hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1304.txt

Episode: 1304
Title: HPR1304: Jon Kulp and His Son Talk Hacking
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1304/hpr1304.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:16:26

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John Culp here in Lafayette, Louisiana, and I've been doing a series of interviews for
Hacker Public Radio, started with my dad, which we released not on Father's Day, but
very close to Father's Day.
Then I did one with Jezre about Bladder, and then a conversation with N.Y. Bill when we
were visiting New York a couple weeks ago.
And today I have another very special guest right here, it's my son, hey buddy.
Hello.
How's it going?
It's going well.
Thank you.
Alright, so this is Hacker Public Radio, and so I'm curious as to what, how would you define
a hacker?
What's a hacker?
A person who changes something to suit their personal needs.
Yeah, so it's not an evil person who, like, logs into servers without authorization and
steal stuff.
Not necessarily.
Okay, about in the books you read and the shows you watch and stuff, how do they normally
portray hackers there?
Hackers are people who go into systems without permission to do something.
What do they normally do?
They normally erase something, download something, they deal with some sort of dad that they
shouldn't have.
Yeah.
Okay, but you have a different view of what hacking can be, correct?
Yes.
Now why is that?
Because I am a hacker, and I honestly do not know how to illegally log onto a server.
Nor do I.
I consider myself a hacker as well, but I have no idea how to crack into things.
Sometimes the people in the hacking community like to distinguish between hackers and crackers
and the crackers being the bad guys and the hackers being the ones that are fighting for
good.
So what is something that you do as a hacker?
Well, I cook, which is a grit, which can easily be defined by hacking because you adapt
in almost every recipe that you make.
I have often thought that my mom is a great hacker, because she is an excellent cook.
She can make anything out of anything for one thing.
But when you are cooking, you are almost always going to modify it a little bit to suit
your taste, and that is definitely a kind of hacking.
Now you do not like to take stuff apart, do you?
I love taking stuff apart.
What?
What good does that do to take something apart?
It is something to do, and two, I can see all that got in it.
Yeah, and what do you do after you see the guts?
I either throw them in a clutter drawer or try to put it back together again.
Yeah, have you ever put something all the way back together and have it still work?
Yes, I have.
Yeah, good.
So I do have bits of an old telephone I ripped apart.
There are bits of a lot of things over there that you have taken apart that are just pieces
in a drawer.
So what is going to happen with all those things?
They are probably going to sit there until I figure out what to do with them.
Okay.
I remember almost any time something in the house breaks down, and it looks like it is
not going to be usable anymore.
You are going to ask whether you can take it apart.
This is good.
I remember one thing you asked about Lon Sweet, remember the time when our, this is going
to sound really dated now.
Our VHS tape rewinder broke.
Remember that?
It wouldn't work anymore?
No.
I remember that.
I remember that.
Yes, I remember it using it.
You push it, you put the tape in, and then you push it down, and it makes this really
cool worrying sound.
Yeah, and it rewines the tapes for you.
Some people would question whether this invention was ever really necessary because of
course the VCR itself would rewind the tape.
But the makers of these rewinders claimed that you could save the wear and tear on your
VCR if you would use this separate device to rewind the tapes.
Anyway, we are getting a little bit off track there, but I was broke at one point, and
you wanted to take it apart and say that is fine.
So you took it apart, and what we found in there, do you remember what we found when we took
it apart?
I believe we found a broken belt, which we fixed, and it started working again.
Yeah, once we found what the problem was, you open it up and you can find out what the
problem is sometimes, and so we saw that the belt was broken.
And we happen in Latvia, Louisiana, we have maybe the best belt store in the whole world,
and I'm not exaggerating.
It's called the belt store, and they have a website online, and I'll put a link in the
show notes to it.
But they serve customers all over the entire world.
They've got a map up on the wall, and have you been there with me?
I think I was there once.
I got on this little mini calendar, but I can't remember what it looks like, though I believe
they have belts like really, really big belts for like tractors and stuff.
