Episode: 891
Title: HPR0891: 2011-2012 Hacker Public Radio New Year's Eve Part 1/8
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0891/hpr0891.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 04:18:03

---

🎵
🎵
Hello and welcome to the 12-hour live show, HPR, hosted by Poke.
Thanks, Clad, too.
I just started saying that and realized I wasn't using my push-talk, so I just said all
that without keying out.
We're off to a great start.
Welcome everyone to the last day of 2011, the last HPR recording of 2011, and hopefully
a long day of people talking about how much they enjoyed HPR over the year, where we've
got a full crew in here.
It looks like we've got 51-50, you want to say hello?
How are you, Poke?
Thanks for joining us.
We've got...
Frank is here.
Frank, I don't know if we've met before.
How are you doing, Frank?
Pretty good.
I hope you can hear.
Frank?
Yep, we've got you.
You've got a little bit of an echo, but you're definitely here.
We've got Kevin W. Good morning, everyone.
And we have Pythman Music, Dan Worth, who's server-we're on.
Thank you very much for all your help in setting this up, Dan.
Hello, hello, hello.
And we have Dan Washgo, who has got two machines on here.
He's on here to talk, and he's also got his asterisk machine hooked up, and we'll be
giving out that connection information at some point, so that if people can't connect
through mumble, we actually have a dial in line for you to use.
Hey, Dan.
Good day, Poke.
And we have Jay Newsteader for right now.
How you doing, Jay?
He may be away from his mic right now.
Glad to.
How's it going, man?
Thank you for coming on to help him out.
Hi, everybody.
Hey, Poke.
My pleasure to be here.
And back from Ohio, we have Pegwall.
I'm not in Ohio, but OK.
That's what we said.
You're back from Ohio.
It's fantastic.
We fell in that hole and sunk in there for a while.
So, man, this is great.
We've got all kinds of people listening.
We've got all kinds of people on the stream.
And these are all people who are fans of Echo Public Radio, and that's just, it's the coolest
thing.
It's really the coolest thing.
Glad to.
Where do we start, man?
Beats the heck out of me.
Didn't you have some show ideas or something about, like, what we were supposed to talk
about?
Not really.
I was just, it would be more of a roundtable thing where people would, uh, would bring the
topics that they had, but I can certainly start us off in talking about how this kind
of came together and, and the problems that had to be overcome on the way there.
But, uh, I had, um, I had my machine, which I, I wasn't planning on using, but I was
testing out.
OK.
I, the hard drive was too full to do any of the recording, but I installed Jack just
to try that out.
And the thing completely failed on me.
And that was earlier this week, and I had no time to get any work and everything I tried
failed on me.
So I pulled out a spare machine that I had in the basement, and I installed Linux Mint
on there thinking that would be quick to get up and running.
And I've got to say all the praise and all the, the, the good I've heard about Linux
Mint, the new one, um, none of it came through on my end.
It just, it failed left, right and center.
And I, uh, I wound up using a, uh, a salads install in this machine is what's running now,
which is, uh, it's, it's slackware for lazy people.
So slackware and salads to the rescue.
Interesting.
Well, so what, what was involved in setting the whole thing up anyway?
I mean, what did you have to do?
Basically, just get mumble installed, get my sound working and, um, you know, make sure
everything was stable, but I don't know what was going on with Mint, but my sound card kept,
like sound would fail if I went to adjust a volume.
My sound would just completely fail and it'd be gone and it wouldn't come back until I
rebooted.
Um, I've been using Audacity for a few years now and I don't think I've had an Audacity
crash in like three years.
And on that Mint install, it crashed the time I opened it about five or, or eight minutes
into a session, it would crash and I, I really don't know what the problem was, but I put
slackware on there and it, you know, it's perfect now.
So that was, uh, that was my end of it and then, um, and, uh, I know that we had some,
a little bit of trouble, uh, with the, with the streams getting up in the server, but
that was more, more a timing thing where it was hard to get everybody together to test
everything out all at once.
So, uh, you know, we had some trouble at some point with the, uh, the kelp, but everybody
had to be on the same version of kelp.
And that wasn't working because not all distors have the same version of kelp available
and people would have to either go compile or find it from other source.
So we've dialed everything back down to, um, to the speaks codec for this, which is, uh,
you know, it's going to be tough for anybody using an Android because that doesn't have
the speaks codec.
We won't hear them anymore.
They certainly won't hear us, but, um, but that's what we're using now and we got just
a million people, uh, in the, in the chat room right now, which is awesome.
Dan Walsh goes, you have the an asterisk machine set up with a meat meat conference bridge
on it.
How, how did you get that work?
It's just a pluge, Pokey.
It's just taking two sound cards.
They had to be different cards because I could not use the same, um, USB sound card.
Um, so I had to use two different cards and I just, uh, took the line out, line in from
one plugged it into the line out of the other and vice versa.
Like I said, it's very clergy, but it seems to work.
So what services have you got run on that machine right now, um, um, mumble, of course,
and lymphone and they just, lymphones connected into the conference on the asterisk server and
mumble is connected into where it's supposed to be.
Okay.
Sweet.
So at some point, um, maybe when, when Ken Fallon becomes available again to update the
website, we can probably drop that phone number or the SIP connection into, uh, into the
hacker public radio page and people calling on that, right?
Yeah.
No problem.
Send them the information.
So it's all up to him.
That is awesome.
That is awesome.
Who else is a, uh, a sound hack going on right now that was, it was not, you know, the
easiest thing to get in here who else, who else dealt with issues?
I mean, I'm the one who's got the, the, the set up to stream it and all.
Yeah, you've got the most complicated set up of all pipe, man.
Can, can you, uh, can you explain to us how you got that even to work?
Um, it's actually not as complicated as you think.
Um, we just have a, uh, I have a web server that's running ice cast and the, and the
murmur server.
Then on my end, um, once you get Jack running, you can, there is a patch for mumble to
get it to work with Jack.
And so basically I just fire up mumble and it pops up in my Jack connections.
And then I use, uh, uh, ice cast client called Dark Ice, which also supports Jack.
And then I have a config file that I run and it's basically all scripted and it just
pops up and connects.
There's not as complicated as you think it was getting Jack running seems to, to be a
stumbling point for a lot of people.
But once you have that done, getting everything else to work is, is just, you know, I have
a patch bay and I just, I'm able to plug the output of the mumble into Dark Ice so
that this, the mumble is streamed.
And then the output of that into my system speakers so I can hear it.
And then I have, uh, I have a multi channel card.
I can do 10 audio inputs and 10 audio outputs on the same card.
And so I have two inputs.
One is my guitar, proud directly through a direct box into my mixer and then the other
one is, uh, my audio technique at 3035 condenser mic and then that, then those are routed
both and then both dark ice.
So on the stream, all my stuff is direct to dark ice, it doesn't go through mumble.
Well, given that, given that this is hacker public radio, maybe someone could actually
educate me on how streaming even works.
I mean, I know that I guess ice cast or whatever, well, actually, I don't even know.
So how does streaming work?
Does anyone know?
You mean technically?
Yeah.
Like, what's the workflow like?
So you've got ice cast running as a service on a, on your server and, and that's outputting
the sound that we're sending to it and then people can connect to that service essentially.
And here, the sound, is that all there is to it?
Well, is it, yeah, this, this, you connect to the server with a, with some sort of ice casting
client.
And that's how I feed audio to the, to the ice cast server.
Okay.
All right.
So dark ice, which is a client that supports, it's a command line and use a config file.
Okay.
There's no GUI for it, but it also supports so, oh, so does it just show up like as an input
or an output rather in the jack when you open up like Q jack control, it would just be
one of the, one of the things, oh, cool.
Okay.
So dark ice and then whatever, it has a random number of designs to it is a writable client
and then I just connected to it.
Very cool.
Okay.
So once you get, once you're able to do it once, repeating it is pretty simple.
The problem is I seem to have a hard time explaining to get there, you know, but really
when I want to stream and do a live show, there's a ton of set up.
I just wrote a bash script that starts everything and then I'm good to go.
Yeah.
You were saying before that the getting jack setup might be the stumbling block and that's
probably where I was stumbling to because I would open the jack GUI and I would see the
patch bay and it's just a list of, you know, inputs and outputs down to different sides
of the screen and you highlight too and you click connect and it draws a line between
the two of them and it seemed to know what it was doing.
It seemed to even connect them automatically, but as I could not get sound running at all
and it was very weird because my sound card seems to be perfectly happy, outputting any
sound that goes into my microphone, but nothing in my system was expecting, was acknowledging
any of that sound, you know.
So in the, in QJack control, there's a setup and this is where it's where you basically
set in all the settings.
Were you able to get, you were able to get jack the server running?
Yeah, see that, like I said, that's probably the stumbling point.
I have really no idea.
So I think that could have been where the problem was and then on the main screen, there's
like a start and stop button when you start that actually starts the jack server, the
daemon.
Yeah, that's what I thought and I would hit that and I would see the timer running, but
I don't know.
Maybe it just, I don't know, it didn't, it didn't like me that time.
I'll have to try it another time and the other thing is in your settings, you want to make
sure that you're duplex, you're set to duplex and that you're using the proper interface
on your, on your computer.
Some of the Intel give like four or five devices, you know, so you want to make sure you're
set up using the proper device.
That's what kills me every time.
I never know.
It takes me so long to figure out which, which of those, yeah, like four or five versions
of the same sound card I'm really supposed to be using.
Oh gosh, yeah, I have a sound blaster card that whenever I switch machines out or something,
that card comes with me because no matter what that sound card works and my mic works
on it.
But, you know, when I open up any sound configuration, I have five or six, you know, Intel sound inputs
for the internal card and like eight or ten or twelve on the sound blaster card and it's,
and then, you know, Alza has five or six listed as default, which I think are just the same
as what's on the sound blaster card and it's just, it's so weird, it's so, there's not
an easy way to test it.
I think if you could test it easier, then the rest would be easy.
Yeah, I think, I think getting the device in the settings is one thing that people trip
over just because the way Linux registers audio devices is a bit strange and Intel registers
like a bunch of different audio devices.
Usually, if you're not running Jack, you can figure out which ones head into your headphones
with using the command line A play and you can, you can send, say, a wave file directly
to that sound card and you should hear audio.
That'll usually tell you which, you know, it's usually HW, colon zero or something like that.
That's a great tip.
I did not know that.
Yeah, if you do A play dash L, it's either L or capital L. I can't remember which one.
It should list all the sound cards.
Yeah, that's not bad.
Actually, I'm thinking from the dumb user standpoint, my solution would be to ask some
kernel hacker, you know, to like alias sound cards with known values.
So like if I plug in my sound blaster or whatever version card, the kernel would say, oh, you
know, it would replace whatever it's calling it with, oh, the green plug or the red plug.
That's, you know, if we had a list of that going on, people could, you know, update that
list with known values, that would make it real easy.
