Episode: 2989
Title: HPR2989: 2019-2020 New Year Show Episode 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2989/hpr2989.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 14:34:02

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 2989 for Thursday 16 January 2020.
Today's show is entitled, Hacker Public Radio 2019 20 New Year Show Episode 1.
It is hosted by Kevin Wischer and is about 141 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
8th Annual New Year Show, Senbrings Toys.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honest Host.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 Honest Host.com.
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Good morning, sir. How are you? I'm doing fine. How are you? I'm awake.
Good, good, good. Looks like mumble is recording. I'm recording it here.
That's what the ZHPR stream in LL.
And the ZStream is Kevin's one, I think. Yeah, I think you're right.
Just do some social media stuff now.
What's your social media outlets that you post?
Facebook, Mastodon, Twitter.
I did a Twitter and Mastodon last night.
Did you see yours coming through? What's your Mastodon handle?
Let me follow you.
It's probably not what you already did.
I can talk to you through 01.
Nine minutes. Yeah, one day two hours still.
I know I'm following you. I just saw your post.
I'm just trying to figure out which version of Mastodon I'm on.
It's just honking my goo.
Oh, there you go.
At honking my goo at my Zanda Cloud.
One moment. One second.
I'm following you. All right. How come I haven't seen that post?
Oh, I wouldn't screw anything up. I'm trying to post it.
Thank you. I think you did.
Ah, there it is. It's in my time.
From school now far enough.
Okay, excellent.
So it's just HBUR.
I have a own Facebook page that is a question.
I don't want to just do some walking out and walking in here.
Okay, five minutes.
Okay, what are we forgetting?
I'm not sure.
Do you feel like we're forgetting something?
Or is it...
Oh, just general...
Forgetting this service.
We've done the same times.
You think we know better?
I don't know. I feel good.
I'm down here on time.
What I'm going to do is I'll put a QR code thing for the livestream on.
I don't know.
How was that help?
A QR code. Did he just have it?
I'm supposed to be the point in doing that.
But...
The fun of generating a QR code for something?
Yes.
That's part of the reason why we do some stuff. I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, your rights are...
I need no other reason than that.
Two minutes.
All right, just done.
What's on the QR code?
That's on the HBUR.
Let's see what happens.
Okay, now I will count the number of seconds until I hear myself.
Counting the number of seconds on the livestream.
One.
I know we want to.
In seven seconds, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Two.
One.
Hi, everybody. My name is Ken Talan.
Joining me today is...
I'll keep it going.
And we're here to welcome you to the eighth annual New Year Show.
What is the New Year Show?
It's basically just one very, very long recording
that anyone can hop on and say Happy New Year and sit around and talk.
We're now desperately checking to make sure the stream is working.
Seems to be.
And for no reason at all, I have a QR code on the website.
But, okay, fine. Seems to be working.
But my recording of the Mixdown doesn't seem to be working.
Oh, that's not good.
Yeah, this was started what eight years ago by Poki?
Yeah, I reckon.
And I believe was originally...
Sorry, you dropped out there?
We may never know what this said.
Going. And I believe Kevin is doing a stream recording.
Right, let's see if this helps.
Nope.
So, testing, testing, one, two, three.
Hello.
No, it doesn't seem to be...
Riding to disk for somebody to try it again.
Nothing.
Why is it doing this to me?
20H.
Could that be 20Us?
Tony, your lips are moving, but we can't hear you.
We still can't hear you, dude.
Can you hear me roasting?
So, Tony's joined us.
Can't hear him.
My recording data doesn't seem to be working.
All flying samba share.
Even though I was working earlier on.
Fantastic.
This is exactly how the new show was supposed to go.
The only I could say is at least I woke up and I was here on time this year.
Yeah, excellent.
And that was no recording of it.
At least somebody said, we're going to try the old turning it off
and on again.
Oh, too bad.
Wonder what that has helped.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
No, I'm just going to boot this box.
Don't see what happens.
The issue with the recordings is they get quite large.
So you need external disks.
I thought I'd mounted to a sift share that we use for like YouTube videos and stuff like that.
That's not working out.
True.
That's why it's usually good to record the stream.
And that's also why I just set up team viewer on this.
So because if it's like if also after like a certain amount of time,
if the recording seems to decorate.
Julie.
So it doesn't look a little bit.
Yeah, I team viewer on this.
So about I might just set alarm for like every three hours or so.
I'm going to stop recording and start recording.
But I can do it from wherever we still can't hear anything.
And connect it again.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
So it's recording started.
And there is a mobile recording over there.
So that's fantastic.
We'll see you then Tony.
I might be on around noon.
I don't remember.
All depending what the day gives.
I'm here working in the back room anyway.
As I do.
That's not interesting.
So I'm now going to switch these.
So it's all amounts all the stuff.
Let's see how far that goes by putting.
Reno auto get rid of no auto beginning of the line in the test tab file.
Attempting to sprinkle some technical content into the New Year's show there.
Our bound to have a little.
Now we're bound to have discussions about guns soon.
Hand food.
Yeah.
Yeah, probably no harm to mention at this point that views expressed on the New Year show.
All 26 hours of a do not necessarily represent the views of the HPR community.
Or any of us putting on the show.
Just for your information reviews are those of the people themselves.
And maybe regression.
Depending on the amount of alcohol they have or have not in their bodies at any given time.
That may not be obvious to everybody that that is the case.
But that is kind of the whole point of this HPR New Year show.
It's just come in chill out.
Hey, yeah, have a good time.
Okay, yeah, no, no, I'm just reiterating what you said.
Yeah, good, good.
Nobody's still sleepy or I can hang out for a while.
What time is this?
Yeah, that's the other thing we do in the New Year show. What time is it there?
Five o'clock, five, ten now.
Do you have work on today?
No, I took off.
I worked Christmas Eve and then I'm off until the second.
Cool, that's my spirit.
It's a nice time to have off.
Nice time to spend them with the family.
Well, let's try this again.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
My kids have found the light show on HPR and now listening on their mobile phones.
I'm laughing.
Come over here and laugh into the thing so everybody could hear you laughing.
She can't even move now. She's laughing so fast.
Breathe in.
So funny.
Okay, that stream seems to be recording again.
Yeah, some back to the topic of annoying teenagers.
Anyway, time and date.com.
That should also be on the website because it's quite useful.
And she's just sent the link to the entire family WhatsApp group.
Great.
That's how the Schnee, because I'm working here in the back room so I can go.
Schnee, come get me a hammer, please.
Have you eaten your breakfast?
No, don't realize what to do.
Chapman Islands have just had their new year.
Hello, go ahead over.
What did you say?
Don't they know that the dad sits in the back room with podcasts and whatnot?
Usually they're watching TV or something while I'm doing it.
My wife just calls it.
I'm going down to the basement to be a gig.
Yeah, very nice.
I'm going to link into the days in time.
Is there anything cool for Christmas?
Nope.
We have the one in that period where we had center clouds here in the fifth of December.
And then that kind of kids we can get a little bit old from that now.
Oh, we don't really do the Christmas present thing.
What was on the fifth of the summer?
It's a center cloud.
St. Nicholas.
He comes in a steamboat from Spain, et cetera.
That's cool.
I'm not sure about that.
Yeah, there's Santa Claus, Father Christmas, since Universal.
They're saying to St. Nicholas, whatever comes over various different forms around the Christmas period.
So from December, right into January, kids are getting presents in different parts of the world.
It's a good YouTube video.
I'm going to find it and put it into the show notes because we should keep them track of the show notes.
Shivna.
That's the guy Shivna.
He's in a Christmas video.
So basically just at some point in December, people get gifts and that's it.
Pretty much so.
So you guys really don't have like that whole Christmas season type of thing?
What do you know?
Yeah, we do.
We have the, we have a, okay.
St. Nicholas on what happens is there's a news report that St. Nicholas is leaving Spain, yeah.
And he has a boat and he's got all these helpers on it.
And that's a controversial now because they're all in blackface.
Originally, it was, St. Nicholas was a taken from the story of St. Nicholas who was a Turkish saint,
a saint from around Turkey.
And he had a helper who was from a moor from forever.
So that's where the blackface comes from.
So in, where that culture has gone to the U.S.
They still do a simple class of Swartipit with, you know,
Bishop dressed as a bishop and then somebody from the African American community comes and acts as the helper.
But that's was going on here.
So this is where the controversy is.
So they had.
They had years to fix this because it was being commented on for years here.
And they tried to get away from the blackface.
And basically there was people who did not that and because it's a tradition.
And so that's a whole thing.
But anyway, if we can leave that aside for a minute, then he comes on the boat with all these helpers.
And then he goes to his house for about four weeks.
And you leave out your shoe, the chimney.
And then you write your letter into and you put it in the shoe.
And then for us, it was every Saturday, you sing songs down the chimney.
And then the simple class hears these songs.
And then we'll deliver you.
We'll take your letter and we'll leave you some small gift like a bag of chocolate coins or some marzipan figurines and stuff like that.
And a lot of some other kids, depending on the.
On the situation, they might get larger presents and stuff.
And then.
On honor around the fifth of December, some people do it on the fifth of December, always, which.
It's not a national holiday.
So you don't get that they all.
They do it in the evening.
We tended to do it on Saturday afternoon.
They peace would arrive in your house and knock on the door or in the attic or something.
And then you would search the house and you find a paper note, a pepper like him.
But we're in the short for paper notes.
Pepper notes, little, little.
Little Chuck biscuit type.
Things that are associated with this time of the year.
And then you would find bags for the presents, you bring them down, you open them and you sing thank you to central clouds of the chimney and then a way you go.
That's the summary of that.
Surprisingly, I know it sounds complicated, but it is actually surprisingly well done because it's all coordinated with the children's TV.
The main national TV station has.
It has like live broadcast and comment and stuff like that.
And they have stories and they have each of the individual piece are.
Are like there's a one piece looks after a horse.
And then there's another one that is managing the household and stuff like that.
How long have they been doing this?
As long as Santa.
Perhaps I'll put a link there in the show notes to the video after the fifth.
It's all done.
Yeah, pretty much.
And then you have then the switches to kind of Christmas, not instantaneously switches to Christmas.
And yeah, people don't tend to give.
It's more for a gift given between adults, but it's not like they.
It's like 600 euro, 1000 euro that you get in Ireland or place like that.
It's like well, for us, it's not.
It's definitely nothing.
Nothing we get.
We tend to get books for the kids or this year we got like family puzzles, cheeks up puzzle.
Just have something under the tree.
Wow.
I'm going through my Facebook polls and four people have like marked myself safe during.
Scary.
Of course.
I only go through my Facebook once a year.
Marked you as safe.
I don't know Facebook.
What does that mean?
Marked you as safe.
Something somebody marked herself as safe during the Gilroy garlic festival shooting.
Oh, got you.
Okay.
I'm going to call it up.
One year's worth of Facebook in five minutes we're done.
It's not like I wasn't done next year.
I'm on Facebook with the only thing I find people I follow are family members.
So.
Yeah.
I kind of go on maybe like once a month just kind of scroll through just to get caught up with the family and then you'll.
Yep.
All right.
Then again, I think about the only social media platform that I.
Really keep up with would be probably me we and that's usually just because any type of.
Stuff I find for the log cast I kind of any articles I find for the log cast I kind of throw in there.
Which probably mentioned this called the HBR New Year show, but it actually should be the Linux log cast New Year show.
Given the amount of work you guys doing us because I'm not doing anything for.
Well, Kevin gave up on the log cast.
He doesn't need in one of participate anymore.
So it's pretty much just me who's the representing the log cast here.
Okay.
It's good.
I do constantly follow the log cast.
So I always fear now since tattoos.
Made the comment about you know people pop fading and not knowing the people who are listening to them.
I religiously listen to the log cast.
Thank you.
We're going to miss 50 this year.
To be honest, he would be on by now.
Yep.
And he probably would have been most of the gun conversation too.
And the beer conversation truth we told.
Yeah, I had promised to go out and shoot all some firearms on his farm.
And the firearms safely way have a few beers and discuss guns with him.
Also, alas, that's for the past.
Yeah, 2019 has not been a fantastic year.
No, it's been a bad year for me mentally.
A lot of mental mental health.
And she said, you know, just down and depressed.
I'm sorry about that.
Yeah, it catches up.
It's not a lot.
It's like you're walking along and you fall into a well.
You're in the well and then you have to drag yourself out.
And then once you're out, if you find yourself in the well.
Yeah, there's hopefully this year will clear up that.
I can't really comment on what's causing it.
But, yeah, hopefully this year.
Sort as well.
Still positive.
Focus on the things and get enough sleep.
Getting enough sleep is key.
That's true.
I can honestly say most of my depression is focused mostly around work.
Yeah.
Also, can you not say?
No, I can say.
I don't see why I couldn't.
I have spent the last 23 years working in food retail.
I am a produce manager for a local grocery store chain.
It is a horrible miserable job.
It's a lot of people who take basically a grocery store way too seriously.
It's a grocery store.
You put this stuff on the shelf.
It's especially in my department where it's quality is key.
That you're putting out the best possible quality.
It's not rocket scientists.
People don't need to lose their absolute minds over it.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, those jobs that started out as being a pretty darn good job that you felt good about.
And then over the years, it just kind of went downhill.
I, yeah, that's not good.
Well, it's also one of those things where I had.
So I started back when I was 16 and now just about 40.
It was one of those things where the, I wasn't going to go off to college because I wanted to do something and the computer science area.
And all the colleges wanted, wanted you to be pretty darn good at math to get into their computer science courses.
So I was horrible at math.
So I wasn't going into any computer science courses.
I took everything that my high school had, which was just pure garbage.
So I started off working there part time at, like I said, at 16.
And I saw a lot of people who, let's see, when I first started there, they were getting free.
But their healthcare was being, was free.
We didn't pay for it.
People were getting paid decent money for doing a job that was, you know, to the halfway easy job to do.
They just basically got to get yourself kind of embedded in because we're a union.
And, like, I saw a lot of people working there who had degrees and stuff who just weren't able to find any work that, you know,
that, you know, they're now prime way of making money was working at this grocery store.
So, I don't know, after a while, I'm just like, I'm here.
I'm making a living.
I have decent healthcare.
What's that?
What's the point of a degree if somebody, you know, if you're doing the same job?
