hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4251.txt

Episode: 4251
Title: HPR4251: Dave and MrX turn over a new leaf
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4251/hpr4251.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:08:08

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4251 from Monday the 18th of November 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Today Then Mr. X Turn Over a New Leaf.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 58 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, it's a leafy day in studio N.
Hello everybody, welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
We're doing a recording in the hills of Edinburgh and with me today is...
Mr. X, hello everybody.
Mr. X, how are you doing alright?
Yes, nice and nice.
We just had lunch and we're at Swanston Farm and behind us is actually a golf course this time
and we've got the windows open because it's fairly warm and although it's very windy
I don't know if that's going to affect the recording.
You're like you're in the audience centre of the club and all the people are saying
No, don't hit it that way, look that way.
So there's a lot of people out playing golf at this place.
It's all part of the ambient situation up here.
So we've got our usual bunch of notes that we want to talk about but we're
we're still not all that good at preparing the notes again and we're going to wing it to
certain extent or try not to go on too long.
I wanted to start by saying that we're not in studio C.
No, not in studio C.
Somewhere in the south of England being taken apart for the bits I believe.
Studio C, you might trust your 10-year-old citron CV Picasso is C4 Picasso
is it dropped a fuel injector within the past month.
It's coming home from the shops and all of a sudden it would hardly move.
It turned out it was a fuel injector which is not only not feeding fuel to the engine but it also
had short-circuited something and it knocked out the engine management system.
So the guy I took it to says well could fix it but he said it costs a lot.
How much does the car work?
It turns out the cost of fixing it would be much more than the guy always worth so
decided to scrap it.
It's always a lot of these things and all the cars getting along the tooth as well.
As I said to you, it's got a gearbox I'll change due to the major to the service centre.
It's a mean dealer thing and you always worry if they're going to set up.
Oh, there's something wrong here.
That's going to cost you several hundred pounds.
It happens.
It comes the time when you just have to say goodbye to these things.
It's not worth it.
It's nice if you could repair them.
Well, that's the thing.
They can hardly repeat anything these days including cars.
So we can get on to that actually but before we do.
So we've got never studio N.
And studio N.
An N stands for Nissan because I bought a Nissan Leaf which is an EV.
It's my first EV.
And it's lovely and how are you finding it?
It's great.
It's a little bit of nervousness about the business of range.
I've been to Dundee in back to take my daughter back there.
I followed that.
That's about 160 miles around trip.
No, 120, 120.
So I learnt about driving carefully and not too fast.
Because you tend to...
You go over a certain speed and you use up...
You tend to be picking an old one.
Yeah, yeah.
Or the regen braking is weird.
You have to press this button and flip this switch here.
And then you really need to train yourself to do the one pedal driving.
Because as soon as you take your foot off the accelerator,
it breaks like there's just an emergency stop.
You go very generally.
Yeah.
I'm really trained myself to do that.
I did well. I found a charger.
A high speed charger, which filled it up to 80%.
80%.
So is that from...
I mean, I've seen some of these cars talking about like 0-80 or something like that.
20 minutes, something like that.
Yeah, I'm not.
Yes, it does take longer too.
I know.
I was messaging my son, saying, oh, the charger would turn on.
And he said, oh, how long is it going to take?
And I looked at the charge level.
And it would be something like, I don't know, 60%.
And now it was...
It was 70%.
Within that short time.
I think it's about another five minutes to get...
That's it.
It was 100 kilowatt charger.
Wow.
Which this thing, I think, well, I don't know.
The car chooses what it wants.
Yeah.
But it was damn fast.
Expensive mind.
79 pence per kilowatt hour.
79 pence, right?
So, how many...
How many, I think, is it miles per kilowatt hour?
I don't know.
Yeah, they do, they do, yeah.
And I bet there's a...
And your screens will show you that.
There will be something.
Yeah, this is...
There's so many bells and whistles in this car.
I wonder how it would compare to a petrol at that range,
whether it is cheap as a petrol or snowy bit more.
I think it would be cheaper myself, so...
I think it would be cheaper, yeah.
But I haven't yet learned how to set it up,
so I can see the miles per unit of fuel type of thing,
you know, the per kilowatt.
I was having a chat about it today about EVs and stuff
and I call it what I was going on about,
oh, I wouldn't have an EV because
you can't trust the gas on what they're thinking.
I can have another car, you can't trust the range.
I was thinking, well, Mac, Mac, everything I fill it up,
it's just 400 miles.
And I can't even get 300 miles per thing.
There was nothing like a calculator,
and I've got a petrol car, so that's junk.
A lot of cars have got a calculator to guess on with those things.
So...
Yeah.
I don't know, not had enough experience of it yet,
but it seems to be pretty accurate in terms of what the level of chart is.
And that's...
Of course, when you look at what the car says,
now you plug it into a charger,
you get the same figure.
I think...
I think our relatives who have got an EV,
and they're not very knowledgeable in EVs,
but I think it was one of their friends, someone who said
they could fill a car up for...
Who's that eight pounds or eleven pounds?
Now, their car, for example,
I've got a 300-mile range.
I've got a very small, efficient petrol car,
it's about 41 to the gallnets,
and every 10 days I've got to put the 40 pounds in it,
so, you know, you can see it's a hell of a deal of...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And their car's much bigger than my recap, so...
Yeah.
Well, part of the studio N story is that I've ordered
and I'm having fitted a home charger,
so that's a slow charger.
It's only seven kilowatts per whatever,
seven kilowatt level.
So it will take a long while to fill it up.
Or you shouldn't get out of your tank to eight pounds.
I mean, that'll wrap it up in the air when you're sleeping,
so whether that works for us...
Yeah, I can program it to come on at night,
and I can be plugged in when I want to get home plugging it at night.
The car can determine when to switch it on or when to switch it off.
