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Episode: 1098
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Title: HPR1098: My Journey to Geekdom
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1098/hpr1098.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-17 18:53:45
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---
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Hello, Hacker Public Radio. My name is Becky Nubra and some of you may have heard me
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recording on HPR before as I've previously taken part in some collaborative programmes
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like last year's New Year's Eve Party. I've also jointly recorded a congratulatory
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message for HPR's once-thousandth episode, and I did that with my husband, and I'm
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the mature one that's blowing raspies rather loudly. And also recently, or Camp 2012, Ken
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Fallon, he, I'm well, cornered, me I suppose, is what you could say in a nice CD hotel. In Liverpool,
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you shoved a microphone in my face, backed me into this corner, gave me nowhere to run, and
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basically asked me all about the Lincoln Linux user group of which I'm the lug mistress.
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This episode, however, will be my first ever Hacker Public Radio podcast off my own back.
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And oh boy, have I procrastinated long and hard about what to talk to you about.
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Today, I'm an old person, so I actually want to do what most old people do, and that's
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we like to reminisce. So come and take a short trip down memory lane with me, and maybe
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compare some experiences as I explain how my journey to Geekdom started.
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My first introduction to tech, probably about 1981-1982, when the BBC Microcomputer came
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into schools in the United Kingdom, and my experience of that was actually, they were locked
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away in a room, and our maths teacher, Mr Morgan, knew as little about them as the kids did.
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He did, however, have an awesome beard, so that qualified in to take on the computer lessons
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in our school. I can't actually remember what we did in those lessons, and I definitely
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can't remember what I learned, but however, I was impressed with what I saw. My next piece
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of tech, probably, that I picked up was the Cassio Scientific Calculator, and I used them
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for all of those scientific reasons, such as spelling words like shell, hello, and all
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of those really mature rude words, such as boob, boobs, boobies, boobless, bogeys, and
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it doesn't matter how old you are, those words never get old. My teenage years, probably
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like most of us, were spent in my bedroom hiding from my embarrassing parents. My teenage
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daughter does that now, so I'm guessing actually that nothing has changed across the generations.
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So in 1982, 1983, probably the highlight of my adolescent week was recording the UK Top
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40 chart on a Sunday, and that was something that all teenage kids do. I used to play
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the tapes back so much, and then keep fast forwarding the DJ talky bits, that the tape
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used to get stretched, and when you couple that with dying batteries, it definitely made
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for some very interesting noises coming out of my bedroom, I can tell you. Next was Christmas
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1984, and wow, what a Christmas. We actually got a ZX Spectrum 48k, and suddenly my parents
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had gone from zeros to hero overnight. There was a downside though, it was a joint family
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present, which meant that I had to share it with my fantastically annoying eight-year-old
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brother James. We only actually had two games that I can remember playing on the ZX Spectrum,
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there was a 3D death chase, and there was Jet Set Willie. 3D death chase for those of
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you that can remember it, was a motorcycle game where you chase motorcycles through trees,
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and it could either be single player or two player. And that actually was the game of choice
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for my dad and my brother to play. Jet Set Willie, because it was a platform game, and
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it was single player, with levels to complete, that definitely suited me more. So that was
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my game of choice. However, both myself and my brother and my dad to be fair, we were
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never allowed to play on the ZX Spectrum for very long, because my mum, as I'm sure many
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mums at that time were doing, used to constantly moan about how much electricity was that thing
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using, and then coupling it with things or statements like money doesn't grow on trees,
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we've got a mortgage to pay, bills to pay, and like I said, I'm sure my mum wasn't the
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only one at the time using that as an excuse, probably around their ignorance of what was
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actually in their living room and being played with. So that was my adolescence. I left
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school, and I left home as soon as I could. So basically, in 1986, I'm 16 years of age,
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I want to leave home, where do I want to go? I want to join the Air Force. So I did, I joined
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the Royal Air Force, and I actually joined as a data analyst, and I was stationed at RFI
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Wickham. So a data analyst does exactly what it says on the tin, I analyse data. During
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my basic and my trade training, the actual role of data analyst was salt to me as being
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a scientific research role, but in actual fact, all it was, because of glorified number
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crunching, and being a clerk. I was luckier than most of my intake though, that when I was
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posted, I was given the job of calculating aircraft wing and fuselage fatigue for certain
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types of, at the time, UK aircraft. So it was on the Buccaneer bomber, the Hunter T7 and
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T8 training planes, the PR9 Canberra, which does for dear to photo reconnaissance, and
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the Victor, which was used for refueling, can't even say it. The reason for calculating
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the fatigue was basically to try and calculate the amount of life that was left in the aircraft
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and to make sure that they were flying within the safe stress limits. We didn't want any
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nasty crashes in the RAF. Whilst as in the RAF then, and working at, well, strike command
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type Wickham, the RAF actually wanted the data captured in a database to analysis, and
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at the time there was no off the shelf product available for them. So it was a lot easier
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if they sent me off to London for a week to go and basically learn how to program in DB3
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or DB3. I'm never ever going to forget this. The IF and the THEN commands, all I can
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ever remember now is that they had to be aligned. Where you started the IF, you had to make
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sure that you then ended it with a THEN and that they were aligned, that you knew that
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the conditional statement was open or that you closed it off properly. So even now, on
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the very few occasions, when I do do some HTML, I still want to tab in my elements and basically
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my husband Philip laughed at me for this. One of the drawbacks I suppose of working
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with computers all day in the Air Force, I then actually didn't want one for home use,
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and it wasn't until 1996, when I actually thought about maybe getting a computer into
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my home. I do remember having to take out a bank loan, and I do remember paying about
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£1.5,000 for it. Getting onto the internet in those days was also a bit of a bind. We
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had over here free-served dial-up, and I remember it costing a penny a minute, however,
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if you'd been on for longer than 60 minutes, they used to break the connection, they used
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to kick you off because that was their max. Again, because I use computers all day at work,
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the one that I had at home, I just wanted to play games on, and I do, or I remember playing
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the game's risk, certainly theme park and sim city, they were definitely my favourites.
