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Episode: 1484
Title: HPR1484: TuxJam31
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1484/hpr1484.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:58:52
---
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Hello and welcome to Tuxjam Episode 31 and this is a special edition of
Tuxjam for HPR Hacker Public Radio, which I've been listening to quite a bit recently. So hello
to all the HPR folks and hello to my co-host, Kevin. How are you tonight, Kevin? Hello, hello and a big
hello to everybody actually out at the HPR listener. So I think this is maybe the second or possibly
even third Tuxjam that's gone out in HPR but to be fair we didn't actually acknowledge it in the
last one because it was a bit of an afterthought. So if you actually think yeah I'm liking this then
please feel free to become a regular listener to the show. The more the merrier would quite happy.
Yes, I am well tonight. How are you tonight Andrew? Yes, I'm fine, fine. Yes, I create a full
of excitement about various open-source-y type things that I've encountered in the last week.
But to begin with, shall we do our usual round-up of obscure distros on DistroWatch?
Yes, why not. And one of my favorite obscure distros, although to be fair it's not actually that obscure
anymore and that is Tails because it seems to be coming well known for a fairly small distro.
I've used this quite a few times now for those you don't know Tails is it's a live CD. I actually
think the last time I tried it, which was only about two months ago but I think the last time I tried
it it was still on a live CD but there was an option to install it, which to me personally made a
lot of the stuff that was made very positive about it for security and features etc. I thought
that kind of might well have, like I said, nullify that if you were to action-stalled as your main
base. It's based on Debian Stable and boy, it really is based on Debian Stable. I'm pretty sure
the last time I had it it was still not even made on my tape, which I want you want to go. It was
known too, that was the actual desktop. So it certainly did feel like it was one back in the
good old days but yeah one of my I must admit for all my live CDs it really is one of my favorites.
Big emphasis on security, everything you know tour everything's set up by default.
Actually to be honest the one thing I've not tried on it is the mail. I don't know if mail
encryption is and things like that are set up by default and I didn't try to put down any emails
through the, oh no, I can't even remember was the likes of Thunderbird or anything Kate did
come with it. Oh I've not tried tales so I'm not sure I don't know what mail client has. It seems
to come with Firefox Ice Weasel so it's not Thunderbird, it's the mail client. I don't know.
I don't know I just can't remember but if you haven't actually tried then like I said I would
highly recommend if you're fancy a live CD if you want a bit of extra security then go for it.
Okay yes I must look into that one. The first on the list of DistroWatch today, the 20th
March as I look at it, is something called Web Converger which I've not heard of before and it's
analytics distro, Debian based I think it might be Debian stable from what it says although I'm not
entirely sure. But an interesting thing is it only has one application and that's Firefox. It's
essentially a web kiosk version of it and this is Web Converger 24 and it's three months since
the release of Web Converger 23 and I wonder no no the 23 doesn't refer to the Firefox version
because the Firefox version is very recent 28. So that's quite quite interesting. I did try to use
it earlier today, loaded a live ISO into VirtualBox and it promptly crashed and didn't load up and in
fact my laptop crashed shortly thereafter which I don't think it's ever done before. I don't know if
it was related to Web Converger so I don't want to malign its name with my bad experience there
but I like the sound of it and it seems like they're trying to make a business out of it and
charge support. You can use it for free but if you're if you're a commercial customer and they
mention a Swiss bank or something was using it then they then you can pay for support for it.
So a nice open-source type model. Yeah and take note please British banks who are still running
XP. I think this would be a great idea for you to move over now and what better thing than
something that's free but you just pay for support here. I like that but mind you it does seem
a bit dubious that. It's free but pay for support and you tried it and it crashed the machine twice.
Call me I call me a conspiracy theorist. Indeed my machine only crashed once it crashed VirtualBox
both times just to just to make sure I'm being fair to the distribution. Oh well fair enough.
Now there's one here that appeared and to be quite honest I was rather annoyed it appeared
so quickly because I only I only downloaded a slightly older version of this last week and it's
Sparky Linux and Sparky Linux it's the one that's been released this time it's been Mate XFCE
and a base version. Now it's based on Debian testing and they have a heck of a lot of
just a heck of a lot of desktop environments that you can actually do. I don't think they've got
like an ultimate DVD. This does seem to want you to download whichever one you want but I haven't
asked you around it trying it yet but one of the things from the looking on through the website
is that they really do put an awful lot of time and effort into presentation. The stuff looks
really nice. At times maybe a wee bit too mackish for my liking it's it seems to rely on dogs
and just about every one of their versions that I've seen but it you know it certainly does look
highly polished and I'm quite looking forward to actually trying this out and seeing what it's like.
Yeah it's Sparky Linux and you went on me I've never heard of it before let alone tried it
and it's another Debian day based distribution mate XFCE and open box as a lightweight starting point
addition. Yeah I think I might have something I may give you. The one that caught my few days ago
17th March some Patrick's Day although I don't think it's got anything Irish about it.
