Episode: 4082
Title: HPR4082: No swans at Swanston
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4082/hpr4082.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:24:51

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,082 for Tuesday the 26th of March 2024.
Today's show is entitled No Swans at Swanson.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 45 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is Mr. X and Dave Morris bring you more chit-chat from Edinburgh.
Hello everybody, this is another Hacker Public Radio show and today it's myself Dave Morris
as you might recognise and I have beside me Mr. X, hi everybody, how are you doing?
So we're doing one of our famous infamous recordings where we sit in my car having had lunch
and we're up at the Pentland Hills in a different place.
The place we used to go to, the setting seems to be changing cans and therefore closed.
But we've got a nice golf course in front of us and some nice looking hills.
I've not seen the hills from this angle so hopefully it's a lovely car park is full but hopefully not overly busy.
So we've got a few topics to talk about and I'm going to kick off and I'm going to start by talking about
a couple of YouTube channels that I've been watching because it's quite nice to share these things.
And the first one is from a guy called Anton Petrov and he talks about astronomy and science in
particular and he goes to quite a lot of depth. So he shows not tremendously long, maybe up to half
an hour, 20 minutes later, but they're quite detailed. So the one I highlighted here is entitled
Study explains dark energy and inflation as parallel universes collider which is not trivial at all.
So this is this is astronomers finding out trying to work out what the bizarre things of dark energy
and why the universe apparently inflated from nothing to a huge thing and a very small space of time
and they're saying maybe it's because there's lots of parallel universes and they bumped into
one another and that is spectacular. I came away from that thinking wow but I don't really understand.
Yeah I'm sure that this might be a useful thing if you're interested in that sort of thing
just to raise your awareness of stuff that's going on. The other channel is a guy who is making
all sorts of wooden things out of junk and his junk is mainly pallets and scrap wood that he picks
up from skips and on sides of the roads and stuff. It says a bit like my father.
There's quite a few of that as well. I've certainly made a fair number of things out of all pallets,
but so he is called epic upcycling and he has arranged his episodes such that there's no
speech. He doesn't ever say anything in he often writes interesting messages but there's
there's only the ambient sounds till yet to end when the when the final display of the product
comes up then there's some sort of background music comes in and he did one recently that I'm
noted here entitled a treasure chest of secret draws made from pallets and scrap. These things
you would not know that they're made from scrap wood because he finishes them so beautifully
and you know vanishes them or waxes them or whatever and they're they're just really nice.
If you if you've got a bit of spare time and you're quite like sitting and relaxing and watching
some somebody making a thing it's actually quite good it's a nice relaxing thing to look at some of
that. I've got no woodworking skills at all but it's such a great use of material like that.
Well yeah he seems to have an enormous supply of pallets that he's rescued and broken down you know.
