Episode: 2400
Title: HPR2400: My commute into work
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2400/hpr2400.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:20:46

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This in HPR episode 2,400 I'm entitled My Commute Into Work.
It is hosted by Bellomeberg and in about 37 minutes long and Karimaklin flag.
The summary in this episode may record an episode across an entire commute into work.
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.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Well hello, my name is Dave, the love bug and you could be listening to this in one of
two places.
So I'm going to be publishing this to my anchor station this morning, this morning being
Friday the 15th of September.
I'm also going to be posting this as an episode to Hacker Public Radio.
In a response to episode 2,377 of Hacker Public Radio where Mr X drove into work and recorded
his commute, I thought I would do the same and it actually kind of falls in line with
something that I said I was going to do on anchor a couple of days ago where I said
I was going to record my entire commute into work.
So all is good, all is good.
So if you're listening on HPR and you've never heard of anchor then you can find my anchor
station over at thelovebug.org for slash anchor.
If you're on anchor and you've never heard of Hacker Public Radio then you can find my
profile on my correspondent page on Hacker Public Radio at thelovebug.org slash HPR.
So in terms of Hacker Public Radio I did a little bit of looking back as to how prolific
I've been with recording episodes for HPR and it looks as though I'm doing this exactly
the right moment.
Now the general understanding expectation rule is that as a correspondent you should
record one episode at least once a year.
Now there are some people who record significantly more frequently than that and there are other
correspondents that record significantly less frequently than that.
But looking at my history I have only recorded two episodes.
I have appeared on others but as a correspondent I have only ever recorded two episodes.
One was episode 1890 which was entitled a short walk with my son.
That was back in October of 2015 and that was me walking back from church with my son
on a Saturday morning which I believe ended with me bumping him up the front steps at
my house in his push chair which he found incredibly funny.
My second episode for HPR was episode 2117 which was a what's in my bag for pod crawl which
I recorded back in September of 2016 I'll stop making that horrible noise there we go.
There I detailed in quite nauseating detail and also on video what I was taking to pod crawl
in the way of technology, amusingly the majority of which I didn't actually use.
So October 2015 September 2016 it's now September 2017 so I am absolutely right for recording
this for HPR.
So I'm recording this on my work Samson Galaxy A5 with a newer NW-W-E-R La Valleier
La Valleier mic as recommended very frequently by Jonathan Culp.
I have used this, I'm going to put words on it and you're going to get a sweet noise
all the time so hopefully it's not too bad.
Yeah he's used it prolifically on his HPR recordings and I've done a couple of recordings
on anchor using it.
Recording using the Ophonic Edit Android app as a recorder two reasons for that firstly
because it's damn good recording software and secondly is I am going to run this through
Ophonic as a web service to clean up the audio before I publish it to both of the locations
where it's going to be ultimately sent to.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before so I'm going to mention it again.
I do have a number of options available to me for recording podcasts on the go so this
is one of them.
The lapel mic with one or more of my portable devices via my phone or all my tablets.
But I also have the portable podcasting setup that I created that I used on Wednesday evening
to record a conversation with my son Alex which I posted to anchor on Wednesday evening.
If you're on anchor have a look at my episodes and you'll see what they're called.
Set on my doorstep episode one.
Yes.
So the setup there is my Google Pixel C tablet with a USB-C to USB-A on the go adapter
in which I then plug my USB microphone audio technology, no it's not an audio technology.
It's a Samsung 2Q-AQ2U, Samsung Q2U which I have mentioned on HBR before.
It's the equivalent of the AudioTenic here to 2,100 USB which is a USB and an XLR mic.
It's actually the microphone that I use in my studio for podcasting and doing the podcast
each week.
So it's a very, very good and incredibly good value for money, microphone and even some
of the professional podcasters like Daniel J. Lewis of the audacity to podcast recommends
the AudioTenic at 2,100 USB as a good podcasting mic particularly for those people on a budget.
We don't monetize any of our podcasting activities so yeah, good value for money, stroke budget
works for me.
So yeah, when I'm out and about and I'm doing podcasting that will be the setup I use.
So metabolite, the adapter, USB microphone and I'll record into the euphonic edit as well.
So yeah, it is all good.
Yeah, Mr. X, when he did his episode a few days ago on HBR he was talking about the
podcast that he's had in the past, he's got, he had two Ford Fokai, but I actually had
a huge number of cars in the past.
I first passed my driving test, I think it was 1997 at the ripe old age of 24, I was very
late starting to drive.
