460 lines
36 KiB
Plaintext
460 lines
36 KiB
Plaintext
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Episode: 3167
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Title: HPR3167: A ramble with the Pentland Squires (part 1)
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3167/hpr3167.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-24 18:08:51
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3167 for Tuesday, 22 September 2020. Today's show is entitled
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A Rumble with the Pentland Squires. Part 1. It is hosted by Dave Morris,
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and is about 42 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
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MRX and Dave Morris chat from opposite sides of the Pentland Hills.
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Edinburgh.
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This episode of HBR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared hosting
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with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15. Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
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Hi everybody. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is Dave Morris with MrX,
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and we're doing another one of our chit chats over Mumbo.
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I think we're either side of the Pentland Hills sort of thing. Are we MrX?
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I'm in an area called Curry, which is one side of the Pentland Hills. You can scramble up the hills
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from here relatively easily, and you're fair where you have the side of it all, aren't you?
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Yeah, that's right. I'm probably, I don't know, six or seven miles,
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so it could be anything but something like that, you know, that's that's generally a basic thing.
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I don't know if anybody is interested in the exactly where we are, but I like to think of the geography of these things.
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So we've got a list of things that we've been sort of kicking around as worth having a little chat about,
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because otherwise you'd be sitting here twiddling and that comes probably, I would anyway have a list.
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So we can sort of leap into them if you're happy.
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Yeah, well, whether we take maybe one from each or, you know, because you've got few.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't want to blitz through my whole lot, because I can't leave a document alone,
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I have to keep adding bits to it all the time, so yeah.
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You see, you see the first, oh, I couldn't have come up with ideas or things.
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I was struggling with all those.
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And then the last few, oh, it was a quick cut. A lot of things.
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Yeah, that's pretty good.
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So Mason, when you get started, it's difficult to stop sometimes.
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So yeah, well, my first item on the list was just to talk briefly about the situation regarding COVID-19,
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this coronavirus in the UK.
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I don't, I think it's, it's a pretty well-worn topic.
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And I sort of detect some people getting a little bit bored of it.
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Personally, I find it quite fascinating how it all works and what people are doing.
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But as far as Scotland's concerned, the schools returned on the 11th of August.
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Today is what 23rd, is that? Yeah.
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And Scotland doesn't have, doesn't seem to have had a vast number of cases.
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It certainly had them.
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But there's a thing you can look at on the web, which is set up by the Scottish Government,
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where you can see how many cases there have been in your area.
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And the number is very small in the area I'm in.
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And imagine this maybe more in, I haven't scanned a whole lot,
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but some places at worst than others.
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But we seem to be reasonably okay as far as the virus is concerned.
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That's not to say we should be complacent because it's not going away.
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It's still out there. How about yourself?
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Yeah.
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I'm just looking at a website that I've actually looked at it on a PC browser
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before I've just looked at it on the laptop, which I'm using here just now.
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And then, yeah, obviously, but so there's a great way to go.
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I think it pulls data from the Scottish website,
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and also from the UK as well.
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I think it's happening with Scotland, but now I think it's actually that
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it had to quit.
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The which is called Scotland coronavirus tracker,
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a few sort of Google phone traveling tabby.
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I think that's it goes by.
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And he's in this stats and whatnot.
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And it's just that's really the information that this is phenomenal.
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And so you got the quest to cover the UK.
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But I think we should see that it was so inconsistent for a while
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that you find it possible to understand the data.
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So he couldn't put it up.
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But now it's obviously solidified a bit, he's been able to do that.
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So he's also got the UK in there as well.
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And it breaks all down and home.
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My large of data.
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Well, I think you find it quite interesting.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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It's, there is a website that Dave Lee pointed me to from the
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podcast and various other podcasts that he's been using where you can make
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just one line of curl requests of it and get a big watch of CSV data.
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So I've been looking at that a little bit, but I think that just shows daily
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numbers of cases and that type of thing.
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So there's tons of information, maybe not as much as they could be,
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but there's sort of some quite useful stuff if you're into,
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into making diagrams.
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What you want to do with it.