Was the release of a tiny core or pie core because it's a tiny core Linux for the Raspberry Pi. Now
if you've not come across a tiny core before it's I think it's it's it's the successor
of Dan Small Linux and and I played around with it a few years ago quite extensively and I
really did enjoy using it. It's not something that I really can see myself using day to day but you
know I see it since it's so lightweight and so tiny I can really see it being a useful way to
build up a very lean like bone system or Raspberry Pi. I haven't tried it all yet but I think
it will because I've got a Raspberry Pi of course and I have a player on with that maybe reporting
the future touch jam but my experiences. Yeah I've got a spare Raspberry Pi actually sitting right
beside me at the minute so that could be something to try out. I've never tried tiny core to be
honest but the one thing that other people who have often spoken to have tried it they all say
about how surprised they are with actually how much you can do on it that I've expecting just
you know log into a graphical environment with pretty much nothing but you know everybody
always says no I'm really I'm pleasantly surprised by it so like I said not one I've ever tried
but I remember somebody else in that it's if you want to learn about Linux then it's a good
one to be on but given by that point I'd already built up my gen 2 system I thought I can't be
bothered going back and learning a whole new way to do it. Yeah not a good point actually because
I think it attracted me because I felt it had similarities with Slackware it was very simple
and part of the reason it was simple is that really it was the product of a very small team
like Slackware if I even argue Slack we're still just one person although I think that's pushing
it a bit far and I forget the name of the chap Robert Schingeldecker what a great name Robert
Schingeldecker I'll say that again. Yeah so he was this brains behind it I think he's not
been terribly well all the way through the development but I do feel it's got the opposite end
of the spectrum to Debian for example where it's a big democratic team it's a small tight team
with tiny quarrel like Slack gives it a character which appeal to me.
Yes indeed now then the only other one that really kind of caught my eye was one that I've seen
before and I don't know why I've always kind of fancied it but I've just never got around to it
and it's a Slackware based one and it's Portius and this is one that like I said it's kind of
caught my eye I've never tried it it always seems to come with a plentiful supply of
desktop environments you know because you seem to be able to get a LXD, KD and
mate or mate and XFC it's because it always seems to have quite a wide variety and it's something
that I must admit I always actually want to try but it's just been on my to-do list you know
probably a bit like a BSD it's it's on my to-do list and I don't I haven't quite written it off yet
it's just something I haven't gotten around to. No I've never tried Portius either but I could
help noticing that there was a sudden run of a Slackware based distribution so there was
Slackl on the 8th of March and then there was Portius released in the 11th then the day after
in the 12th there was the Slackware edition of Puppy Linux so I don't really know why
that would have been the case because it hasn't been a Slackware release all that recently
so it was flat 14.1 came up fairly recently but then Slackl Puppy says it's built from Slackware
14.0 which I don't understand because that's not the latest release anyway I'm glad to see that
people are still building on top of Slackware I can see the I can see the value in that sound
I like Slackware obviously so yeah Portius is one that when I'd like to have a look at as well
well what I was found interesting was it really is highly customizable it's not one that
when you you know you just go and download the image you actually go when you click on the
download page and it's almost like it's a semi build so like the first thing it'll ask you is
what architecture do you want 64 32 do you want a GUI or do you just want a console only you know a
text and then it says write select your desktop now with a desktop this actually I didn't notice
this has been added since last time I looked it's actually a Razer Qt so I'll be adding some
trying out their implementation of that and then you're going further down you know it even asks
what things like web browsers do you want it you know do you want multiple just want one it's
what word process etc so you know all that I must admit is I'm quite interested with all that
just because it's not something that's it's something to be different each time it's not
something that's the same you know just as standard off the shelf there's your token packages
there you go yeah that is that's quite an interesting approach so you get to do your choices
before even to the download yeah it's it's like asks you to build it's it's in fact if you want to
go to build.portius.org and it's from there you can actually decide how much or how little you
want and it's at the bottom it'll even tell you you know current ISO size so it's you know
even if you want to say well you know I'd like to keep it on a DVD or keep it on a CD sorry
rather a DVD or I want to keep it under 500 meg some a bit short of setting this month so yeah
it's sorry settings short of bandwidth this month then you can do that so this is what really
appealed to me I must admit but it's just one of those things I have not gotten rid of you doing to
be honest well if you're ever feeling a bit short of settings of course you should try the key
edition of portius and I'm sure you won't feel short anymore that's very true all to be honest
have you ever honestly in your life felt short of settings as a Linux user I think we have
plenty of settings that can keep us occupied from now and doomsday I have to say having used
unity and Ubuntu for a wee while I am feeling slightly short in settings it's not the greatest
setting for those KDE was anyway on that note shall we go to our first tune yes indeed and
this is one that I got and I have to thank jam streamer for because it played me this at random
the other day and I really liked it and this is Tamara Laurel with the song sweet
I've been running and I've been screaming and I've been calling out to you
I've been saying that I don't need it but damn if I still do
but you you don't know how that names how go and I can't help but think halfway in me
you
you've been for Danny you've been dark blue you've been steady all this time
you've been acting so have pathetic boy damn if I'm on fire
and I don't know where you sleep where you go so I can't have nothing
I have sweet in me
I'm your wilting rose I'll get myself on day I will I'll close my eyes until I love you
no less I will oh I believe how sweet it would be I'll show you
I've been patient and I've been worried I'll let you bring me down
you're my son said my master peace let it do my fingers now
and I don't know anything about letting go so I sit here and think how sweet
and be
welcome back and now we're going to have a little account of kevi's experience
making some video tutorials and I've just watched one of the videos just now and actually