I'm sure you remember somebody saying I came across somebody saying something about how we're
going to manage a post wood because ideas you know we're all you think all you just regrow would
but we're treating through literally quicker than it can be grown and at some point we're
going to run out of wood you know you just can't believe that it's so yeah it's so good yeah it's
yeah it's just lovely to see things being properly recycled and in a skillful way yeah and his
techniques for doing it if you like that sort of thing yeah no I think I'd have to look at that one
that's interesting so don't you listen yeah okay so that's my youtube thing so what do you think yeah
so it's over to me yeah okay so it feels like it doesn't know very much has happened since
for the last time I think I think the the terrible weather it's been just just rubbish he's he's
bunny Scotland as we would see here but I mean I think it's been sort of bad weather all over the
place but whatever we've got here now so yeah there's a big large chief fell down in the local park
and both both are both my parents houses have sustained damages with fences down and roof tiles moved
surprisingly I mean we were quite high up we're probably higher up than the two parents
they've done two parents and yet and I mean at one point the house was coming down it was just
creaking in the groan a bit you know but surprisingly I mean I've either look and I can't see
in a single tile out of place so I guess it must be quite well put together but lucky I spoke
really and then I was I was speaking to um one of my my my wife's friends as a car and it was up
for a new forage car insurance and they just couldn't get car insurance at all for this car
it was it was it a hybrid I can't remember if it was or not but anyway I'm getting insurance
and they actually had to go to the manufacturer out of exasperation to get insurance and then
and I found out one of the weird reports about car insurance has been really expensive and I have
heard people suggest that this might be down to EVs and whatnot but but I also also heard there was
a podcast of us to somebody talking from the insurance industry we're saying that modern cars just
in general I've got so complex and have so many sensors and stuff and in bumpers and stuff
it just takes a minor prying on it on a bumper and it's thousands of pounds so I think that's
a typical thing a lot to it and then I also came across a video which I've got a link to I think
a bit of a chat talking about the what was it the insurers abandoning high climate risk properties
so the over the last four or five years the insurance costs the other to the industry has been
almost the top end of upper of what they were expecting and I basically saying that there are
models that they've predicted for for they need to pay out basically has been wrong and indeed to
drag it with rethink so and they're just saying that there are abandoning people not in tune
because they've lost so much money and so that might also be being driven into all these severe
weather around the world so that yeah yeah yeah yeah sort of thing I'm quite appreciative I know my
insurance just goes up and up and up and up every year for no apparent reason but yeah it's
so it makes a certain amount of sense isn't it yeah yeah because I mean just to just go back
through the news of all all the flooding and and the storm damage and all and it's it costs
millions billions trillions you know so it's something's got to pay for it we've got to pay for it I
suppose yep yep yep yep I mean the business about cars being complicated and stuff I certainly
had experience where some bit of electronics some sort of sensor or something fails I think it
with something that detects the turning of your wheel oh yes that's it and that
fuel efficient ABS ABS that's right yeah it doesn't work because it doesn't know what yeah what
your wheels are doing that's right and when you put the brakes on you it judders and does
bizarre thing and it isn't in my experience it wasn't all that cheap it wasn't massively expensive
to replace it but you know it took a while to source the bits to fit the bits yeah that's
I mean I mean if you're I guess your cars brand new they're even there are much more because
maybe they don't have brand new cars just to see I'm much more sophisticated you know and you
know if you think about the car for example that would you call it the name for these with the
the if you're in cruise control adaptive cruise control you've got the lidar or whatever it is
and the sensor cars and what not and yep yep yeah so that's very very expensive so yeah yeah I
notice this even with my my son's car I think it's a year is it a year or a year is it's got the
cameras and stuff over it and he sometimes when we go out to it for me or something
together I say should we take my car and and he likes to drive it but the last time he says
no I won't I won't because he can't park it just lost a skull for a parking because there's
parking skill just imagine the first that the year is that that shows him you know where he is
in relation to everything I do a funny a funny story but there was a as I call you get at work who
