Episode: 1712
Title: HPR1712: What's in my Crate
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1712/hpr1712.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 08:07:29

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This is HPR episode 1,712 entitled What's in Micrate. It is hosted by Mike Ray and is about
20 minutes long. The summary is, what was in my crate when I went to a log to give a R11Y
presentation. This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
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Hello, welcome to Hacker Public Radio. My name is Mike Ray. What's in my crate? I've been quite jealous
listening to some of the what's in my bag shows. Reason I say I'm jealous is because most of those
shows of course feature people telling you what they're carrying in their bag on the way to work.
Now being blind, I'm almost inevitably unemployed at the moment. Despite the fact that I can still
write code and actually I'm writing better code now than I ever have, I don't currently have a job.
But so you know I don't have a reason to do it. What's in my bag show because I don't go to
and from work. So what's in my crate? How did it arise? At the beginning, in the middle of last
summer I got involved with the Surrey Linux user group and one of the things that I was asked
to do at one point was to give a fairly modest demonstration of Linux accessibility and how I
write code although I'm totally blind to the Surrey Linux user group. And to that I took some
bits and pieces and laptops and stuff and gave a very modest, very hastily put together presentation.
Following the success of that, I was asked by the coordinator of the Portsmouth Linux user group
to give a similar presentation to that user group of the same subject and Linux accessibility.
This was some months after the first event so I resolved to make it very much more comprehensive and
very much more entertaining. So I took quite a bit more kit and I actually piled quite a large
amount of stuff into a plastic crate. Now I've heard people doing the what's in my bag shows.
The first thing they do is to describe the bag. So I've described the crate. Now this is a
brand of plastic boxes. Plastic crates called a really useful box. That is literally the name of
these things. And this is the 35 liter capacity really useful box. What it is is a semi-transparent
box. Or I should say semi-opaque plastic crate with ribbing on the corners and on the bottom
and a raised hexagonal pattern on the bottom to strengthen the sides of the crate. And it's got a
close fitting lid which has got latching handles either end which sort of hinge up and latch
to hold the lid in place. And as I said it's 35 liters in capacity so it holds a fair amount.
I think the biggest really useful box is 60 liters. It's quite a big crate and you can get them down
to sort of about 300 milliliters you know about as big enough to hold the contents of a soda can.
And I've actually got one on the desk in front of me here with SD cards in it from my Raspberry Pi Tinkerings.
So what was in the crate? I'll tell you what was in there in the order of how I packed it and
then I'll tell you about why I took each of the things and what I did with it and what I talked about
etc. So the first thing into the crate was a three-ply layer of bubble wrap for padding.
The next thing into the crate was the first of two Dell latitude D630 laptops. Now these are
quite modest machines. They're two gigs of RAM, 2.3 gigs clock speed I think 64 bit,
1880 gigabyte hard disk. The thing I really like about them is they have a serial port and
it's quite uncommon now to find a machine with a serial port and me being a radio hammer
used them to control radio equipment transceivers etc. that have all got computer controls
interfaces these days. So now the first of those two Dell latitude D630s was next into the crate.
The third thing into the crate was another three-ply layer of bubble wrap
followed by the second Dell latitude D630 identical machine to the first one except I think the
hard disk is only 60 gigs on this one rather than 80 gigs then another inevitable three-ply layer
of bubble wrap and finally on the laptop front was the third laptop this being a Dell in Spiron
machine which is considerably older I think than latitudes and a bit of a clunky old
slow coach but I found it in a skip so you know not to be sniffed at I'm not sure if the clock speed
of that is two gigabytes of RAM because I put new RAM in it and it's a 60 gig drive I think
and then of course on top of that what did I put I put another layer three-ply layer of bubble wrap
now I'll tell you what what's on each of those laptops when it become to the actual presentation
but the next into the crate was a Saker 40 cell refreshable braille display
now this is a USB device it's a it's a long narrow piece of kit with rubber feet on the bottom
it's about the width of a keyboard you know a standard PC keyboard and it sits quite nicely
in front of a PC keyboard and it's got the row of 40 braille cells which are refreshable
that is the braille is cell is made up of the dots that form a braille cell
they're actually little holes and it's got little actuators that pop up metallic pimples
so the braille changes as you move the cursor around the screen you know it follows the
follows the focus or follows the cursor informs the line of braille so that was next into the box
that was in a nice cardboard nice stout cardboard box so that was next in and then I put in the
AC power supplies for all three of the laptops of course the next into the crate was a four-way
mains power strip you know one 13 amp UK mains plug to four 13 amp UK mains sockets
and then I put in the box a clear plastic pencil case this is about 12 inches wide
quite long enough to contain a 12 inch ruler and this is stuffed with audio leads and various