it's not only informative but entertaining I would say as well so of course we'll put the link
in the in the show notes the videos are on video for your if you're viewing it's now we're at
some later date but kevi would you like to tell us a little bit about what you did
yes well you said last time let's have something that plays to our strengths and I thought well
to be honest you know minecraft release and going to be that good for our geeks podcast so
thought yeah fair enough I can't really just kind of do I was thinking between a minecraft let's
play and I thought oh my word they've been done today to be honest so I actually was thought
right one of the things that we do in in school is we do our project and it's just basically
the kids make up a totally new film so to do that they essentially take some academic faces
cut out the background then put them in different scenarios and one of the problems is you've got
teachers there who you know they still basically remember using the slate to write on and you
know the computers are still an evil thing but it's part of the curriculum now so they one of the
things that we've got to do is they've got to be able to teach the kids how to put up the sorry
take out the background using gimp and one of the things I'm always getting is could you come
in and teach that so I thought right I'm going to make up a tutorial on how to do this and that
saves me the effort of having to run through this each and every time so that this was very
much I kind of practical as well as entertainment and for tux jam purposes this was very much a
practical thing so to start with the well obviously the tutorial is on gimp and I uploaded it to
Vimeo just purely because I think Google have enough of our data as it is without adding more to
YouTube so you don't have to have a Vimeo account learning to watch it you can just click on
the links links it'll be in the show notes and the first thing I used was a very simple program
and it's called GTK record my desktop now there really isn't an awful lot of of settings you
can actually do in this it is just pretty much a record button or a pause button the only things
you can do record with or without sound you can increase the frame rate but that's pretty much it
oh you can choose to actually record the whole thing the whole screen or just a part of it I
found the part bit a wee bit fiddly to use the first actual problem I encountered was default settings
I tried it and it was blank this sorry the video worked but the sound was completely blank
nothing there at all and wee bit of work on that but all it actually is it's because it seems
stabbing pre pulse audio so it's got different settings and so all you've got to do is just go
into your settings and for sound settings it's actually very simple all you've got to do is take
out the word sound and put in the word pulse so that was the the rather annoying feature I had to
work around I was quite surprised really that this wasn't either part of it or part of like an
initial setup what do you use outside jack pulse whatever so that was a bit annoying but apart
from that it did actually work very seamlessly it popped up initially with a wee window and when
you hit the record the window completely disappeared and it puts it into the taskbar which just
essentially you click on to either pause the recording or completely stop the recording so
to be honest that was actually very simple straightforward apart from the sound issue and the one
good thing about record my desktop was that everything was done in open format so the sound was
recorded in hog and the video itself was an hog video so it was really it was nice to see that
rather than producing an MP3 and MP4 etc so that was a good start
it was a good start because well it was a good it was a good job you might have to get it done
because I've had real problems recording videos on Linux I have to say it has been a bit of a weak spot
I like record my desktop I have used it but occasion life on it didn't work in the way I expected
and in one case I think I even had to I had to resort to using jack of all things to get the
audio to work but that was a while ago so that's probably not relevant now
right and yes so that at least got me my video and after two blooming annoying phone calls later
and worst of it was recent I'm saying annoying is of course when a ringing goes off in the background
you can't really use that one anymore and the best of it is it was one person was a there was
one person who told me my Windows computer would have iris on it and another person was trying to
sell me PPI insurance or something like that P-W-PPI claims and I'm like yeah clear off notes
in the slightest so that annoyed me but once I had all that I've started have a wee look at
what I can use to start putting this together because I didn't just want to do it in that
rough format that it just was the start of a video and then it ended with me clicking up at the top
and of course I wanted to double check to make sure it's nothing else I could do with it
so how do we look at video editors now I've heard that this is generally a weak spot on the next
and I had to look at a few I can't remember off top of my head but how do I look at several and
there's one big discrepancy I think I want big piece missing here and that is there doesn't seem
to be any that's at middle of the road that I could find not saying they don't exist just
wanted on so that none that I could find of video editors they all seem to be either incredibly
complicated and essentially unusable for our novice or they were actually way too simple and
as much as it annoys me to be honest but I actually plugged for the simple purely because I thought
I want to get this video done in time for tux-cham so I with a one I've went for which I thought
offered the best feature was one called open short video editor which is actually a very common
one which is not very tux-cham like at all but I think you said it already videos in general on
Linux are pretty poor at us just video editing stuff so I thought if I go for a completely obscure
one one I don't know if it'll work and to the documentation on it's probably going to be pretty
poor and the support will be next is next to nothing so that's the reason I went for
in the end open short have you had similar experiences Andrew? No in fact I've never actually
attempted to edit a video ever I've always chickened out and got some deals to do it and it's
only recently I started editing my own audio two of all I was skated around that one as well
but so recording my desktop and you know sharing screencast or something like that yeah I've done
that a lot but no I've never actually used any video editing software I think partly part of
the reason I'm put off doing it is because I feel I will discover that I might wish I was in
some other operating system that might be a bit more proprietary than Linux but that said I know
there are good ones on Linux and I'm sure we're going to get plenty of feedback on this point
so I invite it in fact what you know for listeners tell us what they recommend for a complete
noob in video editing like me on Linux please tell me I'll give it to go.