Yeah, they're good belts.
No, not tractors, tanks and stuff.
Well, all kinds of oil field equipment, like anything that requires a belt, they've got
a belt for it, and that's why they serve customers all over the world.
It's a very unusual store, Grandpa, when he comes to visit us, he'll bring a list of
belts that he needs to buy for the various tools he has, and they always have them at
really good prices.
But anyway, so we took the broken belt to the belt store, and this lady that works
there at the counter put it on her little measuring device, and I would say in under 60 seconds
had a replacement belt in our hands that cost maybe $3, and so we bought it and took it
home, put it back together, and the thing worked again.
Well, Alas, I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get to rip it apart.
Oh, well, there are other things that you did get to rip apart.
Yes, many things.
Taking things apart.
One of the fundamental ways to become a hacker, right?
Yes.
And for those of you out there with little hackerlings, it is a great way to get them into physical
hacking.
Yeah.
Yeah, if you've got kids, and you need to keep them busy and want to get them interested
in this kind of thing, just go to a yard sale and buy an old BCR or something.
There's nothing really, yes, there's nothing really quite like taking a certain board out
of something you just bought for about $3.
Yeah, it's fun.
Even something, you know, when I bought my new laptop a year ago, I don't think I'd had
it for more than three hours before I had taken the keyboard off, just to figure out how
I could, because I wanted to see what was under there, and so I just can't help myself.
Sometimes I've got a shirt from Think Geek that's, what does my shirt say?
I avoid warranties, and below it, there are a series of screws that they used to keep
hackers out.
Yeah, they've got the images of all the various security screws that companies have tried
to use to keep hackers from opening up stuff, but get the right specialized tool set, and
you can get past that stuff.
So why don't you tell the audience what operating system you run on your laptop?
I run Linux at, I run CrunchBang Linux, and I really don't like Windows.
And you don't like Windows, how come?
Because it's flooded with viruses, and obviously it doesn't work as well as CrunchBang does.
Yeah, we do have, you've got a couple of laptops, right, and one of them has a Windows partition.
What's it good for?
Playing video games, and that's about it.
Yeah, he's got an old Toshiba that dual boots CrunchBang and XP, and the XP partition
is perfect for playing these old PC games that will pick up at yard sales or the thrift
store or something like that.
But his main machine is a Dell XPS 1220 or something like that that runs just CrunchBang.
So do you find Linux easier than Windows, or harder, or what?
Well, I'm not used to Windows as I've never really run it, so it's really hard to say
whether it's easier or not.
I've often thought that people will sometimes say that they can't run Linux because it's
too hard, but the kids, if you, I mean you and your sister, the only computers you've ever
had have run Linux, and so you don't really get used to one thing and then have to learn
a new thing.
And so for you guys, it's easy.
And I remember one thing that one day we really made your eyes light up, and I'll have
to delete that.
I'm going, if I accidentally slip and say my kid's names, I'm going to be using a funny
sound to cover over that, so that would explain the sound I just used to cover up their
real names.
We're going to protect their identities here.
But remember the time that we took both of your laptops and created different splash screens
for the boot process, so instead of flashing the crunchbang symbol, it flashed an image
that you had made yourself?
Yes, that was really very fun, and I keep forgetting to ask if we can do it on my new laptop.
We can, for sure.
What did you use to make the image?
Do you remember?
I used GIMP.
GIMP, alright.
Yeah, my kids know how to use the GIMP.
Both of them.
How old are you?
I am 12.
Yeah, you're 12.
Your sister's nine, and this was probably a year or two ago, so they've been using GIMP
since eight, seven, eight, nine years old, and can do some basic stuff with it.
You really like it.
But what we did was we went into the Plymouth, I don't know, what is this thing called?
A boot manager or something, but there's a graphical thing that you can use to cover
up all of the terminal output when you're booting, and on the default installation of
crunchbang, I think it just flashed a kind of pulse on a crunch and a bang, the hash
and the exclamation point, and the kids asked, is there any way that we can make it do something
else?