Yeah, if you could like edit what you see in like K mix or whatever gooey mixer you've
got on your system, that would be really nice if you could edit the, I mean, even, I mean,
it would be great if the distribution could figure that out, but it might not be possible
because there are so many possible values for each, but at least if you could sit down
one afternoon and say, okay, I'm going to figure all this stuff out and then go through
and figure out which weird name of your sound device is which plug in the back of your
tower or whatever, then you could double click on it, rename it to whatever human makes
sense, kind of value.
That'd be, that'd be fantastic.
I'm pretty sure you can, Alias, ports.
Oh, okay.
You can actually enter a card, also, well, Alias, a vendor name, but like, I can actually
call the device by card, mine's called an M1010LT because it's an M audio belt, a 1010
light audio card.
How'd you do that?
I didn't do it.
Alias also does it.
I'm sorry.
I think what you meant was how did you cause Alias the card to give you a more human readable
name?
I didn't.
It does it itself.
I would like some way for the user to be able to do that so that like Poke says, if I'm
looking at the back of my tower and I've got an orange plug and a green plug and a black
plug and a blue plug, I could say, okay, I figured out that this is HW colon zero, so that's
the, you know, I'll call that the black plug and that way I know what that is.
I just, I think that'd be really, really nice.
Oh, yeah, that's not really how sound card works though.
Oh, I mean, one of those devices is all your physical ports, all in one.
The other ones will be like a digital mixer that some, some audio cards include.
Other what, some of those other devices aren't, aren't, most of them are just junk.
They're, they're stuff you're not going to use.
Okay.
Well, you just need to figure out as which one is the one and once you've got that, you
just keep you, you know, but anyways, yeah, that's, that's like I said, every time I
finish computers, I, I take this sound card out and I put it in the next computer that
I'm using because no matter what, if I plug this mic into this sound card, every computer
I've used it on, it works just fine and I get, you know, like if I open Audacity and look
at the sound wave, I get my, my zero line is right in the center as opposed to like way
low or way high, which other cards and other mics have done on me.
So it's, you know, this is what I got.
It's also why generally when we're dealing with any kind of recording or audio, I never
recommend using the, the built in sound card.
It's usually difficult to use and there's a lot of better, better options out there.
And some of them aren't even that crazy expensive like, um, I'm trying to remember the name
of it.
Baringer makes one a USB device that's called, I believe the you, let me look.
We're trying about one of those like breakout boxes.
Basically, you plug it into your USB port and it's got a bunch of inputs and outputs.
Yeah, even something simpler like the Baringer UCA 202, which is just basically has RCA ports
on it.
You have two in two out and it's USB plug and those show up like as a U202.
And they're not, it's not crazy expensive.
I mean, it's under $40.
If you hunt it around, I bet you could pick one up probably around 30 asm for 24.
So then you have an RCA plug.
The problem is getting that to a mic.
So usually you end up going with a mixer and there's a, there's a pretty inexpensive mixer
that's Baringer makes.
It's the Baringer Xenix 802, I think.
It seems to me as, as I, you know, go through life that audio seems to be the only problem
that I know of that can be solved by just throwing a ton of money at it.
It's really annoying.
Yeah.
I mean, of all the problems that people try to solve by throwing money at them, it seems
to work just fine for audio.
To be fair though, this little mixer's a 38 bucks on Amazon.
So I mean, it's, you be looking right around the $50 mark and you can plug a real mic into
your computer and have really good Linux performance.
Yeah, yeah, that's not bad.
It's all, I mean, it isn't out, it isn't an outrageous proposition to solve, but it's
not.
It also doesn't, I mean, to be fair, it doesn't necessarily, I mean, if you don't want
to spend the money, you can sit there and spend the time and kind of, you know, figure
out your internal sound card and just jot down on a piece of paper if you have to, which
we would interface the one that you really want to use is called and, you know, you can
kind of figure it out, but it does get easier if you just, yeah, throw a little bit of money
at it.
Yeah.
Usually, now, I don't want, I'm trying to avoid the preachy, like, what constitutes good
audio quality and not because I know content is key and podcasting, you know, as long
as it sounds reasonable, it's okay, but when you're using an internal sound card and you're
plugging in a mic into that, it's not, the mic you end up using is called a permanently
charge back electric mic, and it's because those like, that's what's like in a headset
or, you know, back in the day, you had the little microphones just sit on your desk and
stuff like that.
Those are about as poor quality of microphone as, as as possible, you know, I agree that
content is king and that, you know, the sound quality issue once you get it solved becomes,
you know, a background problem.
And I'm going to use that as a segue to try to say hello and introduce some of the people
in the room here that, at least I am not as familiar with.
So, is there anybody here on the call right now that, that is not or has not contributed
to show that HPR yet, is anybody here like that?
I haven't.
Yeah, I was planning on doing a how I found Linux episode here while I was off work over
the holidays.
Very cool.
And this is Kevin talking for people who can't see Kevin, you're an HPR listener then
I take it.
Correct.
I subscribe to the feed and listen to all the shows.
So now, how long have you been listening to any idea?
Oh, I would say I would clear back to when it was, what was the original name of the website
and the show?
Oh, today with a techie.
Now, what was the original bin rev, yeah, when it was still bin rev, I was probably when
I started and I remember switching over to Hacker when I switched to Hacker to the Hacker
public radio.
Yeah, bin rev radio was a great show.
I loved that.
That was one of the first ones that I listened to, well, I mean, first podcast.
Yeah, it was, it was a really great show.
I'm still hoping that that stankdog got some of the emails and some of the publicity that
we sent out and we'll call in.
I'm holding on to that, I hope that he'll call in at some point today.
Yeah, it was, it's funny too because I heard about bin rev and about bin rev radio and
I subscribed to the podcast and the first one that came down the feed like the day after
I subscribed was their final show.
Yeah, you know what?
I think it's almost the same thing for me because you're talking about that seven hour thing
that he did.
Yeah, yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
You know, but one of the funny thing is that was like one of the, that was, yeah, that
was, I think where I started listening to bin rev radio.
But it literally, it remains one of those episodes that just kind of, of all times, you
know, just really made a huge impression on me.
Yeah, it was, it was a big deal.
Uh, I mean, Kevin, did you remember that like the feeling that that kind of gave you
and when HPR started up to like that first time that HPR music happened, like I was so pumped
for that.
Like here is something important was the feeling that that came across me and that stuck
with me.
Personally.
I don't, I don't recall how I felt.
I mean, that I just, I like that, I like the intro music and I, when I hear that come
through my, uh, player when I'm listening to the podcast and others, you know, all, you
know, 95% chance it's going to be a good show.
So yeah, definitely pegable.
I was gonna say personally, I'm sorry for interrupting everybody, but, um, when I first heard
it, like I got that big sense of community, you know, like when you first start getting
involved in the Linux community, you get feeling that, you know, I'm a part of something
that was all we heard.
Like when you first start getting involved in the Linux, Linux community and you just
get that feeling of I'm involved.
Yeah, definitely.
It's very exciting, very appealing, I think that's a big draw, at least for me, I mean,
the feeling that, yeah, it's, it's something's going on.
People are interested in this more than just a passing interest.
One of the things that I help, but that I think helps to give it that feeling is that there's
such a low barrier to entry, um, in, in listening and subscribing and also in hosting a show,
but that doesn't seem to turn away the real pros when the guys come out with the real
technical shows, they, they, they don't seem to mind that that barrier to entry so low.
And a lot of times you get that where people will kind of snub their nose at the room full
of noobs.
It doesn't happen at HPR, I really enjoy that about it.
Well, it's because I think, well, first of all, I think the geek community is very much
like that anyway, largely.
I mean, like the most, most of the geeks that I've met are very sort of real, you know,
they don't care who you are, how much you know, as long as you're just kind of yourself.
And I think Hacker Public Radio inherits that a lot because everyone's got something interesting
to say, even if they don't know that much about a certain topic, they, they've probably
got some interesting angle that we can all learn from.
I have to say the, the ability to do like, just call in shows and have it ended up being
posted.
You can't really get lower of a barrier entry.
And what's the name of the guy gadget, yeah, Mr. Gadgets, Mr. Gadgets, those have been
some of my favorite episodes of all time.
I mean, honestly, yeah, I could just listen to, I could just listen to him ramble on about
anything, you know, I, you know, I have so many podcasts in my podcast catcher now that
I have to be pretty selective and Mr. Gadgets shows end up at the top of the list every
time.
They're one of the first ones I get for just because I always walk away with a smile and
feeling better about stuff.
So you can't get lower of a barrier entry to just make a phone call, talk about some stuff,
call it good, you know, definitely.
And Mr. Gadgets isn't here right now, but I think Frank, who's here now is Frank Bell.
And his shows, Frank, if that's you have, your shows have the same feeling to me as those,
those Mr. Gadgets shows are your show, I think you posted one and had the same feeling to
me.
It was really every bit as enjoyable as that.
Well, thank you very much.
I, it's not just I think that there's low barrier of entry.
I think that the hacker public radio community is really welcoming, it's positive.
It wants for a comment, at least I've felt that.
By the way, I can hear most people, but I can't seem to hear Clotu when his little lips
go red.
So I'm, you know, hesitant to pop in because I might walk on somebody.
Well, that's fair enough.
In the configuration, if your settings, your compression is set down to speaks, you
should be able to hear.
My guess is that your compression is up into where it says that it's the Celt codec being
used.
We've had some Celt codec incompatibility problems, but yeah, as to what you said, it's
absolutely the feeling that I get out of HPR is that people try to be welcoming most
of the feedback that we see, like show comments, are very positive, very welcoming things,
trying to encourage people to post another show.
And something that Clotu said earlier was about people who don't think that they have
anything to say.
And it's so funny because people will say that to me in an email or in an IRC that they
don't think they have anything to say.
And when they actually finally post their show, there's some of the most popular shows
that we have because it's a perspective that no one has approached before.
So it's new to everybody and it's exciting.
And I would like people to know, don't let that hold you back from throwing a show up
there.
And give your audio another try, Frank.
Oh, okay.
And I have checked my codec several times.
It definitely says speaks.
And I'm hearing most people, it's only one or two that I'm not picking up.
The syndrome you're talking about, about people thinking they don't have anything to say,
is one that I've run into a lot.
People tend to kind of put down their own experiences.
They can be creative, but if you ask them, they will say, me, I'm not creative.
I just did what I had to do.
I think that's a natural human impulse.
Me, I've got plenty of ego.
I just was just having trouble picking subject matter.
Yeah.
And that seems to be at the heart of the hacker ethos and why hacker public radio works is
that people do just get stuff done.
And many times they're doing stuff in a way that no one's thought of yet or that no one
realizes they need.
So when they talk about that, it really strikes home with a lot of people that seems to be
a big part of it.
I think it's funny.
Lots of times when I, when I've talked, you cut out there like, you're weird to say
lots of times when you've talked.