Yes indeed well the one I planned for as I said was open short and it opens with just really
two tracks and or two empty tracks you'd say and it says it invites you to put in audio and
video files so I did that it kind of reminded me a wee bit of audacity with the way the tracks
and things opened up however the one thing that annoyed me was I couldn't find any way with
audacity it's very easy to sync up tracks and if you're putting multiple tracks together it's very
very easy to make sure they line up I found that very very difficult it was a wee bit hit and miss
they it allowed me to add titles and things very easily which I did and it's a very basic title
I mean nothing fancy at all I did try this on option for 3d titles animated titles and I tried
one of them and I think after 20 minutes it was still at 0.2% and I just sort of forget it I'd
have to leave that running overnight so I just going to give up on the animated titles so I went
back and just as a normal title just to introduce the video and they have fades and different things
like that but again the way I don't like the way it places them because you're just going to place
them quite randomly so I've got a kind of fade out and fade in in between my title and the video
now the first time I did it I just did title fade in video that was it whole video and I was
thinking okay right let's try that yeah that's fine and then I thought well the problem is you
can check this out on Vimeo the first one is the rather more unedited version because it just
shows me removing the background and I try and waffle a wee bit but overall it's quite a boating part
so when I looked at it I just thought well you know once they get the just I don't they don't
need to see me doing the rest of it so then I thought well wait a minute I've seen this with
a Minecraft let's plays if somebody says right I'm just going to dig straight down and head for
bedrock you know they don't often just show that instead they either cut it or and this is my
preferential preference was speed it up a bit so I sped it up and I tried to just get one segment
of the video to speed up but then I discovered that seemed impossible I just couldn't do it not
not with open short anyway so this was where it became a wee bit of a problem because with like I
said about the accuracy part I just could not find a way to get them lined up so what I had to do
in the end was there was I discovered two ways to actually do this I can't remember the
uh I think it might have been just ffmp I used but initially I found ffmp to be the best way to
actually just clip parts off the video so and that was just case of right okay well I want to take
the last you know 20 seconds off the video just use the command for that that worked
because I wanted that completely deleted there is an option to trim or to remove the last part
an open short but the problem there was it only did temporarily if you duplicated that video to
just add the bit back on which I could rather annoyed with so that's what I did there so I trimmed
it down to the bits I wanted to keep so I got rid of a wee bit at the start and I was kind of
clicking about and then a wee bit at the end where I was just basically stopping the recording and
I what I did there was I duplicated the video three times and the bit that I wanted to cut out
what I did was on the first copy I just stopped until the bit I wanted to cut out or wanted to speed up
and I stopped the video there then I on my second copy I just kept the bit that was just going
to be spayed up and then on the third copy I got rid of everything before the the end of the
part I wanted to speed up so if you understand I've kind of got three parts now and I was there
trying to line them up with each other however even with snap on though there's an option to snap
it still did not work very well with a line I was zooming right in and I got to the point
when I was zooming into stupid I was seeing kind of nanoseconds and it was still I was thinking
right there still isn't snapping anywhere so that one that bit really did kind of annoy me a wee bit
but it did work out in the end now when I actually spayed up the bit I put them all together
and I thought yeah that's okay but I think we really need something for this and the only thing
I could get I couldn't get out of my head at all was the Beniole theme tune so I just had to use
I think I got it down to something like there's maybe 10 12 seconds of spayed up video so I just
thought right well that's not creative comments but I just decided I'd use that 12 seconds as fair
as a fair use so I happen to just go on to YouTube and find one where it actually says this is
YouTube standard licensing so how do we look at that yep that's okay that allows me to remix this
this standard license as long as I don't pay as long as I don't charge for it so not so
should actually how genuine that YouTube license is but anyway so I put that and when I stuck it
all together I was actually quite happy with it and I put it all up and that's the second version
of the video and to be honest that's the one I'd actually recommend you go and have a look just for
just more for entertainment value more than the else because it does have about the first one
has maybe about 40 to 50 seconds where it's just me clicking the mouse which probably isn't that
much used or that even that interesting thing but the unless you really do happen to love watching
full-do editing indeed so I was just thinking there in case we have overseas listeners that are not
familiar with Benny Hill he was a comedian in Britain primarily famous for having chase scenes
speed it up with the music you hear in the video and usually women were involved as well
am I remembering that correctly Katie yes and that's a family friendly show and I'll just say
women with how can I say scantily clad and that's it that's all I'm going to see
yes it kind of comedy that in 1970s early 80s Britain was absolutely fine but you'd never see
these days and the fact that I haven't in fact YouTube's probably the only place you'd find it
now because nobody thought about it broadcast it although it could be quite funny and somehow it
lives on in the culture yeah if you've ever seen a carry on for them it's that kind of humor you
know it's not it's certainly not what the internet provides now it's more kind of cheeky let's see
but yeah so that was what I ended up doing and the the result of it was the the result of it was that
what you can go and see on the mute as I say it's a check out the show notes for the links
the how would I describe my overall experience well I would say record my desktop after I
got a walking but that one just that simple thing infuriated me just the fact that it was such a simple
simple thing that wouldn't allow me to record anything but that annoyed me apart from that I was
quite happy with it with open short I would certainly recommend it's probably ideal for something
along the lines of somebody who's coming over from windows and wants something that's a change
from a replacement for windows movie maker something like that it's it would be great for putting
together clips and things or your pictures and sticking together sticking together music with it
things like that that would be utterly fantastic however for what I did chopping and changing the
video it to me it was just a bit too fiddly and a bit too inaccurate I like things to line up I like
to be able to match things up and it just didn't offer that for me so that's the big down point for
me but it to be fair it is usable there are some things with it you can I'm not saying you can't
do anything you can clip stuff you can change the speed of the videos you can set the volume
you know if you think the volume's too high too low you can actually fade in the videos you can
add transitions things like that I would quite like to see maybe my PC just doesn't have enough
going it but you know I've I've not got that small a PC but they are showing not that low power to
PC but they I would really like to have seen what those animations look like so to give you an idea
this my one my system is it was too slow I think for my system animations and my system is a quad
core 3.3 and it had eight it's got eight giga RAM so it's not no it's not the certain of the top
of the range but it's certainly not really that underpowered but it just shows you how much you're
going to need if you want to start playing about with animations yes and one question that I
want to know the answer to is when the the guy phone job telling you your Windows computer
or device did you say no I'm using Linux but I do wonder if you can help me with my Gimp video
no I didn't know I wasn't anywhere near that polite to the guy
well I think it's probably time for another tune don't you think
yes I've probably bored our loyal listeners enough so or maybe or saying that maybe not so maybe
not so loyal after that guys and hacker public radio are probably not clear off I'm not listening to this
clown again right then so we're probably going to wee bit too weak you up and this is moderately
replanes with innocent love
make it
long we'll all start
it's in love it's in love to midnight
make it long make it long
we all start
is in love
to let that make you love
we all start
is in love
is in love
is in love
is in love
is in love
And hope that woke you up a wee bit after listening to my waffles, so it's time for me
to shut up for a wee while. And Andrew is going to talk about...
