Episode: 576
Title: HPR0576: Interview with HeathenX
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0576/hpr0576.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:25:44

---

Music
Everyone, this is Klaatu.
I'm at the Ohio Linux Fest, and I've finally caught up with Ethan X from the screencasters.
One of my actually my favorite podcasters.
Your shows are fantastic, so good to see you.
Is this your first, no, you were here last year.
I was here last year.
But not for very long.
I was here for a little bit.
I just saw you not for very long.
So what's new and in shape?
Well, I mean like just in terms of what interests you.
Lots of things interest me.
But I would say what is new is probably we're getting a new version in the next month or two maybe.
It was supposed to be out in July.
Things are going a little slow now.
But we're waiting for that 047 release, which is going to have a lot of nice snapping effects.
Some new plugins.
Well, I don't call them plugins more like extensions or whatever.
Right.
I'm waiting on that one.
That's going to be a great release.
No, no, no.
You're new.
I was really, I remember the day I saw in the blog post.
I don't know if it was your blog or it must have been your blog.
That you guys were going like, aw, going late for Firefox 3.5 and stuff like that.
Right.
That was really cool.
Was that a practical decision or a decision for like freedom and GPL and stuff?
What was that?
I don't know if it's practical to go with OGV.
I think it had more to do with Richard and I or Linux roots.
All right.
We were using, we were sticking H264 and MP3 into an AVI container.
Right.
I don't know if that's real popular or not, but we decided since we screencast in OGV,
Theora and Borbus, why not just put it into that?
Correct.
And it's gotten to the point now where it's debatable whether H264 is better than Theora at this point.
Well, I mean, if I may interject, you might do love the codex.
I mean, it does kind of depend on what you're looking for.
Right.
What job do you want it to serve?
Exactly.
We're not producing video like that.
We're producing screencasts.
Yeah, exactly.
With that, it's just fine.
Yeah.
And what do you use?
I think you mentioned to me via email once that you were planning around with PityV.
Are you still kind of planning around that or?
No, it's Blender.
Okay.
We do like for our screencasts, it's all record my desktop.
If we got to do any audio editing, audacity, but Richard, his last episode,
he produced the whole thing in Blender.
Right now, Blender is pretty passionate about it.
Yeah.
You know how well it works, right?
Video editing is very stable for those of us at work stuck on a Windows machine.
You can't get off anything else.
Blender's great.
Yeah, exactly.
Blender's great.
And it's very stable.
And Richard's kind of taking the lead on the whole producing our podcast and Blender.
But it probably won't be long I'll be on his heels and doing it myself.
Sure.
Right now, everything is FF Impag to Theora or Mencoder.
FF Impag.
Yeah.
Scripts.
Okay.
For my stuff, it's just connecting an intro with a screencast.
Richard's stuff.
He has a speedcast I call.
He's connecting in.
Is there a little bit more difficult?
Okay.
It's not too difficult to do things with command length.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, that's what a lot of people just really underestimate.
I think they say, oh, Linux doesn't do multimedia well.
You know, they just don't know how to do it.
Right.
And they don't understand how powerful things like, I mean, especially FF Impag for me.
I mean, the amount of video editing I can do just with FF Impag still is down to me.
And people just don't realize that.
Cutting and pasting PTV is getting to the point where it is great for that.
Okay.
But if people want to step up, I recommend Wunder.
I really do.
I do do.
It's a great little package.
I think where it is right now is great.
And I think where it is going to be in, give it a year, it's just going to blow people away.
And I almost feel like video editing is completely under the radar.
When you think about Blender, people think 3D modeling.
3D modeling.
Yep.
That's what I wanted it.
Their VSE is almost like a hidden feature.
I know.
Yeah, exactly.
It is.
I use it almost, I mean, really as long as I can, I edit whatever I'm doing, even if it's like a freelance job or something.
Unless I have to go to their site and work on their equipment.
Right.
Like you said, I can't control what I'm using.