Right.
Yeah. Sorry, Cariel.
No, I'm sorry.
It's just, so I just kind of got myself stuck there.
I've always kind of wanted to get out and do something else, but I've just kind of gotten, you know, kind of comfortable.
Even in the misery, I've gotten kind of comfortable, you know.
After so many years, you start to know lots of people there.
So you're friendly with a lot of people.
And even though the, you know, it feels like over the years, people, the management higher up, it seems to every time they change, they change the rules for everything.
They change what they're, what they're going to get all excited and crazy about and, you know, it starts to wear on you after a while, but I mean.
So when I go, if I, I'm at a point where if I go and try and find another job, I have to find another job where I can make what I'm making right now.
And then I also have to include the fact of, so over the years, my healthcare is no longer free, but I'm paying for it a lot less than I do for.
Then just about everybody else in the United States pays for healthcare.
Yeah, basically, I see where you're coming from.
So to find another job, I need to find a job where I can get into and then at the same time make when I'm making right now.
And also added in the fact of it. So the, I'd have to find a job that I make when I'm making plus not have that taking away of the healthcare.
So it's, I don't have no problem saying that I, I only pay about, I'll say $30 or less a week for my healthcare.
And it's a family plan, okay, which comes to about 120 a month, which is really cheap, especially for there's a lot of people who pay probably about 400 a month, if not more.
Okay, so if I find another job, I got to find one that's also equal in healthcare and pay and I'd rather be doing just about anything IT wise, but I mean, kind of stuck at the moment.
And there's no way to transition into IT from your position.
Well, so again, we're, we're in a union, we're a grocery store, we're a union grocery store.
So to move into the IT department, IT department was actually outsourced to a different company.
And, or they just, they took all the IT people and they brought them into that company type of a thing.
I know the guy who's in charge of the IT type stuff for the area.
Basically, if, if I'm going to get to anything IT, I need to probably go get the, through the, um, company A plus.
And actually back in February, I got so the A plus right now, it's two tests.
It's the 1001 and the 1002.
Back in February of this year, I did the 1001, which is mostly kind of hardware related, some general networking type stuff.
The 1002 seems very operating system focused and by operating system focused 90% of it is window stuff, which over like.
I knew a lot more back in like Windows 7 XP, but now with the eight, eight, one and 10 days, I really don't know a whole lot.
Because I've been out of it for so long.
Yeah.
Basically, what I need to do is fire up a VM and just kind of shove my head into it for a while and went through some videos on some stuff that they're going to be asking for.
And I just, I really just need to get that piece of paper and that piece of paper at least open up a few doors.
Yeah, but then you're going to be transitioning from, uh, from your employer and from a union and terms of work and stuff.
Yeah, it's a bit of a gamble all right.
Yeah.
And that's if I can do it going to keeping with the company on one.
Yeah.
One of the, one of the advantages of, so I live probably, I want to go approximately 60 miles out of Boston.
I have no plans on commuting from where I live to Boston, but I could probably, the outskirts of Boston has a lot more IT jobs than, you know, our near where I live.
So.
Yeah.
That's, yeah.
That's another thing to factor in.
Commute times.
It kills me.
Uh, three hour commuter day.
Oh damn.
Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, I work from home one of the days.
So that's not too bad.
But, uh, yeah.
It's essentially you're doing another day and a half, uh, just wasting communication.
A lot of podcasts listening.
Yeah.
That's where my interest in podcasting developed from.
Yeah.
Well, that too.
But on the other hand, you move to another company.
There's no guarantee that you're not going to be dealing with the same, you know, management.
Turn over paying and stuff.
So.
Yeah.
Um, all in favor of saying following your dreams and do what you love doing and stuff.
On the other hand, there's also a pragmatic, uh, you know, a pragmatic approach.
Recognize what you have.
And are you going to be able to get, uh, you know, that sort of by moving career to do something you love to do.
Is there going to be an additional commute?
Are you going to be able to put bread on the table, you know, stuff like that?
It's, it's all very well.
To say, yeah, I'm grass is going your far away, you know what I mean?
Sorry, I'm not very coherent in what I'm trying to say is if I was in that situation, I don't know if I would transition from the job that I was in.
No, I'm with you.
And that's one of the reasons why I've been here for so long.
And also, I, yeah, I don't know what career wise what's is IT the way to go now because, uh, I mean, people are outsourcing IT departments left right inside there.
They're all going to be off short.
They're the days of Windows computers to be honest are, are few and far between now.
It's only a matter of time before they're like replaced with some sort of Raspberry Pi 5 running Docker container that's centrally.
Sent out from the server.
Why would you do it on the other way?
Just if we are decorating everything in the cloud, why, why would you, why do you go to all this hassle with everybody having Windows PCs and stuff?
Just I don't see the future being Windows anymore.
And that's very true too, but at the same time, they're going to need somebody and they need one of us physical monkeys to go down there and swap out the Raspberry Pi's or whatever.
Yeah, but that's a, that's still a far cry from that's like stocking, uh, you know, stocking vending machine sort of a level of skill as opposed to, would you be better off focusing on managing Docker containers, managing the cloud, managing.
I'm, you know, getting in time as on web services or the Red Hat equivalent, learning that sort of stuff, because that you can do it from anywhere.
That's true too, but I don't know what are the first stepping stones to getting into that.
The Linux Academy has an introduction to AWS course, which occasionally is up for 10 bucks.
I normally would steer people away from free courses or from proprietary courses, but in this case, it's a proprietary platform anyway.
But, uh, so that has been very useful to me because if you, it takes the jargon and then you realize, hey, when they're talking about the cloud and they're talking about regions, they're not actually, they're just talking about data centers, the rebranded data center.
Oh, region is a data center is it, it is yes, and your secure, you know, s3 storage, that's, oh, that's just a bunch of disks in a sort of radar A probably that's underneath that's, you know, an abstraction there.
So by just following that course, it gives you a very quick overview of the jargon and then it takes the scariness of the whole Internet of, you know, Internet and the cloud thing away.
And then a lot more comfortable listening to stuff that plateau is doing, which will show you how they're physically doing this cloud based computing and docker using namespace tricks on the Linux kernel.
So all this Linux stuff that you have in your back pocket suddenly becomes very obvious what they're at.
I would, you know, do your, do your certification as well there, but have a look at those courses and see if it is something that spend a little time watching them and you might think, hey, that's a direction I can go in.
Because believe me, there are a lot of bluffers in that area now at the minutes.
First off, I'm not sure I'll ever reach a point where I can fully understand what plateau is saying. I listened to me.
I would like to say that.
I could, but I, I'm kind of off and on with the new world order because there are times when I start to listen to my mind starts to kind of drift away and I go, but I feel like I knew some of that, but not enough to fully grasp what I'm hearing.
This man is on a whole other level.
Second off, I always wanted to get a coffee mug that's just said, I saw it, I saw a while back, but I still want to grab it.
It says the cloud is just somebody else's computer and it's got a little picture of a cloud on it.
Let's see if I can find a link to them.
I love to do something and I'm not sure whether if I just go for the A plus exam to have that in my pocket because that that's certifications are one of those things where you can kind of walk up and kind of hand to somebody and say, hey, look at that.
I can do this and I don't have a degree of computer science in my pocket to be able to do that too.
I actually went to my local community college and got a certificate in computer repair, which was basically supposed to be a kind of a way to get you to the A plus exam.
The problem being I finished that exam run about the same time I got promoted at my other job and then the promotion and that job.
So I basically became a produce department head or a produce manager from the same time I finished those courses and classes and I was.
I basically got I got promoted and I got said to a store that was about an hour away from when I live on a good day.
So it I became very I came very involved in my new position and stuff and this kind of fell by the way side and as far as A plus stuff kind of goes again you're talking about.
In 2009 window seven just came it you know came to be so it's it's all kind of past all that knowledge is now almost useless but you know not necessarily useless but almost useless.
I'd love to do something more I love to get either a networking or Cisco because I really like the idea of I like networking I think it's I think networking is cool.
But again I can't necessarily do a remote job doing networking which is kind of the dream.
That seems very strangely we have we have a department that says if my employees can't work remote then they're not qualified to be network people.
But that's their philosophy that everything should be manageable remotely you should never have any piece of equipment that is not remotely manageable.
That's this big change coming in that as well if you think in networking the whole concept of of how networking has been done and basically how we've been taught in the past mostly the Cisco command line interface that's the days that the days of that is numbered as well.
Looking at software defined networking there's a lot to talk about it and that's really becoming something that you should also have a look into and have an exploration of.
That is true.
You've got EPGs coming up as well they called again.
Endpoint groups that's it here application control endpoint groups so basically the whole thing is running on virtual servers and commodity servers as well.
And then you then you control that you control basically by having what seems to be like a computer program of if this and that.
And the way they wire up data centers now using their spine and spine and leaf, spine and leaf technology very interesting as well completely new way of seems like a new way of doing stuff to get maximum throughput guaranteed throughput simplification of the network stuff like that all going to be changing very very soon.
But that's the thing with a career in IT if you want a career in IT you need to be you need to expect that the stuff that you know now will be obsolete in two years which is why I like the fact that there's so much unique stuff because even though things are changing at the end of the day Amazon may be calling us one thing.
But under the hood it's just a post best database or the might be calling it something else but under the hood it's just routing tables.
But you have to be prepared to learn relearn everything for two years what you need to need to know and remember you only need to be one step ahead of everybody else one Google search ahead of the next guy or doctor go in.
I just need to nip upstairs and get a screwdriver I'll be back in about five.
I think I'm going to nip upstairs and start another cup of coffee.
Happy new year.
Happy new year can you hear me?
I can't I can hear you.
How do I sound?
You sound great net minor.
How's things going?
Well I have a back kicking up but I'm doing pretty good otherwise.
Yeah I suffer from back problems so I know what that feels like.
Anyone else on with us at the moment?
I guess honky is just streaming.
I don't.
It was around it was around about an hour ago when I bobgain just to check me sound and it wasn't working and then I've just twigged
away it wasn't working because I've got a microphone mute key set hotkey set up on my computer and then the mic was mutated.
That's why I was having problems.
Yeah well I have a few problems myself sometimes half the time I'll boot up and there'll be a patch to mumble
or something and I have to re-initialize.
Yeah well when we record Mintcast we don't use push to talk we just have a mute key that we set so we use voice activated.
So when I've gone into changing it to push to talk I've forgotten my mic might actually be quiet.
By the way.
Yeah.
Yeah I've got got something to say about Vox you know speech activated.
Alright yeah go on.
I was listening to YouTube and somebody was doing some SDR software defined radio and he found this unusual pattern that he recorded.
Evidently somebody had fallen asleep with voice activation enabled.
So it recorded all sleep talk.
So he was broadcasting over the ham radio his snores.
That's a good one I like that.
I don't need to get your thing connected.
I was just saying to that minor what it was I'd let I've got a hotkey set up to mute me mic for when we do the Mintcast recording.
Because we don't use push to talk we use voice activation and I'd for some reason be Mike was still muted.
You set up push to talk here I imagine.
I have I've got my space bar set up as the push to talk key.
I'm going to be doing some dismantling of shells.
I'm going to disappear and go and get something to eat.
But like I said I just bobbed in just to check everything was working again.
So I'll put the mute sign up on me.
I'll be back about midday.
Well happy new year if I don't manage to bump into you.
I have been I have a list that needs to be processed today.
Right. So you're not going to be out.
You're not going to be on this afternoon then.
I'm going to be listening.
Both.
I'll be I'll be pottering away here in the backroom.
I need to we have a bathroom upstairs and there are builders are coming in next week.
So in order for that everything that's in the attic needs to move down in order for that needs to be space made out here in order for that.
You know big long long list of stuff that needs to be done.
I'll be listening.
But anyway, happy new year.
You're going to foster me at all though.
No, I'm not going to foster them.
No, it's not on my calendar.
It was nice to meet up with you at an odd camp in person.
Yeah, I put a call out on the odd camp discord page to tell them I was going to be around about 12 o'clock.
So there might be a few odd campers on here later.
Very good, very good.
Do you know Dave's joining some stage during the day?
Traditionally, he doesn't know he has a life.
He's done to like to do that.
He's not.
I know that's the one day of the year where he gets on.
Oh, well, that said I have two shows that he needs to process later on today.
So I'll do those as well.
OK, we're going to go get screwdriver.
Talk to you later.
All right.
Talk to you later again.
Bye.
Hello, Poppy.
Hello.
Poppy.
Hi, Dave.
Hello.
Can you hear me OK?
Yes.
We can hear you.
You sound very professional.
It's Sunday morning.
Yeah.
It's a bluesy sound.
Welcome to the bluesy sound of Hack Hope Public Radio.
How are you doing?
I'm doing OK.
I'm working here in the back room.
I'm trying to convince my daughter to do a HDR show, but she refuses to do it.
It's only a matter of time.
I agree.
She should totally do it.
What is life in the Ubuntu community?
Quiet at the moment over Christmas.
Everyone's...
So canonical shuts down for two weeks over Christmas.
We're very lucky in that regard.
And that means most of the IRC channels and mailing lists and everything are pretty quiet over Christmas.
Everyone goes away.
In fact, someone put an announcement on one of the forums that said,
um, FYI, canonical shuts down for two weeks.
If you see any canonical employees, feel free to tell them to get lost.
Yeah, very good.
Very good.
Sorry, I was laughing off push to laugh.
No, excellent.
We have the same as all my communication channels have just completely quiet.
And the Ubuntu podcast is also off.
Yeah, we're on a break.
Yeah, we're on a break until we go up for curry.
It's, um, it's nicely timed, actually, because Mark obviously has had a baby.
And that means he's got other things to focus on.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Tell me, uh, did everything go okay with the birth?
Yes, everything is good.
Uh, little baby girl, everything's cool.
Um, but, uh, you know, our priority is obviously the podcast.
And, uh, whether, whether they'll, uh, Mark will be able to find time and quiet room in order to do the recording.
I just don't know.
So it may well be we don't come back next year or if we do maybe marks in it.
Maybe he's, maybe he's not.
Maybe we recorded differently.
I don't know.
Um, one of the things I like about it is we don't have to commit, you know, we can, we can.
It's one of the things I feel, I feel bad for you because, you know, this commitment, the HPR has to put out these episodes constantly.