Well, I'm not a coder, so I'm 100% sure. I know it's Python related. I think it's numpy
and scipy, but uh, don't quote me on that. Anyway, I'm going to hand you over to Andrew
who is, like I said, going to talk about something that is probably going to baffle me completely,
so don't be too shocked if you hear me enter the, let me start that again. If you hear
me interrupting in a few times and saying, what the heck is that?
Yes, thanks, Kaby. Yes, it's my turn to waffle, and my waffle is going to be about my recent
adventures, as Kaby said, with Python, and in particular, numpy, which is basically modules
that add to Python's ability to process numerical data and arrays, and scipy, which adds in lots
of useful functions for doing scientific stuff. Now, I'm not going to go into a huge
lot of depth on those, because I don't know that we have time, and you know, I don't
have to lose too many listeners by going all technical. But what impressed me was the
adoption that this opens our software suite is getting in the scientific community. Now,
as regular listeners might know that I am a scientist myself, and I was many years
working professional science, doing research, and it was in solar physics, physics of the
sun. And I hadn't done that in the last 10 years, although I still dabble now and again.
And recently, I started playing around with Python and numpy and scipy, analyzing images
of comets. Well, it was images of the sun in which comets happen to appear, so we're
looking at that. And interesting little nod back to Kaby's segment, the chap who had written
the go-to web page on hunting comets in this way actually recommends, during the article,
using GIMP to do some of the image processing. So we've got another nod in the direction
that, you know, these highly technical astral boards really get the whole open-source software
goodies that are on offer. Now, what I've been looking at this week though is something
a bit different, because if you've been looking at the news, especially the science-related
news, you might have heard that on Monday, some scientists working on something called
the bicep-2 telescope, which is a telescope that's down in Antarctica, announced that they
had found signatures in what's called the cosmic microwave background. And it's, the
cosmic microwave background is in a loose sense. You can think of it as the afterglow of
the big bang that happened right at the start of the universe. And there's been a lot
of controversy on this, because it's been determined that the early universe suddenly
accelerated, expanded extremely rapidly. And then it slowed down, and it's carrying
on, expanding at a slower rate just now. But of course, nobody was around back then to
watch this super-fast expansion. But what they've seen is evidence of ripples in space
time that were caused back then that were predicted to be seen. Nobody had seen them before, but
the theory that was a bit controversial, the theory's called inflation, which adds
on to the big bang model of the universe. The theory would see these ripples manifest
in the light emitted by the cosmic microwave background from the early phase of our universe.
And they found these ripples not quite as they expect to, but still very similar to what
they expected. Now that's an astronomy for the moment. But the thing that really impressed
me about this was, well, first of all, it was good to see, from my point of view, good
to see some decent reporting of the science in the media at all levels of the media from
mainstream media through to blogs, posts, and well, I don't follow Twitter, but I know
that there's probably quite a lot of activity there, too. There was a few bits and pieces
I would quibble with. There was no direct detection of gravitational waves. That would
be nice if it was, but it wasn't bad. I friends at Glasgow University down the road who
were working exactly that, and they would be mighty excited if that was the case. But
what actually really impressed me coming back to the whole openness of it was that the
team, when they published the data, they created a website, and I'll put this in the show
on those, but it's bicepkek.org. And they put everything in a nice, simple format on
that website, you know, very clean CSS, just data, papers, press release images, and even
a terrible wraps up all the data and the Python code that you need to run it. So, if there's
time, I might put a little screencast video, which will be much, much more poorly edited
than KVZ from me doing this. But today, I downloaded the tarball, untard it, rather read
me, and then typed Python command, and bingo, I within a few minutes had done the processing,
and I had reduced some of the data that came from this bicep to experiment. Didn't
at this point really understand what the data meant, I have to say, even though I'm a background
in the subject, this is very specific stuff. But I thought this is impressive. They've
really opened out their data here, and they've made it so somebody who's conversed with
Python, and has numpy and scipy installed, those are the only two requirements to get it
to work, they can start work with the data in minutes, even if they don't quite understand
what it means. But to be fair, they had links to papers and various levels, all the way
from press releases up to highly technical documents that would help you get started
if you had a degree in the relevant sciences. So, yeah, that was impressive, and if you
don't have numpy and scipy installed, well, I was working at this in a Ubuntu laptop,
so a couple of apt-get installs, apt-get install Python, Python, Python, scipy, bingo, I would
have had all the dependencies there and ready. So, I have to say, I was really impressed at
how they not just used open source software, but opened up all their information for all
to see and others to verify. So, with free and through sense of the word, yeah, that's
actually excellent. I mean, that's not just a case of giving the stuff away for free, that's
showed everything. So, all data, everything plus the tools they used and recommended were all
open source. That's excellent here. Yes, the only thing I should say is the Python code didn't
have a license on it. It said who written it, so I'm blessed to copy right to them,
but they never actually put a license on it, and that's still quite common in academic circles,
is when I talk to academics about licensing software, they haven't a clue. They don't
sometimes even know how heavily they rely on open source software, but then to be fair,
nor do most people, you know, when they're using an Android phone, for example.