used to like to kind of let's say most of it is Mercedes-Benz you know so I've just found out
why these Mercedes-Benz drivers get a bad rap about you know parking in the middle of a parking
space is because I was just put my car into this ready for the space and hit the auto parking
back and I did the wheeled the tated and all that and it parts off just perfectly with that
equal space between the car and left and right unfortunately that was down the middle of the line
so that's why they're doing it that makes huge amount of sense isn't it yeah equally
species it doesn't know anything about the lines it just knows about other vehicles wow yeah yeah
yeah that's fascinating of course he was showing off as he was telling me story of course
so yeah very good yeah so what was your next thing on the end I've got the title on this thing
is I got a steam deck for Christmas I remember she was too mage I suppose what exactly as a steam deck
well I wasn't sure until I started doing the research so he's a history I'll answer that question
no minute but I don't play games much I have played games in the past you to play him on BBC
Micropilot and we used to do family Minecraft sessions at one point but and I was thinking it would
be quite nice to get back into games a little bit and yeah so my son said oh you can borrow my
Nintendo switch in the end of 2023 and see if I get on it because the screens are relatively small
in the massive compared to the way they were gameboys and stuff but but so I had a we play with that
and I said oh yeah I might get myself a steam deck in the next year and lo and behold for Christmas
I got a steam deck from them but so a steam deck is actually a small Linux computer oh it's got all
the controls got a lot of controls and half a half a controlling your position and I mean
buttons and everywhere your fingers go and and joysticks and stuff like that it's got quite a nice
little screen it's got sound capabilities it's running Linux as I said but it's running steam
on top of steaming the things that we play a lot of different different game types so yeah it's
I actually set up to run the Linux operating system directly the other day just to see what
it's like and it's this great it's a little handheld yeah it's quite fun yeah people are using it
for all manner of stuff I think I should have put it in the car but yeah so yeah the only comment
was well I'm pretty bad at usage because I haven't been brought up with all of the control
with all the co-ordinations that I needed you know because all geysers on on on
on modern game machines a bit a bit ridiculous but I will give it a bit of pong on maybe
they bought me stardew valley for it which is a it is a thing where you're a character in a world
and you can move around and collect things and build things and stuff like that so I'm I'm
practicing it using it and going I want to go with that duration but I seem to be going in the
opposite direction what else going on and I've got I've got over that mostly but they're various
games I'd quite like to try out Kerbal Space Program is one that was on my list but unfortunately
I missed it it was there was a sale of it recently and I missed it because I'm too slow but it's
yeah I think it's quite a thing fun thing for experimenting with space flight and this sort of
stuff right right see it in a simulation so yeah yes team box team as I've like used be
ports to put a keyboard on or something or how do you think you can run a keyboard on it yeah I've
not tried that but I mean it's meant yeah you'd need that really just to use it as a as a
early spot certainly seen people saying that they currently developing software on a steam deck
wow so I assume that means they can plug a monitor into it and the keyboard into it and get a
fairly pleasant little Linux engine yeah it's nice it's obviously got a battery in it and you
know you charge it and all that good stuff so I was I was thinking you know exactly what I was
thinking it was it's some sort of a gaming thing like for the for the totally like an Xbox
thing like that my brother came not this Christmas but previous Christmas and they came with this
headset thing oh is it an Oculus Rift thing are they called it oh yeah I think we could have been
that and so that was quite interesting you know you you feel I felt slightly kind of see sick at
one point with a little bit like yeah but you see sickness almost I was a bit like that and you
hand out you can see your hand and you can pick up objects and stuff yeah it was quick
quick interesting but yeah I thought that's kind of what sort of thing you were going to talk about
yeah it's not too exciting at all wow no it's it's it's basically a sort of grown-up version of
gameboys and more and tenders and I mean see equivalent in in size and functionality to an
Nintendo switch right right I think being I'm as big as if I know stuff then I don't I look
I look at that I look at that yeah very good very good well it was so what's my next thing
so I don't this kind of put the last 30 seconds or even maybe 15 seconds so me and the
message X went to the Hunger Games it's like a pre-sequel probably knowing thing with the Hunger