USB to micro USB leads it's quite tightly packed with three and a half millimeter stereo to stereo
leads some of which have got volume controls in the leads they were all in that pencil case
next in was a mesh bluetooth speaker it's like a little brick
redding color with a touch sensitive top panel and this thing will be a bluetooth speaker or
it has a lining socket as well and it also has a micro SD card slot so you can use it as an
MP3 boom box but I use it as an external speaker for PCs or for Raspberry Pi's
also I placed in the box a brawn speaker and this is a nice little device it's a little thing
that sits in the palm of your hand and it's an external speaker and an FM radio and an MP3 player
via an S and micro SD card slot again again it's got a three and a half millimeter line in so it
can be used as an external speaker for a PC or a Raspberry Pi I also took with me a mobile phone
charging battery brick you know one of these big flat bricks that you charge up which you can
then use out and about for powering a mobile phone or for charging a mobile phone I actually use
it as a power supply for a portable Raspberry Pi so that went in the box along with a Raspberry Pi
a banana pie a couple of Arduino's a couple of Arduino shields not there was going to do anything
with those at the presentation just to let people have a look at them and you know just ask
questions and things so they went into the box as well did I put anything else in the box
so I can't oh the only thing that I took with me that wouldn't go in the box was a standard 102
key keyboard USB PC keyboard which was slightly too wide to fit into the box so that was placed on
the top now the three laptops what have they got on them and what did I do with those at the
presentation well one of them has is currently running one of the Dell latitudes is currently running
triskel Linux which I think is an Ubuntu spin and the slogan for triskel Linux is run free
and the free software foundation actually are currently advertising a laptop called the
Libra Boot 200 which has got triskel Linux on it so the obviously meets with the approval of Mr.
Storman and configured on triskel on that laptop I have known fullback and orca the screen reader
so that was demonstrating the accessibility of the known desktop on the
Inspiron laptop I had and still currently have 32 bit Debian 7.4 WZ I think it is
which I did from a net install and I had that along with me to demonstrate
speak up which is the console mode screen reader and it was the Inspiron that I connected the
Braille display to so I could demonstrate using a Braille display for silent operation in the console
the second Dell latitude at the time did not have an operating system on it because I was taking it
to Portsmouth Lug so that one of the guys there who could see could make some adjustments to the
BIOS because I think at the time the boot sequence was incorrect and the hard disk was
before the optical drive and the USB so I needed to change the sequence of the boot that's why I took
the second latitude and on the Raspberry Pi I was running Raspberry with my fixed audio code
which I did a show about a couple of shows ago I think which I'll put a link to that in the show
notes and it was just demonstrating you know running a Pi headless no monitor connected to a portable
battery so you know it's just a very very portable solution we had a projector of projector to
connect to the latitude that was running Triscale so all of the people watching the presentation
could look at the screen of the of the latitude as I was demonstrating accessibility in
terminal in Libra Office Calc Libra Office Word Libra Office writer I should say
EMAX speak EMAX speak being a talking version of EMAX and various other things just demonstrating how I
can write code and get stuff done even though I can't see anything at all the banana pie I didn't
power up that was just I just took that long for people to have a look and they are doing
bits and pieces people were just sort of looking at those and asking questions after the presentation
about how I generally muck about with an Arduino so that was what was in my crate when I went to
the Portsmouth Linux user group earlier in January to do a presentation about Linux accessibility
I have to say thank you very much to Tony Wood a very nice chat who gave me a lift I when I did the
sorry Linux user group presentation he also gave me a lift across to the Red Hat Office over in
Fambra I would not have been able to do either of these two things without Tony because particularly
that one in Portsmouth carrying the enormous great big heavy crate I couldn't have carried out on
the train I have been to I think one Linux user group meeting on the train but I could not have
lagged the equipment for the presentation on the train so thanks very much to Tony Wood I should
say thanks also to Lucy who's last name for the moment escapes me the coordinator of the Portsmouth
Linux user group Portsmouth Linux user group incidentally very very friendly so he's sorry
Linux user group actually and for those of you who don't know the geography of the UK sorry is
a county in the southeast corner well not the extreme southeast corner but it's sort of to the south
southwest of London so it's in the southeast of England and Portsmouth is the home of the British
Navy it's the town on the south coast and where I live is actually pretty much geographically
equidistant middle this you know halfway between London and Portsmouth so making it across to
sorry Linux user group and down to Portsmouth Linux user group is quite possible but again I
you know I couldn't done it without Tony so thanks very much to Tony for that I think that's
pretty much it for watching my crate you've been listening to hecka public radio at hecka
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