And there's also lower rates on the...
There's a tariff you can request for your EV,
which is somewhere between seven and eight pounds per kilowatt hour.
So, very cheap to them.
But that means it's going to be very cheap.
And if I eventually get solar panels, then...
Cheap or still?
I don't know whether I'm going to do it,
but I'd quite like to.
My name is just setting things up to get some.
My own tip, John, is about...
To work is about 30 miles.
So, I mean, I have a hundred mile range.
Well, a 60 mile range, I could manage quite well.
Even less than that, I could manage with that.
And the number of times that I travel more than probably 60 miles or whatever,
is very rare.
It's very rare indeed.
Not only for the majority of people,
but certainly if you have a kind of person who travels up and down the motorway
and travels huge journeys all the time,
then it's probably not the car for you, you know.
But average person, especially the second car,
even the main car, we could manage with that, you know?
Yes.
I'm alone.
Yeah.
Personally, I don't use a car all that much.
I do need one, because I need to get to the shops
which have been deliberately made available primarily to cars.
The more you drive, the more you'll save,
because a colleague of mine, he left us over in five,
and he's got to travel over the bridge and whatnot.
And he's got to have a further...
In fact, there was one that's having even further than that.
He did that every day to work.
So, I mean, he was saving the fortune, you know?
That's all.
Yeah.
I could watch on it that.
Yeah, yeah.
So, it's okay.
I'll get a good number of years out of this.
Yeah.
Hopefully a little bit of good studio for me.
Yeah.
I'll chat.
I do hope to get an EV next car.
But we'll see that main or high,
and we'll see all the pins.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of factors.
Yeah, exactly.
I wouldn't have bought an EV if my old car was still.
No, no, it wasn't.
Exactly.
You know?
So, I've got another few years out of it.
Yeah.
I've just carried it.
Talking about things, not being repeatable,
and reusing things, and whatnot.
That, I guess, could lead us on to the YouTube channel.
Oh, well done.
Yeah.
That's called a Segway.
Yeah, you like that.
Very slightly.
So, yes.
I tend to do on these things a few YouTube channels,
recommending things on these.
I'm not doing that.
I haven't really prepared anything.
But, in the intervening times that's last recording,
I sent Mr. X a channel,
which I thought he might be interested in,
because it's one I watch all the time.
And this is a guy in Germany,
who calls a channel a post-apocalyptic...
Apocalyptic.
...something about it.
...ventures.
Inventor.
I'm going in front of him.
Yeah.
I will.
I will.
Yes.
Anyway, he is a youngish fellow,
and he's very much into building and repairing things.
I will put the details of the channel in the notes for this show.
I haven't mentioned him before,
but he's just going from strengths to strengths.
Yeah.
He's well worth that.
I look.
Because I think he's thanking as well.
It's not that he's necessarily expecting,
looking forward to some of my pop-up clips,
but the point is that in the modern world,
another thing is getting more and more complex
and more difficult to appear.
And as things get more complex and intertwined,
you get, actually, it's less robust.
All the things that I've been thinking about,
he's been seeing the same things,
but he basically takes things from scrap yards and whatnot,
and appears that it could be high fives
or power tools.
He seems a bit into power tools.
Yes.
It's quite unusual because I usually find that people
that are either very mechanical minded,
or they're electrically minded,
but you don't usually get many people that are both
your mechanic who remain meaningless,
I happen to know.
It's one of these people that knows both mechanical
and electrical.
Yes.
That's chapter same.
I'm rubbish with mechanical things,
but I'm okay with electrical things.
Yes.
So yeah, I can...
It's quite unusual.
It's quite unusual.
It's a guy in his terms of not being daunted by anything.
Pretty much.
No.
Yeah.
What was his stuff?
We watched...
I think I watched the one where he'd gone
and bought a milling machine.
Oh, yeah, that was it.
He found an old guy...
He travels around Germany and looks at looks for things
that are up for sale,
and also scrap and that sort of thing.
Yeah.
But he came across a guy somewhere in Germany,
not a number where, but there, maybe.
He had an amazing workshop full of some brilliant looking.
Two high quality tools.
High quality old, yes, but incredibly good quality.
Yeah.
And he wanted to...
The guy was retiring and he wanted to get rid of his equipment
to people who could...
In case of Jason, it was...
So once in a lifetime you might never see a machine shop ever
again like this.
And so it was very keen to get these tools out.
I remember these tools from my LEDs,
I had a machine shop,
and it was very much like that,
a very high quality precision tool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was...
Yeah, I'm not sure he's got his milling machine
up and running as yet,
but he's definitely working towards it.
Because this is a machine which you,
which has got all sorts of attachments and parallel devices
and things that will move tools around,
and tool changing capabilities and all sorts of gadgets.
And it's a huge thing.
Because you couldn't get to fit in the...
And he's locked up in there,
to lower things and...
No, that was unlikely.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know, trailer.
I mean, he's trying to get some sort of a crane.
Did he make a crane?
Yeah, he got a crane from...
He's not a crane in it.
He's got it online,
it's not a Chinese or something like that.
And of course...
Oh, yes.
That's not right.
It was a block and tackle.
It was using to hold stuff.
Yep.
And it broke.
So, yeah.
So you got an old one,
and of course it was built properly.
This is usually the case.
Yes.
More of the things were rubbish.
It's an easier one,
as they said.
So, yeah, it's...
There's something absolutely fascinating
watching the stuff he does.
It's currently in the process of building a...
What's it called?
A laser cutter.
Ah!
We watched that one.
Yeah.
He's got a laser...
Yeah.
He's got a laser cutter.
I think it's what I hate about that.
A laser cutter.
And he's also got...
I think he's got a laser on it.
He's also...
Yeah.
Anyway, he's trying to do things like cut sheet metal
and a plasma cutter will do that.