And, uh, you know, I worry that you don't have this queue and, you know, we can relax and just like say, yeah, we'll be back when we're back and, you know.
Well, with us, it's, uh, I used to really panic about that at the beginning, but then when we took the commitment that what we will keep doing is until we don't have any more shows.
And then when we don't have any more shows will, you know, like Curry night will, we call it a nice and say, thank you very much to the community and close down and, uh, and shut up the place up and make sure everything is sorted.
Hopefully, you know, people leave and, but thankfully also people come back into the community.
So there are any time there's a call for shows and people seem to step up to the mark. So that's great.
Nice. I try not to worry about it, basically.
I now have Dave and, uh, Mr. X who got two Raspberry Pis who flash lights as soon as the Q folds, but so a certain level and then they start panicking for me.
Oh, I love that. I love the idea of having a Raspberry Pi telling you when things are going south.
Yeah, it's, uh, I know we've also increased it so that, uh, we try and keep two weeks of Q of the Q fold.
That's kind of works out. Okay. And actually, after so many years, we get a feeling for when it's going to be quiet and when it's not going to be quiet.
What's not changing people along to get them? Yeah. And I kind of got worried if the Q is is low at particular times when I know that people will be start recording shows.
I don't worry too much about it, but a low Q going into the summer in the Northern hemisphere.
That's, that's something you need to tackle straight away.
I always think I'd have to do one of these, but I never feel like I know enough to be able to do well.
I never feel like I'm like a technical expert enough. I listen to some of them.
And I think, wow, these guys are like their brains are made of ones and zeros. And it's like I don't have technical capabilities to do this stuff.
This is one of the occasions where, uh, I'm glad I'm able to come over and respond to that because if I heard you coming out with that.
On your own show, are we gone? Are you, are you mental? You're one of the most technically competent people we know in the community.
No, if you're afraid of doing a podcast, come on. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? It's just that I guess it's that, um, I don't know that block.
I want you to get over that. I want you once you record a couple. I'm sure I'm sure it's fine.
But I, you know, I could sit here and stare out the window and think.
Um, what would I talk about, you know, and what, what would I talk about that people don't really know? Like I, you know, I could talk about something that I do in my day job.
But then I'd be thinking, well, these people know all of this or they've heard all this before or they've seen it or I'll come across as just a chill or, you know, what I just don't know what I would talk about.
People would find interesting. That's the problem.
For us, for somebody who I can not even vision not talking the whole time.
Yeah, I can't imagine that you even have a silent moment in your day, but okay.
Really? Oh, wow. This is amazing. I would never have put you down as somebody who would, who would be nervous about recording his parachute.
Now it's funny to say that there's, there's, there's, I think I think it's one of those things that we have perceptions of what other people are like.
And I, I recently revealed to the in-laws. We were, um, this sat around having Sunday lunch.
And I can't remember what it was. We were talking about going social social events or something parties or something.
And I revealed to them that I absolutely hate social events. I hate being around other people, especially people I don't know.
I really, really hate it. It's a personal hate. I feel really uncomfortable. And I, I would actually, I'm rather happy in my own company just sitting on my own.
And I'd rather like the rest of the family go to a party and I stay at home.
And that extends to standing on stage and like giving a talk.
I'm fine talking to a bunch of people on a stage, like giving a presentation or something.
But being in the same room with that same 500 people or whatever it is and having to actually talk to them personally one to one is a real personal fear.
And, and, and those kind of things when I explain them, they were like, but you love standing on stage and giving these talks.
I'm like, yeah, I do, but it's frightening doing it. It's absolutely frightening doing it. And I think that's the thing that people perceive you.
Yeah, you have a different outgoing, you know, visible personality than the one that's actually in your head.
Yeah, yeah, that's so much of that. I, I have personally, you're describing my own, myself as well.
Even when I was young, I would have no problem going in front of a stage of hundreds of people singing or doing drama or something.
But talking to those same people, just her, it's weird, isn't it?
And I have this saying, you know, when you go to camp or look radio as it was back in the day, standing outside with the telephone,
teleforming my wife, and it's now become a tradition where you go, what the hell am I doing here? Why am I here?
What these people don't know me, I'm, why am I actively going to a social event when I normally wouldn't, you know,
the last thing that I wanted to do?
Yeah, I feel the same way I'll camp actually. I'll camp's weird because there's a bunch of friends who I get on well with.
Exactly.
There's also one, yeah, who, who I would quite happily stand in the bar with the entire, you know, entirety of our camp and just stand in the bar and chat to.
And there are also, you know, complete strangers who I, I don't avoid, but I don't know them. And so there's this awkward conversation.
Well, it's awkward for me. I don't think it's, well, it may be awkward for them as well, but I have people coming up to me and say,
oh, I enjoy your podcast or whatever it is. And I say, thank you. And I have no idea who these people are, but they know who I am.
I'm, I'm sure you get the same thing. People know who can fall in this and they'll come and say hello.
I mean, I guess your face isn't all over the place as much as you know.
In fact, my goal in life is to be less famous than anybody just.
Okay.
So happens that I'm here. I'm a performer not to be.
But, yeah.
But, but when I'm, when I was a camp most recently, the one in, how was it, Manchester?
Manchester.
That's it.
It was a really good one this year.
I found myself going into a room and sitting right at the back or sitting at the edge, consuming the content, listening, you know, maybe engaging, maybe asking a question here or there.
And then getting up and walking out like straight away, I would avoid all the other people in the room.
And it's not that I don't like them or I have any reason not to want to speak to any of them.
It's just personally, I find it really hard to talk to those people to, to anyone who is, you know, a stranger or, you know, internet friend.
Yeah, it is.
No, I completely guess what you're, what you're on about.
I find that when I'm in the out camp mode, then I switch into the out camp mode.
But what freaks me out is if I'm in like a work mode or something.
And then I meet somebody from the, you know, HBR sort of life.
Then I need to completely reboot that thing.
Probably it's different for you because you're working for a canonical now, but, but you're always in the outcome mode.
Actually, I did, I did see a bit of that.
I was at a company event and we invited some people.
Where was it?
Seattle, I think.
No, Montreal.
And we would all flow now there with with a bunch of people.
And I didn't recognize the name of one of them as being someone who I've hung out with at Lug Radio Live in old camp, like 10 years ago, whenever it was.
And he walked in the room and I was in work mode.
And this guy walks in and I think, oh my god, I've had beer with that guy.
I recognize him.
And I'd actually invited him to get and not realize it, not putting two and two together and putting the names together.
Because you know, you see nick name all right.
Oh my god, it's you.
And so it was great because we're having social time.
And, you know, in the evenings we're having during the day being all professional.
But that context, which you have to do.
Oh, hang on.
This person is from another context.
I've got a switch into the personal life mode or all camp, you know, internet window mode or whatever it is.
Yeah, it's, it's kind of funny because my daughter is now listening to the live stream outside.
And she won't hear this for about seven seconds.
But, hang on.
You never listen to me normally during the day.
What the hell are you doing listening to me on the HVR?
Yeah, but you're different on the HVR.
Okay.
She's turned off the seven seconds as fast.
Say hi.
It's Poppy.
What?
It's Poppy.
That guy there, like P-O-P-E-Y.
Yeah.
I'm Schneid.
I'm Schneid.
I also don't want to do a HVR show.
Okay.
Hello, Schneid.
Hello.
She won't hear the hello for another seven seconds.
Okay.
I love a name, Schneid.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Beautiful name.
Okay.
If you don't, we are.
How about a Linux look?
Cass.
I'm a minor.
Hello.
So you broke up a little bit there.
I didn't hear a whole sentence.
Okay.
I think he's asking, would you do a Linux logcast then?
Oh, I'll go on anything.
Yeah.
See, this is the difference.
The difference between going on a, what you might call
a traditional podcast where other people are presenting,
and you're a guest, is they just ask you questions,
and you just, it's like a chat, right?
And I could do that.
That's fine.
In fact, I did it with Rocco,
does his community spotlight podcast,
and he contacted me and said, hey, do you want to go on this thing?
And I said, yeah, I'll be fine.
That was great.
And he said, I've got a set of questions that I'll send to you.
And I said, no, don't bother.
Don't send me questions.
I quite like being thrown questions cold.
And there's nothing, you know, if I don't want to answer it,
I won't answer it.
And if I, if I do, then I'll answer it.
And I quite like that.
I quite like the spontaneity of a non-scripted, you know,
set of questions.
But that's just like a conversation with a friend.
An internet friend.
Whereas HPR is very different.
Like, and I did one with Yannick on HPR,
two episodes where he interviewed me.
And that, again, was just like a podcast.
But me, cold, opening a microphone,
and then recording it, and then someone, me,
or someone doing the levels and audio editing,
and then putting it out is a very different prospect.
No, you just press records.
There's something you want to say, you press record,
you fill out the form and you send it in.
No editing or anything.
This is, this is, this is procrastination is the,
is the biggest enemy of HPR, you know,
if people stop procrastination.
You know what I'm saying?
And sorry, yes, my daughter now has decided to help me drilling.
So you know what I'm saying?
Drilling noise is always good on a podcast.
It's always good to get drilling noises in the background.
Cause it makes the list of things.
What are they drilling?
What are they doing?
It doesn't necessarily have to be technical, you know,
it can just be a soundscape or, like,
the podcast did a family outing where they were doing geocaching.
The HPR is of interest to hackers.
That can be anything.
Right, that's true.
And by the way, your thing on snap packages will be just perfect.
And you are like a snap package expert.
So yeah.
Yeah, I think I've got more snaps in the store under my name
than anyone.
I think I've got like 200 in the store or something stupid.
So yeah, I should be able to speak with some level authority.
But the reason I don't want to do that
is that I feel like that would be shilling.
Even though it is my job to shill,
because I'm a developer advocate for snap craft.
So that actually is my job.
Yeah, but on the other hand,
if I put out a request right now,
officially from the HPR community,
for a show based on a series based on snap craft,
then please can you do that and publish it here?
That doesn't fall under the heading of shilling
that falls under the heading of sharing your projects.
I see zero wrong with that.
And when I've interviewed people that forced them,
I've said to them,
look, guys,
if you've got cool and interesting stuff coming up,
use HPR as a release for that.
If there's too much of it,
then somebody will mention it on the mailing list and say,
guys, we're getting too much of this crap.
You can do it all somewhere else.
But right now, I see if you've been working on a project
for six months or a year or whatever
and you want to show people how to use it,
the source code is free and open source.
It's of interest to hackers.
Then you're done.
Okay.
I'll reconsider it then.
Shillowacer.
By the way, did you say push the laugh earlier?
I really like that phrase.
Yes, we have to push the laugh here with the...
Push the chuckle is...
Stolen from the...
Stolen from the U-Random podcast.
They pushed the chuckle quite a lot.
Oh, I love that.
That's really cute.
Actually, I was shilling for the Linux Logcast
to have the young lady come aboard one day.
I feel terrible now.
They actually want you on the Linux Logcast podcast.
I know what?
The Linux Logcast podcast.
It's a podcast.
A bit like HBR only it's live and it's every month.
And a logcast is only to use it.
So they have like a virtual one for people
who don't have a group locally.
And you come on to the mumble,
and then you have a chat and stuff.
Why do you...
Yes, we have...
Entirely too many gentlemen and not enough ladies, please.
Yeah, too many gentlemen, not enough ladies.
That is a problem on HBR as all.
I was half serious,
but I'll go to three quarters if the lady wants to join us.
Did you use Linux Logcast because I set up a Raspberry Pi for them
and then rather than put a UI on it,
they have to navigate using the console to play anything.
Well, I'm doing...
And I've got now two Linux machines up.
There is a local group.
And by the way, we're twice a month.
But I'm...
Yeah, sorry.
It's twice a month, obviously.
I'm seeing your Indian.
I don't know if I just sit there in the background
in case somebody wants to find something about ancient Linux,
ancient Unix technology, computer technology,
ARPANET,
ChaosNet, whatever.
All topics that are of interest hackers, there you go.
Yeah, well, I should do a little practice here.
Get my audacity up.
And then after I practice a little bit with audacity,
maybe I'll have the audacity to make a subject.
But also it's later on,
I'm planning on getting into a software defined radio.
And that's...
That may be something that I'll dig into deep enough to be worth responding to.
Yeah, we do have a Ham Radio series on there,
so pop them on.
And the rest of your software defined radio is always interesting.
Well, I'm not so much Ham as a random other stuff,
just after the side,
where to break in and how much to tear open the wallet.
Poppy, are you going to foster them by chance?
Poppy is on the side, muted.
Yeah, you could very well now be scrambling back to the microphone.
Can the apologies to the lady?
I did not want to chase her eye.
No, she's right here.
I have her slaving away.
I fully believe in child labor.
And he's calling you a lady.
You see? I would call you a brass person.
What?
I disagree.
No, take more than that to scare her away.
So how is life with you, nut minor?
Oh, my back's kicking up.
My cat's snoring.
Otherwise, I'm getting on pretty good.
No, I've had a long history of sore backs.
Not good, nothing.
Not good at all.
Now I need to start moving shelves and stuff in order to move a shelf and move the desks.
Where to move the desks to?
Because there's no space here.
It has to be a puzzle if I'm quiet, you know why?
So, nut minor, do you go to physical Linux user groups as well as the virtual ones online?
Well, I used to back in the days when I was running Windows 7.
I find ironic.
But they've been mucking with the subway between my area and MIT
where the users group is.
So I haven't gone in a while.
I haven't checked Boston Linux users group.
Haven't checked recently.
I've been to used to go to regular meetings and install tests and stuff.
Funny thing is now that I'm really using Linux, I haven't gone.
Funny how I think a lot of Linux users groups have changed in some ways that they were super popular when it was difficult to install Linux
and difficult to get yourself up and running with the applications you need.
And now it's a lot easier to install Linux.
I think the need for a Linux user group and having a support group of real physical people nearby to actually get the thing installed.
Obviously, you know, you still have technical problems that need solving.
But the actual getting over the initial hump of getting it installed is kind of not a necessity as much anymore perhaps.
No, I've been wrestling with everything from single core P4s to early AMD 64.
And I've been able to do a lot of stuff on my own as far as the install goes.
All the latest system was a bit of a trick trying to get a Linux that would install on it.
Optimus video graphics was the problem.