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It's interesting.
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So shall we, shall we leave, grow a veil over that one?
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You've got anything else you wanted to add to it?
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So Dave, I was trying to,
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this tablet just fell off a stand.
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Oh, no.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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I was trying to get the website.
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The, I don't know, one I can still speak well.
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I'm just going to see if I can get the website.
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I can paste it in.
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So what do I have to do copy?
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I've got my website.
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Is it sure?
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Sorry.
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Oh, I don't know.
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I don't know how you do it.
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Not, not how we do that.
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I should have been using the desktop.
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I've just copied the URL and it's traveling tabby.
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Well, I remember tabbing tabbing tabbing tabby.com.
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That's, that's the website.
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So yeah, it's probably more, more hassle.
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Trying to get that to paste into the,
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we can maybe add it to the, to the notes.
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Nobody's interested.
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Yeah, of course, of course, yeah.
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Of course, right.
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Yes.
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And yeah, because,
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well, of course,
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the thing is that we were actually,
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we were,
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then,
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supposed to be,
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let's go back to your notes here.
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We're supposed to be going on holiday.
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We're supposed to be like this, you can with some letters.
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And then they love down in Manchester area.
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And, you know, they've been.
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I don't say it was the only way of looking at this.
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And it's balancing balance,
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balancing risks and whatnot.
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And as you see here,
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a lot of people are getting paid up with it all.
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And I found interesting.
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We've read that.
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The fact is that it's just been so much so.
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I've been way behind with on HPR stuff so we were supposed to go in on holiday and we generally
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go to the Lake District at this time but obviously that's that's a bit of a hot spot I think really.
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So we kind of need a session not to and of course we've been getting updates on how
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how wonderful things have been. It's a difficult one isn't it really is. I think started to ease off
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here. I have a membership with Edinburgh Zoo and I like to go there, something like once a week if
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I possibly can. It's also a good exercise to walk around there and so when they started opening
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up again last month I decided I'd maybe start going back again but I do know I found myself
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suddenly I did a couple of weeks and then I found myself feeling really uncomfortable about the
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way people are out looking at animals and stuff and they don't play without masks of course.
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That's the people I mean rather than animals and they don't play a lot of attention to
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proximity and you know whether they're carried away with the light looking at the animals I don't
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know but you know I got a little bit nervous about it to be honest and stop going for the while.
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Yeah well it's funny I don't know people I don't know a lot of people they just listen to the to
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see the news and it sounds to them like it's safe and it's safe enough to go and just do their
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thing and then they just forget where they're basically because you know I keep saying to
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I've said to my mother before you know it's not what I kind of I'll say to you guys it's not
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what some silly law sees it doesn't matter what the law sees it's whether it's safe or not
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that that's really what the while is down to. Yeah yeah that is very true it's I keep saying
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to anybody who listen but nothing's really changed. All has happened is that
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rather than everybody in the country who could catch it catching it and then swamping the hospitals
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we've controlled it so it hasn't penetrated as rapidly but that doesn't mean that if you go
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and expose yourself to it or get exposed that you won't catch it and you know and we could be
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seeing peaks coming back again especially with the kids at school that's a concept that bothers me
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because yeah the kids can catch it they don't there's more or less symptomless in the
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vast majority of cases but they shed it they shed the virus so if kids go to school there's no means
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of telling if there's the virus in the school because there's no testing to see if anybody in