I said, well, let's see.
So I've read around a little bit and found that if you go into the Plymouth directories,
I think you can find the boot up themes in there, and what we did was just copied one
and then hacked it to use a different image.
And so each of my kids had a personalized boot up theme, and they loved that.
When they booted up, they saw their image instead of some other, that's the kind of thing.
I don't think it's even possible with windows.
So that was one of those moments, so it kind of a teaching moments about the greatness
of open source stuff that you can get in there and change stuff around to suit yourself.
Now you also spent a little bit of time, not so much lately, but you were for a while
working on learning some Python, right?
Yes.
How did that go for you?
What was that like?
It was a well back, and I couldn't really do so much advanced stuff as I wanted to.
So I stopped doing it, but recently I've come back and started working with Blather,
which my dad has talked about in earlier episode.
So who is it that created Blather?
The Great?
Jezra.
Jezra's name is revered in this household, so what kinds of things, by the way, if you're
curious, what we did for him to work on Python, and I actually worked on it with him too,
because I didn't know any Python.
All of my scripting has been in bash.
We used a book called, hang on, what was that book called, Invent Your Own Computer Games
with Python.
Second edition.
Yeah.
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python by, what is his name, Al Sligert, and it's pretty
cool.
It's a book that you can actually read for free online, but we ordered a copy in paper format
and then went to the website and downloaded some of the scripts that he gives.
And we made it through a few of the games, and it was pretty fun.
One of my proudest moments in this whole process that was went like one morning you got
up and just wrote out on a piece of paper essentially at Python program.
Do you remember what your program was?
Oh yeah.
At that time I was into a series called Red Wall, and I created a Red Wall Game.
A very simple Red Wall Game, but still a Red Wall Game.
I believe that you had to choose a cabinet, and depending on which cabinet you chose,
it randomly selected an ingredient, and though I never finished it, you're supposed to collect
all the ingredients.
So we learned a little bit about a raise of objects that would be chosen, and I'm probably
going to use the wrong terminology here.
You know that actually wasn't the one I was thinking of.
Do you remember you got up one morning and made a timer?
You remember that?
That would count down?
Oh yes.
What was that about?
Um, I'm not really sure, but I made a timer, so I was just thinking that it would be
useful.
So what he did was he wrote out on a piece of paper Python code that he thought would
make a timer that would count down, I think just from 60 to zero, and then do something
at the end of that time.
So it would count off 60 seconds or something?
Yes.
I believe it would count down an input time and then people.
Okay.
So the user could input the time you wanted to sit.
Oh right.
And then you would prompt you for input and you would type in how many seconds or minutes.
I can't remember.
I believe it was minutes.
Okay.
But what was so impressive was that the code that he wrote out, I took a look at it and
it looked pretty good.
And I said, well, why don't you type this up in your text editor and say, he did it
and with very minor fixes and modifications, it worked.
Like almost on the first try, it was really good programming, so I was really proud of
you for that.
That was cool.
What did we end up doing at the end of the time?
Was it to play a sound or flash the screen or something?
I don't remember.
I believe we had it play a beep sound.
Yeah.
Some kind of audio file.
We made it play an audio file.
And yeah, that was pretty cool.
So what kinds of things do you do with Bladder?
It's been a couple of weeks since you've fooled around with that, but I remember for a while
there, you were scripting and making a do stuff.
What do you like to do with Bladder?
I've made it do several basic things.
For example, I've written a script that says email Jezra.
It opens Thunderbird and enters in Jezra's email for me.
Nice.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
So with one command, email Jezra, it'll open it up, already to type in the subject line.
And I don't know, have you used that very much?
I know you used it at least once.
Yes, I have used it at least once, but most of the time, I don't really have a reason to
email Jezra.
So I don't really use it that often.
Yeah, I understand.
So whatever commands have you come up with for Bladder?
I'll come up with the basic open terminal stuff, except I did run into a problem.
I put in the command open terminal.
Turns out you should put in open terminator, because that's the terminal emulator that
you have installed.