Yeah, it seems video cards are often the sticker at the moment.
And not just for like installs but for updates as well, you know, having an update that breaks your video card, you know, breaks the display.
So you get, I don't know, 1024x768 or even worse a black screen is something that we still need to do better at.
I was installing it to a laptop and before I had the Nvidia Xorg installed, it was getting all kinds of power events that it was not prepared to take.
And it took me a while searching through about a dozen different distros to find one.
Finally found Linux Lite would get installed and then I could install the Optimus driver set.
Now that may change with version 5 Linux kernels that have more Optimus support built in or what have you.
But it was a little tricky drove me crazy for about a week.
I can't remember the last time I went to my local Linux user group.
I think most of them were social things probably about a year ago, I think.
Well, I'm on the fringe of the Boston area.
What you might call reasonable public transportation.
It takes me maybe an hour to get an hour, an hour and a half to get into the core of Boston from here.
So when they were screwing with with that, it made the users group a lot more difficult to get to.
Also waiting somewhat on the pie for to age a bit.
Well, for the price to come down. No, for the capability to go up a little bit.
The video side is still a little weak, I think.
So I'd like to see raspberry go raspberry and go 64 bit.
What's the, what do you see as the benefit of a raspberry pie being 64 bit? That was my question.
It gave the reason the eight gig pie didn't come out is that right raspberry on a 32 bit.
Yeah, but the thing on a brick all the I 32 stuff.
They'll then have to have two separate images as well, one for the 32 bit only devices and one for 64 bit capable ones.
And I know they quite like having just download this one image and it works on any pie kind of thing.
Besides which, who needs eight gig in a raspberry pie?
I do cause we're using raspberry pies as main PCs now. Why?
I've never understood why. I mean, okay, they're low cost, but they're super inconvenient to use as a computer when you compare it with like a laptop, for example.
No, I disagree because you're and this is one of the major reasons I have issues with the way the Linux developer model is done.
People in the Linux development model are developers who have laptops and who for their daily grind are focused on their own use cases.
There are thousands upon thousands of workers out there who fill in order forms on their screens and they're using terminals.
They never, it's just a device that they're.
So here's what you have central location blasts out to raspberry pies.
I've already done a few episodes. You will not be surprised to hear about this.
Downloads the image, changes the keys, blast them out and you've got little SD cards running your generic terminals.
Then you come along with Ansible and you blast out all the updates to these things.
The break, not a problem. You go out, you have somebody trained, this is what a raspberry pie looks like here are the four different connectors.
If anything goes wrong, you take off this connector and you put in this new end of story.
They're completely, completely a usable device for the majority of business cases.
I don't believe majority of business cases, I believe some business cases.
As a European infrastructure manager for a major multinational for five years, I guarantee you 80 to 90% of the people using computers at that time would be more.
Than sufficient, having a raspberry pie in fact, it would be a lot better.
Simply because they're at on a factory floor, they're filling in the form.
You can, you can lock it down so that that's all that happens on that.
And then if they want to go play a game in their own time, take out the SD card, put in this SD card rebooted.
You're not on our network. You can play the game. You can do whatever you want.
But when you're finished, put back in the computer company one and you just blow it down.
So it becomes it becomes a commodity becomes it's not somebody gone in taking product from this side.
And I don't mean to demean the work that these people are doing far from it.
You know, the place I worked that we're doing like support equipment and it was critically important that they knew what they were doing and that they logged what they were doing.
And for that reliable computer is all you need and that that they're in is the raspberry pie.
Sure. And for that use case, fine, but not everyone does that kind of work.
And I'm not talking about developers. I'm just talking about office work is general office work is.
Don't use your office workers would also get away with doing it because you're connecting into a more PC run an Ubuntu on your own personal cloud.
Obviously, but who is processing stuff locally on their on the machine now?
You're using gyro.
A lot of people process stuff on their local machine because they want a bit they want the portability.
They want to be able to use it anywhere and sit on the train and process this stuff and not have to have be connected in order to do their work.
I agree with you.
From a board where have one area where computer users Linux has not won the desktop name that one area.
As an office IT computing because nobody has insight into what's going on the reason being that IT Linux developers Linux users are not in there because they're prevented from using Linux and their working environment.
Therefore, it's a complete black hole to people.
So the places I the place I worked immediately before canonical every single person had a Dell laptop.
There might be some people who had their stops but the vast majority had Dell laptops.
And this was a multi story building with many hundreds of people and the applications they were running absolutely would not run remotely.
There were local applications. There's no way you could run them optimally on a remote machine.
And people want to be able to work pick up the laptop and go and work somewhere else, which when you've got a Raspberry Pi that's tethered to a keyboard display, that's just not possible.
I think you're missing the point here.
Yeah. First of all, I would question that looking at what most people are using. Most people are using email. Most using people are using Excel.
Most people are using some application like word.
If people using corporate corporate applications, which do not run well remotely.
So then that I would I would gesture is not the norm for the majority of people.
This is where they use is SAP and it's significant use in every every one of these.
I would give you that. Yes.
I would also argue that SAP. The functionality provided by that software could not could equally be provided by a central server that goes.
It is a central server.
It is a central server and user a client side GUI to connect to it.
But what people often did in the office that I worked in is you would run some kind of job on the set system.
Then download a chunk of data and then set and process it locally in Excel or some other desktop application.
And there was very tight integration between those desktop applications and the SAP system at the back end.
And so you can't just replace the client, the laptop with Linux because Linux didn't have Microsoft Office, which had tight integration with SAP.
And so it was just a non starter because the integration wasn't there.
And so the people who needed those features just couldn't do their job if they were sorted out with Linux.
Yeah, but what I'm saying here is this is the inevitable catch 22 situation.
But if you re looked at that as a green field IT department going guys, I want to move where the process is done on the cloud.
You have to admit that is the trend that's happening now at the minute.
And even Ubuntu are pushing that with their with your services.
And SAP.
Exactly.
As maybe I know I'm not an expert on SAP thankfully.
Although GWP is so he would be able to comment on this.
GWP you will make sure on SAP and running it in the cloud.
So for the majority of people who would be at a station fixed working point that they're not mobile that they don't need a laptop.
Then having a Raspberry Pi is a perfectly viable alternative for other people having Chromebook is perfectly viable alternative.
Cause you log in and you get to the network that's administration wise I just see that a lot easier.
Yeah, I'm sure it is.
Okay, I now need to.
I need to screw this bookshelf to the wall because my daughter is holding up the last part of it.
But this is such an engaging conversation.
We're five minutes to the hour who becomes 2020 on the hour.
I can't believe it.
If you go to there's a link on your website.
Counts down and time thing.
It's in four minutes.
It's going to be small regions of Russia.
Towara.
Mayuro.
Yarren.
In four minutes.
And then the next one's an hour after that.
And then the next one's a half hour after that.
Okay, we need a bracket.
Your turn from the gun a bit.
Can you hear me guys?
Yep.
How are you doing, Alan?
Super.
How are you?
Yeah, not too bad.
I've been getting into my new hobby.
Oh, what's this then?
I started collecting and restoring matchbox cars from my youth.
Yeah, it's quite fun actually.
How what do you do to restore them?
Like putting new wheels on them or painting them or what?
Yeah, stripping them down, stripping the paint off, repainting them.
The whole works.
You can replace the wheels on the slightly older super, super fast models.
The original wheels vary and it's harder to change the wheels on.
But most people actually like them anyway.
So they don't bother.
But yeah, it's quite fun.
Where do you pick up the ones that need tend to love and care?
Carboot sales, eBay.
Carboot sales, eBay, swap meat, source of stuff.
And do carboot sales, like, is it you walk around and see someone who's got a couple box full of cars?
And you just job a lot by them.
Or do you cherry pick knowing which models are the ones you want to get?
It just depends on how the seller is doing it.
Some sellers they'll have a box full of old cars, Corgi, Matchbox, that kind of stuff.
And they'll say 50p each or five, five for so much or whatever.
And you can just route through it and pick out the ones you want.
And do you know which ones is it like a nostalgic thing?
You're you're thinking about the ones that you had as a kid or the cars that were, you know, in films that you watch as a kid, like a Bond car or something.
Or is it just like whichever one's in decent Nick that you, you know, he's still got all four wheels and still got a steering wheel.
And as I mean, the bumpers haven't been chewed off by a dog or something.
Actually, sometimes the more extreme, the condition of the vehicle is the more of a challenge to restore.
If you go, if you go on YouTube, the sub of the restorers can bring back to life's things that be buried in the ground for like 30 years.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, for me, I was going to say for me, it's actually a chance to collect the cars that I could never afford when there was a kid.
I know there were only just over two shillings when I was alive, but that was a lot of money to us because we, you know, we weren't exactly rich.
So, yeah, even even a matchbox car was quite an expensive item.
So for me, it's about getting older things that I could never afford when I was a little nice.
So how much time does it take to restore one and do you do it all in one session or do you, do you have like a workshop where you have to keep coming back to the car and it's sat there nagging at you saying, fix me Tony, fix me.
Yeah, you got, I've got a box full of various cars in various conditions waiting to be restored at the moment.
I've only actually done two or three because I only started a couple of months ago.
The first one I did was a matchbox model of the Mark 10 Giac.
Oh, nice.
And it is, it's really cool.
But yeah, it's an interesting hobby and there's different ways of doing things.
Some people decide to grill out their little posts and use screws to hold them back together or other people glue them back together.
You know, various different ways of doing it.
Is that because initially they were riveted together?
So with matchbox, they had a little post in it and then after they put the base on, they used some kind of machine to mushroom out this post that then held the base in place.
So it's not exactly a rivet with corgi, they either riveted them or screwed them.
And do people get a funny about the fact that you're, you're not keeping them in the way they were originally like if you're replacing with screws and you repainting them.
The genuine original lead paint or people just happy to see these things, you know, looking better than they did.
Believe it or not, even matchbox back in the 50s didn't use lead paint.
There was already people saying lead paint was bad so they used paints that didn't contain lead.
But there are some people who would prefer just to leave them in the original condition.
There are some people who only collect perfect condition models and they'll pay a fortune for them.
These other people like me, you know, I've been collecting.
So if I've got a good example, even if it's play worn, I'll just stick it in the collection and I won't restore that.
Sorry, is that the phrase for one that's been used as play worn?
Where are kids been playing with it?
Yeah.
And you'll get various states of play worn.
Some play worn can be there's no paint left on it.
And the screens are cracked and all sorts.
Other people, you know, other times you'll get play.
I've got a couple of play worn ones sat in front of me now.
And for the rage, which is over 50 years old, some of them nearly 60 years old.
You'd think, wow, how's that managed to survive in that condition for that long?
What chemicals do you use to remove the paint?
And is there any particular type of paint you put back on it?
You put the same color or different or lock?
Sometimes you'll try and match the color.
If you've got airbrush, then that's a lot easier.
If you're using rattle cans, you've just got to go with whatever you can buy off the shelf.
But you're trying to just do as best match as you can.
But yeah, paint them up.
You don't always have to.
The thing is, once you start restoring it, it becomes what they call a code three,
which has been altered from the original manufacturer.
So if you're honest about these things, they're never worth as much as a mint condition original car
that's nothing touch that comes in its box.
There are people who try to pass off restored models as original untouched.
But you know, there's ways of telling whether they've been touched up and things like that.
Oh, just a minute.
I've got a knock on the door.
Sorry.
Sorry about that.
Well, it was a posting.
No, Lois.
So do you rub the cars down with sandpaper or do you use chemicals or whatever to get the old paint off?
I use, I've been using caustic soda to strip.
Oh, wow.
But you can't, you've got to be careful with it.
You know, even some of the paint strippers that you're buying, being cute and stuff like that,
you've got to wear masks and be very careful when you're doing it.
Would you dunk it in a bath or would you like use it?
I mean, a bath, not as in the bath, as in like a container containing a small amount of this.
Yeah, I've got a large pickle, old pickled jar that I put the boiling water in, cover the model,
and then gradually add a couple of teaspoons of the caustic soda and it bubbles away.
And sometimes it will strip the paint within five to six minutes, depending on the paint.
Although sometimes you do get a child over painted models,
the cut mums, nails aren't as sure over them.
And that can take a little bit longer.
And like you'd take it out and it's just bare metal underneath, right?
Yeah.
And then, depending on the condition of the model, it'll show up if there's any corrosion,
any pits and things like that.
So you then polish it up.
You can use these little handheld multi tools, you know, the grembles and things like that to polish it up with the little brass wire wheels.
And then, if you then give it an undercoat with a spray can, it shows up where you may need to fill it or repair any damage.
Gotcha.
Some people actually like to, you know, in America, and in this country, they get really serious about it,
particularly with the hot wheels ones.
They'll actually do their own nickel plating.
And then they use what they call spectra flame colors, which show through the metal.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's quite a serious hobby for a lot of people.
So, and there you two guys have just wasted a perfectly good hit for your episodes.
Thank you very much.
Sorry about that, Ken.
I was thinking of actually recording it at episode.
You totally should like starting from the point of like the life cycle of the car.
If you talk like if you could do a bit of outdoor recording, if you're walking around a car boot sale and the chink of you rummaging through a car,
I was just picturing it as you were telling it, rummaging through a box, like getting the car and then taking it back and, you know,
boiling the kettle to fill up the jar with water and stuff.
I, you know, I've got it in my mind.
Yeah.
I think, you know, adding a little bit of that would be great.
Funnily enough, these are big toy and hobby fair in Blackpool in a couple of weekends time.
In fact, a week on, no, two weeks on Saturday that I'm going to.
And so I might, I might actually do some recording while I'm there, having a look around, see what they've got.
I don't know if they're going to be doing any swaps, but I've got quite a few that I can take with me to swaps and then come back and talk about it on a show.
I haven't actually been to any car boot yet because when I started a couple of months ago, most of the car boots had shut down for the winter.
I'm just hoping, opening some stuff that I got off eBay, which is car related.
I like it, Andy.
More sound effects for the, for the HPR episode.
Nice little bubble wrap.
This one's come from China, so I'm suspecting it's one of those UV blue containers.
Which I'm slightly.
Go on eBay, type in UV blue and you'll come up.
The original one is a product called Bondic.
It was actually developed for the dental industry 30 years ago.
I was talking to my dentist about it.