And he's built the frame of it himself.
Very big.
So, it's...
You know, he can feed G-code into it or go and cut fancy shapes out of whatever.
So, yeah.
Wow.
So...
It's a...
It's a...
It's like...
It's like that sort of thing.
It's been a while in the darkness.
It's been a while for years, isn't it?
Yeah.
He's got quite a workshop there.
Full of stuff.
So...
Yeah.
I think we both strongly recommend this.
Yeah.
So, I think that to the show notes, I'm sure.
So, if you're interested in any of this or something, it isn't.
Yeah.
It isn't.
I'm much...
I'm much thinking about how washing machine motors work and how you can make practical use of them,
and whatnot.
Yeah.
Well, I've got any plastic here.
No, no.
It's fastening to work.
But it is interesting, isn't it?
You...
Because I've thrown away a number of washing machines over years and each time I think,
why is a lot of material in there?
Yeah, yeah.
Could I keep the...
I don't know a bit.
Use the sheet metal in some project or other...
Yeah.
I don't have the room to keep going on at all.
And of course, the motor, you look at that and think, wow.
Yeah.
That would be great, but yeah, you need to know what you're doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yes.
Yeah.
That's where we are with that one.
So, we'll hand over to you then.
So, yeah.
Yes.
So, let's...
This one's kind of a bit...
lapses, lapses, ck topic, data bases.
And...
Yeah, I've not, go out to the use the experience of data bases.
I wasn't contemplating, I aspiringly do a show.
I'm more of a depth about that, not like I'm going to Grand Without, I think I'm as
ambine in depth.
Um, how I face my peculiar space, but anyway, I had...
I had...
It was...
I think my...
database called the D-base, I have a very little six-base with D-D-Bases. But the point
was back in 2017, I had a hold of a large CSV file. So that's for comma, separated value
in case you don't know. And it's a bit of a text file and it's a way of, I have no
structure, text isn't it? So each field of, it's like a flat database basically. So each
field is a separate back comma and each record is a separate back carriage attempt. So that's
how a CSV file works. And so this is a huge big file and it was from the off-com website,
off-coms, the licensing authority here in the United Kingdom for radio communications
and all that stuff. And they've got a whole slew of stuff on the website. And one of
the things is a wireless telegraph rate, telegraph rate, I would say wireless telegraph rate
register, the VTR. And in that, it lists all the licensees around the United Kingdom.
And my thoughts were back in 2017, it'd be quite nice if I could sort of look at the
data and see what's out there around my area, or there are so many of my arrangements
or whatever it was. And the database has got a whole slew of licensees along with frequencies.
And I think that's about 40 or 50 odd fields in the database. And in this text file. And along
that, they've got long shouldn't latitude. So in theory, it might have been possible to limit
the long shouldn't latitude range and say, right, here are all the licensees that are five
or really stuff in my house, for example. And that was the idea. And of course, I tried
to do it and I tried to load it into what was the Excel of it, what really blew our cow
coat, it was cold. And my god, it was slow. I think it was about 200 odd thousand entries
in the thing. And it really slowed my PC really, really struggled. It was a nightmare. And
I've come back at it and do a wee bit and come back and leave it in the wee bit. And it
was a, I don't think it was too unstable considering how much it was struggling. You know, it was
quite stable. They're all credit to Libra for a team for coping with that, but yeah, it's
struggled. So then I heard a show a wee bit later on, on HPR, and I can't remember the
chap's name. We've been putting the show notes. And he was talking about XSV for manipulating
the commissivity fields. And that, the gate tool, and I think I used that to slice and
I said, yeah, that was Mr Young. Mr Young, yeah. I wasn't actually sure, but just as I was
telling you, I listened to a few minutes of the show again today and it was definitely
one that I remember. So yeah, an excellent tool. And I know that chopped the database down
quite a bit. It was still really slow to work with him. It was better. It's still really slow.
So I just couldn't give up, but I was just too difficult. I put it to the side and forgot
all about it. And then, I don't know, it was a few weeks ago, I can be like him, but
it would mean Dave was chatting back forward and Dave said, oh, have you ever used SQ
light before? What's that then? So I've heard of SQ light, you know, but didn't know about
it. And then, wow, it's fantastic. Yeah, absolutely fantastic. It's an amazing thing, isn't
it? Considering that it's really just one file containing an entire database. And it's
a command line being and it's blisteringly fast. And it does a lot of database things and
do every possible thing that any database will do, but it does do a hell of a lot of things
in the database world. And it's developing all the time too. So they must have an amazing
team behind it. But yeah, it's so many. Well, I was surprised because to hunt through
the 230,000 inches of whether it was, it was very, very quick. I'm just actually, I've
got that. So you advised SQ light, the SQ light browser, which has a grey tool. And that
allowed me to import the CSV file seamlessly. And then, and then work on it. And then Dave
told me, you know, there's also SQ light 3 itself, which is a command line tool. So,
kind of play with that. And, and that's also a terrific. And I don't know, that Raspberry Pi
or I've had it all running your phone or your time, however. And I've got, I've got my,
I've got a Chromebook here in front of me. And it'll actually run on, which is not, I've
got the show notes in it, and it'll run on that. So if I just hit the button, it will,
I'm not working. Oh, I know why. If I do that. So it's, let's make, oh, there you go.
Do that again. I should have had that set up. So I do that. I mean, it's just, it's
looking at the worst triggers, wireless, terrigally, terrigous, terrigous stuff. And, yeah,
and so this is looking for museums. So, well, of course, there's a hearing of what,
as you can ignore somebody's, but there's, in the UK, there's, there's, well, there's
a bit over 50 museums listed in WTR database. Yeah, there's a whole slew. So, yeah.