No, well, that's a truth. I suppose at the matter of the point of it is,
you know, we can all be preachy at, you know, and we all feel like it at the time, but
average joy on the street does not care that Linux is open source. You know, they don't care how
open anything is, they're wanting to use an experience. But, you know, the likes of the
application in the education part is with special lecturers and things. The problem there is
that if you don't license and don't make it clear in this day and age where it's so litigious,
people will probably just avoid using stuff if there's a good idea. Either that or if they just
want to risk it fine, but, you know, it's I suppose that's somewhere where we really need to
educate people of what the licenses are, because I gave somebody recently, who's actually quite
computer minded, he's quite into computers, I gave somebody a bit recently, and I said,
copy this out, get it printed, hand it all out, or you can't, it's copyrighted. No, no, no,
just that stuff's under creative commons. You can distribute it as all you want. Just don't sell it.
Oh, no, I can't, it's against copyright. I mean, bang in my head off, but, you know, the likes of
when people leave it kind of open, I don't know, is that I'll own Britain, like there is in Germany
where everything's copyrighted until it's stated otherwise. Like if there's no, there's no
public domain as such. There is such thing as public domain, but it doesn't default to that,
so you've got to say, I think the assumption is that the creative of the work owns the copyright,
unless, unless you're working for an organization, a company, in which case it belongs to the company
usually, unless you've got agreement with them to contrary. So yeah, I think you have to explicitly
state its public domain for it to be public domain in this country.
Yeah, so no, no, I mean, like in Germany, I remember Fab talking to this before on the next
outlaws. I remember that I'm pretty sure he said there is no such thing as public domain in
Germany. You'd have to either be copyright or likes of creative commons or whatever, I, you know,
software and the GPL, etc. Well, I see. Yeah, I saw a question. I also assumed public domain had a
meaning in the UK, but now you come to mention it. I think that's an assumption of mine that
needs checking. Yes, it is. Right, and do we have any more stuff for that? Are we going to
carry on with a tune? It's up to yourself. Well, I think we'll best move on to a tune,
and it's a tune named after an amber substance, which is very close to my heart and also KVs,
although it's spelled wrong in this. It's not the right kind of whisky. This is whisky with an E
lullaby featuring Jeanette Robertson, and it's from the album Monometric by Cognitif.
Hey, no one's doing fine. Oh, my way.
By the way, but you've been asking, so am I. The only way to find my love.
It's simply let it be by the way.
I'm thinking of you, I'm thinking of you, I'm thinking of you.
By the way, by the way, by the way, by the way.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that, and while the track was playing, KV and I were discussing
what I mentioned at the beginning that it's built with an E, and we both agreed on scots,
so it's quite good to have the E in whisky to show when it's not a proper sort of a whisky
as in a Scottish whisky. Don't you think, KV? Oh, I would all heartedly agree with that. Yes,
indeed. I don't believe that I believe anything outside of Scotland that's been made
any whisky outside of Scotland is just not the real stuff. I mean, the imitations will be there,
but it's not the real stuff. And now that we've lost 90% of our listeners, shall we move on?
Yes, I just like to say that there are some Irish whiskeys and a few American ones that I do like,
but I have to say I'm loyal to my Scottish whiskeys. Well, I'd like to say the same thing,
but I'd be lying, so. Now, if you'd always find to be honest, now, we've got the next piece
is on something called Kro, which is developed, piece of software developed by somebody who was
unidenticated now in the Fediverse called Bejan, and I'd like to work with Bejan a very happy
Persian New Year, because he's from Iran, and I'm half Iranian, or Iranian, I should say,
my mother was from Iran, and I haven't seen Bejan dainting recently, but if you're still up there,
Bejan, you get to hear about this. Do do his say hello to us over in the the status net Fediverse.
Anyway, Kevin, how did you get on with Kro? Well, to be honest, I didn't actually hear of it before,
so which is odd because I actually subscribe to Bejan as well, but I just actually was typing in
thinking, you know, I really do, I'm not a big fan of the, I don't mind it, but I prefer having
a client, and I found discovered this one on GitHub Kro, and it was, I didn't know anything about it,
so I didn't actually know it's a, it's a web, web-based client, so it's still in your web, but
I just thought, right, let's give this a try, because there are very few that will actually work
for status net, and the few that you can modify a wee bit still keep to identity cast 104
decadictor limits, so it drives me bananas. So I was looking for something, and I found this one.
