway, that's just. I have the best of both worlds.
I think I have a ex colleague who was very good at it. And he has his own server in one of the
Amsterdam internet exchanges. And I just pay him a few credit every month. And he just does all
of the names, all the emails, all the security patches. And I just maintain a few pies for access
and stuff. Well, that sounds like a great compromise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, the call of
Tlatou. No, it's not Tlatou. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's ignore the fact I get this
wrong any month and blame the strong Belgian beer, shall we? That's a good one. It's a good one. Yes.
I had no interest in what? Well, one thing, what perfectly timed show that audiobook club has
to time the shows so that they're released right before Halloween. Did you? Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes,
yes. They were not messing around with that one. It's, it's, it's well done. It's, it's an
interesting choice to it. I've, I hadn't heard of this book for years and years and years.
Never bothered to read it. It's available on Gutenberg and I read it a few years ago.
Yeah. I think it must have gone out of copyright. And I thought, I didn't actually enjoy it
very much. I just thought it was stupid. That's just me because I don't like horror very much,
because you can, you can see, you know, this guy's trying to manipulate us to think this way.
I don't want to be manipulated by him, but it's, did you get the impression that they were sort of
questioning quite why it was the cult thing that it's become? Were they saying the same thing
in some ways? Well, I don't know whether they were, yes, they said that, but I don't know whether
they were referring to the book itself or the cult of, or the cult outside the book or inside the
book. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's a fascinating discussion anyway. I like,
I just like hearing them take stories apart. They, I choose to skip over the horror ones,
but I do, I'm really happy that the book club is back and posting shows again.
Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely awesome. Yes. Yes. This was, this was very good. I enjoyed the
the discussion very much. And they do analyse books at the level where you, if you do have a view
on it, you, I anyway have to rethink them a bit and think, oh, maybe I did, I did, didn't like
this for reasons that were not rational. So I'd quite like to hear the, I'd like to hear the,
the audio book of it, I've never, never found that one myself. And, and maybe read some more of
things. What's his name? Of course. That's his name. I've lost, I've lost his name now. But, you know,
what is his name? He's one of his famous editors. It is, I just drawn a blank. It's not even written
there are guys. The book has to be the call of blah, blah, blah, bye. I'm going to have to go,
actually, duck, duck, go, this whole, I remember, HP Lovecraft, that's the money, HP Lovecraft. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I must read more, especially since there are, there are comments
to come which which suggest others. So, so the next book for those of you who would need a time
time machine to participate in the discussion about it, is Cybrosis? Is it Cybrosis?
I'm just, it takes me a while to scroll through this. Cybrosis is where I'd pronounce it,
yeah, PC, airing. Lovely. Cool. We might join on that. They, recording for that show is already done
that just needs to get posted. And hopefully they'll catch up and we can, we can then join along
in the monthly show. Frank Bell says Lovecraft. This is hardly the best Lovecraft stories. My two
personal favourites are at the mountains of madness and the dream quest of the Unknown Catat.
Catat, maybe. Fair enough. The Belgian beer. I'm blaming the Belgian beer. Remember, I've now moved on
to a Schufeld solider which is not really nice. It's, you think it's going to be nice, but it's,
it's very summery. I could take it or leave it Dave. I'm choosing to leave it while taking it
at the same time. Lovecraft was a hack, right? Lovecraft was a hack writer. He was a brilliant hack,
but a hack nonetheless. Many of his works were the same story over and over, but when he got
the right, he was a genius. If you want more Lovecraft, check out a Dagen, Dagenbytes,
Dagenbytes.com, the library Lovecraft. That was by Frank Bell. Kevin O'Brien says,
agreeing with Frank, mountains of madness is a great story. Not a big horror guy though myself.
I have enough horrors in my daily life. I read loads and loads of horror when I was youngster
and my teens and stuff. You still love it. You know, all these really spine tingling stuff.
And then I got to the point where I was thinking, but this is just formulaic. I've seen this formula
before. People just do this stuff. The team that are going through the forest have to split up,
because otherwise, if they don't, then they could tackle the nasties. Well, that sort of stuff,
I just get bored with the cliches of it. Don't enjoy it. Don't split up.