When I've talked about why I started doing the open source musician podcast, the reason
is that nobody else was, you know, it wasn't necessarily that I felt like I was the right
guy or the guy who knew enough, because when I first started, I knew next to nothing, you
know, I just started using Linux.
So it was just that I really wanted to show like that and nobody else was putting it out.
And I think HPR is a great outlet for people who don't want to go through the trouble
of setting up their own feed and that kind of stuff and maybe don't have a weekly show
where the stuff, but have something to say or something to talk about.
And I really love the How I Found Linux podcast because, you know, now I've been doing this
six years or so.
It's the same problem at work.
I'm going through a batch of training people at work and there's seven or 10 or 15 steps
in everything that I do that I don't think about anymore.
And that those are the things that get the new guys tripped up.
And so hearing the How I Found Linux and even if the Hacker Public Radio is just people
saying, Hey, I have a problem with this and I can't seem to get it solved as anybody
else want to do a Hacker Public Radio on how to do it.
And these are the problems I'm having, you know, I like those too.
Oh, yeah.
For sure.
When people call in and talk about that stuff, it's, it's, it's everybody is interesting
when somebody says they don't have a solution is when they say that they do.
But even then, even if you don't think it's enough to make a show out of, go ahead and
email the show request to hpr at hackerpublicradio.org.
And we'll stick it on our list of show request and, and if you want to do a show and can't
find a topic, not sure what to do and on check that list, it's on the, the contribute
page.
And there's always, there's always actually a really big part.
Can you start that over again?
Yeah, sorry.
You would cut out.
I think you're finished.
I was going to say, I think that it's a big part of like the whole open source free
software process is communication, you know, telling people, look, I figured this out
or look, I don't know how to do this.
And I don't think that there is a way to do it yet.
So let's, let's sit down and figure out how to do it or make it better or whatever.
I mean, that's such an integral part of how opens or software even works that having
a forum where people can go and publicly announce, okay, I don't know how to do this.
Or hey, look, I found out a really cool way to do this thing.
It's really actually significant.
I think it's contributing to the greater, you know, this is the greater open source project
I think.
Yeah, I think you're totally right about that.
Is there anyone else in the room who hasn't done a show yet?
And this is their first time on HBR?
Okay, I guess everybody on there's either done a show or isn't right at their mic.
They're right now.
Right now.
No, Craig, and we can't hear you.
Sorry about that.
Craig on's calling in from the future.
It's actually 2012 at his house already.
So we're waiting to hear from him.
He's going to tell us what the winning lot of numbers are I'm hoping and whether 2012
actually is the year of the Linux desktop, but it looks like audio through time travels
just as tough as Jack.
Craig on, can you pop into the OSMP mumble room and try and sort out your audio with
there's a couple of guys in there right now who can help you?
Okay, so they just dropped off.
Now, I'm seeing a couple other names in here.
Colonomial.
Where do I know your name from?
Are you on?
No?
Okay.
Well, who wants anything to say?
Actually, I will throw my hat into the ring here.
Let's see.
Well, first off, this is Bruce and second of all, I've been threatening to do a show for
a little while now.
In fact, I wanted to be one of the first to submit actually a video and it would be sort
of a combination of cooking while explaining my desktop adventures.
That sounds really interesting.
I want to ask you more about it, but I don't want to make you spoil it.
But yeah, I mean, so this is Bruce Patterson, Bruce, you do the DistroWatch Weekly podcast
every week and that's amazing that you put a show all like that every week.
How do you find the motivations to nail a show every week like that?
Well, actually, I'm just the mouthpiece for a lot of Slum and Jesse do actually the
grunt work for all of it.
And I get to sit back and take all the credit for their hard work.
But seriously, I think that one of the things that I was listening to when Russ Winner
was running the show and one of the funny parts about is that I've always wanted to do
something for the community in general and because I'm not a coder and I'm a guy who uses
the links, but really is just getting his feet really wet now with it.
This was a way for me to sort of gently ease into it.
And the short of it is that I've had a lot of fun doing it.
I've met a ton of really nice people doing it as well.
And it's funny because this was one of the things that I remember a while back listening
on to the tilts that are talking about, Bruce, how this sort of new generation of folks.
Hey, Bruce, you're cutting in and out.
We heard you say that you remember listening a while back, I thought you said tilts when
I'm not sure.
Yeah, I was listening to tilts and the short of it is that there's a new crowd out now.
And it's not the RTFM crowd anymore.
I think everybody that I've run into has been very helpful.
And I've enjoyed my stay from every group that I've actually had a pleasure sitting in
on.
And I will agree with that 100%.
Every group in Linux that I've been part of or gone to visit or had anything to do with,
I've never met an RTFM guy.
And you hear about how horrible Linux was to get into because of that.
But I've never met anyone at a log, not at a conference, not an HPR, not in any chatroom.
It's just, I totally agree with you, Bruce, it's been fantastic.
One of the side notes that I'd also like to mention too is that one of the great things
about Hacker Public Radio is the series.
And I wanted to try and thank Dan when he was on here earlier, but he put a six part series
on the boot process.
And it's really important for a lot of folks who are just getting into it as well, who
really want to know the harder side of things.
And this is one of the ways to get into it.
And also because he's also around somewhere, Clat 2 as well, a lot of his podcasts from
the GNU World Order, you know, those have been really helpful.
So I mean, you guys that are in here today just keep doing these things because you've
got a lot of listeners out there.
Yeah, I want to say, I'll agree with you.
And both of those guys seem to have carried forward, I guess I'll say the spirit of what
Chess Griffin was trying to do when he had Linux reality on and they see who just really
carried that tradition on and it's great to have it at Hacker Public Radio.
And my last point is that the open source musicians guys put out another podcast too, because
I was actually just getting into it when you guys went on, I think it's...
Yeah, it wasn't intentional, I just...
I went on overtime at work and was working like 67 hours a week, so I did that for about
almost 11 weeks, so not intentional.
We'll be back.
Well, it'd be nice to talk equipment every once in a while too, because I've noticed
there are a lot of musicians involved with Linux as well.
Yeah, I'd like to see more, I could never have enough.
Yeah, for sure.
I really love my Linux podcast, I like them all.
And HPR is just, it's a great one to get your feet wet too, as a listener and as a contributor.
Well, and in theory, Hacker Public Radio isn't even just a Linux podcast, which I think
makes it nice actually.
It's just one of...
It can be very general sometimes just about computer history or, I don't know, some of
the other topics like hacking weamodes and things like that, it's kind of neat that way.
Whoopie, now I hear Clad 2.
I want to go back to where we were earlier about the range of topics.
I have found that I listen to almost every Hacker Public Radio podcast I get.
The one or two I don't, to be ones, we get into the details of Birmingham, which is
way over my head, like Bruce, I'm a user, not a coder.
And occasionally one that just starts to ramble.
But all in all, there are probably only three that I've not listened to at least most
of them over the two, two and a half years that I've been catching HPR podcast.
Yeah, same here.
For HPR, like, I'm like, Pipeman music, I have so many podcasts in my feet at this point.
And there's almost not enough time in the day to listen to them all, but HPR generally
speaking gets pushed right up to the top of the list, almost always.
Yeah, I think I've skipped maybe three episodes in the entire, we're almost at 900 episodes.
Now I think I've skipped three, maybe halfway through.
And it wasn't even the content, it was, I couldn't hear the audio, I couldn't make out
what the person was saying.
And it's probably just my crappy headphones that I had at the time.
I should probably go back and look to see if I can hear that any better.
Yeah, I agree.
It's one I never skipped.
They're all great.
I think one of the other things I could throw in there, too, is that HPR could certainly
be a gateway drug, if you will, into the Lynx world, because first of all, it puts on
a really awesome face for Linux in general, because it shows how diverse the crowd is.
And again, it's not strictly just Linux either.
I mean, there's a wider range of topics to go from.
I think it's also sort of similar to the desktop fight that keeps be appearing every year.
The short of it is that maybe if we started introducing new folks into free software and
then use it as sort of a means to an end, I think that that's how you would ultimately
garner more of a user group.
Yeah, and to those ends, as far as developing a user group, and we're really working on
this right now at HPR, and I keep forgetting to ask people this, but one of the biggest
things you can do to help out hacker public radio is after listening to a show, to a good
show that you like, go ahead and post a comment on it so that the person who did it knows
it to be in her, knows that they're appreciated, because if you just are throwing out a podcast
into silence, it's hard to find the motivation to do another one.
Yeah, feedback is a huge part of the whole thing.
I just want to let you guys know, I'm going to go upstairs and go get some neat, so I'll
be back in a little bit, let me know if there's any issues.
No worries.
I got your phone number.
Thank you very much for your help.
Yeah, back in a bit.
So that leads me to asking to you, Poppy, what about some of the future projects that you
guys have online?
I mean, what would you ultimately like to see this grow into?
Boy, that's a big question, and I hate to say, it almost feels like a cop out just
to say, I want to see it grow into a community.
I want to see it be a place where people go to hang out with one another to share their
positive feelings about Linux, about podcasts, and about connecting with people online.
Yeah, I have to say that that's almost a question not so much for Poppy as it is for
like everyone in this room right now, you know, like where do we all want to see HPR
go?
Maybe maybe one of these kinds of group calls would be a good idea once a month, who knows?
Yeah, and everybody listening to, I mean, yeah, yeah, I really, I don't want to minimize
the fact that there are people listening to us right now who aren't in this room, and
they are hacker public radio every bit as much as everyone in this room is.
Well, and again, to sort of reiterate the question that I had asked you last night, what
about the possibility of, at some point, streaming these shows around the clock, like we
were talking about feeding them all into Rivendell and letting them run, because like
you said, you've got 900, about 900 episodes now, and I could see this being sustained,
and as you add more to it, it's always going to be playing.
It's a great idea.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't knock it at all.
Well, that's what hacker media is, isn't it?
I mean, not to interrupt you, but I mean, that's, that already exists, or it did exist
at one point.
I haven't looked at that lately.
See, yeah, I was unaware of that, I think maybe it's just the fact that we're not always
on the same page, and that's kind of where the community part comes in, because we don't
seem to have one place to congregate when it's not, you know, when we're not listening
to a podcast.
We all listen to the same podcast every day, but not everybody's on the mailing list, and
not everybody's post in comments, and not everybody's going over to look at hacker media.
So I think maybe that might be like the key to what all is to get one central meeting
place.
Yeah, which ostensibly, I think, a hacker public radio front end that is word pression,
or droople, or whatever, I guess we're doing the word press thing, I think that'll help
a little bit.
I think it's going to help a lot, I think it's going to, it's going to make a big difference.
When that goes live, I think we're going to see some, some changes to the way that, that,
you know, people treat it.
Oh, let me take a step back.
So Clot 2, you mentioned hacker media.
So is there a way that there's something that streams 24 hours on this?
You know, it might not be through hacker media, I think it is, I haven't been there in
a while, but there was a, yeah, there was a binary radio revolution, sponsored site that
literally, yes, it just, it's streamed basically, I think mostly bin rev content all the time.