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the class has got it and then they come back home and then can give it to the parents and the
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grandparents and whatever you know it doesn't seem it doesn't seem very well managed at all. No
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I agree but I think really what the while is down to is it it's to protect it's not to protect
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individual it's to protect society and that's the way I read it because you know for example you
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can you can bubble and bubble to different groups of people and what not so you can have one
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household I don't really know that all the rules and regulations but you can have one household
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speaking to another household if my mother was talking about that and I said yeah well that's
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fine I said but it what is that other household doing it could the household you're you're
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bubbling with could be a person who who sticks to themselves doesn't do very much stays and
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it's careful but it'd be likewise you keep bubbling with somebody who deals with huge numbers
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of the public and isn't at all careful that's not the same risk now okay it means that it's not
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going to spread very far because you're bubbling that's as far as it will go but you still catch it
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you know it's it's it's it's to protect society and not to take in the individual
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necessarily you know what I think that's right the whole mass business is not to protect you
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is to protect the people you come in contact with should you have the virus you know so
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but but that would apply to children and being we can guarantee that kids not can be wearing
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masks too and from and when they get home and whatever you know so it doesn't it doesn't really
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work I don't I don't know what the consequences are going to be I think America seems to be a
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little bit more cautious than than the UK has been in relation to schools opening yeah well it's
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interesting because I wasn't at the teacher talking you were seeing that what was it you said you
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said you said you said you were that annoyed a bit of this and this was probably doing language I
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think there's probably the same in Scotland to be fair and something on the lines of
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you know he was talking about wearing masks he wanted to protect the students from him and he
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wanted to wear a mask but he was he wasn't actually he was he was he wasn't actually allowed to wear a
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mask he was actually rules stated that he couldn't wear a mask even though he wanted to protect him he
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wasn't allowed to which is absurd you know it's really mad there's there's not really been much in
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the way of clear guidance as to what what the reasons for wearing masks are and what the consequences
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of not just the sort of just bare mechanics of how how this works you know and because the virus is
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spread through everyone drops it so come out of people's mouth mostly and roses yeah yeah and it
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depends how the volume map is heard about that disease and how the volume expect difference as well
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and here's a interesting research night you may have heard this one Dave so new research from the
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Edinburgh School of Engineering has shown that if someone is coughing or talking wearing a mask
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wearing a mask then there is 10,000 times less drop of translations to two meters away it's actually
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better to be half a meter away from the person wearing a mask than two meters away if you're not
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wearing a mask that's I just piece into perspective yeah yeah yeah but that's sort of stuff that should
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be on billboards it should be on the news and it should be on the television it should be on the
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radio it should be everywhere those sorts of that type of information those sorts of messages should
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be very clear everywhere and there's some countries that have done it and done it very well but
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for some reason whether the UK doesn't want to play this game at all no no I do find it really first
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to think you know because even with other kind of family members and stuff I think you know it's
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not it's not I don't it's not that difficult actually it's not difficult you know you just think
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if this is a part of a public place you know you make sure you stay two meters from everybody
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if you're if you're for suffercies that you think a lot of people have been touching then
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you know if you do touch them that's fine but before you you should you should
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sometimes your hands before you're going to need your eyes your nose or whatever you know
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that's what you've been all done about yourself it's just common sense yep yep yeah and I know
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oh boy let's move on shall we do you want to have a pick something off your list
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yeah okay what was my list number one what was it general general what no it's not we'll
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we'll stick with the last general discussion about submitting a show notes to HPR remat
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then I'm hoping minimum age it's workload and almost common pitfalls at the start with my
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passport yeah I think we probably get sort of three or four different types of show notes we get
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people who've gone to the trouble to make HTML sometimes it's handcrafted HTML and they sort of
