Episode: 1758
Title: HPR1758: Cool Stuff part 3
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1758/hpr1758.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 08:54:23

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This is HPR episode 1,758 entitled, Cool Stuff Part 3.
It is hosted by Curtis and Kins, C-Prompt, and in about 26 minutes long, the summer is.
C-Prompt talks about some more cool stuff for you to check out.
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So, you know what you shouldn't do?
What you shouldn't do is when you are working on a script or program or document, you should
not keep the names too similar.
What I'm talking about is that I was currently writing a script to help me with a certain issue.
Everything was going well.
I started out like I always do, and I had this process that I go through whenever I write a script.
And it's taken a little chunk, and you know, make it do this.
And then I put that off to this side, and I started another little chunk, and I wanted to do this,
and then I put it together, and I'm making both work together.
Well, in the process of doing this, I take them all, and I start to put it together into one big script to make the final program.
Well, as I was working through this, I realized that there was an error.
So, I didn't want to overwrite what I was doing, and I wanted to save it, so I copied it.
I made a new one to work on it for testing, right?
You can see where this is going to fall down quickly.
So, I'm going through this test script, not my main script, but my test script,
and I'm looking at the code, and I start to adjust it to fix the error,
and I go back over to the command line part, and I fire the script, and same error.
I go back to the script, and I'm looking at it, and I don't see anything, so I start putting all these print statements,
so I can see what the output is. I go back to the command line, fire the script, errors.
I go back to the script, and I'll see what I'm looking for.
What is it? What am I looking for?
Well, my habit is that whenever I go to fire the script, it's a Python script, so I type Python space,
and then hit the first couple letters of the script name, and tab.
Great. Enter. Fire.
Well, let's just say that my main script was called program, or whatever.
Well, stupid me decided to name my testing one, as program underscore test.
It's the real name, but you need to get the just.
So I was just typing PR, and then space, and I was thinking that I was on the testing script,
and I was actually on my originating script with the original errors.
So I am not going to lie when I say that I probably wasted a good hour or more firing the same script over and over,
and fixing errors on a different script.
I realized then that I was really tired, and I probably just needed to quit.
So, starting off the show with a quick tip.
I'm going to name your documents to similar. Make them unique.
Alright, let's get on with it.
So I got some cool stuff here, and I hope that you find it cool as well.
I got three things, and I know that Ken likes to have as many shows as possible,
but you know, I got this thing about three, I don't know.
So, yeah. Starting off, it is a website for podcasts, and there's a lot of them.
So this website is called Radio Topia.
Now, Radio Topia is part of what is called the PRX, the public radio exchange,
and public radio exchange is a society, I guess.
And I'll just read off their about, and it says that their vision is an informed society connected by shared stories
and inspired to improve lives and communities.
And our mission is to harness technology to bring significant stories to millions of people.
So, they want to take stories that are out there in the world,
and they want to share them with everyone as many technological means as possible.
It's great, great. And they are also part of the, I think they get sponsored by the Night Foundation,
and the Night Foundation is a community, it's a foundation to promote quality journalism.
So, it's these podcasts, there's currently, there's 11 of the shows,
and the whole Radio Topia is headed up by their flagship podcast 99% Invisible,
and that is a, it's based on its architecture and design, and it's hosted by a guy named Rowan Mars.
The quality of this podcast is amazing.
The editing and the way that is meshed together with the people talking about the story
and the inserts of the journalist inside the story and such.
It's fantastic. If you've ever listened to something like Radio Topia, Radio Lab,
if you've ever listened to Radio Lab, it's similar in that way how it's, you know,
the interjection of the person telling the story that it's based on,
and the host or the journalist inserts in between there.
It's fantastic. It's really good.
And I know that it's based on architecture and design, and when I first read that,
I was kind of, I'm not really much into like architecture or anything like that.
Listen to it. It is a really cool, cool podcast.