I didn't see the point in it, I didn't see an insisting in it, so I didn't bother.
But when I did learn to drive it, it was one of those kind of eureka moments, wow, I can
drive, I can move myself around, I am good to drive absolutely everywhere.
I remember when I first passed my driving test and bought my first car, I used to go out
a lunchtime from work and just drive around for three quarters of an hour because I could.
So yeah, my first car was a Red Mark I Ford Fiesta, I believe it was a V suffix registration
plate which would have placed it in 1979, VWX.
Yeah, I'm sure it was V. It was a 1.1 economy, now obviously the word economy means
utterly gutless.
I really struggled to get any particular performance out of that vehicle, although just anecdotally
I had a really amusing situation when I had that car.
You could find yourself foot to the floor, following wind, downhill and you still wouldn't
be going more than about 50, 55 miles an hour in it, but I remember driving down the A3
near Gilford in the south of England, and I didn't even bother looking at the speedo
because I knew that my car wasn't capable of going over 60 miles an hour anyway.
So I just know what I thought, bombing down the A3, Gilford Cathedral in the distance,
I remember the day very clearly, and there's a services petrol station and as I was coming
on to that, I kind of looked down and see if I needed fuel, and notice that my speedo
said 100 miles an hour, I'm like there is no way in the world that this car is doing
100 miles an hour, so I kind of slowed down a bit and I thought this is really, really
slow.
And I noticed that I don't need fuel anyway, so I went to the petrol station and I stopped
at the petrol pump, just about to get out of the car, I looked down at the speedo and
it said 40, so what had actually happened is I must have gone past the point of 12 o'clock
on the speedometer, and the speedo needle had slipped for 40 miles an hour ahead of itself.
And yeah, basically I was doing 100 miles an hour and I was doing 60, which was incredibly
disappointing, and yet somewhat relieving at the same time, I don't think my car would
have coped with the concept of going 100 miles an hour without bits falling off it.
So my second car after that was a Austin Mini Metro 1.3, it was a metallic blue, and
I remember vividly after I'd switched to that car, that because obviously I'd been
used to having to make the car work with my old Ford Fiesta because it was so gutless.
The first time I tried to execute an overtake on a dual carriageway, I nearly went into
the vehicle, the back of the vehicle I was trying to overtake, because going from a 1.1
gutless wonder until 1.3, it admittedly it wasn't a particularly powerful 1.3, it was
significantly more powerful than the one I had before, so I had to kind of very quickly
adjust my expectations of the vehicle that I was driving, so I didn't crash it.
But that wasn't a bad car, I mean anybody who's driven a Mini Metro in the past will
know, they're not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing or desirable cars, but to me it was
quite something.
The car I had after that was my pride and joy, it was a Suzuki Swift L-plate, so L prefix
in the UK which means it was from 1991, and this would have been about 1999-2000, I got
that car and it was gorgeous, it was a 1.4, it wasn't particularly high spec'd, so it was
fairly, what's the word?
In fact no, it would have been earlier than 1990, 1999, so yeah it wasn't really high spec'd,
the interior wasn't very well-kitted out, but it was a gorgeous car, it was gorgeous
to drive, it was good to look at, it was dog blue Suzuki Swift, and I loved it, unfortunately
around about that time of my life I entered into financial difficulties, and because the
vehicle itself was on finance I was forced basically, voluntarily, admittedly, to return
the vehicle to its rifle owner which was the finance company, so a little bit of a
dark situation there, both in sort of terms of my personal life at the time, and also
the fact that I had to give up what was essentially a beautiful car.