Games or I don't know if it's existed yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I actually got a bit of
rubbing in the thing I got quite a badge of you but I actually really enjoyed it so that's
that's really good that's a bit I mean that's of course so next so it's a movie yeah so yeah I
said it's a movie I I mean it's um I think we've actually just ridden the book it's
in the book as well okay okay so yeah yeah it was it was it was it was fun thing to go to I mean
we also went to um to openheimer as well oh yeah so that was great I was quite happy and I enjoyed
that I think why you find it a bit difficult to to follow in fact I I was fortunate that I had
I'd listened to a documentary about it the background prior to it and rather than it's spoiling it
it's ideal because I think because some of the things that would be difficult to tell
on on screen sort of I thought you know if let's you knew that background you wouldn't know
why they were showing you that it's had to it's times I have to say oh that means this and it's
explained to me yeah oh yeah I'm not saying that it was subject like that I don't think it's
possible to spoil it much because there's there's always aspects of the thing that you you
you would have missed first time around so yeah filling in a bit of background is a good thing
yeah that's it so I don't of course if you remember there's an openheimer and and the
Barbies or Barberheimer we didn't do both didn't do with however however my wife she managed to get
a hold of um a DVD so we actually didn't eventually watch some barbecue things we also
but it was a lot better than expected because I thought it would go absolute rubbish yeah yeah I
don't I've not seen I don't know anybody you must do it so quite positive comments about yeah yeah
saying much better you just said yeah I thought it was going to be awful and it turned out to be quite
pretty bad yeah so I think yeah yeah yeah yeah so long that's that coming into the cinema for a year
we had neither so yeah that's good that's a nice thing to do yeah yeah so so next thing we we've
been talking about ticks I think what was it the last time we recorded anything we're talking about
how ticks were becoming more prevalent and yeah just looking at over the in the distance into the
hills there that's probably a number of ticks out there yeah yeah yeah yeah a few times I think
walking in the Scotch hills yeah but yeah not not for a number of years because you you just need
to take the rope precautions around and wear wear things that protect your calves and stuff if
yeah I've not had one of them so far but yeah I yeah it's pretty nasty thing you suddenly
look at what is that on my leg oh my god it's not supposed to hoik them out it's supposed to use a
user device for yeah sort of got a tool for them out because I've ever since had a few yeah that's
why we were talking about it wasn't it yeah anyway I had because I listened to a weird and wonderful
podcast I'd been listening to one about microbiology and they were talking about a disease called
alpha-gal syndrome and it's been prevalent in the USA but seems to be making its way to Europe as well
and it's caused by a tick bite what it is is the tick feeds on another mammal like you know deer or
something like that and then it would bite you and it in doing the first the blood removal from
whatever it gets a carbohydrate which is called galactose alpha-13 galactose
and it's called alpha-gal it's got an alpha in it and what this does is that if it's injected
into a human and these are animals the the ticks are things that but bite by first injecting
a an anti-coagulant so they've caused the drug to suck and they inject this alpha-gal
into the into your bloodstream and it becomes its foreign substance as far as humans are concerned
and it causes allergy and what this actually does because the alpha-gal is found in red meat
uh-huh then it means you're allergic to eating meat red meat anyway so yeah not so bad if you're
a vegetarian but if you're not so yeah yeah it's quite quite surprising I want I want to
hope manifest itself when you actually if you see if you tick meat I mean I want to wonder what
what sort of something's you have yeah I didn't very huge amount attention to but the impression
I got was that you would get you know classic allergy symptoms you know like maybe
breaking out into sort of boils or or various hides or whatever and tighten it yeah and that
don't do that I mean yeah yeah yeah although I think it is it's not so easily identified in in
um europe yet I'm not sure that many medical practices are fully aware of it maybe I'm wrong
but it seems to be it's definitely quite common in the USA and Australia um and if you're
other places to the most uh meat you think oh the other yeah yeah just fascinating you think
why are we allergic to it is the other question I didn't really write down here is because we do not
produce this it's found in in other other mammals but but higher primates and humans
we're higher primates and don't produce it so as if it suddenly appears in the blood then it's a
it's a foreign thing that needs to be dealt with and that the results in um yeah because it