It brings out those things that 99% Invisible, 99% of the people just walk by this stuff,
not even thinking about how it was made, why it was made, how it came to be those kinds of things.
Some of the places that they have talked about, I have really wanted to just take off
and just drive to these places to check them out because they just sound so cool.
So currently, I only listened to a couple of the shows on Radio Topia right now,
but as I go through, I'll start adds more, I'm sure.
Right now, of course, 99% Invisible.
And I also listen to the theory of everything.
They're story driven, just like they're supposed to be on the, you know,
it's Radio Topia, the story driven podcast.
So they tell stories on issues, on things in life, 99% Invisible talks about buildings and stuff
and places that you probably have never heard of or thought about.
So great episodes, great.
So give those, give the popover to the, I'll put the link in the show notes to Radio Topia.
It's radiotopia.fm. Look at it, they have some, you know, you can listen to the episodes online.
If you want to just stream them, you know, adding it to your feed and stuff like that,
until you see if you actually like it or not, give it a shot.
I think they might appeal to a lot of people out there.
So next up is a program that I came across.
Actually, I didn't come across this, it's an old program.
I just know I got up at times, I guess.
I was looking for a new terminal emulator.
I was an XFCE user for ever, for a very long time.
So I just always used the default XFCE terminal.
It was there.
So that was one that was on the little kicker that I just clicked on.
So I used it.
And I started to use more and more command line programs.
And RCChat used RC.
So I needed a better terminal emulator.
So I started poking around and stuff and needed one that was very configurable.
If you've ever used the XFCE default terminal, it's not real configurable.
You can kind of throw some colors in there and stuff, but it's two colors and not much formatting and blah.
So it got old.
So I needed something that was very configurable.
I like to configure things.
I like to tweak them.
I like to poke at them and stuff until I get them just the way they like them.
And then I usually just leave them alone.
So what I found was, and I kind of poked around on RC and asked some other people what they use.
And they used the same thing.
That is the XRVT.
Now I went with the URXVT256C.
And we'll get on to that later in a second.
Why I went that way.
So this is all based on RXVT.
And I had a hard time remembering the order of the letters until I found out what those letters mean.
Okay.
So RXVT.
So the VT is, it stands for the VT terminal, which it's wanting to emulate.
See?
It's a terminal.
Emulator.
So the VT terminal that it's emulating is called the VT102.
And I'll put a link to the show notes, put a link in the show notes to this VT102 terminal.
And it's the typical little green, green type of terminal that you would think of.
So that's where the VT stands for.
The X, X window systems.
Yeah.
Now the R stands for Robert, because this terminal emulator was written by a guy named Rob Nation.
Awesome name.
So that's where the letters come from.
RXVT is Robert's XVT.
Right?
So it's Robert's X window systems VT terminal emulator.
Right?
RXVT.
So after RXVT was written, a gentleman named Mark Lehman.
Lehman Lehman.
Link in the show notes.
So you can determine how to pronounce that name, but I'm going to go with Lehman.
So Mark Lehman took the RXVT and he forked it and made it into RXVT-unicode.
Or we like to refer to it as URXVT.
And he forked it and he gave it some kind of tweaks here and there.
This is probably the one that you're going to find in your repositories.
Or you're going to, sure, Slack user, if you're going to compile it or whatever you're going to do.
This is the one that you're probably going to be using more often than not is the RXVT-unicode or URXVT.
I gave it some things like transparency, some pearl extensions and font support, things like that.
Now the URXVT, the way that you configure it is I was looking for like a dot config file or in the dot config directory.
I was looking for a RXVT config file or something, but it doesn't yet to create.
Obviously, the dot X defaults file in your home directory.
And you can do a whole lot with the configure.
Well, it shouldn't say a whole.
Well, yeah, you can.
Yeah.
So it's very configurable.
Fonts, colors, transparency is not really into the transparency thing because in the background it gets in the way and stuff.