I'm using Blender for what I do.
How important is, I mean, a lot of your applications that are at least that I perceive you using are multi-platform.
Like, you can get on anything.
Blender, you can get on it.
I mean, almost literally anything.
I mean, Valera's, Iris, Windows, Linux, Mac.
Is this something, how important is multi-platform?
Or should we all just switch to Linux?
For me, it's very important.
Even though I love Linux, the screencasters are either next.org.
We don't really, there is a little bit of a bias toward Linux, but we don't really talk about the operating system.
Right, yeah.
Because as far as Inkscape, Gimp, Blender, people got their choices.
We don't tell people Windows is bad.
We don't tell people Mac is bad.
We leave it up to them.
Yeah.
We focus on the application only.
And I have to be on Windows that works on Linux at home.
Yeah.
So I only try to use cross-platform applications because I don't want to have to relearn something that I can't use.
Right, yeah.
I know.
I know they're operating systems.
Yeah.
I love cross-platform.
Yeah, yeah.
We're always careful.
I don't want to ever bash anybody for using something that they're very used to.
Even Windows, right?
You can be productive on Windows.
It has its quirks.
But so does Linux.
Yeah.
So do Mac and Tosh, you know.
Yeah.
So I don't like to get involved with that.
Yeah, and you have to ask yourself, what's going to pay for me more right now?
Learning a completely new system which literally can sometimes take a year, you know?
Or day with what I have, even though I might not like it, or maybe I do like it.
But, you know, I mean, what's the payoff?
And for some people, when they need to get something done right now, switching to Linux,
just to run Inkscape is not to be the answer.
Right, yeah.
And that's the thing.
You know, you're proprietary apps, you know.
Inkscape really compared to Illustrator or something.
I would say it's 95% there.
I mean, most of the stuff that people want to use it for gets there for you.
I find it far more intuitive though.
I mean, I don't consider myself like a drawing artist, but I mean, I'm a computer geek and I know program.
I could never figure out Illustrator to save my life.
Whereas Inkscape took me a day of like just sitting in front of it and playing around.
And you're up and running.
Well, a good example is my wife for one.
She's got tattoos, okay?
She's not a big inkscape user.
Right.
But recently, she wanted a nice big tattoo on her arm, right?
Well, she wanted to change the bitmap that she found online.
She wanted to rearrange some things.
And she asked, you know, what can I do that in?
Well, I showed her how gave her a couple tips in Inkscape.
And I tell you, she just took off just like that.
Wow.
It is that easy to learn.
Yeah.
I know.
And for my wife who isn't so artsy, artsy or whatever, she just picked up on it.
And I think anybody can pick up on it.
I think so.
I'm not really an artist.
I'm not a great artist.
I just copy what I see.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's great for that.
Here's a loaded question.
Gimp interface, right?
What do you think of the Gimp interface?
And should it be more like Inkscape's interface?
I don't have a problem with Gimp's interface really.
I've never used Photoshop before.
Gimp's really the only thing I've ever used.
There's only one thing that I would change.
And I would like to have it a single window format.
Yeah.
That's kind of a 50-50 call for people.
Some people like to have separate windows.
Exactly.
Some people is really handy to have them all separate.
I don't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'd like to have everything rolled up in one window.
I believe I would like one window, but then I want the option to split it into separate windows.
So there you go.
I tell you one thing that I do like about Gimp.
I like the introduction of the tango icon theme.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That I thought really pulled it together.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah.
That was a smart move.
Well, cool.
I think it's great.
I think it's great.
I always like coming down here, not just for the talk and stuff.
But I like seeing people that I talk to online.
So actually, yeah.
I mean, that's cool.
Everybody's located all over the country.
Yeah.
Especially for Richard.
This is the first time I'm at Richard Gwerin.
That is so surreal.
He's all the way up from Canada.
You've got the like, few casters.
Yeah.
He's a good guy.
He really is.
And I'm glad I got your meeting.