it obviously reacts to it the first time it gets it from the small one it gets from the the tick can
yep yep and it's primed after that you of course yeah wow I'll um I'll put this in the the notes of
the thing I put some some some uh links to uh to things that explain it better than I did
I mean I don't I don't take a huge amount of meat but I'm certainly not a vegetarian so yeah
I would be I could be at least my kids used to be vegetarian but they're not like a bit
we don't eat a lot of them yeah mainly mainly white meat I guess uh give them the choice but
we did we did is it present and fresh no it's a mammalian right yeah protein uh
mammalian um carbohydrate right okay not quite sure what it's useful and yeah don't know much about
it really but I just thought it was an interesting thing to highlight so it's all well the the
the next thing I've got again make one a last one with like I said it doesn't know very much
it's happened it's it's been the thermal weather well well well I think we might be not the
the cinema uh in that idiot we were trudging down some of the shops in the area and and we discovered
quite backstant that uh what of some as it's a bookshop uh he didn't he didn't in the UK I think
it's of course the whole UK isn't it isn't just the Scotland isn't UK isn't it I think I think
I think it's a national I think yeah so it's got a coffee at least the one we had the coffee
upstairs I think they generally are upstairs and uh so Mrs X she suffers from
gluten intolerance so where we discovered that they've got gluten free options and on top of that
even more surprising they've got them they're they're dog friendly so for like a companion that's
that's really handy so I think I never thought a dog could I think we'll be there it's
somebody came up with a dog oh look at that you know I surely can't have a dog in here and then
they wonder back downstairs and watch them go to the to the to the um to check out and nothing
myself oh that must be okay then so we're right then we asked you know it's okay oh yeah it's
really a goodness okay sure good yeah yeah so we're not using it with them with them with them yet
but I'll have we know we have I should be near with them so yeah yeah so I always look at
for gluten free dog friendly the sandwichers are quick and the sandwichers can imagine you know
especially for gluten free dogs yes exactly oh that's really good it's really good we the the pub
we used to have lunch in for these sessions was dog friendly yeah yeah yeah but I'm not sure
about the one we've just yeah I don't think dog feel they look like it's very
different gluten free options but yeah but it's not very often that to like they're full of
companions yeah but there are places around Edinburgh yeah yeah that are do to accept dogs
so yeah yeah that's the thing anyone I find to keep a note of it so very nice yeah yeah good good
good next thing on my list is I am trying to get back into raspberry barley stuff a bit more I'd
gone into the doldrums as far as pies were concerned because things had failed on me you
discat crashed yeah um an SSD I should say and the change over from raspberry and to raspberry
pie OS caused me some issues with things I was running and I just went oh I fell up and yeah yeah
anyway I've been since since Christmas in January and February I've been trying to coordinate all
raspberry pies and I do have quite a number of them but the key ones I bought a year as we
pay five last year or I was in December and because I want to run my pies with an SSD in all cases
and there's now the ability to boot off the SSD we've been able to do it before but in various
ways it would not be all that convenient the first time I did it you had to run an SD card to
do the booting and then you could hand over to the SSD so I had several setups like that which
worked but now you can just ignore the SD card completely and and just do everything from the
from the SSD so I put an NVMe base from Pimeroni on this Raspberry Pi 5 and I put an NVMe M2 card
yeah I've not had any experience sort of these sort of things and I was actually just seeing the
Dave edit on that I've been extremely lucky because I mean I use SD cards for all my Raspberry
pies I've never and I've never had any feel or crash on me and the my main pie that's running 24.7
I recently copied some files I've been suspecting this for a while and I copied some files across
to to to to give to a colleague and I was actually listening to some of them the audio files and
there was the odd gap and break in the audio and I think that's a bit rough so things are actually
you know feeling and the files actually feeling yeah on the SD so yeah that's a problem with the
SD so I guess Julie yeah I've not had that direct experience I have had one SD card failed
directly but that was one of the early ones right and I didn't know what what quality of card
again and it was the old style large SD cards so I but I haven't had any of the others for
but but the thing is if you put SSDs if your SSD is on a on a USB 3 you get pretty reasonable speed
so you know you got you can have a moderate amount of disk space there if you're trying to run
something that may be storing photos or keeping music on or something like that it's not a bad