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lose the lose themselves a bit because I personally hate writing HTML and it's so easy to
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close a theme prematurely or put put the closing part of a tag in the wrong place and you do
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see that quite often so those those can be great if they're a nice clean HTML but otherwise
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they're not I have to I run them through a through an HTML checker which flags up all of those
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sorts of things and then I edit them to to repair whatever and also we're currently producing a
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repair a report that goes back to the sender so that's the sort of first class second class is we
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get markdown which people tend to people are building up a lot of experience with markdown now
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because it's available in all sorts of contexts if you use git and git modern stuff then markdown is
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what you use to write readmies and documentation and add stuff to the wiki or whatever it is you're
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doing so markdown it's not the best way of typing text admittedly but it's not bad for what it is
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so people have got reasonably knowledgeable about it so we get some quite good quality markdown
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coming in so that's the often the least difficult stuff going yeah yeah okay so I just
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going to say well I mean generally I tend to just submit things as plain text because I think
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well there's there's less likelihood of it to cause any problems so if I can stick to plain
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text I do that and well HTML I mean I think I have done a wee bit HTML way way back but as you say
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it's so easy to make it I mean not not to close something up or something so I can't not to
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but markdown is a new thing I've started you know probably know that I've been one of two
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members of one of two shows that have submitted the markdown members is one actually and the first
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thing was that when I submitted the show it mentioned like you say what type of markdown and this
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problem because there's no complete standard so there was as you see there was git or something
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and there was something else and I didn't understand which one it affects I just run it with
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picked one and the other thing is is that I think the default am I right in saying this at least the
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one at the top of the list is pan dot markdown which is markdown with quite a lot of extras added to it
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and that I think a lot of people prefer that just judging by what you see out there these days
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we'd get have one second second right in popularity now you you mentioned so what I was saying
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well either we were discussing with David about this because of some initially I think when I
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was something I think she was and I was saying you know could could each PR point to of course
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if it's somebody else I can maybe move is a problem with doing that but as I'll say that you
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could let say well by the way if you want to check your you know Mac then you can go to this site
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or whatever and you mentioned a couple of places if you also mentioned an application which I think
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you can also get for Android so it works on Android it works on Linux to do what's in all the
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all platforms really I I can't remember what's called in it and I'm excited yeah yeah we did
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re-text re-text yeah yeah that's right now okay I was opening up this now and it looked a little
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basic maybe but I'm but it was it was really good it was fine so of course when I when I
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clited my document with the re-text I didn't know which markdown to pick but there was all I think
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I'm old and that was the only thing I think is a hard in it but you know if if if you had a really
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possible to have I don't know to mention re-text in when you're applying for show notes or something
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or or or or a link to somebody else when people could check and then I also tell them which
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one to pick the best matches because that would be mad because I don't know in a bit of markdown
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I'll tell you that's that that's what we're all saying no that's great I guess where we have
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agreed Ken and I that the documentation on the site needs some to work and I've been putting
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together a frequently asked questions list it had a rapid start and then sort of stock for a
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bit due to other other things but I think what I like to do would be have sort of sections in there
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that point to the larger documents about these sorts of things and that's certainly be something
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to put in there you know I want to do markdown which one should I choose and how can how can I
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simplify markdown and those sorts of things I think that would be a great question to add to it so
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yep I'll put something in there we'll we will add something about that to the to the notes
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exactly good stuff good stuff yeah that's that's that's that's fashion um I wanted I wanted to say
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that the third type of input that we get is plain text which is pretty common and because plain
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text and markdown are pretty similar I just simply take that plain text and turn it into markdown
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and I've got a few scripts I've written that will help with that now I can select a um a URL and
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it will turn and then click this thing in green and it will change it to the the way that markdown