Yeah. In fact, when we were, when we were actually, I was in holiday, we'll come back,
I'll come back this in a minute, in more detail, but I was in holiday, and I was in the
late district, and there's a, an, I thought I had not, my, my phone, my tablet, I can't
have my phone, actually, but yeah, probably just my phone, and I thought, I wonder if there's
anything, I was, and I was in Windy Mirror, I thought, I wonder if there's anything
going to happen in Windy Mirror. So I take Windy Mirror, and it's, it, a Windy Mirror
probably, it was, blah, blah, blah, blah, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it gave
me the, the, the frequency that, that they use for, for their, for their fairies, I don't
know, Windy Mirror, so I, I don't, so I dialed it into my, I'm actually doing hands-up,
because there was nothing, I mean, the place is so remote, there wasn't even a single
repeater, I could pick up in, so I could put it on that, and then I said, burst into
life, and they were, they were chatting back for me. Come in to pop, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really useful. Without that, we'd never found
it, so yeah. And the sort of, even though the data size is big, it can, it can fit inside
a single load database there, any difficulty, and you, you can actually, mobile phone,
then use it on a portable, even a phone, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's
astonishing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's enough, that
could be good. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So, but you mean, I mean, you've got far more
use of, because I think I've seen today that I have got a tiny bit of theoretical, theoretical,
theoretical, and experience with relational databases back there two years ago, but I've
since almost forgotten everything about it. That, you sent me a video, what was it now,
how to, how to fake a database, was it, oh my god, and for that, it was how to fake a
database, I think it was. Yeah, that was quite good, I'll add that to the notes, I'll
look at one, dig it out, I've forgotten all the, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's, there's tons
and tons and tons and tons to talk about, about databases in general, about SQLite, specifically
and all the other, I mean, there's, there's, where else to go through, I think it's a flat
database, it's nothing clever, there's no multiple tables, no all that, but even, even,
even with that, just choose it up and spat it out, and I was able to, that was all
thing, within a very short space of time, I mean, a day, and I'm not talking about
spending a day doing it, I mean, a wee bit here, a wee bit there, and I had, I managed to
create a search filter, which limited the longitude and latitudes to around my
area, it was, it was, it was really easy to do, and to find, oh there's nothing here,
it's almost, yeah, so that was, yeah, there's nothing really left, so that was, that was
what I found there, you know, but I mean, I spent days, probably weeks playing with that
spreadsheet, and XSV, and I managed it in, I dare to, I thought I was out, I've done
it already, that's too quick, it's not going to have a challenge in this.
That's why I love databases, because they are so optimized for, for doing that sort of
different stuff.
Perfect, exactly the difference between that and the spreadsheet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.
It's not often, to be fair, it's probably for the average person, it's not often that
you need to look at such a large data set of that problem, and it's not necessarily
for me to get a wee bit of a scabby spreadsheet, and it works fine, you know, but I guess
that's a certain size, it's just, just no practicals, so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I tend to use the more convoluted aspects of databases, in the cases where I need to,
I've got one database, and I'm using it at the moment, a SQL database, where I captured
all the information about all of the HBR shows, and all the assets, as I call them, if
they were full tunes, or other things that are attached to the show, and so it's got
a list of them also, I can say, give me all the shows that have got assets, and then I can
go and see if they physically have them, and if they don't, and go and find them on the
backup and restore them, and all that sort of thing.
So, that database has turned out to be extremely useful.
It was more of an exercise in how do you record this type of stuff in an efficient way,
initially, but now it's become a practical tool.
Has it got multiple tools in it, and what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's got two.
It's good, because the show might have many assets, so you need to have a table of assets,
and I need to link to one show to many of that assets.
I haven't done any, there's also a table of hosts, and the hosts are linked to the shows
that they did, so there's one host to many.
My choice.
Yeah, and so forth.
But there's nothing spectacular about it.
It's just a very convenient way to keep data, collect data, and have it available to ask
questions of it and get certain things out of it.
Yeah, yeah, it's really good, it's really good.
So, yes.
The other thing I was going to say about this was that SQLite has got a written in C,
I think, and you can write your own plugins for it, and there are also many plugins available,
which are already, and in my configuration, I use one that lets me do regular expression matches.
So, it gives you a rejects command, would it be, or anyway.
So, you can say a fun new record, where such-and-such a field rejects matches to some regular expression things.
So, if you had museum, if you use museum, and somebody spoke museum wrong, then you could say,
you can use a museum, and then a dot, M.
So, you hit all the funny spelling and stuff like that.
So, that doesn't come by default.
I think, at least it didn't, the time I was setting things like that.
It's fun, so I've got a lot of flexibility and extensions to it.
Yes, it's pretty powerful.
It's very powerful as it is, but it's being enhanced by the...
By the community and by the developers as well.
Even as it's too, I was amazed how easy and flexible it was to work with,
because I mean, I have fiddle with it, access in the past,
and I think I've liked it better than that, you know, an access,
a kind of a creative way to narrow the long-tune latitude,
and what about that being a thinker?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very good.
I think database is the fun, much to get your head around them,
and they are much more powerful than you might imagine
until you get into the possibilities.
Possibilities, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Very good, very good.
I'll be talking more about this.
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
We could do with some shows on databases, by some people.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, I don't know.
I found that X, just again, I think, was it yourself that,
well, it would be, because I think everything,
just everything that comes out of HPR is yourself,
being a janitor.
So I think it was not your idea to come up with tags,
was it? It was your idea, wasn't it?
Yes, yes, I think so.
Because, of course, I just typed in with tags, C, CSV,
and found those two shows like that.
So good.
It would have been nice if we could have put something more powerful
behind the tags, but we decided we don't want to have JavaScript.
Even though maybe JavaScript is a lot better these days
than it was when that sentence was made.
That's something to be said for simplicity.
Yeah, it's not a thing.
It's not my decision, and I'm not going to undo it.