And he says they don't use it anymore because it's the UV light that they used to use it to cure the fillings.
It's too strong, so they have to use a blue light version now.
But it turned out that it was so good they turned it into a product for repair, the repair and model industry.
I was correct.
You can't hear this because I've got a unpushed top, but I'm actually unwrapping bubble wrap at the moment of the model.
Yeah, we good.
I don't think you do have it unpushed top.
Oh, I thought I did have it unpushed top.
It must have reset.
Funny thing is this particular model that I ordered off eBay.
I paid £10 for it with postage.
And fully enough, I bought a job lot of cars for spare and repair.
And there was the same model slightly different variant of it in the batch that I bought.
And it's actually in better condition.
Now I have to pay £2 for it.
Nice.
I've now got two versions of the same model all over looking at them.
One is the one that is slightly different configuration.
It's a little fire rescue tender with the ladders that was made in 1953.
And there's a couple of different variants.
And one you can see through the legs of the driver and the one that I've just had delivered you can't.
Yeah, nice little model.
I don't know why I pushed the talk, it's not working.
So what have you been up to?
Over Christmas, not a huge amount.
We've been doing this eight bit versus thing, me and Martin,
where we play old video games from the past.
It's all started in the Ubuntu podcast telegram channel where myself and Martin had a brief argument about how one eight bit computer was better than the other.
And the someone suggested that we each play those games and live stream it.
And someone else said, yes, I will watch that.
And we were like, okay, well, yeah, let's do that then.
So we set up this thing called eight bit versus.
And the premise is I was a fan of the single spectrum and Martin was a fan of the Commodore 64.
But in this, we get to play each other's platform.
So first off, I get to play a game of Martin's choosing, but I get to play on the Commodore and he gets to play on the spectrum.
And then another round, I choose a game and he gets to play again on the spectrum and I get to play on the Commodore.
So we need to get to choose some of our favorite games to the past and get each other.
And then at the end of it, we decide which one was better.
And it started off as just an idea that we had back in, I think, May of this year.
And it's taken a long time for us to get going.
We only started a couple of weeks ago.
And part of the problem is we wanted to be able to do this remotely from each other.
And we wanted to be able to see what the other person was doing.
So for example, Martin is playing a Commodore 64 game.
And I want to be able to see that or I'm playing a spectrum game and he needs to be able to see that
while we're simultaneously streaming out to YouTube or Twitch or whatever.
And that being able to do that is actually quite hard.
Now I hear people are now shouting at their clients.
Well, you could just share your screen or you could just share your, you could use any one of the many screen sharing tools.
They all suck because they all have either something on the screen which overlays on top with their branding on, which is useless.
Or the latency is really terrible.
And by terrible, I mean, like someone's playing a game and their character dies.
And they'll go, you know, that, that, oh dear.
Well, my character died.
And then five seconds later, the other person watching goes, oh no, you died.
And it looks terrible when you, when you play that back having like a five second delay between the person died.
You know what it's like when you're streaming age like this, HDR to another room.
There's a seven second delay.
And that's just a video and we're sending video.
So Martin wrote a tool called simple stream.
Is anything from anything was simple, but the idea is you run this simple stream script.
You click on a window and the other person runs the other end of it.
And it sends that data compressed over the network.
And the latency is really, really good.
So as a, when I'm playing a game, I die.
Martin sees that within about half a second.
So it's a lot more.
It feels a lot more like we're in the same room.
That's brilliant.
How old were you when you said X came out?
The spec key.
So I was born in 72.
So my first computer was a ZX81 in 1980.
Christmas 1980, I think.
Or you, you were lucky eight years old and you got a ZX82.
Sorry, ZX1.
Yeah.
Oh, 81.
I think I think it was 80, 1980.
I think so.
Yeah, that'd be about right.
Yeah.
My dad, my dad bought it for Christmas.
And I remember on Christmas morning coming down the stairs.
And I wasn't allowed in the front room, the lounge, where the telly was.
And you couldn't see in there because the door didn't have glass in it.
So we went into the kitchen and had breakfast.
And the reason why we weren't allowed in the lounge is because my dad had plugged it into the telly,
tuned to the TV in and then had typed in some code because he realized that,
like giving someone a ZX81 with no program loaded on it was pretty awful.
It's a brutal way.
Here's a computer and there's no software.
Right.
So it's not like today where you just had your little book with you start typing things in to get it off you go.
That'll keep you busy.
So yeah, he typed it all in and I went in the lounge and that was it.
That was the start of my computer.
So what was the first game?
Was it pong?
Oh, God, I can't even remember.
It was probably something that was in either a Sinclair magazine.
There was a magazine called Sinclair Programs and it was mostly type in listings.
And I think it would have been something from that.
If not, it might have been something from the manual.
But I don't remember the ZX81 manual having games in it.
I think it had like little sample code, but I don't think it had games in it.
So probably from a magazine.
I can't remember what it was, but it would have been something simple.
Yeah, when I went all that kicked off, I was in the middle of my first career as an engineer at C.
So I missed it.
The computers hadn't come into schools when I left in 75.
But I did get the first Sinclair scientific calculator when I was at college.
Was that the white one or the silver one?
Yeah, it was very small.
I can't remember.
And you had to do jiggery pokery to get it to work out signs, cosine.
It wasn't just straightforward.
But yeah, it was amazing.
All the other guys were buying casios and stuff like that.
But they were really expensive.
I bought this Sinclair one.
Yeah, my nan had one many years ago.
She had both the, there was one called the Sinclair Scientific, I think.
That was white.
And it kind of had a bulge in the back where the batteries were.
And she also had a Sinclair business one, which was silver.
And was a lot thinner because I think it took triple A batteries.
But yeah, they were, they were gorgeous little calculators.
They really were.
They were, yeah.
Yeah, I had lots of fun with that.
Although we did have one of our lecturers, he was an electrical engineer.
And he used to teach us for electronics.
And he could actually do things on the, on the chalkboard.
Calculation wise quicker than we could put in the, in the calculations into a calculator.
So I had a ZX as you want.
And then I remember the spectrum came out and we didn't have a lot of money.
So I didn't, I didn't get a spectrum.
Until I saw a second hand one.
In a record shop in all the shops, they called elephant records.
And it was a record shop.
My brother and sister used to go in because they used to buy a lot of records.
And behind the counter up on a high shelf, there was a second hand Sinclair Spectrum.
And I think my brother may have seen it or I might have gone in with my brother and seen it in there and thought,
Oh, wow, there's a, there's a spectrum for sale in here.
Second hand, it was 20 quid.
And that would have been in 83, 84, something like that.
And I begged and begged and begged my mum, you know, could I, could I have this, this new computer,
or second hand new computer and saved up the pennies and bought it.
And it turned out to be a 16 K Sinclair Spectrum, which, yeah, there were two models.
The cheaper one was a 16 K and the more expensive was a 48 K.
And the 16 K one had room for you to expand to, to the 48 K one.
Obviously you'd have to buy an upgrade kit or send it off and get someone to upgrade it.
And I was really, I was delighted to have this color computer,
but then crest fallen that it was only a 16 K one.
I didn't realize at the time.
And so the vast majority of games did not work because it didn't have enough RAM.
And I remember buying some of the 16 K games.
There were some that were just brilliant.
And I, I would still play, in fact, I have a couple of them on my desk right here.
This is the set.
That is a 16 K Spectrum game.
And I remember buying an attack, which is this cassette.
An attack is a 48 K game.
And it was that that drove me to save my pocket money and buy the upgrade kit to get it up to 48 K.
There was an advert in one of the Sinclair magazines for a company called Video Vault.
And they used to sell all kinds of accessories and bits and bobs that you could buy and add on to your Sinclair Spectrum.
And one of them was this memory upgrade kit.
And you had to send your Spectrum away.
So I had to save up my money and send it away with a postal order for 35 pounds.
And a postal order thing.
Yeah.
Good back in the post.
Really?
Yeah.
You can still go in the post office and get them.
Wow.
And it came back in the post.
And that was it.
I had the Spectrum for a good few years after that.
And yeah.
So, yeah.
That was my first two good years.
If I remember correctly, the final spec was 128 K.
Wasn't it?
Yes.
It was called a plus three.
Yeah.
I didn't, I didn't start getting interested in computers properly until I went back to college in 87.
But I never got, I didn't get my own computer until 98 when I went back there went to university for the first time.
Well, so the original Sinclair Spectrum had the horrible dead flesh rubber keyboard.
Yes.
The plus two and the plus three.
This is a plus three.
Oh, that's proper sound.
Proper keyboard.
And the plus three had a disk drive, a three inch disk drive on the side.
Wow.
Yeah.
I still have my plus three.
It's right here next to me.
And I, for my birthday a year ago, they were all getting a bit dusty and crusty in the loft.
And I hadn't really taken care of them very well.
And there's a guy who lives in Aberystwyth, who repairs old 8-bit computers.
Much like you repair cars, he repairs old 8-bit computers.
But he does it as a service.
And I contacted him and said, look, I've got two, three Spectrums.
I really need them cleaning up and fixing.
And he does various electronics checks on them and replaces a few components that are dying.
And so for my birthday, I asked my wife, could you please arrange for my Spectrums to be sent away and fixed?
And so I sent away the plus three and my other two Spectrums.
And he fixed them all up and sent them back.
And they were cleaned up and they worked perfectly.
And there's changes they make to the video output.
And I think they replaced a couple of capacitors because they tend to go over time.
But yeah, it's lovely.
I'm really happy with my Spectrums.
What you want to do is try and pick up the ZX-80 construction kit.
Because I remember that when they released it first, you could actually buy it and don't beat yourself.
Yeah, it was.
It was a kit, wasn't it?
It was a board and half a dozen chips and not a lot more.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think somehow I got a whole of a ZX-80.
I don't know how.
I don't know if that was my dad's or something, but that was long given away to another friend.
But yeah, I did.
I do remember playing with a ZX-80 and a ZX-81, but I don't.
I don't remember ever doing the soldering or anything.
Yeah, that would have been a bit much.
So.
Oh, go on.
Go on.
I was just going to wrap up the.
So the 8-bit versus thing, me and Martin and L have the thing set up so that when we want to play a game,
he launches OBS on his end.
And on my end, I've got whatever game I want to play and it streams to him and then he sends it to Twitch and then people watch.
And it's quite good fun because I've got old joysticks as well.
So I've still got a Kempston competition pro and a conic speed king, a loads of old equipment that was attached to my spectrum.
And I actually play some of these games using the original joysticks, which reminds me a how terrible I am of these games and be how awful some of these joysticks were.
I've never, never got into computer gaming.
It's one of those things that doesn't float me though.
Yeah, it's weird.
I have a friend who doesn't use, doesn't play computer games at all and it doesn't see the point and can't see why people spend so much time and money on computer games.
It's funny how people have these vastly different interests.
Yeah, but computers have got lots of different uses.
You know, I'll do video audio.
Well, not so much video, but audio editing and I use gimp and all that for doing photo stuff.
So there's lots of different things you can do on a computer, but games never struck me as something that I wanted to get involved in.
Just like the matchbox, I'll probably take over my life if I did.
I think the thing, I guess, because I was at that age where a computer arrived on the scene when I was 9, 10 years old, something like that.
And so at that time, I'm going to be playing games on it and obviously stuff was well marketed.
You go into Martins and Usage and or WH Smiths or whatever news agent and they had a whole section of buying computer games.
I remember those carousels where you'd have loads of tapes in it and you spin the carousel round looking for whatever the latest new game is or whatever's on in the bargain bucket of you know,
199 games, save up my pocket money and spend two pounds on a game.
But that one bell would last like the the value when you think of the value for money, spending two pounds for a game.
And once you loaded it because you because you've made the commitment of like a spinning is an investment like two quid is a is a quite an investment for a child who's pocket money might have been only a pound or so
a week if you're lucky.
The investment of buying it and then the time investment of loading it because it took like 10 minutes to load off of a tape.
You're committed then to playing that game. You're not going to just turn the computer off. It's not like when I see people playing games on phones and stuff.
They'll load a game play a game and they get frustrated with it and then just close it and then load something else.
And the fact that it's instant means they're not committed to that game.
And I think that's partly what's led games to try and hook you in with notifications and try on mobile devices and hook you in with
well, if you come back every day, we'll give you bonuses and all that kind of stuff that tries to entice you to come back.
Whereas with the old 8-bit days, just the virtue of buying the game and loading the game was commitment enough because like
otherwise you've wasted too quid and you've wasted 10 minutes of your life loading the thing you might as well play it for an hour or more.
Yeah, it sounds a bit like when I was a kid and we had a scale electric set and it used to take nearly an hour to get the track set or
get the transformer on and everything like that clean the brushes.
Yeah, so once you got it set up, you had to play for it for at least an hour to make it all worthwhile.
Yeah, I think I only had one scale electric set.
Oh, that was so great.
It's to really love the tracks you could build with them, especially if you've got loads of extra parts and loads of extra second-hand bits and pieces.
I think we did get some second-hand bits and pieces that were from like a scale electric from the 60s or something.
And like they managed to fit together with the ones that we had from the 80s. They were amazing.
Yeah, scale electric track was compatible right away through but we only had the figure of 8 set up with the bridge going over the track to maybe figure of 8.
But the two cars that came with this set, we'd added bought it when we had a good working week one Christmas and they had bright headlights on the car.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, so we had, how was it fun with that?
I wish I still had it.
I foolishly I sold it when I was in the 20s and I should never have sold it.
The detail on those cars was great though, especially like the rally cars.
I think we had a John player special Formula One car and my brother had a Ford Escort rally car and he loved that car.
More than playing with this electric, just like handling the car and just looking at the car.
It was almost as much fun as playing with it on the track.
Oh, yeah, you still, much like the matchbox, you get people who collect the old slot cars, scale electric and the other slot cars that made just for the actual models.
So back to computing.
What's your current Lenovo that you're using as your daily driver at the moment?
Yeah, my current one is a T450 which is the one I'm sat at right now.
And it's, I bought it in 2016, I think.
So the general rule of thumb is the middle digit, the five in a 450 means 2015.
That's roughly the year it was made.
Oh, really?
So X220 was made in 2012, roughly.
It just gives you a benchmark for how old the machines are.
So my T450 was made in 2015 and I think I got it in 2016.