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My husband has since commented that I do have megalomaniac tendencies, apparently. We're
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now going to drop forward a few years, just to 1998, and this was actually when I got my
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first mobile phone. It was a Motorola D520, and it had an extending aerial. It was actually
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a just in case you need it phone, because that was all a mobile phone was to me in those
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days. However, nowadays, I do tend to use my mobile to browse the internet, take pictures,
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check email, stream podcasts, play games, so actually very, very little text messaging
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or phoneing goes on. My current phone of choice is a gait, gait, oh, I can't even say it,
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Samsung Galaxy S3, and in fact, this is the phone of choice for our whole household,
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and we're all really sad, we've all got the same colour case. Bringing us more up to
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date then, so I met my husband, Philip, who is now my, well sorry, I met Philip, who's
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now my husband, 2004, and through him I actually got my first introductions to Linux and
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open source operating systems. I've never heard of them before, I met Philip. He used to
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come to the my house, and he used to laugh at my old Windows machine, and he'd keep offering
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to make it better for me, I think he actually meant to make it disappear. I just do distinctly
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remember him, saying one day, so I remember saying to him that there was no way that he
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was going to be put in that open source shite on my computer in my house. How wrong was
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I? By the time he'd moved in, and by the time that we had got married, not only was I
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using Zuban too as my default distribution of choice, he'd also stripped out the Windows
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PC from the house, he'd got each of us laptops, and that was very opulent I thought, because
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had up until then been me and my daughter sharing some cranky old Windows machine in the
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corner. This was also the time that actually he made his home project that he'd been working
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on part-time in evenings and weekends, available to everyone on the interwebs to download,
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and this project some of you may know, some of you may not, it's actually CrunchBang Linux,
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and this is his own derivative distribution that was originally based on Ubuntu, however
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now it is solely Debian based, and it did become a little bit popular, and there was a thriving
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and a growing forum community that was increased downloads, increased forum membership every
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time he put out a new version. So, being the supportive wife that I am, wanting to learn
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more about Linux and open source in general, I did offer to look after the forums forum
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in the early days, monitoring user registration and moderating comments and conducting the
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search and destroy missions for spam posts and links, actually not realising what I was
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letting myself in for. Now, we have a dedicated forum moderation team for the CrunchBang forums,
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and for that I am eternally grateful. Philip also introduced me to some tech events, such
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as Log Radio Live and Ocamp, and it's been through attending these events and meeting
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like-minded people, and coupled also we're doing the community management bit on the CrunchBang
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forums that actually inspired me to want to go out and do more in my local community, so
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I did last August I set up a local Linux user group for Lincoln, and that pretty much now
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brings us back up to date on my journey into Geekdom, other than the fact that I do have
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a new experience to add to my list now, and that is recording this podcast that I'm going
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to contribute to Hacker Public Radio. Thank you very much for listening, I hope you've
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enjoyed what you've heard. My name is Becky Nubra, thank you and good night.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio. We are a community
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podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Today's show,
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like all our shows, was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever consider
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recording a podcast, then visit our website to find out how easy it really is. Hacker Public
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Radio was founded by the Digital Dark Pound and the Infonomicom Computer Club. HBR is funded
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by the Binary Revolution at binref.com, or binref projects are crowd-sponsored by linear pages.
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From shared hosting to custom private clouds, go to lunarpages.com for all your hosting needs.
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Unless otherwise stasis, today's show is released under a creative commons,
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attribution, share a life, lead us our license.
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