Yeah, yeah.
But just, you know, you can just go and look.
Look at that.
Yeah, some fine stuff.
Yeah.
And something for what I was looking for.
So that's, you can't see more than that, you know.
Because the tag database exists with the tag list,
the tag collection list, because we went through all the old shows
and collected tags, and there was a long list of people
who helped with that process.
Wow.
Which, yeah, for which there was much appreciation.
Even the list of all the names somewhere in one of the community years.
Right.
Has that happened by DTPs as well that holds the tags?
The tags are in the main HBO database.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not maybe in the most optimal way, but probably
we're going to rethink that in the next year or so,
depending on who's available and who's got the time and so on and so forth.
But, yeah, we'll probably tidy it up a wee bit.
And make it more efficient.
Yeah, yeah.
Very good.
Okay.
We're talking, we're doing some of this.
Can we keep it back for you?
You were saying something like, I couldn't live in any information out on it.
It's a text IMG, because you were sending me screenshots and stuff, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, what was that text IMG at?
It's a tool I stumbled on where you can prepare a piece of formatted text
or any text you like, really.
And you then feed it to this text image tool
and it generates a PMG image of it.
Oh, yeah.
Because I use it in my recipe, a random meal choice thingy,
so I've witted on shows in the past.
Yeah.
So, when the choice has been made?
The script does it makes a nice little formatted text box,
if you like, with tags and values and stuff like that.
It uses colour now and whatever.
And suddenly it occurred to me, what if I was to feed that to text image
and get the end result out?
And then I send it to Telegram to our family channel to say,
here, here you are guys, this is what we're having for dinner next Wednesday and Thursday.
And they go, ooh, that's great.
Super efficient.
I also use it Archer72,
and I often exchange weather conditions between Edinburgh
and, is it Louisville in Kentucky,
around that Simpion, yeah.
Anyway, in Kentucky, that sort of area.
And some remarkable differences.
Remarkable similarities a lot at the time.
And then he's got an incredibly hot day,
and it's five degrees here.
But anyway.
Because I was going to say,
I would think that the weather reports would go,
rubbish, good eat, rubbish, good eat.
You can do it with the rubbish.
Yes, yes, yes.
We do get a fair bit of rain over here.
That's a fairly cold temperatures lately.
So the reason I've mentioned that is because we're using a thing called
www.ttr.in,
which is a website where you can send a,
and you are able to it,
which contains where you are and what sort of weather stuff you want to hear.
And it sends you back weather report in text with colours.
So I have set things up so that it will pipe that into this text image tool
and will then save it as a PNG.
And then I, I just send that across to Matrix,
where we are just 72.
So I think he does something similar.
There were, yeah.
So is it, is it, is it, is it,
a debing package called Text IMG?
I don't know.
I couldn't find it.
It was in the debing repo.
But when I looked again to see how I could advise people to install it,
I found that mostly it was in the GitHub repo.
So it's, but it's relatively easy to install,
because I think there's a binary there.
You can just download,
if you trust binaries that you download,
and stick it somewhere in your bin directory,
or use a local bin or something like that.
I will, again, I'll write up some notes about what I found.
Yeah.
And people might find it and use something like that.
I think it's quite nice.
Change the background, you can change the font,
and all that sort of stuff.
And it's coloured and it's just simple.
It's easy to make text.
You get something to convert it into a picture, it's quite nice.
Very good, very good.
And of course, I'll say this from that,
because you were talking about coloured text and I had a question about coloured text,
you sent me, you've got a, there's some of the scripts that are used
and you use them in a real deal with coloured text.
Yeah.
Well, it was a huge wasn't it?
So how do you actually use text as well?
Yes, all of my scripts were monochrome, up to a point,
and then I got really annoyed with the fact that I had things that said,
I'm about to do this.
And then it said, I didn't do it, it didn't work.
No, it works.
And everything's good, I'm wondering what's going to be in different colours.
So the blue for that, I'm going to do it.
Red for, oh, it seems to fail.
I'll have another go.
And green for, it's all fine now.
It's what it says.
So I can look at those and as I scroll them behind,
oh yeah, that one's done, that one's done.
This is me repairing shows with missing assets and all that sort of stuff.
So yeah, it's moderately complex answer.
But in a nutshell, maybe I should do, I don't know what I want to do.
Yeah, I think I recognize method one,
it was method one before, but I haven't used your method too.
Well, yeah, I've written notes in our shared document here to say,
so I formalized things so that I've got a function,
a bash function that I load into things that need it,
called define colours.
And then it creates variables called red, green, blue, etc.
And it does it by using, there's a bash command called teaput,
teaput set af1, it returns you the code for colour red.
Nice store that in a red variable.
And then I export it so that, you know,
anybody else who can see variables in the shells can use it.
So that'll be the function I'm using and stuff.
And there are other ways of doing it.
Lots of cases where people create escape code sequences
for making different prompts, you know, with colours in and that type of thing.
There are ways of doing it with escapes and so on and so forth.
I think I've got a screen, as I screen our C file, it does that,
and it goes a lot, it goes lots of colours, colours bits,
and we've got from somebody else, obviously I've seen the else's idea.
You guys got a host name and it shows you the open screen,
so I still, fat, in fact, this was a thing that I was just thinking to,
we've gone off an alternate tangent here,
it doesn't declare to you just that the user's talking about,
oh, it's curious how commands get deprecated, you know.
I was just thinking the example, he was going to give a cat in the wall
and something, he was eye peeking, thinking like,
a cat in the wall, a cat in the wall, but anyway, things like that.
And I was thinking, oh, screen, that's an example.
I still use screen, nobody's as fast, I like screen,
and I'm thinking of screen.
I connect, Ken's got a Raspberry Pi set up,
which I use to, he and I use to do various housekeeping things.