It was just around the clock, I think it was hacker media.
I mean, let me go to that site really quick.
It's definitely dominated by hacker public radio though, including the intriguing handbook
for the criminally insane, so you can't blame us for that.
That was damn.
No, I think that's sweet, actually.
In fact, my wife poses the question the other day, the difference between a shiv and
a shank, it's, it's interesting that we found the answer.
Yeah, I think the difference is a shiv is one that you, is one that you make yourself.
Exactly.
Well, the shiv is the knife, the shank is the one you make into a knife.
Yes.
So there are experts, but a bunch of technically talking about knives and then the shank
is the part that's in the handle.
That's that, that love is such a fun show to do because it's, it's just like this.
It's people getting together and you're not just talking into a mic, you know, by yourself.
Yeah, that was a really fun one.
I really enjoyed the book club that I've done, which hasn't posted yet, but that, I have
to say, that was, I was a little bit, I didn't know how to go about it.
I'm not really an audiobook listener usually, so I don't know, it felt like there was a
little bit of, I guess, a barrier to entry, but that was definitely a fun show to do.
I encourage people who haven't done one of those yet to, to consider that.
Oh, yeah, and anybody's welcome to join us in the book club.
You can get in touch with us, you know, on the mailing list,
hpr at hackapublicradio.org, or you can get us in IRC, we're usually in all cast
planet. One of us is usually hanging out there or do your own book club.
If you don't want to, you know, if you don't want to do the same book we're doing,
or you want to do one of your own, anything like that is fine.
I mean, Clat 2, you did a movie review with a bunch of guys once and, you know,
because of it, I saw one of my very favorite movies ever and I never even heard of it until you guys did that.
Which one was it that was T.A. checks 1138?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the movie's fantastic.
I love every, I mean, that was great.
I never would have known anything about it if you guys hadn't mentioned it.
Yeah, Bruce, I guess it's not hacked.
I mean, hacker media is an aggregation, obviously, of a bunch of feeds,
but I'm not, I'm not seeing the streaming thing that used to be here,
unless I'm just not thinking of the right.
I kept, I keep thinking maybe hacker voice, but I go there and there's nothing there.
So I'm not sure, but it was, it was a streaming online,
you know, it was online streaming that just kept streaming stuff over and over again from different sources.
It was really, really pretty neat.
Oh, and so I didn't decide.
I think if anything, that's another void yet for hacker public to step in.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I used to tune into it like if I'd run out of podcasts to listen to during my day,
I would go to that site and just kind of listen in on it.
And there'd be, there were often some security podcasts on there
that I, that I didn't really have as part of my feed, but I kind of knew of them.
So I'd, I'd catch a few episodes through that, through that.
It's kind of cool, although one of the things that I definitely want to start doing,
you know, and you can see the blog that I usually post up on Linux basics.
I think what I'd like to do is just throw out an occasional for the, you know,
HPR episode that really hits home for me.
I definitely would like to start pushing those things to the forefront as well,
because I actually heard episode 83 this morning, the interview with Dan Lynch.
Dan's always a good, good interview and the, the talk that he had with Ken Fallon,
who was one of the more enjoyable ones that I've liked.
Yeah, definitely. It's definitely, there's a, there's a Dan Lynch isn't for you.
It's, it's always great to interview, you know, cool people who are just willing to be,
you know, friendly and stuff, and that's what's so cool about HPR.
There's so many people there, maybe we can use this to broaden the topic a little bit.
What's, what's been everybody's favorite shows this year, really memorable shows?
Can anybody think of, think of, you know, shows that really stick out to you?
This is my attempt at trying to get some of the people to talk who haven't been spoken up yet.
Sounds like it didn't necessarily work, OK?
No, it might not.
Frankie, sound like you're trying to say something there.
I think you got stuck in a time vortex.
Yeah, yeah, OK, we kind of, kind of lost Frank there.
I'll say that some of my favorite episodes of this past year have been the brother mouse episodes.
Those things come out of left field and like from nowhere and you're like, wait,
have chickens in your backyard and he makes it so interesting.
The chickens one, the, the Coleman lantern one, those things.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, those were really good.
I've forgotten about those until you just mentioned it.
Yeah, those were great.
They were kind of almost like survivalism, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
In fact, I didn't even know what the survivalist movement was until he said that.
And I started looking into some of it, you know, just for everyday stuff.
I saw a really good presentation at a bar camp once by these small group of people.
And they were all, I mean, yeah, they looked the part.
They were definitely like into survivalism.
And it was, it was really eye-opening and just really appealing.
And one of those moments where it was like, okay, so the hacker public or the hacker culture
rather is also about this.
I can get into this and it was really neat.
Just being prepared for anything at any time is really, really a cool topic.
So I really liked the, yeah, the brother mouse episodes on more or less the same kind of stuff.
Yeah, I think the hacker culture to me because I'm not a coder, you know,
and I know that's where the word kind of started.
But to me, the hacker culture isn't necessarily, I mean, it is about coding for sure.
But I think it's also about solving problems for yourself or with friends,
you know, perhaps in a way that isn't you.
You got to, you got to figure out how to do some, you know, kind of in the non-commercial way.
And just figuring out how to get those problems solved.
I think that's really what's at the core of hacking, you know, hacking computers, hacking life,
whatever it is.
And I think that's why, you know, we have so many that are so appealing to people.
Some of the old sort of like computer memory episodes where they kind of talk about
the older computers that they kind of started out on and stuff.
I don't want to say those are like eye-opening or anything.
But I think they're really important bits of history.
And I usually like hearing that sort of thing because, I mean, even though I grew up on computers,
I had a pretty limited set of computers that I was, that I would, that I was around.
And I was kind of oblivious to what was going on outside of that little world that I was
sheltered in using those kinds of computers.
It's really neat to hear about the other kinds of computers that I didn't really know existed.
A flavor of like what what computer culture was like, you know, back at that time or whatever.
Yeah, they would go so far as to say that they're eye-opening.
They, some of the things that are said on some of those, you know,
the Mr. Gadget shows and the Frank Bells shows and show.
And the one that was about the desktop transparency.
I mean, those blew me away.
I wouldn't say they were eye-opening.
Yeah, it's weird. I go to those really hesitantly.
You know, I'm like, I'm not another historical computer episode.
And then I start listening.
And I'm like, wow, this is so cool.
And I, it's really hard for my mind to fathom what computing must have been like before Linux.
You know, it's like, what did you do before you had all this act for the operating systems and stuff?
I'm not that I've already always had it.
But I guess once I accepted that I was a geek, I kind of accepted that, okay,
the Unix Linux thing was what I was interested in.
So my, in my mind, it's always been there for me.
Yeah, I'll agree with that.
I mean, I, you know, I look back on, you know, my days of running like Windows.
And just it was a habit.
It was habitual.
Every six months, I would reinstall.
And it would take two or three days to get it done because of all the updates and everything.
And then my computer ran okay again.
And that was like, that was acceptable to me at some point.
You know, to the point where I would offer to help people do that.
And it's just, I look back on that.
And I'm like, wow, was, was I crazy?
What was wrong there?
I made the mistake back in probably like 2003, 2004 of asking a guy if he knew anything about Linux,
because I had heard the word a couple of times.
And he was not a Linux user.
And that was my mistake because he told me it was just some difficult thing that you didn't
have a desktop and you had to build it all yourself.
And it may have been minimally true at the time.
But it was, it was certainly not correct information.
And I held off for a long time.
And I didn't try Linux till like 2007 when I started hearing it mentioned on a lot of
podcasts that weren't even Linux specific.
And yet, and as soon as I, you know, popped in that first live CD the first time
and, you know, resized the partition without destroying it, I was blown away.
I was sold.
Yeah, that's funny.
I kind of had the opposite experience.
I remember being in a computer store with my dad back when computer stores existed.
And we'd seen three boxes.
I think it was Red Hat, Sioux and Yellow Dog.
And I asked him what that stuff was.
And it was over in the Windows sections.
You know, we always went to the other, the other little room,
tucked away in the corner with all that fruit flavored computer equipment.
So I kind of associated with Windows.
So that was negative.
But he told me it was like something about Unix.
And Unix was the original computing operating system.
And it's the real deal.
Like it's really serious.
You know, he gave it like this reverence.
And I just thought, wow,
someday I'll work my way up to that.
And so I always kind of regarded everything.
Anything Unix and Linux, I would always think that, you know,
it was something to achieve.
I'm going to see if I can help popy with this sound.
I'll be back.
Absolutely.
And as far as helping people with sound,
I think there's a bunch of people who have been checking their sound
out in the OSNP mumble room, which is our test room.
And seem to have stuff working.
And Ken Fallon tells me there's some people who want to say hello.
Is there anybody on who wanted to say something?
Who hasn't?
And not just a minute.
Carnominal and I think popy,
Carnominal joined and there's done to get some other people.
So I hope to be back in a while.
And my kids want to say hello as long before they go to bed.
Oh, fantastic.
The Fallon family.
Excellent.
Send them in.
Well, they're actually HPR contributors themselves
because they help me post the show every morning.
That is not cool that it can be a family thing.
You know, that we don't have to worry about.
You know, we don't have to worry about it.
It did not be an appropriate for kids.
I mean, I occasionally have to share it,
but it's, it's, it's, I usually know that going in.
Oh, the thing is here this week,
Coach, I mean, so anything you,
any bad language in English is kind of
not as, not as serious.
So what are their names, Ken?
We have Shnade.
She's the oldest.
And then we have Padrik.
Good name there.
And then we have Roji.
Okay, can they hear us now?
They're actually having their supper.
So it'll be five minutes or so before they're available.
But you actually hold on a second.
I'll see if they're around.
Ken doesn't like to be hanged so much,
but Ken is, Ken is the guy who revived Hacker Public Radio.
When it started, let's stop this, please.
Okay, I have got a gentleman here
who wants to actually be interviewed.
Hello, how are you?
Hello.
And what's your name?
Um, Padrik.
And do you know what HPR is?
Yeah.
What's HPR?
A radio program?
It's difficult to think of the words in English,
isn't that squiggles?
Yeah.
And where do you see HPR written then?
On the battery?
That's on our bicycle.
And there's a picture of that on the website, isn't there?
Do you help me in the morning post the shows sometimes?
Yeah.
And do you like it?
Yeah.
Okay, and who else do we have?
Okay, say goodbye.
Goodbye.
Or do you want to say happy New Year to people?
Happy New Year.
Can I ask Padrik a question?
Just for no more seconds.
Can you say that again?
Um, Polkie, can you say that again?
Yes, may I ask a question?
Padrik, do you know that there's people all over the world
who are happy to hear you right now?
What did you say?
Come to the closer here.
I was wondering, do you know that all over the world right now,
there are people listening to you and happy to hear you?
No.
I'm in America.
You know where America is?
Yeah.
It's a far away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you know a lot of the dinosaurs come from America?
What?
Yeah.
Cool.