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likes to do you links do pictures and that sort of stuff as well so just to save me some typing
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it's all but um so that that's that's a fairly common thing be nice if it was markdown to start with
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but can cope otherwise that's interesting I maybe other people thought the same thing with it
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a the simplest thing for you to deal with could be text but it actually turns out that markdown is
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probably as long as you pick one that's that's that's recognised it's probably the simplest one
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to deal with because I could sense I've met all my shores in markdown that's not not the issue
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|
actually that's that's good to know that actually yeah yeah we should be clear about this shouldn't we
|
||
|
|
um the the and we do take different flavours of markdown because this was a thing that Ken and I
|
||
|
|
discussed I use PANDOP behind the scenes to turn the markdown into HTML and markdown will handle
|
||
|
|
many different types of input not just markdown it will handle other things as well so I've just
|
||
|
|
whatever you select in that pull-down list gets passed through to PANDOP and it just processes it
|
||
|
|
accordingly so we have had one or two instances of things like
|
||
|
|
that was a restructured text I think somebody sent in at one time which which we're trying
|
||
|
|
yeah yeah there's a big problem with it so that's the idea
|
||
|
|
I'm a PANDOP so I think I've shoot quite a bit of that I sure
|
||
|
|
years ago a bit about PANDOP and she would do it and or maybe it was actually on his own website I'm
|
||
|
|
not sure if you're unsure but in PANDOP that's like I conversion the conversion from one form like
|
||
|
|
another that's right yeah yeah it's it's amazing it's a really clever piece of code and it's got
|
||
|
|
better over that over the years so yeah you can actually feed HTML and it will generate markdown
|
||
|
|
did you hear that by the way did that come through do you hear what that is I forgot to switch it off
|
||
|
|
I say that's my there's a show just been submitted message so my I'm on my laptop here because
|
||
|
|
I couldn't get mumble to work on my main PC the main PC just spotted a new HBR show
|
||
|
|
and that's it that's it alerting me to go and do stuff with it so yeah it's fun here oh it's all
|
||
|
|
go oh excellent very good very good yeah so that's good that's what's that's but I'll be of that in
|
||
|
|
mind that from now on you know the one that's gonna cause less less of an issue is I use markdown
|
||
|
|
so and particularly to highlight URLs and whatnot so that there's makes it less like a good
|
||
|
|
longer is one of the issues that we haven't fully resolved yet although we're working on it is
|
||
|
|
when people want to send in pictures I've always been keen that there should be a way that people
|
||
|
|
can do that because you take tell me he uses stuff recently where he was sending in pictures of his
|
||
|
|
model cars that he's been refurbishing and stuff I thought it was yeah I'd like to see that sort of
|
||
|
|
thing happening to some some extent no it just makes it to my mind make sure more interesting
|
||
|
|
so but sending them in and putting them in the road place and knowing where the actual file is
|
||
|
|
going to be when it's on the server all that sort of stuff gets really complicated so we definitely
|
||
|
|
need to make a simple path to achieve that and document it properly which we're working on but
|
||
|
|
it's a little while yeah it sounds like a nightmare I mean how could you how could you
|
||
|
|
automate pasting it into the correct location and that that would be the unless you could just
|
||
|
|
append it to the very end and and just say you know refer to picture one picture two picture three
|
||
|
|
years it's not it's not ideal but it would make it much easier to deal with this you know
|
||
|
|
monotony point of view of the thought yeah yes yes yes what some people do do manage to do it because
|
||
|
|
we do have some bear information about how that works but Tony for example just puts in a little
|
||
|
|
sort of comment that says picture one here please picture two here and that's everything so
|
||
|
|
so I've just got the little then macros that will do the necessary so yeah it's but it's a little
|
||
|
|
bit the challenge for my end yeah unless you could you could supply a template or something like that
|
||
|
|
don't want this template and put your own text in the late that's maybe that would be the one
|
||
|
|
we didn't mean that's a thought it's a thought yeah yeah I'll have a we think about that I actually
|
||
|
|
use a template myself when I'm preparing the show so yeah but but templates that I write for
|
||
|
|
myself and not things I would want to give to anybody else but the principle is a good one yeah
|
||
|
|
so shall we move on to your number two then all right I just wanted to flag up the fact that
|
||
|
|
many for several years now we've had a thing called the pod call Glasgow more sometimes
|
||
|
|
Glasgow pod call I don't know which which way around we like to do that but um that was planned
|
||
|
|
for the first of August this year but of course that couldn't it couldn't happen but so we managed
|
||
|
|
to organize an equivalent thing using jitsy and so we had we had a get together by jitsy on that
|
||
|
|
that evening and it was really good because many of the people who've actually been to these things
|
||
|
|
in person were there but there was also people who said oh I wish I could have joined you
|
||
|
|
and for they had a long haul to get get to so we had Laney who's who I think is involved with some
|
||
|
|
of the stuff that the other side network does in she's in Yorkshire I think and we had
|
||
|
|
Clatu from New Zealand somewhere in the middle of the night we're early morning in the heat class
|
||
|
|
we had Chalcolon who who does appear occasionally in uh HBR things uh it's not actually an HBR
|
||
|
|
function let's get that sorted and he's in Hungary and we had another one of the other side network
|
||
|
|
people Chris who was in Canada so so we had 10 people joining in to this this thing um I like
|
||
|
|
it's really good it's great oh excellent yeah I just I just I tend to be
|
||
|
|
busy the other these days so yeah um what is jitsy is that is that uh you mentioned it's important
|
||
|
|
does it do videos is it's audio or what is jitsy? No it's it's a video videos system a bit like the
|
||
|
|
zoom never use zoom so I can't really say much about it but it allowed us to uh what you do it
|
||
|
|
you create effectively a room on the jitsy server now it seems to be a pre-service at the moment
|
||
|
|
and you can then advertise the URL of that server to people who might want to join in and they
|
||
|
|
can just join in with uh with a web client with a web server to to that address and um uh no
|
||
|
|
with client like I said web server and they can um uh just join in I mean I I just
|
||
|
|
connected to it and with my my phone headphone set up as I have now for mumble and uh and obviously
|
||
|
|
my camera on my laptop and it worked just great there was an array of matrix of videos of people
|
||
|
|
doing stuff sitting in front of their computers or whatever and uh and we were able to
|
||
|
|
to wave at one another and chat and so forth it was really good.