It's got a backup just stuck to it at the moment,
and it's got a fair bit of disk of its own,
and it's what I use to take shows and upload new shows
and upload them to the internet archive.
So it's all being done on there, and I connect it with screen,
and I've got several terminals open all the time.
The other day, I, the thing I was running,
it's never going to finish, it's getting to midnight,
I've got to go to bed, so I just log off, you know,
shut down screen, log off, and came back again in the morning,
and it was, it was running fine to come in.
With screen dash, I'll read that to you.
Yeah, exactly, so, yeah.
So, I mean, there's nothing specific to screen there.
It's just great.
What is it called?
T-mux.
Ah, is that the, the Christmas was it?
It is.
It's got more.
Two more facilities.
Right.
But I haven't really spent the time to relearn them.
Exactly.
And I can always learning it all.
There's another more fancy one that's around at the moment
that people are pointing at.
It's called Zellage.
Right.
It's Zell E-double L-I-J, which means something,
in some language, I think.
Ah, right.
Which I'm wondering where I should actually learn
and make that my new default.
Yeah.
The whole business of, you know, having a terminal
multiplexer is effectively what it is.
Yeah.
You're logging in through one port and then.
Yeah.
You're getting several virtual terminals that are sitting there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, really.
Yeah.
This, this colour's business then was.
Yeah.
I've just written function, a function to call the colour.
So I just do things like, there's a function called coloured,
mm-hmm.
Which takes two arguments and then the first one needs the colour name,
which is a, which is a string.
It doesn't have to be quoted, because most colours got single, single,
just one word early, but you can, you should quote it, I suppose.
So you type coloured, then red, then a message, so you know, oh dear, it failed.
And then you, it takes the message and sticks colour codes around it, and it determines
what colour to start with by the use of the argument, which turns into a variable.
Yeah, and methods that I won't go into just now, but yeah, it's very simple, it works fine, so.
Very good, very good.
So yeah, so where do we go from the event?
See what we've come up with.
We're now 47.
Oh, let's say 47 minutes in.
47 minutes in, yeah, yeah.
So it's something fly.
I don't know, making how much time we use.
Yeah, I've touched it before with the rubbish weather, and it has been tremendously rubbish.
It's been pretty bad.
Yeah, and I was telling Dave that I was, that's exactly, at least two YouTube channels are watching.
So one other member was there's a one chap called Tecmon, who are watching me.
Every time he does, I always watch every single show he does, it's terrific.
And so he was talking about how he was struggling with the heat of whatnot, and he bought this.
It was actually a portable air conditioning unit, which this is a sub.
So it goes in your neck, like a scarf thing, all the way around the top of your neck, and down either side.
And I think it's speakers, speakers like that.
So these are actually air conditioning units, and he thought, well, it's a build of rubbish.
He thought it would be rubbish, but it obviously thought it works.
Something he could sort of do a review on.
This is fantastic.
So he took it off, because he had to make a phone call, and he forgot and he had, okay, took it off.
And when, by the end of the call, he was all hot and bothered.
And he put this back on again and said, that's fantastic.
I thought, I'm so jealous.
Yeah, it's about six degrees, and how on the game I said, you know, do you come hot?
You're too hot.
Yeah.
So yeah.
And of course, we had a, we had a hot, a hot, a holiday just about last week.
We went to Lake District, and it got to the point where Mrs. X said to me,
like, don't mention the weather again.
Maybe I'm going to dig in the ribs, I think.
But it's so nice.
It's been so rubbish back home.
I told the camera.
It was a glorious weather.
It was sunshine.
Oh, it was wonderful.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was really nice.
Yeah, it's been fairly grim here.
It has.
It's been day after day after day of rain.
Rain and wind.
Yeah.
Yeah, to me, oh, I was just saying, it feels like, it almost feels like a minute.
But it feels like the weather is angry.
It's like an anger fix.
It's just constantly heavy.
When the whole thing is, oh.
Can I drove to Dundee with my daughter a couple of weeks ago now?
It was one of those days where it was just incessant rain.
It had been raining the day before and before that, I think.
And it was all the clouds really low.
So it was to find its fork.
You could hardly see any distance in front of you as you're driving.
And the roads are soaking wet.
You get a car, windscreen is getting full of splashed rain from the car in front of whatever.
And my car with, it's got some quite fancy icon stuff in it.
I had to turn the screen clear thing because it was just steaming up.
Because the humidity must have been so incredibly hot.
What with us breathing in it as well.
I've never driven in those sort of conditions before where your car is just steaming up inside
because it's so incredibly wet.
Have you got other wipers on this of you?
Yeah, yeah.
It's got all those sensors in there.
Previous car had that in there.
A mess was a must in there.
Yeah.
It does do that.
Maybe it will also switch on some of the fans and stuff it in there.
Because there's an auto button here.
I know that the thing people talk about as well here on your range goes in there.
I don't know.
But I remember something making a comment on YouTube.
Imagine if you were in your daft EV and you got stuck in a snow jacket.
You wouldn't mind us then, would you?
There was a chap.
I'm going to try that.
I don't know what car it was.
It may not have been that.
I don't know what was a Tesla or what it was.
But whatever the car was, you put it on and set it to 20-20-20 degrees and set it something up.
And seven days.
Seven days to beat the battery.
So I'll let's see your petrol car doing that then.
I know, I know.
So it's different.
It's not necessarily better.
It's different in all sorts of ways.
And once you're everybody.
No.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
For people who don't do a huge amount of driving.
Yeah.
A small EV is.
Not even seeing that.
They could do a huge amount of driving, but not long distance driving.
Because I say this people will clock up quite high images.
I know that they don't do necessarily long distances.
Incidentally, I discovered recently that this car is front wheel drive,
which I thought that a lot of EVs were real wheel drive,
which I've always enjoyed having front wheel drive car,
because in the ice and snow, you're having the traction at the front.
