hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4277.txt

Episode: 4277
Title: HPR4277: Introduction episode by Paul
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4277/hpr4277.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:23:46

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4277 for Tuesday, 24 December 2024.
Today's show is entitled Introduction Episode by Paul.
It is the first show by Newhost Paul Jay and is about 8 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is Paul Jay is a new podcast host for HPR.
This is his introductory podcast.
Good evening.
My name is Paul and this is my introductory podcast for Hacker Public Radio.
I came across Hacker Public Radio and Ken at Ogkamp 2024.
In discussions with Ken, he was very persuasive, suggesting I should make a podcast for Hacker
Public Radio.
The first show he explains should be a simple, short introduction show and then the following
shows could be more about specific topics.
So here I am.
So it's first of all I'd like to give you some background about me, starting with my
work.
I studied material science at Brunel University in West London in the UK.
Following my degree, I joined British Steel as it was then, in the stainless division
in Sheffield as a graduate trainee.
Six months later I transferred to South Wales to stay in this long product as a steel
maker.
This job involved calculating all the elements, additions and gas blows to convert about
44 tons of melted steel scrap into 48 tons of prime stainless steel.
This was a small division and in the following 18 months I was promoted a couple of times.
First of all to shift management and subsequently to technical section manager.
After three years I took a job in Bosch at their new UK-based factory.
I worked there for 10 years actually in two five year blocks with two years in an automotive
pressure up in between.
All I can say is don't believe what the headhunters tell you.
In 2002 I moved to North Wales to start with work of a Toyota in their engine manufacturing
plant.
I stayed with Toyota for 17 years, the last three and a half years based in Brussels and
working all around Europe.
In the middle of 2019 I left Toyota and after a couple of months I set up a part-time consulting
business with an employee count of one, i.e. me.
This has kept me busy since 2019 but I plan to finish this work at the end of 2025.
I had been very lucky enough to work in companies with a real interest in looking after employees
and working together with them to deliver both performance with a company and long-term
stable employers and development for their employees.
I'd like to talk a little bit about my computing interest.
So my first interaction with the computer was in 1980 in school.
We had an opportunity to do some programming in basic.
The computer was actually based at the county council and we had to send the program listings
off to them and they would load and run them and then send the printout back a week or
so later.
Debugging would take some time.
Subsequently the school bought two Commodore PET computers which we could use, again programming
in basic.
My first computer I owned personally was a Spectrum 16K on which I mostly played games.
When it went to university we had an account on the Baltic's mainframe.
This was used for some coursework but also for emailing and so on.
In my last year my project was modelling interfacial bond behaviour on injection moulded carbon
fiber reinforced nylon.
To do this I decided I didn't want to learn 4tron or lists but instead learn C.
Ironically I've come to love lists in recent years.
I was given an account on the Pyramid Unix system to do programming for this project.
In hindsight what I did was not really that complex but it did get me a good degree
result.
I also bought an Amstrad PCW8256 in my final year at university and I used this to write
up my project and also to learn Pascal.
In my job in British Steel I had an IBM PC clone on my desk and after university I bought
an Omega 500 for home use.
I could see the possibility to make a computer program to do the calculations for steelmaking
and I started writing a program in C to do this while still in British Steel.
I set it up so I could compile it on both the work PC and also on my Omega.
It was a terminal user based interface program as was commonly known as days but it had
a consistent interface whether used on the Omega or on the PC.
To make life a bit easier I bought a sidecar hard drive unit for the Omega and I also bought
a C compiler to form a cost about £400 with a 20 megabyte hard drive.
The C compiler itself was also not cheap if I remember correctly.
Once the hard drive was plugged in the driver took a good portion of the 512K system memory
so the next purchase I had to make was an additional 512K costing another £70.
Stuff wasn't cheap in those days.
I left British Steel before finishing the program but delivered it to the company 18 months
later.
It was then used up until the plant closed about 10 years later.
I eventually moved on from the Omega and built an X86 system based on the AMD K6 processor
I remember correctly.
I've made use of several Linux distributions.
The first was flatbar in 1995 but I also had a few box version of Suzie.
When using Suzie I learned the meaning of dependency hell when trying out newer versions
of software which has stored newer libraries which overrode libraries needed by the system.
I gave a run for a spin when it came out but in 2005 settled on Gen 2 and I've been
using it continuously on my desktop and laptop since.
Over the years I became curious about Geeks and Knicks.
I struggled to get my head around Geeks initially but had more success with Dix having learned
the concepts while learning Geeks.
The community friction in Knicks is something I find disturbing so I put Gen 2 back on my
laptop and I start experimenting with Geeks again on one liter PC.
I'm making much more progress this time and I can see a time when I put Geeks on my
laptop and possibly on my other computers at a later date.
I have a server which I've built for work in 2023 primarily to run Next Cloud as a service
to avoid needing Google Drive.
My work is still done in Windows in order to interface with clients my work files are
on OneDrive.
This is something I will change in 2025.
Anyone who thinks Microsoft, Embrace, Open Source should consider why things like Autosave
and Office applications only works when the files are stored on OneDrive.
The sooner I'm out of the Microsoft ecosystem, the better.
Not to mention their intention to use all customer files to train their AI.
In addition to my computing expertise I also engage in several other activities.
I play the clarinet in the local town band.
I picked the clarinet up about 20 years ago and initially taught myself to play but
then had lessons to improve further and also to unlearn some bad habits.
The band is a community windman with about 40 players and we meet and rehearse each
week and do a couple of concerts each year.
I build and fly model aircraft in quadcopters and I have done this since I was a teenager
really on and off.
I have been involved in the development of Libre pilots, which are quadcopters software
but the team have drifted away and is now no longer in active development.
I'm learning Rust at the moment and want to build a flight controller and Rust to reinforce
my understanding.
For me, learning by doing is better than learning by reading.
Outdoor activities and trying to keep some level of fitness, particularly as I start
to get older.
I do cycle and I also took up kayaking this year.
I'm also a registered ham operator having taken my foundation license to found during
lockdown in the UK.
I set up a home shack but I'm plagued by interference at home so I need to spend some
time working out where the problem is coming from and resolving it.
I have a mobile setup which I use for some SOTA and POTA but I need to be more active.
I do some electronics mainly supporting ham radio and model flying activities.
Again, I plan to expand this more once I fully retire in October.
I think in summary, I can bring something to the HPR community and look forward to choosing
a topic for my first proper episode.
If you have any ideas you think I should elaborate on, feel free to comment.
Also, if I can make an episode for HPR then so can you.
Trust me, it isn't so difficult.
I will be in FOSTEM in 2025 so if you want to meet up, drop me a message.
It will be my first time and I suspect I will find it a challenge for the number of
people there.
I'm looking forward to it.
It would also be great to be in Brussels again.
That's my introduction show for you.
While preparing to record this podcast, I had a look at the account on the HPR website.
There are so many open slots so I really need to emphasise that you should make a podcast
and I will also start looking at what my second podcast topic should be and hopefully
to be something of interest to you.
So that's me.
I'm Paul and you've been listening to Hacker Public Radio and I'd like to wish you all
the best for the upcoming holidays.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, you click on our contribute link to find
out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the Internet Archive
and our syncs.net.
On this advice status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
License.