I got it second hand because I couldn't really justify the price or afford a brand new thinkpad.
So I got it second hand.
And I've upgraded the RAM.
It's now got 32 gigs of RAM in it, which I got on eBay.
I got there were two separate sellers that had 16 gig dims available on the same day from completely different people.
But they were exactly the same model of dim.
I must buy these two to get to get to gig.
Yeah.
And I've upgraded the SSD and I've actually replaced the display panel because the panel was a reflective one, which was a bit rubbish.
So I've replaced it with a mat, mat display.
And it sits in a docking station on my desk.
And yeah, that's why my machine.
Brilliant.
And recently I've moved over to Dell's.
I've got a Dell 740.
Well, I've got a couple of them.
I've got an i5 and an i7.
And they're cracking the machines.
But I've still got the X230i.
And I've got the X201.
And knocking about.
And I've got the X200 tablet as well.
The 740.
Has that got the nipple in the middle of the keyboard?
I think it might actually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's one of the killer features that I love about the think pads is having the nipple.
I always turn off the trackpad completely.
So my trackpad doesn't actually function at all.
I only use the nipple.
And I know people are like passionate hatred of one and like passionate love of the other or whatever.
But the Dell's look really nice.
They are cracking little machines.
I've also got a couple of Toshiba Z30s.
Then I say the screen's a bit smaller because it's only 13 inch.
But they're really lightweight.
So they're very portable as well.
I had a bad experience with the Toshiba ones.
And I mean, I used to love the.
The stuff they made back in 93 94 95 that kind of era.
The 1910 CS a big white chunky thing that had a track ball mouse that clipped on the right hand side of the laptop.
Was just delightful.
It was felt nice and robust and the follow up.
I think was a 2100 CS, which was a kind of dark gray color.
And that I think was my first laptop that had a nipple.
And it was on the Toshiba.
It came with a green nipple.
And two curved mouse buttons, which were a bit weird.
But I, yeah, I used to love those.
But I had a bad experience with the Toshiba some years later.
And that really turned me off from buying Toshiba's.
Oh, that's a shame.
Yeah.
What I want to back in around about 2011, 2012.
I managed to get a couple of our 500s, which were ultra books in the day.
And I remember taking them around to various Linux events and using of the demo in Linux.
And they were brilliant little machine.
I don't think you're seeing an R500.
Yeah, it was a little silver ultra book.
So yeah, it was a core two series, I think.
It weren't very upgradable.
We're Ram on them with a little strain.
It was custom Ram, I think.
But, all right.
No, sorry, not on that one.
It was an earlier one that I had that was custom Ram.
But there were nice little machines.
The only problem was the screen was a little bit thin.
And it was quite, it was easy to damage if you weren't careful because it was fairly flexible.
But yeah, I ended up giving Josh one of them.
It's relatively modern, really.
It's got a Windows key.
I mean, relatively, you know, it's got a Windows key on it.
Are you looking at it? I'll lie down.
Yeah, every laptop you're mentioning, I'm googling to get a picture.
So I can see what you're talking about.
Oh, dear.
That's a great thing now.
You can just go online and search things up as you're talking.
Yeah, those Bell 7440s look quite robust.
They've got connectors up the where zoo as well.
Yep.
It's got pretty well everything you need on it.
USB 3 HDMI.
Oh, works.
I've also got it smaller brother.
The 2507250.
12 inch one.
Nice.
Yeah, I can't justify buying any more laptops.
I have to curb my enthusiasm slightly.
I've lost my source of cheap computers since the auction shut down.
I used to have a local auction about 40 miles away from me in Bolton.
And once a month for used to have a, yeah, once a month for used to have a sale that you could go to.
And they'd be selling old corporate stuff.
And that's where cheap.
Oh, you could get some really good deals because because they were authorised refurbishes.
What they used to do was wipe everything, make sure everything worked.
And then you got it.
There was no, no operating system on it, although quite often it had other windows license key on it.
And towards the end, there was selling stuff with windows 8.
Licenses.
So you could just reinstall windows 8 out of the box because that had reattidate anyway.
But yeah, I picked up some of those said 30s for like 5060 quid.
Very nice.
But it's all gone because the couple that ran it have retired.
How dare they?
I know it's bad.
I can't get the year computer fix anymore once a month.
Yeah, I wish there were, I don't know.
I'm now googling for auctions in my local area.
Which is terrible thing to do because I'll end up coming back with I've been trying to limit because because I've got.
13 pads or something like that, which I think is probably enough.
But then I see a nice example of an X2 30 or something, I think.
Oh, I've got a 220, but a 230 is just a little bit better.
Maybe I want that.
Yeah, the only problem.
You go on eBay to look for these things and people are asking ridiculous money for them.
So unless you can find a really good auction.
But no one's following and get something cheap, which I did with one of those Dell seven four four rows.
Actually, the I seven one.
It was actually it was actually advertised as an I five.
And when it came, it was an I seven.
So I was quite chuffed about that.
Nice.
One of the problems I have with my X2 20.
And what I think pads actually is their thermal design is not great.
And they they are incapable of dumping the heat that they generate particularly well.
So my X2 20 is an I seven.
And it overheats all the time.
And I've done all the usual.
I mean, it overheated from day one.
So it wasn't like the thermal paste was duff.
It was just the design of it.
It just didn't have a beefy enough fan or the beefy enough heat sink or vents the right size or whatever.
No, no, we just couldn't dump the heat that you needed to.
Yeah.
I've noticed that the fans running on the.
Those who know those all the time really.
One place I've noticed people selling laptops these days actually is actually on Facebook marketplace.
Which often turns up the odd bargain.
Which if it were sold on eBay would generate a mark commander a slightly higher price.
So I mean, there's right now I'm looking at an X to third X to 30 on Facebook.
And it's a hundred quid, which is a reasonable price for a SSD decent life battery i5 with four giga RAM.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
It will be nice to get one a bit cheaper than that.
Yeah, we're always looking for cheaper.
Yeah.
I'll have to check out my people's.
Hi everybody. Can you hear me?
Hello.
We can.
That's good.
Dave Morris here.
Is he probably gathered or maybe gathered?
I don't know.
Oh, yeah.
Your voice is very distinctive days.
I could always recognize that.
I was told I sound like Mr. Chumley Warner by somebody and he speeds up his podcast.
So just like Mr. Chumley Warner.
And so I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not.
Most of the Americans won't get that.
I understood that reference.
Ken was selling you sure he said you've got life.
I have actually been listening.
But no, I don't have a life good grief.
No, I heard that.
I thought he's winding me up, isn't he?
He wants to join in.
That's all that's all about.
Yeah, I'm interested in your talking about Lenovo's and stuff.
Because my kids both have acquired them of eBay in the past year.
And my son's girlfriend as well.
So when they're visiting this, there's a row of these damn things.
I could do it with one of those.
The entryway that I wanted to...
I'll have a few years ago is lovely.
But it's big.
I'd like something a bit smaller that I could truck the conferences with.
Yeah, those X series ones.
I think all the way through from the X to 20 to 30.
Skip the 240, maybe 260 to 70 to 80.
They're lovely.
The 220 now is still a very usable machine.
And those are 10 or penny.
They're all over the internet because they were a super popular corporate laptop.
So there's tons of them around.
It's old and crusty and it's first generation i7 or i5.
But it's still a lovely little machine.
Yeah, yeah.
I would suit me just fine just to run a minimal Linux of some sort.
You know, just use it for nothing very heavy weight.
But just general odds and odds that you might want to do at a conference or whatever.
I don't even think you need to go minimal on it.
I've got elementary on mine.
And I've installed...
I use it as my test machine when I'm doing like QA testing for ISO images.
And I've installed all manner of stuff on it.
And it's perfectly usable with full fat than it's distros too.
That's really good to know, yeah.
All the ones that sit in this house are all running windows,
but they get on pretty well with that.
So windows 10.
I think anything that runs...
Yeah, first or second gen core i can run most things that Linux these days come in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm still under.
If you get one that's only got like two gig of RAM then it gets a little bit paid full.
Most of them, most of the corporate ones will have i5 and full gig of RAM.
The weird thing is for the X220 is that i5s only have USB 2 and the i7 has one USB port,
but it's not labeled and it's not colored.
So you'd be forgiven for thinking it's USB 2 everywhere,
but it's got one USB 3 port but only on the i7 models.
Yeah, but they've got a little card bay that you can stick a USB 3 card in it.
Oh, like what's it called?
Cardbox or something.
Yeah, I can't remember the name of it,
but I know I've done it on one of my early videos that didn't have USB 3.
I've never tried using one of those cards.
I remember PCMCA cards from back in the past,
but I've not tried a cardless card.
Yeah, it's express card, I think you call it.
That's it, express card.
Okay, I was impressed by the fact that the one my daughter got had her two batteries in it,
and the fixed one was faulty.
She got a replacement for it, and she brought it over here one day and said,
Dad, can I borrow your screwdriver?
Because I think they're talks.
And within about 10 minutes, she'd stripped it down and put the new battery in,
you know, so it's really, really nice to work with,
which is a big selling point I would have thought.
You've told her properly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's really important where she teaches me, I do.
But, yes.
Yeah, the only downside to the early core I series is probably battery life.
If you've got a 4th or 5th generation battery life is going to be a bit better.
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
I shall go hunting when I get a moment, I think.
So, go on.
No, go on.
No, I was just going to say I have used Christmas to do a really loony project.
I was just going to share.
I got more Raspberry Pi's here than I really should have,
because a lot of them are not doing anything.
And I've got one of the 3A pluses, which is small but moderately powerful,
and I'm thinking I've really got to use it for something.
So, I've been trying to, I wanted a project where I've got an old monitor,
an old Dell monitor from a family computer back in 2005, probably.
A square, strange looking thing, but it sort of works VGA only.
So, I thought, I wonder if I can make it some sort of a status display.
So, I've been searching, because I use MQTT around the house for all sorts of things at the moment.
No internet, things stuff, but just telling one computer about another one or all that sort of business.
So, I'm just trying to find some way of making it into a running status display
with a clock and that sort of stuff.
And I found a project called Magic Mirror.
People have put in stripped-on monitors behind mirrors.
Have you seen those?
Yeah.
So, if you go to the archive for Magpie magazine,
do you write up on it in there about one of them?
Yeah, I found that there's a group that had built something in Node.js,
which is a language I don't know, but,
and they had made it into a really nice modular thing.
So, you can just install it without any fuss at all.
And there's loads and loads and loads of modules you can stick within it to make it do all the manner of things.
So, I mean, I've been having a wonderful time playing with the...
I wonder what this module does.
Click.
Ooh, it displays the news from the BBC and all that sort of stuff.
I don't really know what I want to have news headlines popping up on the monitor on this shelf up here,
but, you know, it's amusing.
Yeah, but you're not doing it for the news headlines.
You're doing it to play and see if you can get it to work.
That's right, that's right.
Yeah, there's a big element of play in there.
I've often seen these things where people like hack together a magic mirror for,
you know, for like, I made a magic mirror for my girlfriend or whatever,
I have a Raspberry Pi and they, you know, hot, hot snot,
all this inside of...
I hear the...
Yeah.
Like a friend wearing mirror on the front.
Yeah, and it looks cool.
And then I think, but I'm not sure I really want to leave a, like,
14, 18-inch panel constantly on, like,
because nobody's ever looking at it.
Like, the number of the amount of time I spend looking in a mirror in a day
is a vanishingly small quantity of my life.
Yeah, yeah, quite agree with that.
Mine's not a mirror at all.
It's just a monitor.
So I'm not bothering with all that stuff.
It's a monitor only.
I'll probably put it on, you know, one of these visa...
Is it visa mounts that, you know, an arm?
An arm, so I can swivel it around and stuff.
But at the moment, it's just a little monitor stood on its original stand
up on the shelf above my main desktop machine.
So it's just...
Yeah, yeah.
That...
And I just discovered an MQTT interface.
So you can send it messages.
And, you know, you can...
I want to work out how I can classify the messages, have urgent things saying,
I don't know, there's something at the front door, perhaps.
I'm getting deaf in my old age, sir.
Something that tells me, the postman's trying to get in touch with you.
Yeah, you're left to talk to the chief,
because he created a little rush reply with a screen,
one of the rush reply screens, I think it was a four-inch one,
and made a Harry Potter themed thing that came up with serious black on it,
just saying something.
You know, I think it was about a 30-second clip,
and it was for these girlfriends, but he's part of this birthday.
Yeah, it sounds good.
There were so many wonderful projects out there when you start looking.
You just sort of have a question in mind.
And loads of people have done it, and it's all free,
and easily stuck together.
You don't need to be a coder at all these days,
unless you're the guy creating it,
but the users don't have to be coders.
No, because you're even creating it.
A lot of this is freely available on the web anyway.
You just have to actually put the code in,
and just copy what someone else has done.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing.
So did you hear the conversation earlier before we got on to Lenovo's
about Matchbox cards?
Yeah, I remember.
We met up at old campers.
I'm sure you remember, but just for the context,
and you were mentioning that then.
Yeah.
Is that going well?
Yeah, well, at the time during old camp,
I just started getting into it.
I bought a couple of models to actually send to one of the YouTube
guys that I'd kind of got me into it.
But since then, it's kind of gone off the scale, so to speak.
Are you sitting in some darkened room with a magnifying glass on your
on fixed-year head somewhere and staring at these things with a powerful light
and stripping them down and painting them and all this sort of stuff?
Is that the right image that I should be visualising here?
Well, the darkened room, not so much.
I've got a very nice front and house double bedroom that is now my workshop.
We've got all the computer gear, the audio setup for the podcasting
and all the model making.
Excellent, excellent.
So you can always retire to that when you need to.
I do.
Very good.
Very good.
Yeah.
Well, I'm hoping there will be a...
We can't call on you to do HBO if it's on this necessarily, can we?
Oh, you should.
I think you should.
Ken says yes.
He told us off earlier on for the conversation we were having.
He said, that should be a show.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I would love to see some of these things.
Sounds really good.
Yeah.
You could put pictures in the show notes to show people what you've been doing as well.
Well, that's what I was thinking.
You know, some good close-up photos of some sort would be lovely.
So that sort of stuff.
So you're about my age, aren't you?
Do you remember the matchbox and Corgi stuff from the...