Rule number one of that. Exactly, exactly. And why do you go out if you're spacecraft without
the space helmet on when you're in the alien-infested planet? No, that's not, you know.
Those sorts of things, you think, what the hell are you doing? How long does it last? Yeah, that's just me.
And the thing about that is, that's why I like lost and Bronx stories. There are some elements of
of his stories that are, yes, you've got faster than light drives, yes, you've got gravity, blah, blah, blah.
But within the compounds of those things, his stories are like dwell on the mundane things
that can go wrong. It's just really, really like in his stories. If you're into well-written
science fiction, check out Lost and Bronx stories. That is all. This was a part of political
broadcast on behalf of Lost and Bronx. Anyways, where are we with Commonstave? Why are there no
colorful commons in the show notes this month? They're because of the way the months
overlap with our show and stuff, because they were none that we read last time that next month,
it will be different. Okay, comments on previous shows, the Apollo guidance computer,
while, oh yeah, that was my one, you sent an email, which was actually better.
I did, yes, yes, if you, because the textual thing has the, yeah, has the actual comment
contents inside. Super duper. I was going through, as you do,
Fran blanches old videos, because I've gone through big lives now, Julian Elets, and I'm going
through France, and I'm going through the EEV blogs, YouTube things. I came across that she has
a board from the Apollo Saturn V, Saturn V launch vehicle digital computer. If you remember back
in episode 2150, we did a show with about the Apollo guidance computer. This was a completely
different computer for actually steering the engines themselves, and this was, if she has,
she's taken X-rays and stuff of that board and done a breakdown of it as well. So if you're
into that sort of thing, there is some more stuff for you to be following up. Yeah, wow, amazing,
all these breakdowns of ancient kit like this is, seriously, if I found that board in my parts
bin, I would think, yeah, this is just, you know, something from, from a 1980s computer,
it's amazing, the technology in it, multi-layered PCBs and printed, you know, integrated chips,
soldered on chips, it's even more advanced than the guidance computer that we did that we were
talking about. Yeah, anyway, no glob, Dave, people are commenting. So, yeah, Clack came back with
a comment on the, on that particular show bash snippet about no glob. So I read his, and you can
do yours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that. Happy to know that I have now used SH Opt-S, no glob
professionally. Never do, never do it in interactive shell, though, and never set
dash you either. I did solve a mistake while troubleshooting and making a careless copy and
paste, all kinds of prompt rendering and tap completion will feel loudly and hilariously.
So yes, I commented on this saying, delighted you found a use for no glob. I too have been surprised
by its side effect, presumably because stuff like bash completion makes use of it and doesn't
just say enable disable it in the way I walked about in this episode because I'd done stuff about
how you save it state and then change it and then put it back together again. And I said, there's
always a slight air of incompleteness about bash, I feel, though it's a hell of a lot more polished
than it was. I was forced to use CSH and TCSH at one point in my unique life and boy, just bash
make those shells look terrible. I'm afraid the old glob thing lost me a while back, but I know it's
one of these things that I will eventually be going back to at four o'clock in the morning going,
where did I hear that? Yes, yes, yes. I did do an example of why you want to use it. The reason
for doing this particular show is because I suddenly hit on something where I thought I could
use an algorithm this and thought I'd share it. But you have to have the need before you do that,
I guess. Blind Abe, excellent handle, replied to information underground 21st century superstar.
I really got really behind on my podcast playlist while on vacation this year. I've just heard
this at the end of October, so Kevin begged me to say that I wish I was part of the discussion.