Obviously, all four wheel drive would be best.
But good traction at the front will often get you out of scrapes that we're hard to get out.
I've certainly been able to see cars trying to get up the hill.
There's a slope just from the road, from where I live,
that goes up to the main road.
And I've seen people trying to get up there, and they just can't move.
Every time they try, they either put too much accelerator on and spin the back wheels,
or you know, and I've been able to just sort of slowly go past them.
As long as it's slower and in a low gear and gently,
no sudden movements and stuff.
I remember last week's brake, which is really steep.
I remember coming over the top of that and meeting another car,
facing an opposite side of the road,
but facing the same way, reversing backwards up the hill.
You think that's how you should expect that?
Yeah, that is the strategy.
Yeah, definitely.
There's a huge hill and long, so it wasn't like a...
I mean, it's a hundred meters ahead to drive backwards to get up this hill.
That's when we didn't have the speed.
Yeah, yeah, it works, it works.
But it's not the best.
No, it's not.
I thought I was thinking, what's it going to be like in the winter driving an EV?
But you're lucky it's fun people to have.
Yeah, yeah, so hopefully it will be.
It will be, yeah.
It's good as any other sort of car.
What else have we got?
Oh, well, we've got an up-camp.
We have indeed, yes.
So by the time we next come together to record one of these,
I think.
Up-camp will have...
Up-camp.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I will beat my very first up-camp this year.
So if any of you are coming along, I can say hello to you.
Yeah.
It's nice to be good.
And I just heard from Ken today.
By the way, is it Spectrum 24 in Paris,
which is an amateur radio thing?
All right.
He would just mess his...
The last message I saw was...
There's a lot of talk about mesh testing.
Oh, yes, mesh.
There's been a lot of buzz about it.
I don't really know a huge amount about it, but it seems...
It's a bit like you can have off-grid communications and stuff.
Pusing low type of radio, is that what it is?
Yeah.
So you can...
And it's all done by sort of peer-to-peer type of type of...
It's probably...
It's probably like, we're a type of packet radio,
but shrinking it down to a finger size of our matchbox,
and you can turn a message and it'll go through the network
and go through the nearest...
I don't know, somebody who's got one as well.
And then onto the final destination.
I've seen a few YouTube things about it.
So it's not like he's coming along quite nicely.
I wonder these things.
These unlicensed stuff.
It's such a little power on there.
I think I'm not richer.
I don't know.
I don't think you need a license.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
That was the message I got.
Yeah.
I certainly know.
So, and because you could have a whole...
You could have a whole mesh of them.
You could have a theory go from one end of the country to the next.
But through multiple steps and hops and what nots.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Quite a lot of stuff.
I thought you'd been interested in that.
Yeah.
We've got a booth or a table or something at Alchem.
With HBR has.
Yes.
Oh, very good.
That was the other message I got between Ken.
He's got a table at...
Yeah, because it wasn't...
I think when we were speaking to...
What's very hard to get back up to speed
because of the holly.
I was about back behind.
I listened to the episode that Ken did to do the camps.
That was it.
Excellent.
Yeah.
I think at that point, I didn't know they were going to have a table.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
But so, was it Gary, the guy he interviewed me?
Like Gary?
He just...
No, I said, yeah.
There's a room for, sort of, just hanging out and raising with people.
Excellent.
And we're going to have a table with...
With the...
The issue with our table.
Ken.
So, we can just sit there and chat to people who want to come along and chat.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Very nice.
Very good to hear you.
So, if you're there, I might see you.
Yeah.
We might see you.
Yeah.
We might indeed, yeah.
So, yeah, come and say hello.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, that's...
So...
That's what we've got.
How are we doing, Tom?
We're doing the same way.
What's that?
52.
I don't know.
Excuse one or two weeks.
I've had small things.
Yeah.
Printed problems.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
I've got...
I've got an old Epson...
Epson R300.
And I don't know what it is.
But the 20-odd years I'm daft at that, I don't know.
But it's...
I think that's probably a bit 20 year old as well.
I think that's maybe what the problem is.
Yeah.
But it's...
The black isn't working now.
So, I think I'm having to print in a coloured...
We've got a packet list for the two wood to relate to this, right?
And the...
Mrs. Sixth to print it out in blue or something.
So, she can read it, you know what I'm saying?
She's...
No!
Still working.
But you get through all this ink.
Does it take cartridges or...
It does.
It does.
Oh, it's...
I mean, I think...
I've told the story before, but it was...
I've got...
I've got four or five sets of cartridges over...
Maybe more than that, over a set of...
I mean, in some day, what gave me a free bundle as well?
So, I end up with a huge box of cartridges.
I think I'm totally lucky if I spent 15 pound of the whole damn long.
It's so cheap.
So, it's been a very, very cheap printer to run.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I think that's going to get into its end of it.
But I used it so infrequently.
There's no point in that.
There's no point in that.
There's no point.
Inkjet printers do suffer from that.
They need regular use,
so to keep the ink flowing otherwise they tend to dry out.
Yeah.
I certainly...
My inkjet hasn't been on for ages,
but there was a point where I resurrected it,
and then it's an HP one,
with a built-in fax and a scanner and all of that.
Oh, and that's...
My mother's got one like that.
And getting it back to working again,
required you to run the...
The head cleaning...
Yes.
How did that...
My mother actually...
I think that took some...
Yeah.
I suppose I'll help a whole...
To the heads...
Yeah, I think I took a tip and cleaned them.
The HP is quite clever, you could say,
but that's why the cart was a little...
You know, the head's actually in the cart, isn't it?
Yeah.
Because the episode one's on the printer,
so that gums up your stuff better.
Well, she put in ink for that.
Oh, it's okay.
You probably could clean it,
but it's probably not a non-trivial.