Oh, yes.
Like 50s, early 60s?
I might be a little bit beyond your age, actually.
I just turned 70 this month.
I don't realise you were quite out of it.
Wow.
I don't look...
I don't look at me either.
You don't look at me.
You don't look at me.
It's me.
Yeah.
No, it happens.
You just sort of sit around and then you just keep clicking by.
I know.
I've just turned 61.
Oh, right, right, yes.
Oh, I remember the matchbox very well.
I think I said to you, I had a lot of dinky toys when I was a kid.
That would have been in the 1950s.
So post war and stuff.
But they were starting to become available.
You just got the one for Christmas, you know.
Yeah, because they were expensive.
They were.
They lasted amazingly well.
Even the matchbox was...
I was saying to Alan, I couldn't afford them when I was a kid.
Because even though they were only a couple of shillings each in the mid 60s,
that was still way above what I was getting for pocket money.
Maybe I'd won a two for Christmas, but that was about it.
Yeah, yeah.
The thing about the dinky ones was that they had quite a lot of moving parts on them.
So there was like a load of lorry type of thing with a little crank handle on the side.
And you turned it and a spiral rod in the center lifted the back up.
So you can actually put sand in it and tipped it out.
So it was just wonderful for a kid.
I don't remember, did matchbox have that sort of feature?
Some of the super king stuff does.
But you know, the actual small matchbox size ones.
No, they may have opening boots and opening doors for that.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember being very impressed when doors and boots and things opened.
But yeah, I think the dinkies were a little bit bigger and they tended to have a bit more moving parts.
Like the sort of a bin lorry thing had sliding sides to it.
From the old days when they used to tip metal dust bins into the side of these things as they chugged down the road.
None of the fancy stuff with lifters at the back and things.
Yeah, there are a few smaller models that do have tipping backs and things for the construction ones.
And you've got the crane models where the crane moves and things are up.
Very simple stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
It's good.
But a child's imagination will get way past that anyway.
You do have moving bits, but that's good.
But if you don't, then you can pretend that they do and make them fly or whatever else he wanted to entertain yourself.
Yeah, when you buy them off eBay, it's a job lot spas or repair.
You can tell the ones that have been played in the sun pit with because they're still full of dirt.
Yes, yes, yes.
And smashed together a bit.
Oh, yeah.
That's good stuff.
Yeah, I was just thinking Korgi and Dinky were with the expensive.
But I remember the, I think it was Korgi did the James Bond.
Oh, what do you call it?
DB5 with the roof that opened and flipped out the little plastic man and the guns at the front and all that.
That was really complex, but that was way, way outside our price range.
That would have cost a few quinoa, but yeah.
Yeah, good stuff, though, good stuff.
I still got my Dinky toys and wonder what I should be doing with them really because all the,
all the tires of all perished and fallen off in many cases presumably get replacements.
I could be following your lead here and repairing them, perhaps.
Yeah, you can, you can go online and there's plenty of places where you can buy spares for Dinky and the rubber tires are one of the things that goes for,
you know, because, because like you say, they perish with age.
You're quite often you'll see models where the tire, the tire has got a flat spot on it and it's been sat on a window sill and got hot.
And because the sun, because the tires started to melt a bit.
Yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet.
See, that vintage tended not to have windows and stuff, did it?
None of the ones I've got got windows in them because later on there were plastic windows, but plastic wasn't that common?
By the 60s, by the 60s they were starting to have windows in them, but some of the, some of the, even the matchbox 50s models,
a lot of them didn't have windows in.
Yeah, because plastic was mainly bake a light in the 50s, wasn't it?
It wasn't a lot of the sort of plastics you see these days.
No, but by the end of the 50s it was starting to come in and they did start putting screens in some of the very late 1950s models,
but that became quite common in the 60s.
Yeah, cool.
There's a lot to say about this stuff actually.
There is.
There's a whole series of HBO show, you see, you know, Tony?
The problem with this is it's so visual.
And that's why the YouTube was doing so well with it.
No, no, understood, understood.
But yeah, just just just sharing some of your enthusiasm would be fun, but I'll stop.
I'll stop trying to force you into doing shows at any minute now.
No, I had talked about it.
That's cool.
That's cool.
What one of the makes would you've been working with, did you say?
I haven't actually done, done any restos, but because I've been picking up a lot of job lots,
the spares and repairs, you quite often get corgi and dinky and stuff.
Okay.
And there was a corgi had another line that they produced the wall was called Huskies.
And they were the small matchbox size models.
And in 1969, wall was stopped selling them.
So they turned that line into corgi juniors.
So they were producing matchbox size cars, even in the 60s.
They just weren't labeled as corgi until 69.
Okay.
Okay.
Sorry, I'm afraid.
Yeah, you get them.
They do actually tend to have plastic bases, believe it or not.
So they were, they were definitely using plastic quite a bit in there.
I think it was because they were for wall was and they were trying to produce them as cheap as possible.
Yeah.
Oh, cool.
I think you will be starting to do restorations at some point then.
Oh, I've already done the first couple.
Okay.
Yeah, I restored a little Mark 10 Jaguar, the matchbox one.
And that came out quite nicely, actually.
What?
And I heard you say you were using caustic soda to take all paint off.
Yeah.
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So that gets you down to, is it like alloy or something underneath?
Yeah, they used, they used a specific alloy for the castings.
I think it's called zircon or something.
You've got to be careful with it because it's delicate.
But, yeah, when, when you strip the paint off,
matchbox, unlike some of the other premium brands,
they didn't undercoat their models when they were spraying up.
They just sprayed them straight on with the top colour.
So they should, unless it's been over-painted by some child in the past,
they should only be one layer of paint, really.
Right.
And it generally comes off quite easily.
You just have to be very careful.
Cause caustic soda is a bit of a dangerous chemical,
if you're not using it properly.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, you don't want it on your skin and any form or in your eyes.
You need to work.
You could probably be able to have a face mask as well,
because you'll be doing some of the vapour in, right?
I tend to use quite a large jar and then stick the top on it.
You've just got to be careful that you release the pressure,
because obviously it's generating gas.
Well, it's working.
You just make sure that you don't leave it dead tight on it.
Yes, it'll react quite violently.
I would imagine at some point.
It does.
If you use very hot water,
you can, you can use it with just tap hot water,
but it takes a bit longer to do the job.
That's better if you use it to take off the paint off plastics,
because you don't want the plastics to melt and distort.
No, no, no, no, no.
So, yeah, that hot.
You don't want too much heat there.
But the caustic soda doesn't affect these alloys, does it?
Aluminum, it only eats away.
You've got to be very careful with aluminium,
and they did make metal wheels for some of the models
that are aluminium,
so you don't want to be putting them in sometimes.
But there are other ways of removing paint
from some of the more delicate parts.
One of the ways is using metal.
That works.
And another way is to use brake fluid,
brake fluid dissolves paint gradually.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because, yes, you should be careful not to get it on your paintwork
when you're ever doing your breaks.
Yeah, yeah, it sits there.
So you don't see, you should start to paint work.
But things like alcohol and stuff
won't take any of that off.
No, acetone, nothing like that.
You've got to be very careful with things like acetone.
You can use it.
You can use it.
You've got to be very gentle with it.
Some people use it for the modern cars,
for the modern hot wheels,
for taking off the decals.
It's a cleaning them up if they're doing custom jobs and they've got a modern casting that's got loads of decals on it, they'll use acetone for taking off the decals before they carry on and do the, if you don't want to, if you don't want to completely paint strip it,
so you can just use a light amount of it just to take care of it, to attach those from the thing, yeah, that's cool.
So yeah, that's quite good, but yeah, there's so much, once you get into it and then of course you can create your own decals or you can buy replacement decals for the models as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes you can, you can pay more for a set of decals for a model than you paid for the model.
Wow, it's ridiculous in there, yeah, I know, I know, the prices of things is nuts.
That puts me in mind of doing air fix stuff where those little teeny tiny things you had to stick on them when they were built.
Presumably that sort of stuff is sort of film with an adhesive backing or something, isn't it?
Well, the water decals, they come on a sheet and you cut it out, you stick them in a, you cut them out to shape and then stick them in water and then the actual decal floats off and then you apply it to the model.
These two types is one with a white backing, so you don't want to be using them on something that's dark, but if you're using it on a white background, that's fine.
Or these clear back decals, but if you've got white lettering that you want to apply onto a dark surface, you've got to get a specialist decal producer because white tone is particularly specialized.
Printing medium.
Okay, gosh, yes, there's a lot to investigate.
But there's some great, great YouTube videos out there.
I follow quite a few and watch their videos, so you get lots of tips on what to do and have to do stuff.
Yeah, yeah, very good. It certainly keeps you busy.
It does. So you're doing anything special for Hulkman 8 tonight?
We don't really celebrate it much in this, this family.
It's just, just keep your head down.
No, I live on the outskirts of Edinburgh, so it's pretty quiet.
There'll be lots of fireworks and stuff as the night goes on, but not a lot.
In the centre of Edinburgh, it will be completely insane, but.
Oh, yeah, because they have the big firework display in the centre of Edinburgh, don't they?
I've always avoided it in the 30 plus years I've lived here.
I've never gone and joined in. It's just too many people for me.
Yeah, I was watching news last night because Sydney have a big firework display every year,
and there's been a lot of people calling for them to cancel it because all around Sydney is where all the bushfires are at the moment.
Yeah, yeah, it looks appalling.
Absolutely dreadful.
A lot of the smaller towns around the Sydney suburbs, they've cancelled their firework displays,
but Sydney have said, well, we've already paid for it.
It was paid for a month ago, and we're just going to go ahead.
Just add to the smoke a bit.
Yeah, that's what a lot of these, you know, nearly half a million people have signed a petition telling them to cancel it.
Yes, I wouldn't want to be in Australia right now.
I have to say it looks pretty, pretty dire over that side of things.
Yeah, that first YouTuber I started following Marty, he lives in Australia.
Yeah, I visited Australia about nearly 30 years ago, around that area, Sydney and a bit.
Is it south from there?
Bateman's, Bateman's Bay, that area, and thought, wow, this is a nice one-line living here.
Yeah, but then climate changed that one.
I'm not sure.
I don't live anywhere.
Scotland seems reasonable for the moment.
Still, still cold enough.
Yeah, it was a bit chilly here in Blackpool today.
I went out to go to the gym and the car was I stopped.
Yeah, yeah, it's like that.
It's been like that here.
It's been minus one.
Just looking at my little display here.
It's 2.7 degrees at the moment.
But it was minus one earlier on.
It's not amazingly cold, but it's chilly.
Yeah.
So no snow around.
Nah, nah, not that much.
My daughter went up to, about a week or so ago, she went north.
There's a zoo, Highland Zoo, which is an offshoot of Edinburgh Zoo.
She went up there to visit, and it was very snowy.
Not precisely sure where it is, but it's up in the Highlands.
So yeah, that was just about a week ago.
So it didn't last a huge lot of time.
But you'd expect to get snow in the Highlands.
Yeah, I remember a few years ago going up to Calfgart to see me in laws.
And yeah, it was snowing that time.
And remember, creeping around the small side streets,
because they were chock full of snow.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
But snow itself is not too bad for getting around.
But when it freezes is the worst.
Yeah, that was the main problem.
Yeah, semi-thorough, and then freeze as hell, both on foot and in a car and everything.
Yeah, it was pretty bad back there, but I don't know how long it lasted,
because we were on the up for a couple of days.
We don't get a lot of snow in Edinburgh.
We had some, when was it now, about six or seven years ago,
there was a very, very heavy snow,
to the point where the council was bringing in large wagons
to shovel the snow off the streets into them,
and then take my way and dump them somewhere,
which is a pretty rare thing to see.
But we've not seen that sort of thing for a long time since that.
That was probably around about the time we were off in Glasgow,
so yeah, probably the same time, when they got heavy snow.
Yeah, yeah.
So pretty, pretty nasty.
It was quite a lot of it.
There was a lot of shoveling required to get out of the driveway in my house.
Hello to the newcomer.
How are you?
He's muted, yeah.
How would you pronounce that?
Urugami?
Urugami?
I think we've, I think we've heard Urugami on the,
on I could probably read it perhaps,
or on some other podcast I don't know.
Tell us.
Tell us.
Can hear the mic blowing, but I can't hear you.
Urugami.
Urugami is correct.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Hello.
Happy New Year or happy New Year's Eve, whatever.
It's slow.
I'm going back quiet.
So have you got any projects, particular,
into the New Year Tony?
Well, continuing with the two podcasting cast and distra-office.
Obviously the models.
The podcast take a fair bit of your time, I would imagine.
Do they?
Are you doing a research for them?
Not so much research, but I share the audio editing for Mintcast
with Leo, who's our lead host.
And I also do all the post-production for the distra-hoppers.
One.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that can be quite a process.
Take a fair bit of time.
Yeah.
Distra-hoppers isn't too bad because it's just the two of us.
So the audio editing itself is fairly straightforward.
It just, you just got great.
And we only record for about 45, 50 minutes.
You just got to slowly work your way through it.
But it took me a while to work out how to do all the posting
to blogger and all that to get the feed to work.
But now I'm into it.
It's not too bad.
Yeah.
Good.
Good.
Yeah.
These services can be a bit of a problem.
It took me a long time to get the point where I could reliably post
HBR stuff to archive.org because it's a, you know,
I haven't put in the audio.
There's not a big problem.
But I wanted to make sure that the shows were completely self-contained.
You know, contained the any supplementary stuff,
all the notes, any pictures and that sort of stuff.
And I think it's taken me years to prepare that.
It took me a couple of months to work out how to
embed the logo so that when you,
when you push the feed to a pod catcher,
it shows the little logo in your pod catcher alongside that particular stream.
But I finally worked out your act to actually post
the image that you wanted to appear alongside your,
your stream on your pod catcher.
And then put a link in with the,
in the industry in your blog thing for that as well.
And then that works.
But yeah, that took a bit figuring out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot to learn.
Still, that's quite fun.
That sounds like fun.
Still plenty of podcasts.
And podcasts have increased in popularity in the past
a year or more seems,
although the fact that quite a number of them don't use RSS or atom bothers me slightly.
But you know, they're all going to the various platforms,
whose names I can't remember,
but things that you need to have need to be using specifically.