Now it was very simple to install, there was, there's very few dependencies, I had a wee look at it,
and I can't remember, I think it's just a case of, there's a couple of Python ones, Python pip
and Python notify, and I think that's it, and I had both of them installed anyway, and what was
the other thing, there was something else, Tornado, it's been called a Tornado, so I installed, I don't
think I had Tornado actually installed, but I installed that, and then it's a case of just simply
running the wee Python script that's there, and it starts to kind of run a server, oh no, sorry,
before that there's something else I need to do, you need to go, there's a configuration file,
and in that configuration file you have to say, you have to edit where it is you want to point to,
so by default it points to Quitter, so you just have to go in there and change Quitter to whatever
you're on, so in my case it was microfragdev.com, so that was just a very quick nano
sudo nano command, and I changed that, and then I had it up and running, now it doesn't run like
a normal client, a search where you would say a desktop client, because once you actually run the
Python command, it says, right, it gives you an address, which is, well it's different for every
time you actually log on, and it says, please open this up in your browser, so you opened up,
in any browser you want, it's worked for me in Firefox and CMonkey, and it just gives you
username, password, entry, so you type that in, and you're greeted with a very nice simple and clean
interface, you've got that kind of grayish bar at the top, which is for your, for obviously to
choose what you want to view, so you've got your home page, your home timeline, the public timeline,
you can reply, you can look at your own posts, and from every post you can then reply, you can
retweet, or you can retweet, woohoo, I want to introduce you there, you can repeat it, or you can
favor it, no, that's pretty much all it is, but the one thing I did quite like where it kind of
brings it more into your desktop, rather than just being basically a web page, is it does
interact with your notifications, so if you get a direct reply, it will notify you through the
desktop, which I really did like, the only one thing I would say, what I would say, I would change
that if I could, is that it's, when it comes to posting, the, it's not immediately obvious,
I was looking for maybe a wee pen, or something, and then I noticed there's in the top left,
there's my own user profile, and you click on that, so you can click on that, and then that's,
it turns, a wee status box comes up, you can type in, it allows you to add things like
smiley things like that, it also gives you, you are else short, and I think it's bitly as far as
I remember, and just click on send, and it works very well, the other thing that I quite liked,
but it was, and this is what I was doing, was you can, it automatically switches to whatever size
you change, the, whatever width you change, the browser too, so I was, what I was actually doing was,
I was making it be a tab on its own, and then it would just end up looking almost like a desktop
interface, like I said, overall I was very happy with it, I quite like it, I think I'll keep on
using it, the only one oddity I had was that it, one of the times, when I started, started it up,
I don't know why it's only having the ones, it never happened again, was that it loaded up my
timeline, no problem, but then any other timeline new posts didn't go to the top, they went to
the bottom, and they started going in reverse order, so as they were coming in, they were actually
pushing my oldest ones, kept on pushing them further down, and it was, it made for a really
hectic timeline and reading, but I must admit apart from that, like I said, kudos to the guy,
I really did like this, the one thing that I would like to have seen different was I don't think
there was any way of inserting a picture into it, you know, like you can, I love all the clients,
there was no way of putting an attachment or anything, so I mean, no big deal, you can get
round that, but those are two things I would say, maybe it needs a wee bit of work on, and they
ability to insert a picture, and they are posting, creating a new post, I'd like it to be a different
icon rather than just your profile picture, because I don't think that's immediately obvious,
personally. That sounds great, post of an interesting, after see personally, I do almost all my
micro-blogging and social online networking with through my phone, so apart from a wee dabble with
identity curse and a tiny test of Chocoque some years ago, I've not really felt the need for anything
on my desktop, I'll just use the web browser if I have to, but from what you just described,
I think Crue is worth a go, and so you think you'll be using it on a fairly regular basis for a while.
I think so, yes, I do think so, like I said, I would actually quite like to maybe get it so that
it, right now what I do is I opened up an browser and so when I leave that browser running
completely independently, so there's no more tabs or anything on it, I would like to maybe get
to the point where I just maybe write a wee thing so that it opens up on like a browser with
absolutely no record ascribe it, browser with no decoration or anything, so almost just like an HTML5
kind of application. Yeah, well that's a wonder then how much work it would be to get it working
in something like Firefox OS? Well, that was the next thing I was thinking about, purely because
I've been, I've recently received a Geeksphone revolution, and I have been using it, and I've really
have been missing a client for that, so I'm hoping this will actually work, although like I said,
not so sure how easy it's going to be to install Python on the Geeksphone, so I wonder how much work
it's going to be, I don't know, I think maybe if you were a coder, you know, like an enterprise
and coder like yourself now, you know, I think it probably wouldn't be too difficult, but for
me who has no coding experience, I think I'd be quite a struggle. I have compiled Firefox OS a
couple of times, although I've never used it, I've always just sent the builds to Jezra, who then
complains bishily about how not very good his ZTE devices with some justification, but I suspect
having looked at the build process, that getting Python, the Python bit of it to work is not
trivial at all, would be quite difficult. I imagine Jezra could come in more upon that too.
Yeah, that's it. Well, maybe we should actually get him wanted, but then again this is a family
show, we might have to kind of lose the family friendly tag for that one show. That's right, we
have a Jezra special edition that gets flagged as this is going to be more interesting
live with your less family friendly than usual. Yeah, we might have to, yeah, I think that's really
standard, totally safe thing. Indeed. So, time for another tune? Yes, indeed, and as I said, I would
wholeheartedly recommend anybody tries that one. So, if you can go check it out, it's the only
place I can find it was on GitHub, so it's not got a website of it soon unless it's just me missing
it completely. But then again, maybe I'm just not that observant. Right then, so this is an artist
that I'm going to apologize to if she's listening, because I'm going to get this completely wrong.
It's Olga Selkova. Selkova. I'm going to go with that with I miss you.