Maybe at that, actually.
And if you knack at the whole printer's gone with it,
you've just broken the cart to case.
That's it.
But it certainly did take out the cartridges,
it's become just and give them a clean.
There's a lot of gunked up dried out ink on them.
Right.
And if you use a cotton bud with some I suppose on it,
you can clean it, clean it.
It's efficient.
But you might have dried up all the ink in the cartridge,
of course, that's the other end.
I remember many, many years ago,
and it may have been some dodgy website of news groups
or whether it was back.
I got a whole lot of...
And I must have just sort of lost something,
well, that'll be interesting.
It was an Epson R300,
technicians' package of software.
So it's basically what the Epson engineering would have.
And it's got also some diagnostics and clever things.
And it's also been the full manual for the same
with the whole printer.
And I have that somewhere,
as long as the CD is readable.
But trying to find it, maybe a bit of a pain.
But then again, I think I'm just keeping using the paint
to put the comes up as a bonus.
So I'm not too fast.
Put blank ink in the blue, in the blue.
Yeah, exactly.
Really good.
I'll give it all of them.
Do we do it?
Yeah.
And from that, we could talk about your propelling pencil.
Is that the next one we're going to talk about?
I actually did the pencil did see the light of day
on an HBR show,
because I think one of the pens and pencils
shows that I did.
Like you talked about it.
Demo it, yeah.
Forget what the model is now.
It was a pen teller thing, isn't it?
My one's pen teller.
Yeah, I think it's a pen teller.
And it was a metal barrel one.
Right.
And it had a...
If you click the clip,
the pocket clip thingy,
if you press the top end of it,
it would the whole tip of the propelling pencil
or just a bit or retracted.
Right, right.
And then you press the top button,
and it came out again.
And then you pressed it some more,
and it would eject, it would push the...
Is it a clever thing not the fact that when you press
on it, the tip actually rotates,
you don't have to keep turning it in your hands,
so it stays...
Not that one.
No, I've had...
There are other pens,
my daughter...
Oh, I've both met someone in Japan several times.
They tend to go looking in stationary shops.
Right.
And there's one...
There's one pencil,
the Japanese are really strongly into pencils.
Right.
And there are definitely models that,
as you press them to write,
it takes the lead.
I thought that was the one you had.
No, my...
My pen teller was just a metal barrel one,
with...
It came in multiple formats,
different lead sizes,
not in...
You have to buy a different pencil for each lead size.
I bought three,
there was a bargain at the time,
and I bought it.
You could...
On Amazon, you could get three
for the price of one, effectively.
Well, one now, anyway.
Right.
And it was something like 20 quid for three.
Now you'd be like,
it's been 20 quid for one.
Yes, hi.
It's inflation for you.
I'm just having it like I've been able to...
Because I thought my, yeah,
my propellant pencil,
and I've got,
is also a pen teller,
but I can't remember,
or found that we've got it at home.
It's one called a Kuru tool gun,
which rotates the lead,
but I think they all,
a lot of them tend to do that.
Right.
No, this one was,
I bought it because,
I saw a lot of people,
on YouTube saying,
oh, if you would work,
this is one of the best,
because, you know,
it's real bust,
you can use it in the workshop,
and blah, blah, blah, blah,
and draw as nice lines
on a bit wood,
and you know where to cut,
stuff, and all that.
So I thought,
all right, it was good enough there.
No, really, you liked it.
It was an excellent pencil.
Uh-huh.
But I dropped it.
You dropped it.
In the workshop.
Which is my garage.
Right.
And I think what,
and then I picked it up,
and it seemed to be fine.
It continued to work.
Uh-huh.
Until one day,
I was, um,
sounds like a bedtime story,
and, um,
but one day,
it, uh, the end of the pencil,
sort of, just fell out of the,
the metal tube.
Right.
Um, so,
I think what had happened
was that the plastic inner part
of the pencil had broken,
when it fell,
onto a concrete floor.
Right.
And it, uh,
but it wasn't obvious,
because it was held in by the tube
of the metal tube,
but this thing was,
was, like,
how do I have it here outside?
Uh-huh.
And, uh, so it just,
just,
just, if it really been destroyed at that point,
it just continued,
pretending to be alive,
for a while,
and then it died completely.
Yeah.
So, yeah,
it's a shame,
but it's nothing like it.
I don't think I could mend it.
Yeah.
It would be a huge blast
to there.
Yeah.
I mean,
as we've seen a bit,
how modern things are,
so much more difficult to repair,
but I suppose something,
like a propelling pencil,
it would be quite difficult to build up,
a propelling pencil
that was repeatable like that,
because it would be really clunky.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The, the,
the sort of tolerances
and the,
the movement of bits and stuff,
and they're,
they're really quite complex.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not a,
not a thing you easily repair.
No, I don't think so.
And you,
and you garage,
or whatever,
it's a bad thing.
A lot of,
you know,
it's on your,
in the printer,
you have one,
Dave.
That's some of us do.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
You can try that one time.
Yeah.
No, I don't think I'll be
printing any,
propelling pencil.
So,
well,
so we,
so we call it,
and answer this one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Covered a lot of things here,
so yeah.
Interesting topic.
Yeah.
You can hear all the,
when we're seeing,
sticking it in a leaving, yeah?
Heading, heading home.
Hm, heading home, yeah.
Yeah.
We'll,
we'll call it done.
I don't know.
How, can I show you these things?
Michael!
On the bed,
yeah!
So, it's goodbye for me.
And it's goodbye for me, man.
Have a nice,
bye.
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Huy Graphics Radio
like yourself. If you ever thought of recording podcasts, you click on our
contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hosting for HBR has been
kindly provided by Anonsthost.com, the Internet Archive and R-Sync.net.
On the Sadois status, today's show is released on our Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.