I could not find any evidence to support this, but some of set, frightening links, songs have a very
key way sound to them. This sound and style was common among bands, New Zevens flying on record
label from roughly the mid 80s to the mid 90s. I was going to add more to this comment, but there is
just so much to say from my own experiences, and also from watching how my children consume media
that I really need to record proper response to this. We don't get many Kiwis doing shows
these days. Yes, if they promise to show, they'll show. That's what we've agreed. You get them for
free, although some people would argue that one show a year wouldn't be a lot to ask. One show a
year. You could say these people from endless boredom. Think of the children. Anyway, my rambling
drive into work by Mr. X, high-dota dummy. This is Mr. X replying. Many thanks for leaving in
comment and sorry for taking so long replying. Yes, that's a good tip in the noisy environment,
which I knew about, and I did give it a go, but the quality was so poor that I didn't think
it really helped. I think it may be okay up to a point, but past that point, it just makes things
worse. Thanks for the tip. Much appreciated regarding Mr. X. That was a reply to a comment about
using Orphonic to do leveling out. I tried it myself. It didn't help. It was actually trying to do
their truncates, you know, find a piece of silence in the thing, and then use the silence to
help modify the audio. But if you do a, or not truncate silence, it's eliminate noise. So if you're
in an environment where there's a constant buzz or something, and you can capture a sample of
that recurring noise, then audacity can take that into account and eliminate it from the show.
So the longer the sample is, the better. So if I was in the noisy environment here with a
clock ticking and, you know, mains, mains home on the line or something, then you take that into
account, and then that's just subtracted from the rest of the recording. So that helps. But in the
car, you know, there's so many, you're going over different types of road. It was just not possible.
I don't think it'll work. But it didn't work because I tried it. Yeah. Yeah. The, actually,
Orphonic comment was from Dave Lee, which is Mr. X's second answer. He says, hi, Dave, many
thanks for the comment. I think I think you've hit it on the, I think you probably meant to say
head there or something. The internal, dictophone microphone. Do you hear that one? Oh, cool.
I saw these banging a Hiscaterna or something like that. That's some hellish big fireworks.
Anyway, the internal dictophone microphone is reasonably sensitive, but the external clip on one
supplied which I use is even more so. It's clear that the audio was badly clipping when looking
at the recording in audacity. I think I'll be investing one in one of those excellent microphones
recommended by John Culp. Many thanks for the useful advice. Really look forward to hearing your
episode. And yes, I hope to have another go. I get a chance. Best regards, Mr. X. And why duck
book by Latou? Got a comment about clacky. S-G-M-L. It seems unclear on what S-G-M it's seen. You
see one clear on what S-G-M-L is. So here's a quick summary. S-G-M-L to tell a simplifying lie is
the idea of using a tag name enclosed in a less than and greater than bracket to mark up text. The
original duck book is one application H-G-M-L as another. X-M-L is a further evolution of S-G-M-L
with both constraints which both constraints and extends S-G-M-L to enable new ways of defining
or working with applications of the format. The counterpart of S-G-M-L in S-G-M-L schema in S-G-M-L
is the D-T-D, the document type definition, and the counterpart of X-S-L is D-S-S-S-L,
which is a form of schema. Yay! Looks like tacky could do an episode or two.
Is it a great proponent of scheme, the language? So yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I never knew
there's a lot of people used to go on about S-G-M-L when I was at work because it was university and all.
But I never really got much into it. So it's an interesting insight. Like I also says,
markdown. Markdown, the specification of markdown, the Perl script came out in March 2004 and he
gives a reference. And we're last updated in December, the reference, the same year. I think it's
fair to assume that John Gruber, that's the author, considers it perfected for the use case he had
in mind. Any further evolution of the language is now at to anyone who cares to implement the
processor. There is nobody maintaining the language itself. I absolutely agree that it's pretty
useless for anything bigger than a small read me without resorting to HTML, but I don't think
that's a big problem. I don't think it makes markdown meaningless. I used to write documentation
in HTML and I think replacing 95% of the HTML with markdown makes it much nicer to work with.
I wouldn't write a book in HTML, but there are those that have using CSS3 print styling.
Before hearing your argument, if I were hypothetically to ever write a book, I would likely not even consider
use anything but latex. But thanks to your episode and you simply reminded me that Doc Book is
still out there, I might spare Doc Booker look first. It was a good episode and your points are
thanks. Right there, I want the following shows from Clacket, HTML, HTML, DTD, XML, DSSL,
latex or late, latex, what do you call it? The last x is not an x, it's a chi symbol. So it's
pronounced latex. It's a what? La tech, you know chi, the Greek thing that looks a bit like an x.