After that I had another Mini Metro, it was a 1.1 liter Mini Metro on a D-plate which
would have been 1986 registered car, and it was actually my mum, it was her car, which
she gave to me actually, but it wouldn't have got much on the, what you call it, part
of exchange or private sale, because it was an old car, it wasn't particularly powerful,
it was a car, it got me around, so I was happy with it, it did exactly what it was supposed
to do, but I tried to think how long I had that for, I think I must have driven it for
a good year, year and a half before I ended up replacing it, you don't have to forgive
me, because I'm doing this from memory and my chronology of this next set of cars is
a little bit, a little bit hazy, I believe that the next car I had after that was a company
car through work, because I was actually acting as customer services manager at the time,
so I had a company car, which was a white Ford Cavalier, which to me was a tank, because
I had two mini-metros, a Ford Fiesta and a Suzuki Swift, I think used to small cars, and
as we go through the remainder of this chronology, you will appreciate that I am very much used
to smaller cars, so yeah, moving on from that, I believe the next car I had was a, a Peugeot
205, a Peugeot 205, oh, crumbs, what was the designation? It was a 1.4, it was beautiful,
it was a red, I think it was an XSI on an F-play, so 1998 F prefix, red-stress play in the
UK, now that was the car, my second car that I actually intended to keep for life, beautiful car,
it drove like a dream, it was responsive, it was very, very pokey, both in size and in performance,
and yeah, that would have been the car I would have kept, and unfortunately, through circumstances,
outside of my control, that car was quite brutally taken away from me, it was a very cold and icy night,
the car was parked on a side road where it had been for, you know, six, nine months previous,
someone came around the corner at the dead of night, I was asleep in bed, and misjudged it,
skidded, smashed into the car, broke it off, so absolutely gutted about that, because like I say,
that was the car I intended to keep, after that, it was kind of an emergency search for a new car,
and there was a friend of ours, there's a lesson to be learned here, there was a friend of ours who
just were looking to get rid of their Peugeot 205, and I thought, okay, well, it's 205, you know,
I can't go wrong with that, so I bought it, it was incredibly good value for money, and now I know why,
it was, I can't remember the registration plate, it might have been C, which would have been
a 1980s, 1985 plate, I don't know, it was 1980s anyway, 206, the designation was
something R, it was a 1.3 non-injection, and it wasn't that nice a car at all, it was white,
it needed a lot of attention, the engine mounting went on it at one point, so when accelerating
away from the standstill, I found there was a huge click coming from the engine bay, and that's
basically where the mounting had broken, and it was shifting from below the mounting to above the
mounting, where the engine was physically moving, so little is scary, but the car had a number of
problems with it, not least of which was the thermostat went, so it would overheat at the
moment, notice, so called the AA out, the automobile association, that I was a member of at the
time, they just said, we'll take the thermostat out, and just be aware that you've got no
attention control on the engine, anyway got rid of that, and switched to my first diesel car
actually, it was a K registered, which would have been 1990, diesel 1.7, diesel, red,
voxel, astro, that was a nice car actually, first diesel car I owned, very, very much,
very different experience to drive, a diesel car for the first time, but you know you kind of
adapt to these things, learn the different foibles of driving and how the engine responds to you when
you drive it, had a weird quirk in that the air intake for the engine was really, really close
to the ground, so I was always advised, if you're going to go through a puddle, go through incredibly
slowly, otherwise the air intake will basically suck up the water from the road, into the engine
and you'd break your engine, unfortunately that car, although it was a good car, it was reliable,
I really enjoyed driving it, it had a fault though it wasn't aware of, in terms of the oil,
there was an oil leak, and if you've ever known or ever had a diesel, you'd know that having oil
in the car is absolutely critical, because of how the engine works, I mean yeah okay, it's
critical to have oil in any engine, but more so in the diesel, so we didn't realise it, we in 2003,
we went to buy a new car, we still didn't have kids by this point, we went to car craft
in Sheffields, like huge car supermarket, and bought our first family car, which was a blue
per show 206 on a white plate, which would have been 2021, 2001, and we actually, I remember this
clearly, we bought it on the 29th of March 2003, the car was registered on the 29th of March 2001,
so we actually bought the car on its second birthday, which we took us as a good omen,
I don't know whether it was owner, but we exchanged the old Vauxhall Astra, we exchanged and put it
out in its part exchange, and when they took the car, which they took it out of question,
they said to us, we really don't know how you drove this car here, because it was humanely
to fail, because the oil leak engine failure was absolutely human, and I didn't pick that up,
went driving the car in at all, I didn't pick up that there was any problem with it whatsoever,
so yeah, we were quite lucky to get rid of it, so yeah, we had this, this per show 206, beautiful
three-door metallic blue vehicle, which we had for a good number of years, and it was a lovely car,
I love driving it, it had all the Monkcons, electric windows, did it have a summary, yes it had a
summary, no it didn't have a summary, sorry my apologies, but it did have climate control air
conditioning and a decent stereo system, it was lovely, unfortunately it started to generate,
sorry to display issues, to do with the engine management system, and when we moved up to
South Yorkshire where we were living now, we took it to a garage that we trusted,
and they replaced so many parts on it, they did a lot of work on it, most of the work they did
for us, they didn't charge us for, because they recognised that the work that they had done
didn't actually make any difference, so they didn't charge us, which I think is incredible
customer service, it goes without saying that we still use that garage now, you know,
14 years later, they've been great for us, so yeah, we had to get rid of it,
but it was around this time, we actually became a two car family,
and I need to try and work out exactly what the chronology was here,
and I'm going to get this wrong, I know, but over the next few years we kind of flitted
between a number of vehicles, so I'm pretty certain the next car I got after the
206 is a Voxel Vectra Estate, which is on a V-Player, V-Prefix, which would have been 1999.