You can't just use a generic pod catcher to grab stuff.
All right.
Most of the ones I listen to were all RSS or atom
because they just push straight to me pod catcher.
Yeah, me too.
But you do, like for example,
I saw an advert for Bill Nye's latest thing.
I've never really listened to him.
I thought it would be interesting to hear his podcast.
No way could I could I subscribe to it because it was Apple
and it was Stitcher maybe or those types of things.
And they're not very Linux-friendly these things.
Yeah.
I know what you mean.
So that's if that's it, that's an ongoing trend.
That's just a bit of a shame, I think.
But maybe it's not maybe there's just just a few.
That was the other problem we had.
I can't get distra hoppers into the adult at Apple pod catcher thing
because you've got to have spent money in an Apple account
or you can post stuff to the podcast system.
Yeah.
That's the sort of thing is people trying to tie some sort of
so-called monetization with these things.
Just wonder if it bothers me slightly that it might be hijacked
in some way but hopefully not.
Yeah, theoretically you can create an Apple account
without actually spending money but in practice you can't.
Yes.
Sounds like a very political sort of a way to deal with things.
So I'm talking about Project again.
My neighbour just had an extension built.
And yeah, great.
You know, people build extensions to houses these days
as a wood-framed thing with,
and then this guy's put a brick skin on it.
And he had a lot of leftover joists and other such bits of wood.
And I said, and the builder was starting to load him in a skip
to throw away.
And I said, do you really want them?
Can I have them?
So I've got a garage full of joists and bits like that.
Quite long some of them.
Almost too long for the garage.
So my project soon is the weather's up to it.
It probably would have been today actually.
To make it, maybe it's up a good workbench with them.
You know, do some nice woodworking and some good, good lap joints
and that sort of stuff.
Make a reasonably good, solid workbench.
I've just inherited some antique woodworking equipment
from my father in law who passed away just before Christmas.
Sorry to hear that.
But yeah.
Oh, well, what sort of stuff have you got?
Sort of old bracing bits and planes and things like that?
Yeah, these are bracing bits.
These are a plane, the square is various bits and pieces.
I haven't fully sorted through it.
The, the set squares or the squares got a bit of rust on the,
but that'll clean up very well.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yes.
But I can see a plane at the bottom of the box,
which I haven't got out yet.
Yeah, it was amazing.
I was really surprised.
That's lovely.
Yeah.
When they were clearing out.
Yeah, when they were clearing out the house,
the brother-in-law and said,
oh, these are loaded tools in my, Michael's garage.
So there's anyone want them before they get slung?
I said, oh, I'll, I'll have them.
I'll have a sort through them.
And if there's anything I can't use,
I'll pass on to someone in camp.
And so we just before Christmas Eve,
actually, we dropped into them to take a Christmas presents.
And there was a big plastic,
one of these big plastic storage boxes full of tools.
Wow.
You like it into the car.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
There's that.
There's some HBR shop potential there.
So I fell into HBR mode there for a second.
No, but you and Ken are always looking for new content.
That's what we do.
But no, that would be, that's a really interesting thing.
I have also inherited such stuff.
My neighbor left a few years ago now.
Really quite friendly.
And the husband was a carpenter for a lot of,
until he got old and got, and retired and stuff.
And they were clearing stuff out in the same sort of scenario,
a box, you know, a handmade box of tools.
Many of them are rusty as that.
This could be because they've been sat in a garage for a number of years.
And they said, do you want them?
So I said, yes, please.
And it's planes and chisels and gauges and all sorts of,
all sorts of really cool stuff.
So the plan is to get them,
get them de-rusted and back into, into use again.
There's some of these really big longs, moving planes
and the ones that you can make.
What do you call it?
The ones that have got shaped blade to them so you can make
the word escape me,
but the sort of decorative wood edgings on things.
So kind of little hand routers kind of there?
Yeah, that type of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, these things fascinate me.
I'm not much of a woodworker, but I did learn at school.
And I've always been quite fascinated with making things out of wood.
Yeah, I'm looking at a tin now.
It's a very on PC, too.
It's a very old cigarette tin.
Mitchell's price crop cigarettes, but it's full of woodworking bits
for the ham, the drill,
these are the little tool for,
oh, what do you call it?
Create your circles on metal.
So it's a nice,
oh, projector, protractor.
All right, okay.
Yeah.
For making the scoring circles on sheet metal and things.
Yeah, that would be good.
And it's got the old little bar
that curved bar so that one end of it can slide up
and the little flat, flat-ended screw that holds it tight
when you've got it into the size you want.
It's really cool.
Oh, yeah, so they don't make them like that anymore.
Now, do you know what you mean, though?
Those are lovely.
Yeah, good stuff.
Well, yeah, we must compare notes at some point.
Do a series on woodworking tools of,
yes, the year or something.
That would be a good one, actually.
I'm sure there's probably some quite knowledgeable people
out there who do woodworking professionally,
but still it would be quite interesting,
interesting subject to get onto.
One of the downsides of living in the UK is that
the quality of wood tends to be lower than you'd find
in some other parts, I think.
Certainly watching woodworkers in America,
the availability of really nice wood is very, very much easier
than it is here.
You can get quality stuff, but it's rare and it's massively expensive.
And you go, you have to go somewhere very specialised to get it.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
But as far as the tools go,
some of the really crafty woodworkers do want the antique tools,
because especially if they're restoring old stuff,
they want to be able to use the tools
that would have made it in the first place.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Unfortunately, if you're going by the equivalent now,
I bought myself a Stanley,
just a sort of standard planer,
I remember what number it is,
but the one that everybody recommends that you have in your tool,
if you're doing a bit of woodworking,
just to do sort of simple planning,
not to flatten great big lumps of wood or anything.
So I bought one of those and I'm maybe in the 1970s,
I bought one and it was a bit,
it was a little bit pricey.
You go and try and find something of an equivalent quality now.
Or rubbish.
Yeah.
Yeah, no weight to the metal.
No, no, no.
And, you know, they're not as precise,
they're made of poorer materials.
They're just bad.
You know, it's quite sad.
Yeah, if you don't make it,
like they used to do anymore.
You know, we sell a couple old geezers.
Yeah, grumpy old men.
Yeah, yeah.
This is the point at which my kids are normally turning on.
My kids would have turned off ages ago if they were listening to this.
The one thing they do make better than they used to and that's cars.
Yeah, true.
Back in the 70s and 80s cars used to fall apart after 60 years.
Nowadays, my wife's driving a car that I bought from brand new
and it's 15 years old this year.
That's very true.
And I remember my dad having a second-hand car
and, you know, you needed to put under seal into the wings.
Otherwise, you'd go and poke it.
And the thing would just be a sheet of rust.
Yes.
I don't like that.
Like voxels that were particularly famous.
The salty mud from the roads would go up into the wing.
And within by the summer,
it was just like a sieve.
You could literally poke your finger through it.
I had one of my first car.
I inherited off my mother.
And it was a datsome 120-wire state.
And it wasn't that old.
But a couple of years after I got it,
it literally failed.
It's had no take because it was totally full of rust.
And it would have cost me more than I paid for the car
to get it fixed up to get you through the 70s.
Oh, yeah.
I, as a summer job,
I used to work for my uncle who had a bodywork shop
in Norwich, where I used to live.
And he, that was the majority of the work that he did.
You know, somebody bring a car in and say,
I think there's a bit of rust here.
And he'd spend ages taking the paint off, cutting the rust away,
then making an aluminium plate that went over the space
where the rust was and then using filler
and sanding it in.
So it became invisible and re-spraying, you know.
And that probably next year it rusted in somewhere else.
Yeah.
Winged full and awful.
Yeah, the repair was stronger than the rest of the car.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Nobody ever said, why did he make him so badly?
But they did.
And yeah, it made him a living, anyway.
Yeah.
Right, I'm going to have to go and have a walk round.
I've been sat at this, in this computer chair for an hour and a half.
But I was thinking about the same thing.
Yeah.
I don't know your lunch yet.
So I'm going to go and get something to eat.
So yeah, I'm going to make myself a coffee
and I'm 20 minutes walking around.
All right.
And maybe speak to you later, Tony.
All right.
Cheers, Dave.
Cheers.
Tell her.
Cheers again.
Okay.
And I'll stop recording from now.
I'll start another one.
I hope that is recording.
Yeah.
Cool.
Greetings, everybody.
I haven't tested any of this audio stuff here.
And this device has fallen on to concrete many times.
Just jumping on here.
Say, happy new year.
Just woke myself up, got me a fresh cup of coffee.
And I'm going to get myself ready for the day.
So I think if anybody is actually here, maybe I'll hear something.
So I hope we get some activity.
Looks like we got a few folks that are in here.
But once again, I don't even know if this thing's working.
So we'll see.
We hear you, Brian.
Talk to you else.
No, my music.
Why can't he hear us?
Huh.
I thought I heard something there for a second.
Maybe not.
Oh, there's Ken.
I can.
Hi, buddy.
Hi, Brian.
Hi, Ben.
Happy new year.
Glad to see you're on.
A good email saying you wouldn't be here.
But I guess you are.
I don't think your audio is working, Brian.
Oh, that sucks.
Well, I guess if my audio doesn't work.
Or if I'm not hearing.
Then fuck.
Okay.
Maybe I'll figure this out one day.
All right.
I did get Ken there for a second.
But I think I've got this configured wrong.
So we'll see.
Let me get myself woken up.
And we'll figure this out.
Greetings, everybody.
I sure hope this works a little better.
Just made my way into work.
And it seems like everyone else is sleeping in today.
So I'm just going to be sitting here for a few minutes.
Wait.
Nine a month.
Here comes somebody.
Well, not the somebody with keys, but somebody anyway.
And well, let's see what's it look like we got to do here today.
Pretty sure we got these vent window assemblies for this 57 Chevy hardtop.
And that's pretty neat job.
These owners just want everything done.
Every time we get it done, we say it's all done.
And then they say, OK, well, how about this little dinky thing?
So they're going to have a fully restored 1957 Chevy hardtop here pretty soon.
Not till next year though.
We got a 75 stingray.
Old Corvette.
Having a e-brake issue, which really is annoying because you have to disassemble the entire rear hub to get to the e-brake.
You can't even fit anything in there.
What else?
What else?
I think we got a ball joints.
That's what I'm going to do.
First thing I think I see this thing in here.
An old Chevy Silverado needs some ball joints.
That'll be fun.
They're not too bad.
And then of course, there's another one, a 93 Silverado that needs a door lock mechanism.
Hopefully I do the door lock.
Now I do the ball joints, then I do the door lock, start on the vent windows, and we'll cut out of here by lunchtime.
But that's pretty wishful thinking.
I don't even know if this is working.
So I might just be talking to myself.
Well, I can definitely say you're not talking to yourself and it is working.
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you.
Sounds like you have a fun day ahead of you.
Yeah, it won't be too bad.
Except we lost someone this week.
They've decided that they need to be three hours away.
So we'll find out they come back next week.
They might have a job.
Yeah, being three hours away seems to be a little different to doing the job.
Yeah, I hate to sound callous because he does have a granddaughter that's in the hospital down there.
But it seems seems like he's the one breastfeeding at this point.
Gotcha.
I tried to jump on earlier this morning and Ken was there.
And apparently he was trying to talk to me and I couldn't hear him.
And I wonder if it was because I installed Plumble.
And I had that setting checked that is half duplex mode.
So I unchecked it and I don't know.
I think it might be working.
Plumble is one of those things that some of the time when I use it,
because I usually just install it when I need it.
It's not constantly on my phone.
So whenever I use it, I have to reset it up.
I'm about 50% of the time amazed with it.
And about 50% of the time think it's trash.
So it's probably a setting thing.
Yeah, I think I got it.
Unfortunately, I think this is where I'm allocated today.
Because my headphones seem to have cropped out on my computer.
And that was really a pain in the ass couple of years ago without headphones.
Yeah, for sure.
You sound really good, though.
So that's a plus.
Yeah, I got this old Samsung S4 donated to me a couple of weeks ago.
And it's doing pretty good.
Except the guy that gave it to me kind of wishes he didn't know that it's run in Lineage 16,
which is Android 9.
And it was stuck on like five or something before.
That's crazy.
I had one of those a few years ago.
And I, it worked fine, but I wanted a newer phone.
And so I gave that to my daughter.
And my daughter used it for at least a couple of years.
And then it just died.
And it wasn't a battery issue.
It wasn't something that was easily fixable.
But I think last it forever.
And I actually really enjoyed it.
But it's funny that it can still go up to the current stuff with Lineage.
Yeah, it's wonderful.
But of course, now I've got everybody else going, oh, I've got my old S5.
And I can't get them to give it to me.
So I'm going to have to help them.
You're like, no, I don't know how to do that.
I'm sorry.
Here comes the boss.
I think I might just leave this on for a bit and listen to what's happening if there is anything.
But geez, it gets so loud in there as soon as these guys walk in, they just fire up that compressor.
And I can't hear a damn thing.
Well, hopefully some more people show up and we start having a conversation.
I'm pretty sure somebody will be here.
Unfortunately, this is going to be our first year without the long ramblings of 50.
Yeah, that's going to be rough.
Especially since he was pretty much here the whole time, every year.
But we'll make it through.
Oh, yeah.
Well, what came up under Agam Blue?
I mentioned the Buckminster Fuller's old quote of writing his friend a letter.
Getting a response back that he had been dead for a while.
And he said, well, I begged a differ.
I wouldn't have written him a letter if he wasn't perfectly alive.
So that's kind of how I feel about this stuff.
I lost a few people this past year too.
Which actually erupted that play test with loss of Bronx.
I got an emergency call and I just thought they were screwing around.
But that was a word that I better get my ass to Florida to see dad before he's gone.
Dang, that's hard.
I guess you're excused in that circumstance.
Yeah, I'm just a little pissed at myself for not coming up with something along the lines of,
oh, wait, I did take that knife and they just arrested me or something stupid.
Or at least like if you knew you weren't coming back, just be like,
I'd pull out the knife and get taken out in that way.
At least there was some action.
Yeah, but I don't know, I keep them with me.
I never did meet 50 in person, but Jesus, that guy has been part of my life now for well over 10 years.
Okay, off to work.
Have a good day.
Hopefully I'll talk to you later.
Yeah, catch you later, man.
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