You know chi squared and all that stuff? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I
avoided that. Thank God. I'm barely an engineer, Dave. I'm just a biologist, but we have to do a lot
of statistics. Yeah, but anyway, La tech is the way he was supposed to say, but who the hell does
I don't only meet probably? Cool. Yeah. Aside from all those shows, you know, he does know all
some of the shows. Well, if he was thinking of perhaps doing a show, couldn't think of a topic,
all of these would be valid shows. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I would, I would be
for this thing. I wanted somebody to do latex for a while, but nobody, I haven't found a
sucker to do it. I, yeah, yeah, I've used it for years at work, but before I have a new
official, I don't know if you were joined up, sure, like you did with, uh, with a, um, easy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be fun. That would be fun. We, um, yeah, I've forgotten just
for everything I knew about it, but, okay. That's a great invite, David, a lot of back.
Probably, yes, probably is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. You hear these, it's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I've got all the curtains shut,
so I can't see. No, it's just people, there's things being fired up into the sky. So it sounds
like it's over the top of my house, sort of thing. Anyway, um, there's another comment, which is from,
did you, did I read the last one? Yeah, it is Bob Youngman, reference to your podcast in the
nonprofit CIS admin meeting. I conveniently listened to your podcast just before going to the KWN
PSA Kitchener Waterloo non-profit CIS admin meeting on markup lounges and note-taking,
where I took notes for the meeting. I added the podcast as one of the resources. Thanks for
telling us about duckbook and some of the markup lounges. There you go, Dave, affecting change.
That's what we do here at HPR. Yeah, he's, he's, um, meeting sounded like fun. He did point to the
notes. Oh, yeah, there's another comment that we should have provided a link to the meeting notes
for our KWN PSA meeting, markup lounges, etc. And he gives a couple of, it gives a, gives a link
maybe the HPR comment demons can just depend that link to my previous comment. Well, this particular
comment demon didn't because it seemed like it was, it would just run straight on without any,
any problems. So it's, uh, come through now as a clicky link, doesn't it? It certainly does, yeah,
yeah, yeah. So it's, so it's perfect. Yeah, I did follow it up and have a look. Looks like a
pretty co-meeting they have there. Two, the episode by Latu, benefits of table top,
benefits of it. Well, obviously, aside from your coffee, we'll follow on the ground. Thanks for the
comments. Thanks to Gurdon, Nark and Shane. Glad you enjoyed the episode. The comparison between books
and movies is such a great meaty topic. Everyone ought to do a series on the subject. Somebody ought
to do a series on the subject. It's true. It's true. You can do the Slack where I want.
I'm not going to do it. I don't know. Um, I would have to be a Kiwi, American Kiwi. Anyway,
Klaatu says Slackware everywhere. Could we start a series in which a Slackware user,
which named Nation State, doesn't have to be acknowledged by the UN or any agency checks in.
Let's hear about Slack, wherever it may occur. Hmm, Slackware is a scover too. I love the
show. I also like to take the time to mention sport. I read it as Slack ports as an alternative tool
for SBO PKG. It offers no new features. It just doesn't have the incurses interface and is written
in Python. Hmm, Gidee Slack sport for such sport. PS, Latu, this is a nonverbal check-in of a Slack
abuser. Cool. And health care calls by Ahuka, Kevin O'Brien, on reply to be easy. Thanks for
the kind comment. I happen to have a strong opinion on what should be done. But this is, but in this
series, my primary goal was to be objective and you are relieving me that I sit, that I may have
succeeded. I think he has done so. Yes, indeed. Yeah, he's certainly explained things very, very well.
He did a, he commented on Bob's message. Kevin O'Brien did, Adam Ruins, everything is very
entertaining, but not exactly complete in its analysis. So this comes across to me like
cherry picking the data. Hospitals do indeed have charge masters and the prices there in our
largely made up, but it is also true that margins at most hospitals are rather thin. So I think
it's not accurate to imply that hospitals are simply being greedy and waving around large
bags of money. So I think Adam is essentially confusing cause and effect here. Yeah, I think
I read that. Did you watch that video? Did actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's entertaining. Yes, it's
entertaining. But he has a link, Bob put a link to resources in there as well. So they are,
he's coming to you on newspaper articles and stuff that's been published. Yeah, yeah. But
that style of delivery compared to sort of a proper analysis, you know, you wonder how much is
being done for the, yeah, yeah. On the point there, I think Adam Ruins, everything was trying to
make was that, okay, they, yeah, yeah, the big bags of cash been handed over to the hospital.