Registration, that is not the year, and that was actually given to us by my stepdad,
because he realised that we were having problems with our current car, he basically donated
that car to us, which was incredibly generous of him, but I think under the same circumstances,
had he tried to partner exchange that or do a private sale, he wouldn't have got much cash for
it anyway, so he figured that donating it to somebody who could make use of it would be
beneficial, so yeah, that was a good car, it was an automatic estate,
beneficial for so many reasons, I mean first automatic I had the wife drove,
so she actually used it primarily, have we only had one car at the time, so I think Caroline
was doing public transport to work most of the time, and I had it for commuting into notting the
most still working, notting the city at the time, which was a 45 minute commute, sorry I'm behind
the very, very slow transit man, so I had that primarily, and then I then went out and bought a
Nissan Almira, I can't remember the license plates on it, excuse me, I'm doing an overtake,
I probably shouldn't, there we go, yeah I had a red Nissan Almira, which I think was on
an L, a K plate, a K registered Nissan Almira, so then we went back up to a two car family,
so Caroline had the vector estate, I had the Almira, and you know, it was always gravy,
and then I can't remember which car went first, but we went through another series of vehicles,
so I think the Almira was replaced by, oh I just know I can't remember which round it was,
anyway we lost the, over time we lost the Almira and the, the Vectra, we got rid of both of them,
because they both started displaying issues, Caroline at one point she ended up with a red
voxel corsa, which she just couldn't get on with, so we got a shot of that as well,
and then I, I think when Caroline had the voxel corsa still,
hang on let me work this one out, I think when, when Caroline had the voxel corsa still,
I bought myself from a friend of ours, and I know we bought from a friend before and it was
a bad experience, at least I knew that this car had been looked after, and that's the car I'm
actually driving at the moment, which is my very trusty voxel corsa and lupo, which was actually
the voxel corsa and equipment, the satire rosa I believe, the satire rosa came out first,
when the VHG group bought sat, they then created a voxel version of the aerosol called the lupo,
and it is, it's a tiny car, it really is legally a Caroline fit for, four people in it, two in the
front, two in the bag, there's no room for a middle, a middle passenger in the back seat,
and we had that as a solo car for quite a while, which meant that we couldn't travel anywhere,
as a family, and I remember that Christmas, we arranged to go down and see my parents,
sorry my mum and stepdad, in order to do that, we had to hire a car so that we could,
we could actually go down there as a family, and we figured that that is just no way of doing it,
and I wanted to keep this car because it is incredibly, and I mean, seriously, seriously economical,
it does about 70 miles to the gallon of diesel, sorry I didn't mention it was diesel,
the lupo, and yeah, amazing car, saved me an absolute fortune on fuel, to have this car,
rather than the Almira, I think it was a petrol car, the Almira, and I think it was doing me something
like 28 miles to the gallon, so it was constantly unfortunate in fuel when I was doing best
apart of 100 miles a day, yeah, well that one out, so yeah, we had to do something about the
fact that we couldn't go around as a family in this car, so we went to, what's it called?