Okay, who else wants to be one?
Hello, what's your name?
Chennai.
What HPR is?
Yes.
What's HPR?
I think I'm 10.
You type in things.
What do you type in the morning?
HPR.
And then the number.
What's the number?
It's a different number.
And you have to look at the number that's on the page
and then you have to add one to it.
And then you have to type that number in.
Isn't that right?
Yes.
And how old are you?
Seven.
And you're learning to read and write now, right?
Yes.
Yes.
And you speak Dutch mostly, don't you?
Yes.
Yes.
Where have you learned your English, then?
Well,
Daddy.
Say, wish everybody happy new year.
I wish you have a happy new year.
Hi, Chennai.
Happy new year.
Happy new year from America
and from all over the world right now.
Thank you.
Okay, and now the smallest one who is a bit hyper,
but also a little bit shy.
Hello, what's your name?
She doesn't want to say anything.
And hello, who are you?
I'm Manon and the mother.
Yes, and she's also the voice of the current outro.
Okay, Roosh, say bye-bye.
Happy new year.
That was Roosh, Chenan Manon.
Okay, thank you very much.
Sorry for the interruption.
Carry on and continue enjoying the show.
Awesome, Ken.
That was great.
Thank you.
I think it's kind of funny.
They have, you know, the amount of access
to technology they have been on a radio show,
broadcasting live to thousands of people.
It's actually quite amazing what you can do
with free and open source software and the community.
This has been amazing to see the amount of people
who have stepped up to the place
and started helping this last week.
It's just absolutely, totally awesome mind-blowing experience.
I've had a grin from ear to ear for the last week,
watching people volunteer, servers,
and volunteer mumble things,
and volunteer to be on,
and posting it on Facebook and all the rest.
It's fantastic.
Well done to everybody.
Yeah, thank you, everyone who's offered to help.
Everyone has helped.
Everyone who's listening.
I can apologize for not knowing
what to do with all the help that's been offered this week.
That might, I think, that was a little frustrating
for some people who were offering to help
and didn't know what to do,
and I didn't know where to place you.
But everyone is, you know, is doing their part,
and it's just fantastic.
Claudio Im just popped.
He was about to say something.
Hey, everybody, happy new year?
Or happy new year.
If you're on that side of the world,
then we're still waiting over here on my end.
Claudio contributed a couple shows a while back
on selecting a processor.
So he's one of our more technical guys,
and those are really cool shows too.
How's your 2011, Ben Claudio?
Well, it's been rather interesting,
as I've had more fun on roller coasters, really.
But this has felt quite like one.
So, yeah, overall, I'd have to say it's been a pretty good one.
It's ups and downs, but overall,
it's all good.
So, you know, as far as 2012,
challenge accepted, that's all I have to say.
Yeah, nice, nice.
I'm grasping for a topic here,
who's got something to talk about.
Can you hear me now?
Crayon, hey, from the future.
Yes, I finally got the time warp worked out,
so I'm calling in from the future.
Yeah, it's 2012 here.
So, yeah, it's funny.
Everything, I thought it would look bigger,
but everything looks pretty much the same.
Oh, that's because it's in Australia.
We don't know that.
Yeah, that could be the case.
Yeah, it's 5.5m here,
so I'm getting tired, but yeah.
Yeah, you sound like you're receiving all, mate.
Yeah, it's been a rough, you know,
pretty busy sort of end of year for me
with Christmas and everything,
and as I suppose it is for everyone,
but yeah, I'm coming down.
I've got a week of camping to relax starting tomorrow,
so that I'll have plenty of time
then to recoup and, yeah,
listen, catch up to HPR episodes and things.
So we can all look forward to hangovers tomorrow
is what we're trying to tell us.
Yeah, that's what the forecast is at this point, yeah.
I did want to say just a few things
about going backwards just from everything
that you're speaking about before.
With the, you know, the whole hacker thing,
you know, I think it's quite interesting
the website for this call in show links
to the definition of hackers on Wikipedia,
which I think is, yeah, exactly right,
in that it refers to the fact that you're building,
rebuilding, modifying and creating.
They refer to hardware and software,
but yeah, I think HPR is brilliant
in that it is literally hacking everything.
You know, you're hacking life.
And I think it's basically just,
you know, making it work for you is what you're doing.
You're taking something and you're making it work for you.
And I think that's really really quite awesome.
And for me, one of my favorites that I remember
was by KE5, which was episode 665,
which was hacking the craps table.
And that was really quite fascinating.
I thought, you know, just...
And that's a perfect example, I think.
I like those HPR episodes.
I'm fairly computer, you know,
I'm fairly technical when it comes to computers,
but I get to kick out of the episodes
they're actually on other topics,
you know, such as that.
I thought that was brilliant.
I had to listen to that episode about five times.
And after the fourth time,
and not being able to follow at all,
I printed out a picture of a craps table.
So I could set it down on the table in front of me
and looked at it while he was talking about it.
And it finally made sense that fifth time.
But yeah, that show was really fun.
I must have skipped that one.
I don't even remember it.
I think the image was in the ID3 tags, actually.
Regardless, I also printed out a lot of Wikipedia.
Well, there's some of the episodes that I did like a lot.
We're from...
from Barryman, the ones where I'm talking about his Linux setup
for his music.
Those were phenomenal.
I have to say, I enjoyed every minute of those.
And just the plus of tone of his voice,
him being a jazz musician and everything,
is just you want to hear more.
It's like, you know, you hear a storyteller
tell you this whole story about whatever.
And it just captivates you.
It's just captivated me the whole time.
Every episode was like that.
And it was great to listen to.
And definitely a lot of great tips
considering what he had set up.
So...
Oh my God, yeah.
He didn't actually even have to say anything.
That dude could read the phone book
and it would be captivating his voice
and his sound all over me.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, end of sax playing.
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
I mean, on top of all of all that.
Yes, his sax playing and the info that he had
was just amazing, that guy.
Yeah, his...
It was funny.
I was talking on IRC about this a bit ago.
Those episodes kind of reminded me of a jazz program
that they had on the station that used to be on here
where they played classical during the morning
and jazz all night from midnight to five.
And the tone of his voice was similar
to the DJ's voice for the jazz segment.
And it reminded me so much of that.
I just could not stop listening.
I mean, his voice just captivated...
Again, like you said, he could read...
He could read the alphabet for all.
It would just be so captivating.
He just...
He just had you sitting there just kind of enjoying it.
And yeah, his music, the music that he used,
which I obviously was his, which was awesome.
But I really like that sort of thing.
Actually, just like, here's my personal setup.
Here's what I do on it.
Here's how I do it.
Because even if you're not doing that same thing right now,
number one, it's interesting to hear
how people are doing what they're doing.
And it also kind of gets your brain
starting to work a little bit.
And you're like, I could do that.
I could set something up like that.
I could make music or whatever.
I like that sort of thing.
I could learn E-Mex.
I was about to say, I think Plato's series on urban camping
was fascinating to very eye-opening,
not something that I personally do.
I don't think it takes quite a brave individual
to do something like that.
I think to be able to have the courage to do that.
But yeah, I found it fascinating nonetheless.
And I loved every episode.
I have to agree.
Club two, those episodes were, well,
I mean, I'd never find myself doing anything like that.
But it definitely captured my interest.
And I was hanging on every episode
and looking forward to the next one.
What's funny is that it came up in conversation.
We were talking about, it came up in conversation
with my girlfriend.
And we were talking about hackers and stuff like that.
Why people want to, you know, malicious hackers.
Why people want to do stuff?
And I tried to explain to her that, you know,
that hacker doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing.
It can mean someone that takes something,
or it does mean that someone that takes something
and makes it do what it intentionally
was not designed to do.
So in talking about that,
the episode about the urban camping series that you did,
it came up.
And I said, well, you're pretty much hacking life right there
because you're taking, you know,
you're taking pretty much living spaces and stuff like that
where people would normally think as being living space
and just kind of living life in a way that, you know,
normally people don't normally think to live life as.
So you're kind of hacking life in that sense.
So, you know, I explained to her,
she kind of looked at me with a funny face,
but I told her, no, don't worry, it's not anything I'm going to do.
But I just started really interesting.
And it was a great, I had to say,
those were the, that was one of the most memorable ones
of HPR.
Well, to be fair, I don't think they were this year,
though, I think they were actually last year.
So I don't know if they're fair game for, for this.
Oh, forget everything we just said then.
Yeah, I will do.
It does not necessarily because we got a lot more feedback
on those this year and they were a perfect example
of how you can get people thinking outside of the box,
exactly, you know, coming in from left field,
never having been baseball.
I have no idea what that means,
but it's kind of personifies exactly
what we kind of need out here in the HPR show.
And just to point out, despite the fact it was
on last year, it's still one of the most downloaded shows.
Yeah, they're definitely the ones that I get a lot of
the most comments on.
I think people seem to really, really like that series.
And of course, that was one of those series
that I was really nervous about.
I thought people are going to hate this.
They're going to be upset.
It's going to be controversial.
Turns out everyone loved it.
What can you do?
You try to be controversial and you fail.
Every time.
Every time I try so hard.
I think I'm just in the wrong group for that.
I think the whole, you know,
revolutionary new idea thing.
I don't think that's working out for me
among this group.
I think everyone kind of likes that sort of thing here.
I need to go to like the housewife
podcast section and put out some weird ideas there.
Yeah, man, it's called preaching to the choir.
Yeah, I'm really good at that.
And he was too.
Yeah, definitely.
One of the things that was so important about those shows
and about so many of the ones that are kind of,
you know, people think they're going to be off
the deep end like that is in shows like that.
We get to know the hosts.
And that's like the best part about it
is getting to know the people.
You know, like after those shows,
I felt like I knew you.
And then I was like talking to you and, you know,
NIRC, like I knew you don't know this guy.
Yeah, exactly.
It's kind of, it's a one way thing when you put out an episode
like that.
People kind of get people kind of get to know you
and it's it's weird, isn't it?
That's actually a really good point.
Maybe that is an element of of podcasting in general
that that is actually maybe under undersold
is that like if you podcast regularly
and you kind of talk about this stuff you're interested in,
people start to kind of like they feel like you're,
you know, your buddies with that person.
You know, I don't, I haven't met everyone
in this channel by any means,
but a lot of them who, you know,
I mean, Hokey and Ken Fallon
and Pythman music and crayon.
I mean, people who I've kind of heard
and Claudio, sorry, but I've met Claudio actually.
People I've heard a lot, you know, you kind of do.
You feel like, oh yeah, they're a good guy.
I kind of know what they're interested in,
stuff like that.
And you get this camaraderie ship that,
that I don't know.
It's not real, but it is real.
Oh, that's why I suggest going to the fest
so you can put some physical person behind this
and you don't feel as embarrassed going,
yeah, all my friends online, okay,
when I say my friends online,
you mean all the people that you've never actually met in real life?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like your online Canadian girlfriend.
She's real.
Papa.
What are you?