|
||
|
|
No, very good, very good yeah I mean uh so you you you mentioned the decision before
|
||
|
|
and they I managed to actually prolong my get back my webcam from my mother so I know
|
||
|
|
have it and then okay it does actually work to my amazing I couldn't believe it actually
|
||
|
|
so maybe one give another go and get set up was yeah yeah yeah that would be no we just the
|
||
|
|
I think people are doing things like running jitsy with an audacity running in the background
|
||
|
|
recording stuff because jitsy doesn't have a recording capability as far as I understand it
|
||
|
|
but um you know so so that you get uh I'm not sure most people will record something or
|
||
|
|
whether you're just getting what you could just make an audio thing but you could see the the
|
||
|
|
others um as you as you did it I think zoom might have a bit more capability I'm no expert on this
|
||
|
|
so I shouldn't say more than I know yeah yeah I was wondering uh I should probably just leave
|
||
|
|
that I've got I've got push to talk enabled but I've actually got it toggled um right because
|
||
|
|
it don't suppose you're not going to get feedback or anything so I don't suppose it really matters
|
||
|
|
I push it I don't push it I have a bit there so because you can kind of feel do you flex out on guessing
|
||
|
|
when this can you obviously I think so yeah yeah some people do do you remember that way
|
||
|
|
so yeah what quite sophisticated yeah yeah yeah yeah really good so yeah so yeah the good time
|
||
|
|
in that that's that's nice yeah that's I think anyone open to that one there it was it was open
|
||
|
|
to all but but we I think the organizers didn't uh didn't make the address available until
|
||
|
|
just a short time before the actual uh start time so uh oh I was wondering I should say actually um uh
|
||
|
|
this has been a thing that um kevy from tuxjam podcast has attended to organize in real life and
|
||
|
|
he was certainly one of the the movers on this jutsi one and um he uh he just had a moat
|
||
|
|
moat about accident on Thursday so just to say anybody is a no similar sinister to him he sees
|
||
|
|
he's out of hospital now but he broke broke both um coming off his moat break so so he's in a
|
||
|
|
bit of a bit of a quandary for a for a few weeks I think so yeah no no I must admit there was a time
|
||
|
|
when I retired I thought it'd be great to get back on a motorbike again I used to ride one
|
||
|
|
quite a lot but uh yeah I used to as a student I used to commute from knowledge where my parents were
|
||
|
|
to Manchester which is a fair old journey on a not very large motorbike but um yeah yeah I was
|
||
|
|
really fancy and getting back on one but I'm really glad I am because I've probably killed myself
|
||
|
|
I'm sure I heard statistics of course that people later on in life were sort of you know
|
||
|
|
get back into motorbikes I think and there's quite a number of that happen I happen to
|
||
|
|
believe so it's it's it's it's difficult isn't it because I mean that I have I don't have a license
|
||
|
|
of motorbikes but I have off road does not uh off road bike whatever it is wonderful you know and
|
||
|
|
I don't hold here do more peds so yeah it's a great test feeling I must say it is a lovely way to
|
||
|
|
to travel on on a good day whatever but uh yeah it's it's pretty weather dependent I think um
|
||
|
|
kevy just just lost the back end of his bike lost division and he was off the road it wasn't a
|
||
|
|
collision or anything but I haven't got the full detail so I shouldn't say say too much too uh
|
||
|
|
but he'll doubtless tell us all but he's he's communicating by telegram and stuff so he's uh
|
||
|
|
he's not not too downcast he's a cheery fella so I just thought I'd share that because
|
||
|
|
because you know people might be aware might want to be aware that he's uh yeah he's not been too
|
||
|
|
too good yeah yeah excellent excellent good stuff good stuff so um shall we move on to the next
|
||
|
|
topic or so uh so my second one uh well this script wasn't I you know the thing I missed before
|
||
|
|
