Initial commit: HPR Knowledge Base MCP Server
- MCP server with stdio transport for local use - Search episodes, transcripts, hosts, and series - 4,511 episodes with metadata and transcripts - Data loader with in-memory JSON storage 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Lee Hanken
196
hpr_transcripts/hpr4246.txt
Normal file
196
hpr_transcripts/hpr4246.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,196 @@
|
||||
Episode: 4246
|
||||
Title: HPR4246: Bytes, Pages and Screens
|
||||
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4246/hpr4246.mp3
|
||||
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:59:42
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4246 from Monday 11th of November 2024.
|
||||
Today's show is entitled, Bites, Pages and Screens.
|
||||
It is hosted by Lee and is about 12 minutes long.
|
||||
It carries an explicit flag.
|
||||
The summary is, Attract Through Some Podcasts, Books and Television Shows.
|
||||
Hi I'm Lee.
|
||||
Today I'm going to run through some of my favourite books, TV shows and podcasts.
|
||||
I'll try to both describe what each one is about and give some context as to how I got
|
||||
into it or what it meant to me.
|
||||
Our start of podcasts and the best one I can think of all time, present podcast accepted,
|
||||
was Linux Outlaws with Fabian Churchill and Dan Lynch, which ran for seven years starting
|
||||
in 2007.
|
||||
Hacker Public Radio Episode 319 even saw Mollochrome C start a series clear in homage
|
||||
called Linux in-laws.
|
||||
Linux Outlaws was both a very down-to-earth, informative and then entertaining mix of tech
|
||||
news and general chat.
|
||||
Although times have moved on, I think I could still go back and listen to any episode
|
||||
even today and not be bored.
|
||||
I'm also a fan of the Twitch or this week in tech network, which hosts a number of video
|
||||
podcasts.
|
||||
My favourite Twitch show was called Know How, especially the episodes hosted by ISACTAR
|
||||
and also those hosted by Father Robert Ballaker.
|
||||
These would get into some really interesting topics and would be fairly practical.
|
||||
Another Twitch show, which is still running at the time of this recording, is Security
|
||||
now featuring Steve Gibson.
|
||||
It's about both current events in cybersecurity as well as some in-depth dives into certain subjects
|
||||
and following this show eventually got me into studying cybersecurity at postgraduate
|
||||
level.
|
||||
Thirdly, there's Floss Weekly about Open Source Software, which I've followed for some
|
||||
time with interest.
|
||||
Twitch is a bit of a funny name for a podcast network and I confess to walking down the
|
||||
street wearing a Twitch t-shirt, only to be on the receiving end of the comment with
|
||||
a mixture of typical London humour and possibly some misreading involved, there goes a
|
||||
twat.
|
||||
Destination Linux was another American podcast I used to listen to and sometimes watch.
|
||||
It was characterised by a four-way split screen and the different personalities worked
|
||||
well together.
|
||||
I was pleased one of the presenters at the time was a Brit, his name was Seb, who I believe
|
||||
was associated with Peppamint OS, which I donated my remaining stock of refurbished Ubuntu
|
||||
laptops to after I realised I couldn't make a profitable business out of selling them.
|
||||
This podcast is still going strong and it seems as good as ever but I haven't watched
|
||||
or listened to this for a while.
|
||||
In some ways Linux has now become a prevalent and perhaps even mundane part of my everyday
|
||||
life to extend I don't even notice I'm using it anymore.
|
||||
In which case these podcasts have succeeded in their goal, Linux is no longer a destination
|
||||
but my home.
|
||||
Knowing that there is one Linux podcast which most HPR listeners will already be familiar
|
||||
with that goes into such detail on every episode that I always learn something new.
|
||||
This is going to be a world order presented by the HPR presenter Kletto, whose podcasts
|
||||
have influenced my life in diverse ways, ranging from drinking coffee to composting and even
|
||||
wanting to become an HPR host myself.
|
||||
Now, best for books I've read and found resonated with me, I probably don't need to go into
|
||||
too much detail about canonical sci-fi and fantasy novels like The Lord of the Rings
|
||||
by JRR Tolkien or June by Frank Herbert, both of which I read as a young adult.
|
||||
I won't mention War and Peace by Leah Tolstoy about the lives of well off Russians during
|
||||
the time of the invasion by Napoleon.
|
||||
I read this over 25 years ago but still think about it from time to time.
|
||||
For example how the character of Pierre finally can stop living in the trap of his own head
|
||||
after befriending a farmer who later dies while they march together as prisoners.