You could, if you wanted to be able to say open terminal, you could install a, you could
make a SIM link, which is like an alias in the program directory that will link to terminator.
And of course, you could also, if you say open terminal, that can be your voice command,
but then of course in your executed command that Bladder runs, just make sure you put terminator
instead of terminal.
Is that what you ended up doing?
Yes, that is what I ended up doing.
Ah, okay.
So you're smarter than I am than you did.
You figured that out.
And also, I worked with the physical Bladder window.
I made it so that it closes Bladder and then opens a new window.
And then I modified it, so it, so it closes Bladder, Bladder runs new corpus.sh.sh.
Yeah.
The shell script new corpus.
Yeah, that's the one that will update the language files, yes.
And then reopens Bladder, so you can use the new command you just put in.
It's so funny that you're saying Bladder like that, because that's what I always say,
because why do we say Bladder instead of Bladder?
Our microphones happen to have a quirk, when we say Bladder, they think we're saying Bladder.
Yeah, I think it's not even the microphone so much as the speech recognition engine,
the swinx thing, it has a hard time distinguishing between the TH and the D. And so I've just
by default now say Bladder and make it recognize that instead of Bladder.
As do I.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So yeah, you're the one who came up with the idea for the, you know, I'm always restarting
Bladder because it needs to run the language updater script.
And it seems like you're the one who said, Dad, why don't you just make one of the commands,
shut it down, run the script, and then restart it instead of having to say, shut it down,
run the script, then say restart, you know, you helped me automate it and make it more
efficient.
So thanks for that, man.
Well, actually, I thought I put it, I thought I put it together.
Yeah, you probably did and then I copied you.
Yes, you did.
Man, listen to him.
I got a copy right.
I should, I should, I should sort of copy right, but that's not in the, the Linux way,
the free software way is just to share it and not worry so much about who gets credit,
although you should get credit.
So another thing that I wanted to talk to you about that, that seems like it would be
really of great interest to hackers is this hobby that you took up a couple of years
ago and didn't get to do so much this last year, but really seemed to want to with the
blacksmithing.
How in the world did you get started as a kid doing blacksmithing?
Well, I went to, um, to the festival of KDN, yes, I went to a festival and I saw
a blacksmith there and I thought it looked cool.
So, um, I applied for lessons and he said, yes, we got started at that winter as it was
very, very hot then.
And um, I've made several things, a nail, which I believe some of the listeners, listeners
have.
Well, in my bill has one of your nails, yeah, we sent one to him.
So what is he, have you make nails?
What's the reasoning behind making nails?
I've noticed that you made a lot of those.
Um, it's very basic and it kind of is a warm up.
Right.
You have to make a, we make a couple of nails before you start the lesson.
So how do you make a nail?
It's pretty easy.
Yeah, heat, you heat up one end of a long metal strip and then you hammer it down and
then you flatten it out on ones, on what, then you hammer on one side a couple of times,
flip it and hammer on the other side and basically draw it out until it is at, until it
is at a point.
If you've ever seen a blacksmith nail, you can see what I'm talking about.
We'll put a picture of one in the show notes.
Yeah, a couple of your blacksmithing creations.
How does that sound?
Great.
So you've made numerous nails, you also made a candle holder, a couple of different kinds
of candle holders.
Um, I mean, no, actually just one kind of candle holder, the, I guess the chandelier
would count.
Well, yeah, that chandelier thing, I would call it a candle, but then the candle holder
that's got the, the curly thing at the bottom and then the point sticking up to hold the
candle, that thing is awesome.
And what else did you make, a meat turner for grilling steaks and stuff?
And then at my request, I made, I designed and built a pancake flipper, though I'll
ask, we cannot use it because it's made out of metal and it would scrape the bottom
of the pan.
Oh yeah, that's too bad, but it's beautiful.
It has kind of a swirly heart shape design and we'll put in a picture.
Yeah, yeah, we can put a picture of that too.