Like Kevin's point, but I think the point there was that if you're not insured that the hiking of
the prices for the charge master means that if you're not insured, you have to pay a full price,
even though that price may be inflated. But yeah, I find it all very confusing. I'm really,
I don't know why it's political topic, but it seems to be. Yeah, it's a strange thing. I find it
hard to reach conclusions about this because there's so many layers of people doing bizarre,
what to me, bizarre things. Yeah, but you have to ask yourself and this is something that Kevin's
show really made me realize that I may, I have an opinion on this and I've never really
questioned that my opinions until I realized that there are so many people with completely
opposite opinions that I would never have in my life and they have them and they seem valid.
So yeah, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, exactly. This is why I find it difficult to reach any
conclusions because, you know, you might see one one argument and it looks perfectly valid
followed by another. So I'm just, which is going completely different angle. So you'd have to,
you'd have to collect all of the information and analyze it very, very carefully to have a
proper view, you know. And I haven't got time to make an inclination to get that deep into
personally. You know, I would like to thank Kevin for putting on this, this series because
especially with the last show, it just completely brought together the whole background of it.
And, you know, he tried made a very valiant effort to remain impartial to it, something that at
the beginning, I was thinking, why do you need to be impartial about it? But now I see that he does
need to be impartial. Yeah, so yes, yes, no, he did, he did go a long way towards doing the thing I
said I wasn't doing for myself. So, so yes, we'll power to him for that. Do we, oh yeah,
and the other ones are comments that we probably have already commented on.
They are indeed, yes, yes. So they put the mailing list, I put the mailing list stuff towards
the end of the notes, it changed it to different directions. So do you want to say anything about
the mailing list? Yes, just what do we have? Let me see all done here. Any other business,
htbs.narkup.org? Do you want to go through that? Yes, just really to solicit comments, I guess.
So when an htbs show contains an image, or a link to an image, or an image which has been
uploaded, then it adds a level of complexity to the, the uploading to archive.org. And I just
itemize the issues. If the file's been submitted as part of the original htbs.narkup.org,
then we've got a copy of it. And I simply, the code of written uploads it to archive.org and
then changes the notes to point to that copy rather than the hpr copy. The idea being that we then
have a self-contained show on archive.org that can be referred to if hpr has gone away for the day
or something. And that's something I've added relatively recently, so not all shows do this yet,
till I get ran to to fixing them all up. So that's the first case. And if the notes contain a
link to an external file or files, then something that's happened on archive.org makes them
inaccessible sometimes. So for example, was it Shane Chenichou on Cat6? 2406 was he links to his
image of a cat6 pinout. And when it's uploaded to the internet archive, it doesn't show anything.
You know, it's just the link is to the same places it is on hpr. But they're doing something on
archive.org that makes it invisible, which I don't fully understand. I haven't asked them, but then
having conversations with the guys at internet archive is difficult because they never seem to answer.
They're so busy and there are lots of them are volunteers. I do understand, but it's just
difficult to get anything resolved. So what do we do with the external file case? One way would be to
make a copy of it. So if somebody uploads a file with a reference to an external file, we copy it
to get on the hpr site. And then it could be treated like the example I mentioned earlier and
uploaded to internet archive. But I'm not quite sure where we would stand as regards copyright.
In this particular image, I'm talking about 2406 is not owned. I don't think by Shane Chenichou himself.
It's a referral to probably a creative commons file or something. Don't know exactly what it is.
So you need to trace all the copyright issues in order to do that. The other way would be to point
to a copy in the archive to organotes to the wayback machine. Now the wayback machine
snapshots a lot of stuff, but it doesn't do it in any pattern and it does an amazing job.
But if you point to it and you don't know where it is necessarily, you have to find it.
And then you can point at it. What I did for 2406, which does show the image on archive.org,
is I went to the wayback machine and asked it about this particular file. And it says, I don't know
what that is, but I cannot load it if you like. So I said yes. And it then grabbed a copy of it and
put it in its own archive. And then I was able to make a link to it. But that's hugely labor intensive.