setup it's even better with the USB P5 which uses the the faster interface right whose name is
Casey I've generally got 120 gigabyte SD card and then when it fills and it takes me a long time
to fill that up I then just copy it across onto hard drive and start again you can manage
depends on what you do with it that's right yes exactly it's it's a perfectly workable solution
you're describing it so yeah yeah I'm kind of the same I've got a bit just a little bit before I
bought a pie 4 and I was going to use that for I was actually going to use it under the the
TV's immediate thing but issues with it so a little it was bizarre it would it was a tiny TP
I can't I can't some resolution a video it would actually play back a certain resolution a video
a bit better a bit better than than the previous pie I had but the lower resolution it wouldn't
so I thought well that's just not a good at all so it was the new distribution of the
what was in there it was it always MC that you call it or that always it always MC on
always MC some hours as I said yeah yeah you speak XBMC thing yeah yeah yeah yeah something
it's one of those ones it's one of these distributions any whatever it was mini XMBC I can't
know what's calling it whatever it is yeah I think it's it I haven't been afraid is it so I just
stuck them all when I'm not bored so I thought well what I'm going to do with this 4 so I thought
I'd replace my my aging a pie server what I was talking about but it's it's finally time and
and and at least at least this we have got two I can have two running and pardon it when I
were all up and running I can then just swap it across so I start playing to you you know you
was talking about ras being it and ras and put the call on raspy pie OS so is it was it the raspy
pie for addition swapped from ras being to this pie right right okay so the pie OS I've got
as well on when you pie then there's quite a lot of differences as far as I can see I had written
the thing I did a show about it a script that would go and interrogate the pie through the operating
system to find out all the different parameters that he gave you reports I always
said this type of pie has got this memory blah blah blah but I think none of that works now
oh because the way everything the commands to get it or the places to go and look for it I've
all changed I've not it's a thing on my to-do list to to to work out how to do that but it's
sums it's a little bit frustrating that things change quite it's just a bit yeah so yeah
I was just going to say I've also got two four four B systems that I'm setting up
if you've had had for ages but there I'm currently rebuilding them with raspy OS and they're
going to be used for for all the various home lab you know this is term home lab where you effectively
build things where you you have lots of services running you know from your own DNS if you want
or you know your own database and a fancy web server and all that stuff yeah on on something and
you can put all of your information you can run next cloud all right next cloud and all the various
things I've got a list but I can't seem to remember because it's written but I'm planning to do
that I've just been before we we met today I've been installing pie hole on one of these machines
so I hadn't had pie hole for a few for a while so I'm trying to set that up at the moment so
that's that's going quite well yeah that'll be good yeah so I think I've ever dealt with
the pie hole in my server it's really quite satisfying to have it when I had it before and it was
because you could see it blocking so much and it was not only blocking things on my PC but you know
I'm the laptop as well and everybody's phone when they were visiting and stuff so my next thing
on the last I kind of are thinking I've mentioned so I know how long we'll talk a bit and it seems
such a long time ago but we visited blackpool and it was it was quite late on in the year
it was of course it was freezing cold and it was blown a gale and it was it was decided to walk
up up doing a promenade so we were absolutely frozen sort of it at one point over you're leaning
at them in so much that you know that you fall over it was it was that you know and oh that's
really cold and so I'm really had a nice time and we've got actually got a chance to go and you
know the yum oh no it's it's like a pumpkin thing it's it's a it was a horse and horse
and puny and trap the I don't know if you call it out it's um you know they do these things up
and all that with headlights and you can sit in them and it's horse-drawn kind of sort of thing
okay yeah yeah it was nice it was it we got all got in that and got in but I think but that's
some over that freezing freezing you know we said because because usually the wheel the the
the the goes so far up the the promenade and back down again and it's something to say you know
excuse me would you take us all the way back to hotel oh no we're just just a set a set of
and we asked another two sheen and we're finally got something and he said oh yeah well I'll do
that so he took us in one direction for just a face fixed like the same distance be just in one