Yeah.
That's cool.
So I'm actually really curious,
as to why having you talked at Ohio Lynch Fest,
or have you before in the past?
Well, the thing is, that's something that Richard and I were talking about.
Yeah.
I know last year they had a blender offering for a presentation.
Yeah.
And I know you did one this year of a learning course.
Yeah.
I wouldn't like to see, I wouldn't like to see maybe a focus on graphics,
but I would like to see more of it in Atlantic Fest.
Yeah.
Not too much just the administration.
Yeah.
For me, I am an IT manager at my workplace.
Oh, okay.
That's not what I do for a living.
I'm an actually an engineer.
Okay.
But that system administration, for me,
that's kind of a set it and forget it,
and walk away from it.
Not I'm doing other things.
Yeah.
I don't want to be emphasized how important that kind of stuff is.
Right.
But I do would like to see something like maybe on game for a scribe,
or anything.
Yeah.
It would be neat tip to help people like that.
I think that's a great idea.
And I think maybe next year, if by some chance,
or maybe even if Southeast was,
did you get a set?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I saw you for like, no, I didn't.
Yeah, I did.
I was there.
Maybe next year or at South East Atlantic Fest or whatever.
Yeah, maybe either me or someone involved
should actually maybe make almost like a day
or a track of, you know, words of multimedia stuff,
or art stuff.
Right.
Because I know there's an audience work,
because every time I do a talk on video editing on Linux
or something, there's the audience, you know.
So I think people are interested,
is that that place is a little curve of life,
that we've got all this to said,
and some kind of, I mean, everyone knows Linux can do that.
So now let's start, as well, exploring the multimedia stuff.
Exactly.
There's enough geeks out there
that they want to be a little artsy sometimes.
Yeah.
And not everybody is an artist,
and not everybody has that kind of capability.
Right.
But, you know, hey, I want to throw some graphics up on a website,
or I want to do a little something here.
Yeah.
What do I use?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would love to see that type of thing.
I think it'd be really neat now.
Yeah.
Well, it was great talking to you.
Glad I got to finally introduce you.
I didn't mean to interview you, probably.
Actually, a while.
One of you got to get to you on the show.
Thanks a lot.
Well, one thing I want to add is,
stay tuned for an A Press book.
I'm co-occurring with Donna Benjamin, John Cruz,
and I forget the fourth guy.
Okay.
Really, this is Donna Benjamin's project,
but hopefully we'll have a beginning in state books.
Wow.
December, January.
That's fantastic.
I'm very excited about that.
I will stop here.
And now we've got, even Richard,
how are you credited, though?
Huh?
How are you credited, though?
He's an ex?
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm credited as Mark Mystery.
Oh, okay.
That's my real name.
All right.
All right.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding, though.
That's okay.
I'm going to be like, who's this dude?
Yeah.
Nobody's going to know.
I know.
But it's so cheap by A Press.
Yeah.
That's great.
I know.
You want to buy a book or whatever.
That type of thing.
Yeah.
Keep an eye out.
It's going to be there.
Cool.
Very cool.
Congratulations on that.
Oh, yeah.
And what's the website for your screencaster?
Screencasters.heatenex.org.
Okay.
Cool.
Which, by the way, if people haven't seen those,
they really need to check them out.
It's like, what do you have to be like,
108 episodes?
97.
97.
Yeah.
You're probably getting us confused with me,
again, Richard.
I think those guys are up to like,
like, 114 or 17.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Yeah.
I could have sworn you guys reached 100.
But I guess not that way.
But they're great episodes.
They're fantastic.
I learned most of what I know on Escape from.
Thank you.
Those episodes.
Thank you.
There was a while where I wasn't, like,
instead of TV, I had in Miro the screencasters,
like a channel, basically.
Right.
I'm just playing it over and over.
Yeah.
It's cool.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you for listening to Half of Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net,
so head on over to C-A-R-O dot-E-T for all of us here.
Thank you.