|
||||
Or Prince Andrei looking up at the clouds when he's been injured as if he has never even
|
||||
noticed them before.
|
||||
Or the observation that those who recount traumatic experiences such as being in a battle really
|
||||
tell what really happened.
|
||||
This novel is famous for being long and I only read this once but think it was worth
|
||||
the effort.
|
||||
Going from classic literature to comic sci-fi, I have a fondness for the hitch I could
|
||||
guide to the galaxy series of books by Douglas Adams.
|
||||
I first got into this watching the BBC TV series and later at high school my maths teacher
|
||||
lent me the radio series on cassette and I also played the text adventure game, didn't
|
||||
get too far with it.
|
||||
While at university when my fellow role-plates encouraged me to join the official hitchhiker's
|
||||
fan club and that summer I went with her to a weekend event with other fans near Nottingham.
|
||||
I also liked the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett that these are so numerous I've
|
||||
only read some of them.
|
||||
When a particular was mort about a young man who becomes apprentice to a personification
|
||||
of death who has the catchphrase I could murder a curry.
|
||||
I read this while on a course in Pershort near Nottingham and later saw a play adaptation
|
||||
performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
|
||||
More recently I read a couple of books by Neil Stephenson, recommended to me by someone
|
||||
who I met a few times while running a meet-up at a local park during the pandemic lockdowns.
|
||||
The first book was CryptoNomicon, loosely about code breaking both in the Second World
|
||||
War and also more modern times.
|
||||
This briefly features a more lighthearted, fictional depiction of Alan Churring which
|
||||
is refreshing, given the many works about the import of his work and the tragedy of his
|
||||
later life.
|
||||
The second book was Anatham, set in a future in a world similar but not the same as ours
|
||||
about a brother from a monastery of mass philosophy and science who encounters visitors
|
||||
travelling between parallel universes.
|
||||
Both of these books have a star that is both high and low-brow, somewhat entertaining
|
||||
and also absorbing but they are relatively long and omit to sometimes skipping over parts
|
||||
and then having to go back to reread.
|
||||
She also recommended I read some high-line novels.
|
||||
The ones I read were HaveSpaceItWillTravel, DoubleStar and LaterStrangerAndEstrangeLand.
|
||||
The first, set in a future where space travel is common, is about an enthusiastic young
|
||||
man who wins a space suit that leads him into adventures in space.
|
||||
The second is about an actor who has to pretend to be the president of Earth to resolve
|
||||
a diplomatic situation with Martians.
|
||||
The third is about a man brought up by Martians who has developed special insight in abilities
|
||||
and who are returning to Earth ends up founding a religion.
|
||||
These books are of their time, for example the latter one does delve into the free love
|
||||
phenomenon as it was emerging in the early 60s which the person who recommended the books
|
||||
to me found off-putting.
|
||||
StrangerAndEstrangeLand also introduced the word Grop into the English language, a Martian
|
||||
concept having no English equivalent but meaning more or less to understand something fully
|
||||
as opposed to just knowing it as a fact.
|
||||
A few years previously I'd been recommended Orson Scott Cards Enders Game by someone who
|
||||
herself had aspirations as a sci-fi author.
|
||||
At the time this book was soon to be adapted to film.
|
||||
The book has a number of themes, from the political impact of social media, written well
|
||||
before social media had even been invented, the practice of training children to be soldiers
|
||||
and also whether extremely destructive acts legitimised during the war time.
|
||||
Sometime after reading this book I also read some of the sequels.
|
||||
These come close in their subject matter to James Cameron's Avatar films and that they
|
||||
explore the theme of the living organisms of a planet existing as a spiritual hull.
|
||||
I was also somewhat of a fan of the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling, having discovered
|
||||
the first book discarded in the dustbin of a psychiatric ward.
|
||||
I won't go into here what I was doing there while I was looking in dustbin.
|
||||
For anyone somehow not familiar, it's about an orphan boy with abnormal abilities he
|
||||
goes to a school that teaches magic.
|
||||
My favourite of the series is the third one, the Prisoner of Azkaban, which she's the
|
||||
young protagonist to discover about himself, he's not helpless, and might within himself
|
||||
be capable of using even lethal force to address the mode of his parents and prevent further
|
||||
harms.
|
||||
Finally a series of books that I've got part way through, listening to as audio books
|
||||
rather than reading are the Frontier Saga by Rick Brown.
|
||||
I started listening to these as Steve Gibson talked about them on the security now podcast
|
||||
I mentioned earlier.
|
||||
They're mainly about interstellar war and borrow a little from Star Trek and Star Wars.