He's a man.
Yeah.
And these are really, really.
I think, I think we have a, a young guest on unintentionally.
Hey, lost him, Ross.
Blankton.
And little Brockton.
Yeah, little Brockton.
And little Brock, how are you guys doing?
Hey, okay, you guys are, I'm sorry.
I was looking for the channel to the room to just test your audio.
The cooking show, you're looking for the cooking show.
Yeah, yeah.
If you move out to the, I'm still waiting on that.
If you move out to the root server, I'll go up with you, okay?
But how do I sell?
Because you guys are a little choppy coming in.
You sound a bit broken up, a little bit static-y.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to jump out and mess with this.
I probably won't be on for a while.
Sounds good.
We look forward to it.
Okay.
So yeah, I mean, you know, kind of like I'll, I'll plot like the big guns here with examples
as far as what we were talking about.
Goes is like, who in this room would feel awkward walking up to like a Dan Lynch?
And like, don't you feel like you know him?
I mean, I've never spoken to him in real life, but I can approach him.
I can email him.
And I know that's the point that you make all the time clad to where you can email
something.
It feels more comfortable listening to what they put out or view and what they put out, you know?
I think that's, it's hugely important.
And something that I think I must have maybe first experienced
to a greater extent among the software programmers.
I like get festivals realizing that I'm meeting people who are, you know,
making the programs that I'm using, which was kind of cool.
And it kind of started to break out into like the art stuff that I,
that I listen to or that I watch.
And it started to become like, you know, if I'm listening to someone's music,
I want to be able to email them and say, hey, I like it or, or whatever,
or contribute money to them and know that that money is actually going to go to them
and not to some label.
It kind of, it's something that kind of started with software for me, I think,
and started really kind of getting its way deeper into other areas of my life.
Yeah, I can totally relate to that.
I mean, like back in high school, you know, I would go see local bands and stuff
and listen to their music.
And I knew a lot of the guys.
I knew them personally.
I worked with one guy who was a bassist for a local band.
And even knowing them personally, they just didn't seem very approachable.
But then when I started getting into Linux and getting into software and stuff,
I had just like an eye-opening experience where I was using MEMO
on an A10 that I picked up.
And I wanted a game on there that wasn't available on it.
But people said, hey, it's just Linux.
Everything should work as long as it's ported.
So I put out a bounty on the MEMO board.
I said, I want this game to work on my N810.
I want to be able to take it with me and play this game whenever I want it.
And somebody picked up the bounty and started working on the game.
And the guy emailed the developer of the game.
And the developer emailed me to ask what I was looking for to be done.
I mean, like, wow, that's approachable.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
That's really cool.
And significant.
It is significant, yes.
And it does bleed over to the things like music.
We're now, I only really want to listen to music.
If I can talk to the person and tell them that I like their music
and tell them I like what's going.
And art, you know, like pictures and stuff.
And you name it.
It's great to be able to talk to them like that.
I kind of have this idea that, like, content,
speaking of, like, you know, artistic content.
That is so prevalent at this point.
Like, everyone can make stuff now.
Everyone's got a computer.
They can draw pictures.
They can make music.
They can make videos.
There's distribution channels for it.
They can post it online up to, you know,
at least a billion people could potentially see their art.
So I mean, there's no, there's no lack of content.
People can, we can all get stuff if we want it.
You know, it's, it's there.
So the, the real, the thing that matters now
isn't the content.
Like, it's not so rare that someone is making a musical album
that I have to go scramble to get it.
The thing now is the person behind that content.
You know, the, the people, the person making the content
and, and distributing it.
And they're the thing that, that is unique.
You know, it's, it's no longer what they're making.
It's who they are.
And I think that is true both in art and software.
Because if you think of, like, software
that's being distributed to people,
we all have all the software we need
between the free and the proprietary offerings.
We've got what we need.
It's not a big deal.
But we want to make sure that if there's a problem
or if we really like something,
or if we want to feature or whatever
that we can then go in and say,
hey, you, the person who's maintaining this software
or art or whatever, can you, can you fix this for me?
Or have you tried this or have you considered doing it this way?
And that's, that's kind of key.
And I think that's what's really hurting
a lot of industries.
Whether, again, it's software, record label,
movie distributors, whatever,
they're not understanding that they're no longer
selling the content.
They're selling the whole package.
The, the, the artist, the, the artwork,
or the software and the programmer.
It's a package deal now.
The accounts are down.
Can we come outside please?
Yep, I'll step.
Streams are down.
So no one's hearing us anyway, I guess.
Just, um, sing a bit of a tune or something,
clatoon.
Till it comes down.
Yes, sure.
Actually, Cookie does have that ability.
What's that, Kevin?
Hey, guys, I just, sorry, I've been silent,
but I've been putting together a quick graphical how-to
for a mumble client.
So, um, is there somebody I can send this to
or they can post it on the website, maybe,
so people could just download it
and walk through the instructions?
I think that'll be in foul in with the ability
to post it to the actual hacker public radio.
Site, although I'd be happy to host it
on the Canoe World Order site myself as well.
If you want to email it to clatoon at member.fsf.org,
I could, I could post it somewhere
until Ken gets around.
Can you, uh, type in your email address
on the IRC channel, please?
Oh, yeah, sure.
Okay, I'm here.
Let me see what happened.
You're, you're Kay Wischer in IRC, right, Kevin?
Correct.
Yeah, Dark Ice died.
Let me connect it back up.
Yeah, what are you doing?
Play the game with me.
Yeah, you're in a rush.
He's not playing the game.
Oh, man, I gotta feel so guilty.
You should.
I do.
I am hurrying up, calm down.
Hurry up.
No pressure, no pressure now.
Hurry up, hurry up.
Is Mr. Squiggle Australian?
I don't remember.
All right, it should, it should be back up now.
I think Mr. Squiggle, he might be.
Yeah, we should be back up now.
See, hearing that makes me want to bring my kids over here and make a ruckus.
Yeah, I was playing main caller with her.
Wow, I thought that was kind of an advanced game,
no?
I don't know.
I guess it depends on how good you are games.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah, it sounds like Tiltz is back up for sure.
And, yeah, Tiltz is back up.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a nice fight, man.
Tripped up.
That's okay.
It's all I'm here.
I'm gonna go finish the game for you to agree with me.
Good idea.
We don't want that on our conscience.
Okay, where are we?
I was saying that content providers should come along with content,
but we can move on from that as well.
Oh, yeah, you okay.
We can move on, but I do, I do want to say one more thing about that.
Just the other side of the coin that you were saying,
if you come up with some content,
you want to be able to contact the person about it
and give them the thumbs up or the thumbs down
or report troubles or whatever.
But the other side of that coin is the person themselves.
I mean, in this, it seems to me like in this day and age,
everything is so impersonal.
And like I just got their ear buds in.
There's no personal connection like it online
and start talking to people.
And then it's just like these are the real people in my life.
These are saying, hey, what are you working on?
What are you doing?
You know, and I want to see it that way.
Yeah, it's an exact, um, isn't it strange?
It's like the whole thing's been turned upside down, I think.
You know, I don't know my neighbors.
But yeah, I can, as you know, you guys were saying,
you can email a person whose music you listen to
and get a real reply from them.
You know, you can speak directly to the people
who are producing your entertainment and, and, you know,
you could, you could contact Jonathan Colton, probably,
you know, and not that I've tried, but you probably could.
And, you know, it's amazing that there's,
that we've got so much more intimate relationships with,
you know, in the past, the people who would be
considered, I suppose, celebrities or whatever.
Yet, it seems that, as you say, less, less,
you know, less personal interaction in every day life.
That's how I feel anyway.
So a really good point.
I think it's almost like, because we've got a,
I guess, a smaller world now or whatever the term is,
we can be a little bit more choosy as to who we decide to get to know.
And that's kind of one, it's been one of my problems,
additionally, is that a lot of the people geographically close to me
weren't necessarily people with any similar interests to me whatsoever.
And so finding those people online is a lot easier.
And it's a lot easier for me, at least,
more talkative and more outgoing and stuff with people that I know,
at least, will be able to respond to me with something that I'm interested in,
you know, science fiction or computers or something.
But, you know, I don't have to just settle for, I don't know,
thinking about the front lawn and how well it's trimmed now.
You know, I can talk about anything, but any one I want.
Yeah, totally. And I noticed, you know, throughout this,
through this holiday season on Thanksgiving, in particular,
the people that I know are discovering the same thing,
because, you know, I spent the night at my sister's house
and of the whole family, like, I'm the computer nerd.
And when we woke up, uh, in the morning,
and we're having breakfast the day after Thanksgiving,
I was the one who, you know, grabbed a cup of coffee
and sat down to talk with everybody and socialize with everybody.
And they were all on their, you know, their iPhones and iPads and nooks and Android.
Like, it really was, like, the world was turned upside down on me.
It was very, very odd.
And I should have probably just, you know, popped online and
chatted on IRC or something, or recorded a show and annoyed everybody.
Yeah, it was really funny. I got an email from somebody.
I don't even remember what it was, but the opening line was,
if you are reading this, then you have already begun to hide from your family members.
That is kind of funny.
It was, like, uncomfortably true.
It was like, yeah, well, I guess I am kind of.
Yeah, and I think that's the part that is kind of upside down on me was,
in the past, I would have been the guy hiding from my family members.
You know, I mean, 15, 20 years ago,
I would have been the one playing Nintendo.
You know, we're looking for a video game or a movie to watch or something
while everybody's out in the kitchen socializing.
And it was the complete opposite.
Here I am, you know, looking to talk with everybody
and they're, you know, playing Angry Birds or Facebook, you know, whatever.
It's actually been kind of nice because to some degree,
now that everyone has some kind of electronic gadget in their hand,
even if they're, I mean, I don't care who they are,
if they've, if they swore that they would never get a computer,
they've got something very close to like a computer in their hand at some point.
And so it becomes something that you can talk to them about.
You know, it's like, oh, what version of whatever are you running on there?
You know, it's just like a good icebreaker for a geek at least,
because sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what to talk to people
about that first and it's always nice to have kind of that, that inroad.
Has anybody else in the room? Has anybody else been able to do that?
You use, you know, everybody's, like, your family,
your friends or devices as a way to open the conversation?
Generally, if I'm like...
I did just, just the other day with the brother of my friend's daughter's husband,
if that's complicated enough.
And we had ended up having a nice conversation about his camera,
which resulted in me recommending the Gimp to him,
because he didn't have any software yet.
So maybe I've recruited someone.
Very cool. That's actually really cool.
Pegel?
Generally, if I'm at someplace say like Ohio Linux Fest or Southeast Linux Fest,
I'll see someone, you know, using it with a laptop and I'll just walk over and say,
hey, what are you running on there?
What's your desktop environment of choice or, you know, whatever?
Yeah, right.
Yes, it definitely works at a, um,
it definitely works at a Linux Fest,
the class who's making fun of me in the IRC.
I'm not.