Maybe what we'll do is set up a gallery of your stuff on my pictures site and then link
to the whole gallery.
So what's the most fun thing about blacksmithing?
It's really, well, it's really an art form and I just seemed to have a way with metal
for some reason and it, and it's just, I just seemed to have a way with it and because
I have a way with it, I enjoy it more than other art forms.
It's nothing to do with getting the whole burning, glowing, hot metal.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that what's as cool down now if you
can stick it in the water and see all the steam rise up.
What's that called?
Quenching it.
Quenching, yeah, when you've got the thing you're ready, you're done hammering it out,
it's glowing hot.
You can stick it right in the water and go, that's pretty awesome, isn't it?
So, yes, though I did think it would make a little more steam.
Maybe if you've got a really big piece, it'll make a lot of steam.
Well, if it was glowing, I think it would make more steam.
Yeah, blacksmithing is pretty awesome and not many kids do it.
As I one kid, Mr. Delahousi has one protege who's now 17 or 18 years old who's really
good also and he started when he was nine like you.
Well, actually I started at 10.
You were 10, yeah.
Anyway, okay, so anything else to say about blacksmithing?
No, not really.
No?
Okay.
So, you've got something in your hand there that you seemed keen to talk about.
What is that?
First, can I get started about how it did about another form of backing?
Yeah, go for it.
Well, what's on your mind?
I also have another hacking hobby, designing things theoretically, of course, as I don't
have the money for hollow projectors and special chemicals.
Hold up.
What's a hollow projector?
A projection that doesn't need a surface that doesn't need a surface to go upon.
So, it's like a hologram like in Star Wars when Princess Leia appears out of R2D2 and
says, help us hope we won't continue.
Canobie, you're our only hope like that.
A little bit, it's a bit more like the one in Wally where it is a 2D image, I believe.
Oh, okay.
Interesting.
So I'm sorry.
Go ahead, so you don't have the money for a hologram projector thingies.
So I just make theoretical designs and I am holding a visual aid, which I will post a picture
of, and as I do not have the materials to put together a real visual aid, I have made
this one out of Lego pieces.
Legos, hackers love Legos.
What do you think that is?
Because they're designed to be hacked.
That's right.
Take them apart, put them together.
So he has here a device that has four arm-looking things that kind of fold up and go towards the
center.
It's an octagon shape with a circular thing in the center.
So what is this thing?
It is a new breed of phone.
It doesn't look like a phone.
That is because it is entirely new and has entirely different needs.
As instead of using a touch screen, it uses depth sensors and overlaid holograms.
You lost me.
Overlaid holograms, what's that?
As I told you, most holograms are 2D images and if you create a picture with something
clear with clear edges and something in the middle and you get about 100 of those and
you put them on top of each other, you can make an image, 3D image.
So basically the same thing happens.
There are a whole bunch of holograms on these arms and they project at angles and they
overlap to create a 3D image.
The depth sensors in the middle can tell depending on which depth sensor detects you, it
can see which direction you are coming from and how far away you are and it can see and
therefore it can find out how hard you are pressing by how close you are and where you
are by where you finger it by which one is picking you up.
So you are saying that you control the thing by moving your hand around it?
Yes.
It's kind of like a touch screen without the touch.
Without the touch?
Okay.
Boy, do you remember when we were at the little, I don't want to say museum, the little
science activity center in Tennessee where Grandma and Grandpa live and we played with
the Thairman.
Do you remember the Thairman?
It's a musical instrument that's got two metal things, one of which sticks up and you
play it by moving your hands closer and farther away.
No, I don't remember that but I have read about it.
Apparently it is like the only musical instrument that you do not, that can be operated without
physically touching it.
Yeah.
You don't touch it at all.
One thing controls the amplitude or the volume and the other controls the frequency of
the pitch and so you move your hands to control the frequency and amplitude and it sounds
like you've got a similar kind of deal going here.
You never touch it but you're able to control it anyway.
Yes.
It is a lot like that except instead of changing pitch and volume it is connected with
mouse clicks.