direction and I know obviously picked him to put other end to suit him as well but it was lovely
you know I took it back to the hotel um a horse-drawn it was like damn freezing cold yeah yeah
black pulls uh any funny place it's a let's live further up the coast in mocha which is
you know another yeah quite chilly place oh yeah in the wrong direction I can remember that yeah
hang out in black pool a few times it's yeah it's an interesting place my kids like it because it's
all the fun fairs and stuff yeah yeah probably where they we got the chance to go in our
I was at a tram that was over a hundred years old all right and that was nice and yeah I was
surprised because but the first thing you notice we I've been there's there's a there was a bus
I'm a tangent here I was at a bus museum thing in Edinburgh the opened at certain times to look
at the different buses and whatnot and like the like the buses the you look at the yesterday
gear buses and trams they're they're tiny you know because people are so much smaller than that
today and this tram was the same was really small and compact at this back to back looking so
when and we got to the top deck and it was what I thought was really clever as they had two slots
on the on either side of the seat and it meant you could you could take the backrest and push it
forward and the building was to decide it was all and it was facing nubs direction so clever you
know you've never seen like that and buses and stuff and they also have them so that your your
face and a block of four looks and together or you can be facing the other way so you could complete
flex but that's so clever right it's probably because of health and safety probably not
yes because if I remember right I have been on this tram a long time ago because I took my kids
for for a holiday two blackpool years and years ago when they were much younger and we we had to
travel on the on the trams but are they not sort of wooden slatted wooden seats they were in the
when we did it it was like some park benched up thing on the side can't I know I think I think
that they were cushioned okay but they're quite thin cushions before you know I think the original
would just the right wooden benches but but yes yeah yeah no the the trams are good and then
they're yeah it's quite nice to see these these things trundling up and yeah I mean I'm the
problem we weren't going to they've got I've got a section on in my time but I think we talked
we reckon what I've talked to them in my trams but they they were tight like because you gave
that tip and it was really good really really efficient yeah so yeah but I think we don't really
go on that again in case they're in my trams yeah yeah every six minutes and yeah yeah yeah no get
held up by cars no no it's been it's been built properly so it's not well they do say that if
you are using public transport of any sort and it is dependent on the congestion of cars yeah
then you haven't really got public transport you just got a sort of a big car and then it says it's
not well I've got to say I was very skeptical I a bit skeptical here everything else is very
skeptical well I mean it's better than nothing it's it's not you know but I was thought well it
doesn't go anywhere particularly but when I tried it I thought it was all the way from one
in my right out to the down to bottom of the east and you can get off and on there's lots and lots
of stops you can get off on and it's so fast and efficient yeah yeah it's it's a delightful thing
yeah and when you reach my age you get free free of course yeah of course yeah I'm not that I'm not
that far away so I think that would be fun yeah when you get your card in the post oh I can
use the buzzes of free and I can travel all over Scotland down the tram if you don't take it
before I get to that so yeah I think that was good good good so I think probably well the next
one is that my last really that I want to talk about today you just to highlight some changes
that have happened on the HBO and it's down to Ken who has added some stuff to the calendar page
the place where you go to find a slot to add your show there was a quest for an overview of what
was in the reserve queue and that's been added so that's quite nice and so yeah so that I mean
that that somebody might have been me and I've got a Raspberry Pi which used to display that
information and there used to be what was it there was a file on the old site wasn't there
there was a thing with the text.psp that just came back with the text format things
which had like sort of labels and values and stuff on it yeah this is it so that's how
used to get the information and and it stopped working of course when the site was changed over
and it just happened to see I don't suppose that you know and the time it sounded like it well I
said obviously some sort of very low product myself I don't want a bit of it would be nice if
if you could and it sounded as if it was a bit a bit awkward to do and to my delight Ken was
able to incorporate that so and it's got there's loads of statistics you should take a look at it
it's it's it's very good it's indexed from the calendar page and I'm going to do a show