So really what I'm asking is for any thoughts from the community is the best way to deal with this.
Well I've been thinking about this myself and I think the best thing is if we consider
the entire show as to be creative commons by a say, which is a default license. So if you
whatever license you upload the show, any image or media that you're referring to should also be
covered by that license. And I would prefer that we have, if there are images attached,
that those get attached and served locally from the HPR website because that then gives the option
to include that with the show as part, ideally as part of the RSS feed. But also as part of the
package that we upload to the internet archive. And later on if you want to distribute the show
that we could distribute the whole thing. Yeah, I like that. I like that solution.
The way back machine stuff is fine and dandy, but it's not, it's a mess. It's messy. No.
It's not ideal. But have you sent this out to the millest? I haven't. No, no.
I think I will. Yeah, yeah. But we were discussing it the other day and decided to put it up on the
any other business first off. But yeah, I'll ask for opinions out there.
I'd just go back to the story finished with that.
Yes, we have. I think, yeah, I'd like to see. I've always had this feeling that we should have
like a pre-packed show that everything related to the show was packaged by us even going as far
as if it's a YouTube video that we have that YouTube video as well, you know, that video file
associated with the show itself. But there's a there's a cost associated with that. And sometimes
you're linking to something that yeah, you're not going to be able to get back. But then I guess
if you're linking to a website, then the internet archive is a way to get around that. And you can
use the search feature on the internet archive to create backup links if necessary. Yeah, yeah,
into a particular image. That's a tough one. Yes, yes, I haven't explored all of the possibilities
using archive.org. I'm sure there are there are there are tools I haven't found yet.
But yeah, it's achieving the the bundle of all of the bits of a show as one package. It's definitely
a thing I've been trying to to work towards. So yeah, okay. Going to the mailing list now for a
minute, we had the micro commenting that site was unavailable. It was intermittent, intermittently
unavailable. And I think it's due to a script that Josh was running that that flagged suspicious
activity. And well, suspicious activity due to poorly configured ISP addresses and reverse
lookups. But unfortunately, as I pointed out to Josh, there's not a lot we as a user can do,
you know, either you've got an ISP and that's the ISP you have. There's nothing you can do about it.
So that's been disabled. If anyone is unable to get to the HPR website, I'm now able to go in and
check that stuff myself. So email admin at HPR and we can see about getting that sorted.
Excellent. Yep. It seems to be a bit more stable now since since this thread was discussing it.
Do you want to go through your shows of multiple hosts thing as well, that email?
Just give a quick summary about what we're trying to do with the shows of multiple hosts.
Okay, yeah, yeah. So I wrote an email that spoke of the issue shows multiple hosts of which
are a number and the fact that I'm rebuilding currently designing a new HPR database and I'm
using Postgres to do it. We've looked at the issue of one to many many to many relationships in
the database. For various points, I've done shows on the mic, rated, a brilliant show on
the subject way back and basically we want to be able to do this. So two people jointly do a show
then we want to be able to signal this in the database in the usual database-y way.
So what I was asking for, I have actually written code which will go through the current database
and we'll find cases where we have instances like show a show done by NY Bill and Windigo.
NY Bill and Windigo is a separate host in the normal, in the sense of hosts in the current
database and I go to those and I split it up and find the NY Bill case and then the Windigo case
and then make the show owned by the two hosts rather than this single, single, strange double host
thing. So that's fine, that seems to be working. But I believe there are
other cases where people might wish there to be multiple hosts credited for a show.