And dragging things and making images bigger and it is overlaid with picture with the hologram
setup I talked about earlier.
So it is a lot like that except you can actually see what you're supposedly touching.
So theoretically then how do you make a call with something like this?
Basically the same way you would make a call on a touch screen phone even though it does
not have any call buttons.
You go into, you just it projects buttons and you just touch the button, the projections
and it dials the number.
So it seems like with something like this that is such a radical departure maybe we can
even get rid of the whole button paradigm.
Maybe there is no need for buttons anymore.
Maybe you can just think call mom, call mom and it will know and then suddenly a hologram
of your mom will appear talking to you.
What do you think?
Well, I'm not really sure how to get past that annoying skull thing.
So I'm not really sure how to get visual images without intensive surgery which they have
actually started.
I have seen a video where someone controls, where someone moves a mouse around with their
brain but it looks very uncomfortable as they have something plugged into the top of
their skull.
Yikes.
Yeah, we haven't hacked into the brain yet.
Although on our trip to New York a couple weeks ago you got to do a virtual open heart surgery
right?
Tell us about that.
How was that?
It was very interesting though it wasn't really as realistic as I thought it would be.
Where was this by the way?
This was in New York.
This is New York City at Sony Wonders, right?
Is that what it's called?
Yes, Sony Wonders Technology Lab.
Yeah.
How was that?
Did you like it?
Yes, it was amazing.
Hold on a sec.
I have a list of the things that they were there.
Okay.
Yeah, so while my son's sister and I were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art checking
out the Masterworks by Vermeer and Van Gogh and Monet and all those kinds of things, my
son here went with his mom over to Sony Wonders Technology Lab and checked out stuff there.
He decided that on this trip he wanted to see some kind of new stuff and not look at
a bunch of old stuff in a museum type setting.
So they found that.
It sounds like a pretty cool place.
I did not get to see it.
And it's free.
The Sony Wonders Technology Lab is free, but you do have to have tickets or some kind of
verification code or something.
You have to make arrangements in advance.
You can't just show up and hope to get in.
But his mom found it and made arrangements for them to go on that day and they went and
had a good time.
So now he's got the paper.
What all did you do there?
We had SWTL diagram, whatever that is.
I can't remember.
It's WTL.
If only we had an IRC channel with listeners live commenting upon this, somebody might
know that.
But that's okay.
Go ahead.
What else?
Signal stations where it teaches you about how signals are transmitted and you actually
got to transmit a picture of yourself onto a giant screen in the corner.
Crazy.
And then there's something called any time anywhere and after that nano technology,
which didn't really have anything to do with technology, more just nano.
So what about nano?
It explained what nano means, which is kind of boring now.
Okay.
That's fine.
So what else?
Um, after that was virtual surgery, which we already talked about.
And after that, we programmed a robot, which was kind of a disappointment as it didn't
really work out.
Don't.
And.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you're experimenting.
Sometimes it just doesn't work.
You have to try it again.
And after that, we built a racing game, though, though, um, that didn't really work out
either as I couldn't do the controls properly.
Oh dear.
You had fun anyway?
Well, I kept crashing cars, though.
That's pretty fun.
Yeah, but not if you can't control the car to crash it.
Yeah.
So what else?
Then I did the animation studio.
Hmm.
I got to look in on how animation works.
Mm-hmm.
And after that, there were other things that I did not do.
Um, there was this dance motion capture thing.
Is that one of the things where you wear a suit that's got little sensors all over it
or something?
About the same thing except without the suit.
Oh good.
After that, there was this HTT, and there was this HTT studio.
HTT TV?
Yeah.
HTT TV studio.
Mm-hmm.
After that, the movie maker, and something called in the game, meaning I got to go and play
Lego Batman on a PlayStation.
On a PlayStation?
Yes.
Um, it is.
It's a Sony product, of course, yeah.
So it doesn't.
It's not really surprising that they would have a PlayStation.
It is Sony wonders after all.
Um, what else?