but I finally developed a get a chance to to uh to do things like that these days and of course
|
||
|
|
if you're not if you're not using something you you you quickly lose it you know if you're
|
||
|
|
you know if you don't use it all the time you that does tend to go and I'm kind of quick bursty
|
||
|
|
there with a lighting bash steps or whatever or so on so it's a bash or maybe python there's a two
|
||
|
|
things that are flavor than the past uh but um yeah so I was working on that and I script that um
|
||
|
|
the idea was that I I the some video files are sometimes uh convert um to different format and
|
||
|
|
the it takes on my aging ancient old PC it takes quite a long time so I thought it'd be good to know
|
||
|
|
how long is it going to take to uh to to to convert you know this this video file from
|
||
|
|
and I'll just be second I thought this but Pablo's going to go asleep there um yeah so I
|
||
|
|
wonder how long we take to take to convert you see because obviously you live with PC a load
|
||
|
|
and you think well well they get it done before they go to beds sort of thing sort of that sort of
|
||
|
|
thing yes I thought yeah I thought well it must be quite easy to find out the the first thing I
|
||
|
|
did the duration of a video file and even that was a um oh wee bit tricky so I pulled together a script
|
||
|
|
which um so what it does is it uh for each file it looks for if files that are no older than
|
||
|
|
so it's it basically starts using a fine using a fine command and so it's okay so to add that
|
||
|
|
it says no files that are no older than 14 days ending in before put the date and file name
|
||
|
|
followed by duration so it uses um I think called a ff probe to get the um the duration of the file
|
||
|
|
so you get the date you get the file name the duration of the file um I'm in in a second now
|
||
|
|
the conversion time and it uses a what is it called it was a huge um what does that
|
||
|
|
then called no um for doing footing point um this bc that's all right yeah we're just
|
||
|
|
gonna say that's it yeah bc so a bit it ended up with like um oh yeah when you call it sub-shells
|
||
|
|
and say sub-shells and say sub-shells oh it's like complete spaghetti I thought I got the name
|
||
|
|
but um yeah so that that that was that was that took a real longer than I expected but it was
|
||
|
|
fun to do it and I was probably months since I've done any coding so uh so what's
|
||
|
|
I've been thinking to be working on these I tend to be poking around with scripts all the time um I
|
||
|
|
yeah terrible this sort of well yeah it's it's in my job I started out as a programmer and uh
|
||
|
|
then I became a sort of manager and did less of the stuff and so I really missed the scripting
|
||
|
|
and programming and stuff so I'm retired I tend to do more of it so I'm terrible at
|
||
|
|
fiddling around and this sort of stuff so yeah I um let me tell you about one thing
|
||
|
|
I'm actually might make a hbr show about this one it's gonna be of interest to people but um
|
||
|
|
my kids live with me these days but they we have a sort of family get together every Wednesday
|
||
|
|
Thursday and I cook for them so um they they what I do is make a big batch of something and
|
||
|
|
we eat it on two two nuts and um the vegetarian my son and these girlfriend are the daughter is sort
|
||
|
|
of 90% vegetarian so limits the number of things I can cook for them so what I've done is I've got
|
||
|
|
a database containing the various meals that we've tried and liked and um then I wrote a script
|
||
|
|
which will uh select the next one for the becoming Wednesday and uh it'll do it randomly
|
||
|
|
but it has to be a little bit more than just random because we don't want to be getting the uh
|
||
|
|
the ratatouille twice in succession so each meal has got a meal titled ever has got a repetition
|
||
|
|
time associated with it so don't bring this back up again until so many days have passed so uh
|
||
|
|
and someone we've got long repetitions because the because they're not that popular and someone
|
||
|
|
got short repetitions strangely haggis and eeps and tattis using the vegetarian haggis is a rapid