Well, I mean, it will have the effect that if you go to the database to find out which shows have
been done by host X, you will get back all the ones they've done single and also the ones
they've done jointly, which to me seems the right thing to do. So I was asking for one would be an
example. Well, I thought so too, yes, yes. So I was just asking for anybody who had a done a show
of that sort, if they wish to flag it to me, I can use it, I can modify the date, my new database
to reflect it and keep a record of it so that when we have something that goes live, we can make sure
it gets sorted then. So that's it. Yeah, I like it. And something I was thinking about there, Dave,
is how we will represent this in your SS feeds. Yes, yes, yes, yes. How do we represent which host
is the author of a show? No, because you under the item section in an RSS feed, you have an author
and that's a single, single thing in RSS. Yeah, that's a problem. All right. Okay, that's interesting
because, yeah, okay, that's such. Well, it's a specification. It's vague and liable to
breakage because people will assume. So there are possible ways around it. We need to have a lock
and see. You need to bug me about it so that I have a look and see actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
some people would say, well, throw away RSS and use Atom, but yeah, and then you have other people
who say, yeah, Atom is killed by the fact that you can extend it with with your own namespaces.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. So six and a half a dozen or the other, I guess.
Chris, you can extend RSS with other namespaces as well. Just true, just true. Could there be one
that has multiple authors? Yeah, but we could do whatever we all we can create our own HPR namespace,
but then if that has the side effect of breaking every feed reader out there, then that kind of
defeats the purpose. So that's it. Yeah. We need to practice solution. Interesting to see. Yeah.
And it's really hard to find as we could. What we could do is author multiple hosts
are, you know, change the authors to be hosts underscore HPR blah, blah, blah, which is a male list,
you know, type thing. But is the author a, is it a link of any sort? Is it just ten?
No, it's an email address. Okay. Okay. I'll have a think about it. Yeah. It needs some
cool. There was conversations about that. Do you want to give the summary of the conversations or
not? The conversations were largely about, should we be looking at Postgres? Josh commented that
he had no specific experience of administering Postgres if we were going to be implementing that
on the server, which is, which is fine. And it's, there are questions to be answered there,
obviously. Yeah. But I think what's missing is that we would probably be just running Postgres
on the HPR BPS and then push out a normalized view into my SQL or sorry, yeah, into MariaDB
and then host that out there. So I'd possibly be tempted to move a lot of the pages to static pages
as opposed to requiring the database for everything. So I'm trying to keep database access
on the back end and then having as many static pages as possible on the front end. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. No, that's fair enough. One very interesting comment came from Nigel Verity who was pointing out
that my SQL MariaDB and Postgres are all fine and dandy. But since we're dealing with a relatively
small and relatively simple database, maybe something like SQL Lite would be worth a look.
Not really. We were looking at that. We had, in fact, been discussing this,
having just heard Floss Weekly's show about, what was the name of the thing I've forgotten?
Yeah, I can't remember, but if you go back, it's the last one or two shows on Floss Weekly has been
about clustering of my SQL databases on the back end. It's called Bedrock, I think, say so in the thread.
Yeah. Episode 456 of Floss Weekly. They looked at Bedrock, which is, which has clustered
SQL Lite instances, which might be overkill. But still, it's something well worth looking at.
And SQL Lite is actually very powerful considering it's a database in one file.
Yeah. There are advantages to it because we could put that at the back end of a read on the
RSS feed or think server. And then whoever wants it, can grab it. Yep. Yep. It's, yeah.
People want interesting comments, feel free to do so. Yeah. I plan to put out the work I've
done so far in the next week or so. One or two weeks is what we used to say in my workplace,
one to two weeks. So sometimes when I get a moment in the next couple of weeks, I plan to put
stuff out for people to look at if they're interested in comment. And that would all be most
appreciated. And I would like to thank NYU Bill for the pulse card, which he found my address.
If anybody else finds my address, and send me a pulse card, I will send them on back. Thank you
very much. That's good. That's very good. Have you found my address on the website, Steve? Yeah,
I know. I know your address. There are various ways. There are various ways to find it.
Yeah. I ain't hard to find. That's for sure. Is there anything else that we missed or we should
be discussing? I think we've covered it. My can't think of anything further. So we have a little
look at the old queue and see how it's doing. We could do with some shows. Next week is full.
The week after that is not is not full. And there are plenty. There are a few shows for the next
three weeks, but it's looking slim. Slim pickings is what I'm seeing. Slim pickings. So yeah,
if you were thinking of doing a few shows, now is the ideal time. Northern hemisphere of the winter
is coming in. Southern hemisphere long summer days ahead of you. And no reason not to do a show.
Yep. That sounds about right. Okay, let's call this a day, Dave, and tune in tomorrow for
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