So, if you can go check it out, you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go
check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go
check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out if you can go check it out
Yes, spam followers, well the followers of a can they suppose
well that's it you know so you know who knows if they're if they're taking note then clearly
we're probably appearing on a few more lists
right then so the two bits of feedback that I can remember from last month and that was
Chocolom sees was saying that he enjoyed the last show and he was thanking us and it's always
nice to get that that's very appreciative and also he suggested how about the new android
messaging apps like whispersystems and talks I am yeah I might have a slight problem with that
given my old phone kind of died and I'm currently using Geeksphone revolution so I'm at
pleasant I am on Firefox OS more or less 100% although to no to be fair actually I've got tablets
here we could still tie that maybe just not quite as convenient as it once was yeah okay I've
stored my android phone here so yeah I apologise to Chocolom thanks for suggestion but until I
check today I completely forgot and he made it although I think I did see it at the time but yes
that's a that's one to look at I'm not sure I've ever used any messaging apps before text
secure did I use that for a while but anyway let's have a look at them and I'll also check out
some apps and froid that may fit the bill as well have a look at that too yes indeed and the
other person who did a very good job actually pointing out well he first of all said that we had
said that there was some fine music and especially liked pro leader so that was a your choice so
yes good choice there and this was I was I was a bit surprised but I they started off a number of
people in the Fediverse and over in Fendica where R7 hangs out as well and also that sounds
good that pro leader stuff I just assumed it was everyone knew about it and I was the last one to
know about it but it's maybe the other way around it seems like not that many people have heard
of pro leader so you sadly it shows a lack lack of dedication to gemendo and the
broadcast because they've played the quad regularly on so yeah so yeah if you if you like good music
go check out both these broadcasts a show and gemendo is a site where we actually get most of
our music from all of it is released under creative comments so we can't complain and yes we
also got big thank you to R7 who pointed out that we made a mistake in the show notes last time
and we actually put the tracks listing for episode 29 instead of doing the new one for episode 30
and now as it's yourself Andrew's been doing the tracks I sent it at the time on
frag Dave as is I don't care how many mistakes you make you knock it now to do the show notes
yes I know I hang my head and chain with the tempting that but in all honesty I thought I made
a custom paste error it wasn't deliberate at all not my attempt to get out of it
actually what I did was I looked at the list of tracks that you'd left for
twitch channel 29 and I put all the work in of copy and paste and going to the web page getting
the artist named and you know it wasn't a copy and paste thing I actually rebuilt them all
and completely failed to notice while I was doing it that all the tracks were the same as the
previous shows except for the last one which was my new track the pro leader one and I for a while
I was totally confused as to how I'd done that but it was a dufferness you know note to the
duffercase yes it was my dufferness showing through but many thanks to R7 for for setting me
straight on that an excellent proofreader if anyone needs a service is up there I highly recommend it
yes indeed and if you want actually follow either of those chocalums on micro frag Dave.com
and R7s on nd.im and he's R7 there so yeah that I suppose that's one of the one of the slight
annoyances actually of identical being a bit more federated the old identity verse is the fact
that it's not so easy just to go and search for somebody but you can get them in the end
but speaking of searching if you want to search for ourselves then well we've got their first
of all unseen studio has got an account on frag Dave on identica which I think is now dead as far
as I'm concerned I don't post anything to it and it's also got one on joint dias but I and Twitter
but those are just announcement sites you know don't have a yarn to us somebody actually said that
they they've replied to us the other day on Twitter and I says oh don't do that is it reply to me
or garden one the other or yourself if you want a response because nobody really monitors that one
that's just more announcements so if you want to follow uh well certainly myself and Andrew are
on micro frag Dave.com and I am at kevi and Andrews at maknalu I'm also on diaspora.net.gr and
Twitter and Twitter I am at kevi 49 49 so uh yeah I'll pass you over to Andrew because he's on
other sites as well. Yes I still occasionally check uh identica maknalu there as well but
you know probably if you tip talk to me there I wouldn't have any way of knowing it unless I
happen to see it by chance another place that I that I do like to use is still a courtesy of
our friend r7 is friend dot ells mussels dot net which is a friendly site and I'm called
maknalu there and also you'll find r7 there uh he's Paul Taylor on that same site so you can
find him there as well and he's encouraging me to try out red matrix which might make an appearance
in a an upcoming uh tux jam if I actually get owned to start using it that is um yes so uh
and you can find a maknalu on twitter but there's really no point talking to me there because I don't
do anything with this recently. Yes and if you want to go down the old-fashioned route of email then we
do have an email and it is tux jam at unseen studio dot code.uk and please in fact do uh if you feel
that well uh you want to leave us feedback or maybe you want to suggest a tune I mean as long as
it's clear to the commons I don't mind then uh and also as well uh an open source
application you want us to try so any of those reasons are just to say hello uh like I said
they only preach people I really don't want to see uh people who are saying that they are wealthy
they're that I'm an heir to some wealthy person who's died and if I'll forward them a few grand
they'll give me millions really I'm not falling for that one come on now. Yes quite right too and
finally just another uh shout out to the community the nice community that is on HPR I hope you
enjoyed this episode and maybe we'll do another one sometime and I plan to do some HPR episodes
on my own geeky stuff at some point um but uh hope you enjoyed the show. Yes and if you like it
then we are on unseen studio dot code.uk and just search there for tux jam.
um and uh now we've come to the end of the show we're going to play out with what cavey
warns me is likely to send you to sleep that's usually my job is to come up with a track that
will relax you and send you to sleep he's described as being slightly musicky I don't think that's
the word he used but I interpreted that but we'll say it's in the and the operations musically
we should like uh and it's DJ rostage uh uh the long road from the album old letters so sit back
and relax and enjoy that and we shall see you in the next tux jam goodbye
uh
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