You're not supposed to be looking over there.
You kids behave.
At the supermarket, I tried asking the,
the, you know, woman scanning my items.
If she used VIM or EMAX, but she just sort of looked and puzzled at me.
Really, I asked that and it always gets me the girl.
That's, I think, the greatest ice break ever.
It's, um, no, it's a good point, though, with the, um,
uh, I'm not sure who said it.
I think it was Frank who said about the Gimp.
Um, I did a photo course recently and they were saying how, um,
you know, in order to, to touch up your photos that, you know,
you need to get Photoshop and that whilst it's, you know, fairly expensive,
you have to, you know, you have to get it and all this sort of thing.
And I just sort of said, do I have you heard of the Gimp at all?
And she said, oh, no, I haven't.
And it was sort of an open, casual class.
So, you know, there was probably only about 10 of us in the room.
And I just sort of said, um, to them all, you know,
hey, if you want to check it out, get the Gimp,
try it out, you know, to at least save you the money of getting Photoshop
or whatever.
And it'll most likely be good enough for what you want to do.
If you're just going to be cropping and re-sizing and whatever,
I mean, I, yeah, I use the Gimp for everything and works for me.
But it's funny how you can end up sort of pushing open source and,
and that sort of stuff without, um, even trying sometimes.
So, hey, go ahead Frank, sorry.
I'm going to say it's funny, given how much we're surrounded by computers these days,
how frightened people are.
My son is in the 82nd Airborne Military Intelligence.
They give him a $26,000 laptop and push him out of the air.
And I was talking to him once about Linux a few years ago.
And he said something, something, something he said,
but I'm not going to mess with the operating system.
As peak folks just, they make it so much harder in their heads than it really is.
I have got to agree with you 100 percent, Frank.
That is, um, that is, I have found exactly the same thing.
It's really bizarre to me too.
Yeah, and at the same time, I have been able to set people up with Linux.
Well, one guy, I said one guy with Linux computer,
and he's perfectly happy with it because he doesn't have to mess with it,
where he's very familiar with Windows machines.
And he's not, I wouldn't say he's very familiar with the problems.
He knows what annoys them about him, but he has no idea what to do about it.
And then, you know, I sit him down in front of a Linux machine,
and the guy's just thrilled with it.
I guess it's a case for a lot of people,
if it is broke, don't fix it and stay with Windows.
Yeah, it's just, I'm not sure if that's a computer thing,
or if that's kind of a lifestyle thing, where people run into the same problems every day
to the degree that they can look right through them and ignore those problems.
And I think it's more of a lifestyle thing because you see people do things that don't make sense
after you've thought about them.
I could be wrong.
I keep blaming sort of like culture for this, though,
because it just feels like we're not taught to do that.
We are so, or at least it feels to me like the prevailing idea is
that you should not, you shouldn't try to make things better,
or write, or work differently.
You should just do what you're told and be happy with it,
even if it means banging your head against the wall repeatedly.
And, you know, it's just like that, this weird mentality,
and people carry it over like you say,
Pokey, in life, as well as computers.
I think I'm not hacked.
Yeah, I think, I think, Clotu, I'm not sure we may have discussed this on a kernel panic episode,
but yeah, I think I agreed with you at the time,
what you've just said then, but, yeah, and also just that they,
they're reluctant to change anything or to try anything,
because I think, you know, human beings are generally
a lot happier to just adapt to what they're dealing with,
to solve, to overcome the problem, as opposed to changing the thing they're using,
to make it work right, or whatever.
So, you know, if they have, you know, if a person has a door that
jimms or sticks or whatever, they'll work out a way to get around it and use that door
without, as opposed to just fixing the door, you know.
Yeah, they'll tell you just to pump it.
Yeah, exactly, and that's it, because humans are, we are, by nature, extremely adaptable
and, and, and really good at, you know, changing the way we do something in order to,
to get the result. And I think a lot of the time, you know, a user would be happier to have to,
you know, in windows have to reboot once a week or whatever,
than to try something new where that's no longer necessary, you know, to effectively solve their
problem. And you see that all the time, there was an XKCD cartoon that made fun of it,
and you see it all the time where, you know, that where users have solved a problem that they
need to overcome. And when you look at the way they've solved it, it involves, you know,
using seven different programs and opening and exporting a file, and then changing a file,
and then doing this and doing that. And it takes them an hour and a half to do some operation
that could be quickly and easily solved with, you know, some other more elegant solution,
rather than looking for a solution. They just find a way that works, and then they work around it
yet to the degree where when a real solution to something comes up, it's even hard to get your
head around. Like, you know, back in my Windows days, when I would rip a bunch of CDs or something,
and then have to re-eng them, I'd have to click on every single track and like paste in the album name
and just do it again and again and again and again. And many different file types, we're just
entering the same data a hundred times, and it could take you an hour to get something like that
done. And when the concept of batch processing was introduced to me, I couldn't even wrap my head
around it. Like, how, you know, how is my computer going to know what I wanted to change and where?
And it's just, yeah, it's very foreign until you've, you know, until you can wrap your head around
stuff like that. And I think the same is true of hacking in real life where people are afraid to
make something worse. And I don't know, to me, if something's broken, how can I get worse?
Just fix it or just try it. Go ahead. Oh, yeah, no, I was just going to say, I think, yeah, I think it's,
the two things that it actually got what I was going to say. It's all right.
Okay, I was going to say, I think it might be in part, there might be some logic to that because
it's kind of like they've invested so much getting to the point that they are. You know,
it's like, well, gee, I spent, seems like I spent my entire life learning this stupid computer thing
that I hate so much. And yeah, it doesn't work, but man, I know how it, you know, I know what
doesn't work. I know what does work. I can just be happy in this sort of weird corner, even though
it's not the greatest place to be, but whatever. And I just don't want to start over. And a lot of
times going over to Linux or something or even anything just seems like you're losing all that
investment. It feels like you're stepping so far back. Yeah, so they feel like they're throwing away
the all that effort that they went to finally work out how to get around the problem in the first
place here. But I remember what I was going to say now regarding the batch processing and that
sort of thing. It's something that you can, I don't think you ever, you know, you've got to be
constantly vigilant and ensure that you're constantly thinking about your actions and what you're
wanting to do because yeah, it's gotten to the point I find now where anytime I've I repeat
anything more than once I sort of have to stop and go, all right, now hang on, I've done that,
you know, I needed to do that again. Should I, you know, in some way automate this or, you know,
is it likely I'm going to need to do it again? And you have to be constantly sort of checking
yourself to make sure that you're not being less efficient than you can be in some way, you know,
because there's, otherwise you just sort of tend to fall back into those old habits and you
find yourself here repeating something manually when you could just automate it or whatever.
Yeah, for sure. And Clatio, I think that scenario you were talking about, isn't that called like
the lost cost fallacy or the sunk cost fallacy where you kind of trick yourself into believing that
if you invest in something that isn't working and you bail on it, you give up on it and then
try something that does work that it feels like you've thrown away all the investment in the
initial thing even though it hasn't returned anyway. I hadn't heard that put into, yeah, I haven't,
no, I didn't know there was a phrase for that, I love it though. And I find that I think that's really,
I mean, again, it doesn't, it's not just about software, it's, it's real life stuff too,
you know, in on film sets a lot of times they'll go through the same kind of thing, an actor or
something won't be working or a certain camera angle just isn't working and they feel gee we,
we've already got everything set up this far, it just seems like we should force it, you know,
and so they keep going with it. And then in the end, in the editing room, the shot doesn't even
make it into the project because it didn't work. And so if they bailed instead of trying to keep
their, yeah, perceived investment, then it would have been so much better. But instead they,
they just kept doing what they were doing and it turned out pretty much to not be what they wanted.
They should have just bailed out. Yeah, another example of that is, I've heard it explained
as like the stock market, you buy a stock at $10 and it sinks to nine and it sinks to eight and it
sinks to seven and every time it drops down, you know, a lot of people have this, this thought
process that says, well, I can't let it go until it's worth what I paid for it. Whereas if they
just took their money out, cut their losses and put it into something that was growing,
it would have been positive at that same point in their investment, you know, in money,
actually, you know, but what we're talking about is energy and effort. It would have paid back
much sooner. Do we have to insert like a legal claim here that we're not stock market experts
and that we're not giving stock advice, something like that? Nor are any of us lawyers to the best
knowledge. Yeah. There is a TED talk that I saw pretty recently talking about almost exactly what
you guys are talking about. We're going to talk about an experiment they did about, I forget,
it's about putting your own money in and return on investment. I don't remember. I don't
remember the point he was making exactly, but there's a good TED talk on that. It's an interesting
topic and I haven't really thought about it as much as I think we're thinking about it right
now, so it's actually really interesting to me because so far in my probably admittedly limited
experience, it really does seem to be true that if there's a, if it's occurring to you that something
isn't working in your project or your life or whatever, it's probably more often than not,
it's true that you, you should be changing that thing rather than trying to force it into being
something else because that's just, it's not going to work out that way. Right, order to try to
work around it. I mean, in, of course, we're assuming that you've got the time to get something
like that done, you know, whereas, you know, if it's a timely thing and you know how to do the
work around, sure have at it, but if there's a better way to do it, you should, you should attack that.
I, um, I can smell a really good HPR episode coming from Clack 2 once he's had a good
think about this. It might be a topic I return to possibly. It's like the old stuff about how
it's amazing when something's broken, people try to fix it by doing the same thing harder.
That's exactly what it sounds like. Yeah, it's like, it's that, that old definition of insanity,
you know, like, try something like we're over and over, expecting different results.
I find myself getting into those loops sometime where I'm trying the same thing again and again,
and it doesn't work and it's so frustrating, it's crazy. And then you realize all the sudden,
I've been doing the same thing for the past X amount of time and it's, it's stupid, you know,
and it's just, you know, how do you not make that change soon or try something else? It's,
it's really weird. One way I've been able to kind of get out of those loops, Pokey, is to trust,
to at least in a specific situation, is to trust the command line. Like, because I can't tell you how
many times I've been doing something with FFVINPEG or even just something, something with where
I have my path wrong or something stupid like that. And I'll be thinking, why isn't this tabbed
completion working or, or why is this FFVINPEG movie keep looking really bad when I'm transcoding it?
And, and I'll do it like three times and then I'll stop and think the command line isn't lying to me.
Like, something is wrong with the way I am doing it. And so then I'll, I'll, I'll go back and
investigate why it's not working the way I think that it should be working. And there, there is a
certain beauty to computer consistency that you can kind of fall back on, I think.
Oh my gosh, if anybody is in a time zone where it's after 5 p.m. it is New Year's Eve. So please
raise a glass to the command line. Exactly. Hey, I was meaning to talk to Clot 2 about EMAX.
You've been doing some hacker public radios on the EMAX. So I have been. And about,
oh, maybe about three months ago, I got into using org mode.
Yeah, yeah, I've been using that a lot lately myself.
I am extremely addicted to org mode now. Yeah, me too.