in the near future hopefully with talking about the how I use that information and I'm going to
cover the fields and stuff and that and that file as well so that could just one file but yeah
it's just very good very good I think that the issue with it was that the query that you need to
applied to the database to get the data right quite an expensive one and since we're now running
off an AWS instance so it costs I think every query will cost some some number of micro pins
so rather than a query it just it just puts out the JSON file and then you can just you get
it to operate it refreshes the JSON every 15 minutes and things so it's not it's not an
on demand yeah yeah I think it says says as much on the yes perfect yeah yeah that's that's
really good yeah so it's um very much appreciated Ken I should see these things uh moving for
absolutely as I see I was just coming at this morning and I fucked my last bit prior I don't
actually there are 15 slots in the queue so you're not keeping them up yeah yeah it's good um I've
been doing that sort of thing for years and years because I get notifications to say
somebody's just sent in a show and a red light comes on and the other one that says Ken's
processed the shows are ready to go on the internet archive site and another color LED lights up
so all of those sorts of things are very handy quite useful to do so yeah so that was your last
last one yeah sure the only thing I've got is and I don't think it's going to take up very much
time it was it was a topic which I was listening to when a clattery shows and I think I've
quite a bit behind his most recent show so I mean it was for a long time ago has he recorded that
show um about TLDR so TLDR I don't even know what it stands for but it's it's a kind of community
I think it's a community built improved help system to understand and it's his complaint was
by you know the help on Linux is as a as a trussious and if you actually take help on it you get
no help whatsoever it's awful you know actually that's not entirely true because I think at least
I'm not sure if it's all Linuxes that offer a help but if you type help and then some bash command
but you need to know about that command in the first place there's not a thing that says ah so
you want to find out about a bash do you know yeah start here no there's nothing
but the help thing if you go if you want to find out how a particular weird bit of bash work
you can do man bash but you have the most enormous man page and but if you type help that thing
there's a good chance that you will get get some quite condensed and useful notes so try if you
interest it say test for example yeah test command which is also the square brackets around
the thing double it is but yeah you will find if you do help test you will find some quite useful
things I only stumbled over that within the past couple of years and and use it a fair bit so
yeah I think I think there's a there's a package which you can install I guess it's called
TLDR but there's also website okay so there's an online instance of it which you can try
out and I think it certainly covers bash but I think it covers other languages as well okay okay
so it looks very but the point is it's got lots and lots of examples oh that's what that means
and because that's one of the points it's a clarity with your examples you know you're looking
at what does that actually mean once you get examples ah that makes sense oh yes yes just reading
the text for you know under conditions why happens yeah it's it's all very well but it's hard
to visualize what that really means and yes examples are critical so yeah yeah that's good stuff
good stuff TLDR will be too long didn't read I think no or maybe I've no idea probably is yeah
too long didn't read yeah I guess that's not done which is good now yeah good stuff good stuff
so yeah I think I think that's I mean there's a lot on this yeah this shared document that we
we managed but yeah but I mean we're all ready yeah 45 minutes yeah and we'll we'll be trimming
that back I think that's enough thanks a lot that's enough yeah all right then well I've been
great there's always seen there yeah it's nice to just have a hangout with the yeah with another
HBR host absolutely they find lots of things to talk about if any of you are in Scotland you know
well yes yes um Ken himself was in Scotland and we did meet up with him last year and
it was in last year that was that was really pretty nice yeah but we didn't record the show about
no because there was too much else going on yeah so I did indeed so yeah all right well thanks
everybody yeah thanks everybody yeah we'll uh we'll speak to you again soon hopefully if I can get
well think I don't get organized okay bye you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio
at Hacker Public Radio does work today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself
if you ever thought of recording broadcast you click on our contribute link to find out how easy it
leads hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com the internet archive and our
sims.net on this otherwise status today's show is released under creative comments attribution 4.0
international license