Whatever.
But it's there if you want it.
So the reason I went with the 256C is I use Erse.
And there are, I like to have colors so I can see where things are different.
So it breaks it.
So I like to know that it's a terminal emulator and all that.
But I still need some color in there because I got to have some type of association, I guess.
So that's where the 256C comes in.
I found that the way to configure the colors and stuff like that, the color schemes.
I had to have the 256C so it uses the 256 colors.
But there are some ways that you can configure RX VT or URX VT to use a theme.
And so one of my sessions on my terminal runs H top.
So I can see what it is that's pounding me at my system to make it slow sometimes.
That's just kind of like a nice little monitor.
You just kind of keep watch on it.
Maybe I'll talk about that one day H top.
It's pretty cool.
So I use that and you use the 256C part of URX VT allows me to use a color scheme better.
And that way I can see kind of the organization of the programs and stuff.
So the last thing that I want to talk about and introduce you to maybe or maybe peek your interest in,
I have a very strong love for astronomy.
I absolutely love the stuff.
And one of my favorite people to listen to give talks or speeches or even read his blog and stuff is feel plate.
Now any of you listeners out there have heard some of you all talk about some of the podcasts that you listen to like the skeptics guide and start talk and stuff like that.
And since some of you all do listen to those shows, I'm sure that you've came across the name of feel plate.
He is not an unknown person by any means.
He goes also by the name of the bad astronomer.
He's written quite a few books.
I'll put a link to his Wikipedia article in the show note.
He blogs at slate.com.
And it's a really cool blog.
He's very active on Twitter.
He posts some really, really cool pictures of the eclipses that just happened not too long ago.
Just random pictures of the moon maybe in a really cool position or whatnot.
He gave a really nice TED talk, which is actually a little scary.
I'll let you listen to it or watch it and you can determine.
But it's based on how to save the earth from cataclysmic events, I guess.
So it's kind of scary to listen to him talk about how there's something out there that has the potential to just slam into us and destroy us like we go by the way of the dodo.
But what it is about Phil played that I wanted to actually introduce you to is this online videos, online videos.
These videos that he's doing for a thing called Crash Course, but it's Crash Course Astronomy.
And these are little 10 minute videos where he explains something in regard to philosophy.
He's astronomy.
And he does it in such a way that it is so clear to you.
It's not like you're in a Harvard lecture or something and you're trying to digest all these crazy formulas and stuff like that.
He explains astronomy things in a very clear way and the way that he explains it is amazing.
Because once he does it, you're like, that's so simple when you show it like that and explain it like that.
It's so simple.
Talk about why the moon looks bigger sometimes than it does later on in the when the sun, when the moon is, it looks like it's rising.
You hear the thing about the big moon, the super moon or whatever they want to call it, why it looks so big, why we perceive it that way.
The moon is always the same size.
The moon is not getting bigger.
So he really does a really nice show video on why we perceive it that way.
So I'll put a link to his blog and in his blog, he has links to the videos as well.
But also put a link in the show notes to straight to his YouTube channel for the crash course on astronomy that he does.
So give it a shot.
If you have any interest in astronomy or anything like that or maybe just why things are the way they are, then give it a shot.
I'm sure that a lot of you all will find it very interesting if you've never never checked it out before.
So there you go.
Some kind of cool stuff that that I've came across and started using and have enjoyed so far.
We've got radio topia.
Lots of really cool podcasts.
If you're looking for something new to put in your podcast feed, hop over to radiotopia.fm.
If you're looking for a really cool terminal emulator, your XVT256C.
Awesome stuff.
I might do a show next time on like using screen.
Anyway, so the third thing, fill plates crash course on astronomy.
Excellent, excellent stuff.
Give those a shot and hopefully you will find some interest in them and be able to start to use them.
And until next time, this is Curtis in North Carolina.
Thank you very much and have a great day.
Bye-bye.
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