|
||
|
|
repetition one they never complain when that one comes back so I run this thing and then send
|
||
|
|
of a head of saying right the next Wednesday's meal will be global but and it gives me a chance to
|
||
|
|
if I do it a few days before I had to do the appropriate shopping to around to get all the
|
||
|
|
all the necessary so so I've been developing this this particular script and uh making it more
|
||
|
|
efficient and it's a bells and whistles I'm not one for GUI applications this one is a um
|
||
|
|
command line thing so uh but it's uh but it does color text and stuff just my concession to GUI
|
||
|
|
things so yeah so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah like I mean it makes me
|
||
|
|
sure that you know that sounds fun really yeah it's useful to actually yeah well it's it's
|
||
|
|
surprising you know there's a there's almost like a sort of a betting game going on I wonder what
|
||
|
|
it's going to be this week oh yeah do you think it will be such and such no no I hope it's not that
|
||
|
|
you know so so uh when have we when we're going to have that such and such again you know
|
||
|
|
it's fun it's fun it's fun it's it's it's in the hands of the computer oh it's something to do with me yeah
|
||
|
|
yeah so that's it I was thinking I was going to make it more generalised and then put it up on
|
||
|
|
GitHub to haven't got that far yeah yeah yeah it was funny fun enough you thought about
|
||
|
|
the vegetarian but my my wife there's recently got a book and it's really taken she's really
|
||
|
|
taking this sort of thing and it's about how what impacts what you what you eat can have in your
|
||
|
|
your whole body and your mind and all that so I think you know I have read it myself but um
|
||
|
|
but so she's been cooking many more vegetarian dishes so I mean we're not
|
||
|
|
vegetarians but any means um but uh last few weeks now I reckon maybe 80% of the time we've been
|
||
|
|
eating vegetarian meals something I'm a bit more than that in fact but yeah it's just it's very
|
||
|
|
good I'm kind of enjoying that much to me I'm more than I thought I would so yeah yeah it's
|
||
|
|
surprising how how good some of these things can be if you're not to not really into into the vegetarian
|
||
|
|
stuff um I get asked every Christmas to make um what tense we called a nut roast I think the
|
||
|
|
if you look in the recipe books that they tend not to use that because that was used as a sort of
|
||
|
|
pejorative joking term for what vegetarians eat but it's basically ground up nuts in it and made
|
||
|
|
into a shape with with all sorts of other things in it like mushrooms and you know quite a lot of
|
||
|
|
flavorings and stuff with it and you get you bake it and then get slices of it um but you eat as
|
||
|
|
if it's meat with uh you know roast potatoes and uh and veggies and all that sort of stuff as
|
||
|
|
as per Christmas so that's been remarkably popular yeah yeah that's a that's a favorite and when
|
||
|
|
you get done at Christmas it's quite a lot laborious so yeah very good very good excellent yeah so
|
||
|
|
there we go it's just that's quite interesting hi hi hi this is Dave here we decided to cut our
|
||
|
|
conversation into two pieces so we're going to stop at this point and resume in a later episode so
|
||
|
|
thanks for listening see you later bye
|
||
|
|
you've been listening to Hecker Public Radio at Hecker Public Radio dot 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 an hbr listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording a podcast
|
||
|
|
and click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is hecker public radio was found
|
||
|
|
by the digital dog pound and the infonomican computer club and it's part of the binary revolution
|
||
|
|
at binwreff.com if you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment
|
||
|
|
on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself unless otherwise status today's show is released
|
||
|
|
on the creative comments attribution share a light 3.0 license
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