Oh, crumbs, I can't remember the place, it's another car supermarket in a car people, that was it,
a car people in Sheffield, and we were going for a look, in quotes, we went for a look, close quotes,
to see what cars were available, and what it was that we wanted to look for in a car,
so we took the whole family and we went around this car supermarket looking at cars,
oh there were some lovely cars there, they really were, and they were kind of in the price range
we wanted to pay, and I think we saw a say out of ether, which is, sorry, a say out of lay-on,
which is quite a nice sort of small family car, and there was a Peugeot 306, we saw
I think there might have actually been a Rena Magan, was it a Magan or whatever the larger version,
a Rena scenic that we saw that would have been, would have been really nice, anyway, when we were
walking around, we clocked these cars, we'd shortlisted some of these cars, you're going to
overtake this on our issue, we shortlisted some of these cars, and we ended up with the say out
lay-on, which musically I'm actually following a say out there on another moment, say out lay-on,
a Rena Magan, because we determined that the scenic would have been too expensive,
and this Peugeot 306, so we went back and revisited them, and looked at the prices,
the features you were getting for it, the mileage, we basically went through and
totten up everything, and we asked a look at two of the cars, and I can't what the other car was,
but one of the cars we did also look at in detail was the Peugeot 306, and we all took turns
in sitting in it, Alex sat in it, the girls sat in it, Caroline sat in it, and it felt comfortable,
but then we asked Alex to get out, and he wouldn't, he said, I don't want to get out of this car,
so we kind of took that as a sign that maybe this is the car we wanted, and it was an ex-motivability,
excuse me, an ex-motivability car, motivability is a scheme in the UK where people who have
motivability issues, they buy cars on their behalf, and basically rent them out to the people
they need them, so it was a well-kitted out car, it was an incredibly low mileage car, and that's
very much the case with motivability cars, they tend to be low mileage, and it kind of ticked every
box, so we asked for a test drive, so both Caroline and I went and test drove this car, and we went
out for just driving the local industrial estate road, and yeah, we both absolutely adored the car,
so we ended up getting it, so that's where we are now, we have two cars, me with my, excuse me,
I should have brought a glass of water, a glass of water, a bottle of water, me with my
box of open loophole, which I am driving at the moment to work, I've been recording 30 minutes
so far, and probably about a mile from work, so this worked out quite well, and Caroline, well,
Caroline with the family car, so when we go places, we're going the family car, if it's long driving,
I tend to drive, but Caroline does enjoy driving the car as well, so there we go, I hope you
enjoyed that, for the benefit of those of you listening on HPR, there will be four show notes
with the details of all the cars, and a rough chronology of the years, we had them, if you're
listening on anchor, well you're going to get this episode today at the time of recording 15th of
September, the guys at the Hacker Public Radio will get it later than that, depending on when the
next available slow show slot is, which then raises the point, that if you're not listening to Hacker
Public Radio, you should be, so Hacker Public Radio dot org, I'm not going to get into too much
detail about it because for those that are actually on Hacker Public Radio, you already know about it
because you're listening, yay, so I suppose I should wind down, because it's Friday, I will be
doing some planning this evening, all this afternoon, this evening for tonight's episode of the
Bugcast, episode 479 will be broadcast live tonight, you're very welcome to join us if you're listening
on anchor, join us tonight for episode 479 over at thebugcast.org slash live, if you're listening
on, oh, nicely done, if you're listening on Hacker Public Radio then we'll just go to the Bugcast.org
and find out when the next show is, it's probably going to be on Friday. I have been podcasting for,
this is my 10th year podcasting now, released my first episode in March 2008, so in March 2018,
which is only three months away, we'll be celebrating both 10 years and also our 500th
episode of the Bugcast. I am on other podcasts as well, historically more, but other podcasts have
kind of like faded and ended up on hiatus, but I'm now a regular on tuxjam, which you can find at
tuxjam.otherside.network. I am a regular contributor to CC Jam, oh that reminds me, I should have put a
CC Jam out this week, plum, my episode as well, at ccjam.otherside.network. I appeared on
episode or two episodes in fact of the Ubuntu podcast, which I'm really, really quite psyched about,
hopefully they'll even be back. And other ones as well, including Hacker Public Radio and of course
my iPodcast here on anchor, which has become my audio blog. So I am now turning right
into the estate. So the drive this morning, woo, let's start on a ride about it. The drive this
morning has taken me from Connys Bratt in South Yorkshire in the UK to New Olatin in North Nottingham
shire. So it's about 28 miles. I recorded this at the point I started the car, so it's taken me 35
minutes, which actually isn't bad at all. Not bad at all. It's kind of a slalom as I get in here,
sort of turn right then left then right then left. But I am now turning into Alcar Park.
And my breakfast buddy is here. On a Thursday usually, me and the colleague that I've known for
many many years, we have Cook Breakfast here at the office. And he wasn't in yesterday, so I had
Cook Breakfast on my own, you know, Billy Noe makes in the restaurant. So we said we would do breakfast
on Friday as well. So he's in and I am now parked up and I'm going to switch this off. I'm going
to go in and I'm going to enjoy myself a rather hacking breakfast. So with that having been said,
thank you very much for listening. If you've got this far, please do leave a comment. It'd be nice
to know what cars you've got. If you're listening on Hacker Public Radio, why not record an episode
about your car, yourself? Do the book.
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