Um, music mixer, so what that says?
Yes.
And then music mixer, which, um, I saw, was not available for some reason or another.
So the only part of this that I actually heard about after you were done was the surgery.
So was that, uh, what did you do that on?
Was there, like, a touch screen or something, or how did that work?
There was this little ball thing on connector thingy, my jiggers, and you moved it, and you
moved it around pressing in and pulling out, pushing it forward, and all these other
directions.
It was, like, a 3D joystick, if you will, and, um, it didn't really work out too well.
Apparently, it's a very new technology, and they haven't quite perfected it.
But, um, I managed to cut through the rib cage properly.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I didn't really get to enjoy it as I just was moving around to that point.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And after that, um, I went, I went in and cut a slit in the heart to stop it beating so
that I could perform surgery.
And after I'd cut it open, I put a tube in, which I had the person on the computer thing
do as I could not do that.
And, um, after I did that, the heart stopped beating and I was able to go in and cut something
else open.
Okay.
And then, I went out, I don't think I cut anything open, I put a patch on something,
and then tried to sew it, which didn't really work out either.
But somehow your patient survived, correct?
Yes.
By some miracle, my patient survived.
I wonder if they actually have any patients die in that, um, I hope they so.
All surgery, that would just be too disheartening for the kids.
I'm sorry, your patient died.
That's too bad.
I want to try again.
Uh, so you, would you recommend that place for, for people who've got kids about your
age?
Yes, I would.
Interested in science and technology.
And they actually had holograms there.
They weren't, though they were in boxes and I couldn't really see them properly.
And they talked about new technology, apparently.
They invented biofuel batteries that, that you can, like, pour sports drink in and use
it to power a fan or something.
Crazy.
You know, I just heard a story on NPR news a couple days ago, maybe last week, sometime
about some researchers who are building batteries out of wood.
That sounds like a biofuel of some sort as well.
Yes, it would work as a biofuel.
Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
Well, do you have, um, oh, I want to ask you one more thing.
You are a huge reader and you've been reading, man, thousands and thousands of pages of books.
I do have any summer reading recommendations for kids of our HPR audience who are into
science, technology, fantasy adventure, that kind of thing.
So many.
The Temerar cycle, which is for adults, so you should probably, um, read aloud to them
and filter out the unsavory parts.
There's some swearing in it.
That might not matter to some people.
You're 12 and we trust you with it.
You hear much worse at school, I think.
So that's the Temerar rare series.
What is that about?
Donkeys or something?
Um, it is set in the, it is set in the Napoleonic Wars.
So it's not about donkeys?
No, it's not about donkeys.
I'm just being so.
And the plot is that this sea captain, William Lawrence, is on an English vessel and he's
going around and he finds this, and he captures this French ship and he opens up the cargo
hole and he finds a secret door in the cargo hold.
And he finds an egg, a dragon egg inside.
And as dragons are very valuable, he has to have it harnessed, meaning someone has to put
a harness on it and gain ownership of it.
And as it is a dragon, the person who harnesses it has to live away from civilization and
they don't really get much luck with women because they're stuck with a dragon for the rest
of their life.
Yes.
So big downside, but the dragon who he names Temerar comes out really cute and my sister
who cannot read it because of the swearing and such.
My parents are reading it aloud to her and filtering out the swearing and stuff.
And she likes it too.
And she really enjoys it and she thinks Temerar is very cute.
Yeah.
All right.
So we've got a reading recommendation, we've got anything else on your mind before we call
it a day here?
About 500 other reading recommendations.
Nah.
Well, you have to start your own podcast for the reading recommendations.
You'd be good at that because you read so many things and have all kinds of opinions about
them.
So anyway, thank you so much for chatting with me here, son.
I will not say your name here.
All right.
Maybe I should say it so I can bleep it out later.
Okay.
How about we say fake name just in case it doesn't bleep out properly?
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
Nice chatting with you.
And maybe we'll do some other time if we get a good topic here on HPR.
I don't say bye to our listeners.
Bye.
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