It has changed my life at work. Like, really has made my, my life 10 times easier.
And here's, here's an example of beating your head against the wall and I'm going to request it.
Can someone try one more time for my sake to explain org mode?
It is, it's basically just a set of add-ons for EMAX that allow you to automate creating notes
and organizing things. Like, it's just, it just really helps you quickly make to do lists and
lists and nested lists and track time and that kind of stuff. Okay, okay. So there's just a bunch
of key commands basically that automate making notes. In the end, the org mode file is just a text file,
but it handles nesting things really well. Like, when I do notes, I could really quickly
start nesting things under different to-dos and you can add dev lines to objects to different lines,
you know, and then you can clock in on that and clock back out and keep track of the time on it.
So I do all my time tracking with it and stuff. I mean, you can mark things done and not done
and that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's very dynamic. It's very dynamic. It feels like when you're
in org mode, it feels like you're using, I don't know, like a talent or a do list kind of application.
I mean, it's not just text. You can hit the tab key and it'll collapse bullet points or you can
hit the space bar and put an x by the the thing that's done. All these kinds of different things
that are really, it's very interactive. So is, is org mode useful for the person who
is organized already and just needs a tool for that? Or is this a tool that can reach out to a
person who's classically disorganized and help them get their stuff together? Well, let me give you
kind of a reason why I use it. Not, you know, I can't say what it's going to work for other people
or not, but I can give you why I thought it really was so revolutionary for me. At my day job,
I do design, I design commercial system or mostly hospitals, pipe systems, HVAC and stuff like that.
And I deal with a lot of information day in and day out. It's a lot of, and it's all in different
locations. I have emails that engineers and people who sent me. I've got different construction
documents that I have to deal with. I have submittals that show us what actually equipment
we're installing and how it gets installed. And it all gets really convoluted really quickly where
job isn't about 30 different locations. And then you add to that, some conversations end up
being verbal over the phone and stuff like that. And the problem is like, let's say I decide to
install a valve. And I do it because one of the engineers said we're going to be using this valve.
And then later they say, who told you to do that? I need to be able to keep track of the conversation
so that I'm covering my own butt basically. So what makes it easy for me is that I can make to do
lists on what I'm working on if I'm drawing a mech room or whatever and all the stuff I need to do
to get that done. And then I can track time so that when they ask me how long it's going to take me
to do something, I can go back and look at something similar and say, well, this last job it took me
this long to do it. But then also when somebody talks to me about something, I can make another line
and I can timestamp where and I talk to them and add a tag that says verbal or nonverbal. And I can
put their name in there and then I can search for their name and like pull up conversations. So when
somebody says, you know, yeah, you remember we were talking about this, you know, I don't remember
what they ended up saying. Do you remember? And I can pull up my notes real quick by just doing
a query inside org mode and go right to it and say, yeah, I was on this date and this guy said this
to me, here's, and then I can nest under at emails and what was said in the emails and what date they
came in and stuff. And it really just helps me deal with day looses of information. Is that help?
Yeah, it helps a lot actually. I'm mulling it over.
I don't know if people who are very unorganized will go into org mode and just find a sudden
imposition of organization. I think you have to have some some ability to kind of organize your
your thoughts and tasks and things like that anyway. And and if that's what you're looking for,
but you just want something that's that's dynamic and yet simple and ultimately portable because
like pipeman music said, it is just a plain text file that once it gets into org mode, it becomes
beautifully dynamic, then then you'll you'll find it helpful. But if you're the type of person
who can't even make a logical outline of something or a bullet list that really sort of relates
to it. So, okay, then you might want to just kind of work on those those I say basic skills.
I mean, I guess they're not basic skills, but you know, those kind of organizations.
They're pretty basic skills. I'm not offended by a word like that. That's fine. Okay.
Yeah, what I like is that you can really arbitrary like for me, the notes move a lot. Like
things don't I'll get to a point where I'm making notes and they no longer make sense to be
organized in the way that I have them. But org mode lets you change the nesting of things really
quickly. You can shift things up and down and in and out and you know, there's times when
I need to break one one area that I'm working on into two sections and track that differently.
And I can really move stuff around really quickly. So it ends up for me being like once you kind
of get down the workflow, I don't know that I necessarily like approach things every the same
every time. But it lets me just kind of pour things out of my head. And I can kind of keep moving
that around and moving it around until it gets more and more useful. You know, I'll nest and add
another heading and add some dates and make some bullet points. So the other two things I've
been using it for is one. Another one is I've been keeping notes on when I listen to podcasts
and people mention things that I want to look up. I've been making an org mode to do list that has
different kind of sections and stuff and I keep track of things I want to look up. And then I can add
it's funny though, because I've got org mode open right now doing that very thing for this
episode. So just that's that's funny. So yeah, I've been doing that. And that way when I get home
and I'm back in front of the computer and I have some time to cruise Wikipedia or whatever and look
up some things, I have that kind of and then I can mark them done that I already looked them up and
I can put like this wasn't that important or wasn't as cool as I thought it was or oh my god,
I need to look into this, you know, and then I can add it to a task list and say, you know, to do,
I got to do this, you know, so I've got that going. And then the other thing is it work. I mentioned
earlier on the conversation that we hired some new guys and what org mode lets me do is type notes
out for them and export them as HTML and then I saved that on our network drive and they can pull
up that HTML document and use that as notes for how to do different things in AutoCAD. So I make
these kind of like step by step things that are underheadings and the export in org mode automatically
gives you a index at the top that you with links to places in the document already filled out
of different headlines and nest things and you can do lists numbered lists and bolded lists and
you can also add in image files. So I'll do like screen captures and then in org mode I just do
bracket bracket file colon the path to the file bracket bracket when I export those automatically
be formatted and into the HTML dock and then they just have to hit F5 and refresh that dock and
all the notes I can keep up to date for them. So it's really helped out a lot at work in just helping
you know some of the stuff we do is kind of like if you mess up one step you kind of
board it but this I don't want to explain it 15 times before they get down all the steps you know
so writing it down means that when they mess up they can go back to the beginning and look again
and there's screenshots and I I take little screen captures of icons they need to click on and I
throw those in there you know this sounds more and more like hittily wiki the more you explain it
I've never used that yeah I I think uh was it you Pogi who were telling me about that in the first
place it you're right it is really close it's very similar yeah it's yeah it was me it was telling
you about it's it sounds like Bikki with a black background depends on what you have your
background set too right right of course no but yes no and the other thing you said there
uh Dan that was really you know stuck out to me was the fact that at your work you can run Linux
and you can export an html file and give it to a co-worker because I have worked in places where
keeping a notebook on my desk was frowned upon because I was misusing company time so
wow uh to be fair to correct that I don't use Linux at work I'm not allowed to
I remember I already maxed on windows yeah that's it that's the beauty of this stuff though because
I mean emax will run on any platform and org mode is just a plugin for for emax so it works
but I also back up all my notes with Dropbox so that I can have those at home too if something
happened it worked you know I have a backup of all my work notes this so another word
in class who said to describe it was portable meaning like the hyphenated portable you can
port it to different systems but is it literally portable as in does it run on you know uh I
guess Android is what we're left with now but it's around tablet yeah there's a portable org
mode app that actually syncs with Dropbox too but you can also sync it with a web dev server and
I forget there's some there's another option in there literally I've the yeah one of the
cool things that I might have mentioned this before on another show but one of the cool moments
for me was someone sent my old bus sent me an outline of a chapter and he just pasted it into an
email I copied it out of that email the body of the email pasted it into emax and then started up
org mode and suddenly it becomes like this beautifully you know again dynamic kind of outline where
I could collapse bullet points and see what subsections we needed to write and stuff like this
and I was like wow that is portable I mean it's plain text so you can send it through any computerized
device it doesn't matter but once you put it into the application that knows how to look at it
then it becomes this new and cool interactive thing and if you don't have that application for
some reason then you can still look at it because it's plain text yeah and one of the other crazy
cool features is the ability to embed spreadsheet right in your notes I use that a lot too
I don't use that but I read about it yeah yeah you can you can do like when I'm doing
spoolsheets they like to keep track of how many I'm getting per hour so I make up a little spreadsheet
then every day I add a date and how many I got done for that day and then you can you can have it
do calculations and figure out like what I was how many spoolsheets I was creating per hour so I
like that and you know other keeping track of other information that really looks good in a tab
table you know there's every job has like floors and I need to keep track of what the elevation is
from the top of each floor to the next one so that I I can keep spatially kind of where I'm at
so I make a nice table that has all that and like I make a table for insulation thicknesses on pipe
so that I know when I'm running this system it's two inches of insulation so I use that table a lot
I like that a lot and when you export to html it makes a nice html table of it you should use
Unix at work because it has pipes built in tee he thank you clever I don't know about that
well I hadn't the thought of it before yeah I wish more guys who knew about pipes
were as good at it as you are because I work in rooms with steam pipes running through all the
freaking time and they're not correct yeah steam is my specialty that's actually what I specialize in
you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does our
we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday
today's show like all our shows was contributed by a hpr listener like yourself if you ever
considered recording a podcast then visit our website to find out how easy it really is
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dog Pound and the Infonomicon Computer Club
HBR is funded by the binary revolution at binref.com all binref projects are proud to sponsor
by lunar pages from shared hosting to custom private clouds go to lunarpages.com for all your
hosting needs. Unless otherwise stated today's show is released under a creative comments
attribution share a live free dot o license
can I think if we just start with what we've got for now they're both confirmed to be working I
think and then when you come back from doing your family stuff a lot will work on it a little more
in like the IRC perfect I'll do that can mean
that's not your live music is it yeah that's my impressive cool thank you thank you keep going
I don't know I was just trying to keep the stream with noise in it
okay
appreciative thank you
She broke down and left me in
Let me know just where I've been
And now I'm one time, and now I'm two times
Never going back again
Dan Washgo, can you send yours up with wish to talk? Please keep hearing you breathe in
Can everybody hear me? Got you, get you down Kevin, thank you
She don't know what it means to win Come around and see me again
And now I'm one time, and now I'm two times
Never going back again
Hi guys, just one second
I have one stream up there that I can guarantee to work
If you're saying Corba 2 works, that's fine, I'll put the other one up as well
I think that's smart, obviously some people are managing to get to them
So I think we should have them posted, people can try different ones
And then I need to go because my daughter is coming in
Yeah, we know you can, I think we're probably ready to start
And people will stream in and stream out through the day
You have been listening to HackerPublic Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by a HBR listener by yourself
If you ever consider recording a podcast, then visit our website to find out how easy it really is
HackerPublic Radio was founded by the Digital.Pound and near Phenomenal Computer Club
HBR is funded by the Binary Revolution at binref.com
All binref projects are proudly sponsored by Lina Pages
From shared hosting to custom private clouds, go to LinaPages.com for all your hosting needs
Unless otherwise stasis, today's show is released under a creative commons,
Attribution, share a like, free those own license