|
||||
While they're not necessarily high-brow, they're quite entertaining, suspenseful, with plenty
|
||||
of space warfare action as well as some politics, espionage and core technologies.
|
||||
Talking of Star Trek, this leads me onto TV shows, and yes, I've watched on my SEVERING
|
||||
CONNATION of Star Trek, the as-yet, unconcluded one at the time of recording being strange
|
||||
new worlds.
|
||||
But here's a TV show that has nothing to do with science fiction.
|
||||
It's called Prison Cell Block H, setting a women's prison in Australia in the 1980s.
|
||||
I would almost never fail to watch each episode with my mother as it was aired in the UK
|
||||
around midnight once a week, even though I'd school the next day.
|
||||
I'm not sure how or why this became a favourite, but perhaps her experience has been detained
|
||||
in an institution as a young woman had something to do with why appeal to her.
|
||||
The lighter side of Australian TV, which would often feature the same actors as the series
|
||||
mentioned previously, was their soap operas, and these were especially popular in the
|
||||
80s and 90s, and for some years I would always watch these, neighbors being the one that
|
||||
preferred over home in a way.
|
||||
They're absorbing at the time, but I don't think I would rewatch them now.
|
||||
Coming back to recent years, I'll mention Mr Robot featuring Christians later, Rommie
|
||||
Malak, and created by Sam Esmel.
|
||||
This has a very realistic depiction of hacking, down to details of characters discussing whether
|
||||
they prefer KDE Plasma or Nome as a desktop environment.
|
||||
At the heart of it though, it's a fantasy, with a character afflicted by some sort of
|
||||
psychosis or disassociation, trying to understand the world-changing events occurring around
|
||||
him, of which he, without his knowledge, is the prime re-instigator of.
|
||||
While I'm tempted now to go back again to talking about TV series of my youth, I think
|
||||
I'll skip over the ones that come to mind that have since been rebooted, such as Mission
|
||||
Impossible and Lost in Space, move on to something more contemporary.
|
||||
The anthology Black Mirror by Charlie Brooker is often about technologies gone wrong.
|
||||
It's possibly one of the best, though, also most disturbing TV series of recent years.
|
||||
Some of the episodes were produced in my neck of the woods.
|
||||
I know someone who has been an extra, and my sister has done work on the series as a
|
||||
makeup artist.
|
||||
Some of the humour, if you can call it that, is indeed very dark, and while I would say
|
||||
watching this might be a cathartic way to deal with trauma, it's perhaps more advisable
|
||||
to seek help from a psychiatric professional to deal with that than watch a TV programme.
|
||||
While on a dark theme, I'm mentioning a show called Dexter, it had already been running
|
||||
some time when it was recommended to me by a friend who was a computer game enthusiast,
|
||||
who I used to meet at a neurodiversity group in the Puckney Academy Street in Central
|
||||
London.
|
||||
Having missed the first couple of series of Dexter, I then had to go back and watch these
|
||||
to fully understand the backstory, but I was soon hooked.
|
||||
It was really one of those shows I'd anticipate every new episode of, being about a crime
|
||||
investigator who has turned vigilante in order to expiate his own demons.
|
||||
While featuring James Reema, the eponymous star of Dexter is Michael C. Hall, who is
|
||||
also known for six feet under, where he played a funeral director who has similarly led
|
||||
a double life, concealing his sexuality prior to his father's death.
|
||||
So I don't end an adult now, I'll talk about a TV series called Touch by an Angel.
|
||||
This drama is religious with a smaller, much along the lines of the sci-fi series Quantum
|
||||
Leap.
|
||||
Each episode features a new set of characters and a new drama, which the regular protagonist
|
||||
must help resolve.
|
||||
The Angel's test and moniker make it contrasting pair, and like the appearance of an ill-fated
|
||||
officer wearing a red uniform in Star Trek, whenever Andrew, the Angel of Death, aptly
|
||||
played by John Dye, made an appearance, you knew things were not looking good for those
|
||||
involved.
|
||||
John Dye is also known for playing an idealistic soldier in the Vietnam drama Tour of Duty.
|
||||
Angels of Death aside, Touch by an Angel was something light I'd watch with my mother regularly
|
||||
for some years, we both liked it.
|
||||
Well, in conclusion, this has been a somewhat random and not exhaustive list of my favourite
|
||||
podcast books and TV programmes, none of them are too obscure, but I'll try to include
|
||||
links to each one in the show notes in case you want to find out more.
|
||||
That's all from me now, thanks for listening.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user