Episode: 2905
Title: HPR2905: Two HPR hosts living in the same region finally meet up!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2905/hpr2905.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:01:11

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This is HBR episode 295 entitled to HBR hosts living in the same region finally meetup.
It is the 110th anniversary show of Dave Morris and is about 19 minutes long and carries an
exquisite flag.
The summer is Dave Morris and Mr. X Meetup and record a conversation.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com, get 15% discount on all shared hosting
with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15, better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello everybody this is Dave Morris for Hacker Public Radio and today we're doing a recording
out in the open air in what we thought might be a fairly quiet place but I think it's going
to be fairly noisy so if there's a lot of background noise excuse it excuse us and just put
up with it and we'll have a have a shot at cleaning it up if possible.
Anyway the point of this particular recording is to note the fact that two HBR hosts have
finally met in real life and the two hosts obviously myself, Dave Morris and Mr. X.
Hi Mr. X.
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio with Mr. X and you haven't got your theme tune with you.
No, I'm sorry, you should have brought a zylephone or something.
Yeah, that was something I did with the kick-walk studio we're back in the day so with our
kit-of-labs sound cards so yeah it was good fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I always know it's one of your, your, you know what I like.
I know the, I know the sort of, I think it's slightly a phone to point having a bit of music in your
and your, but since it's just the beginning.
Well, yeah, that's a set so yeah, yeah, yeah.
I tend to speed my HBR shows up so but it doesn't bother me particularly so we just to say that we're
in in Edinburgh, we both live in in and around Edinburgh.
Yeah, I won't tell you exactly where we are because, you know, you might get the homing missiles coming in
after it, but I don't know how that would work, but we thought we found a spot that was fairly far
away from the noisy world of Edinburgh and we are quite far away from the centre but we're still
fairly close to roads and stuff like that so, so hopefully there's not going to be too much background
noise, but there's not many places where you're actually alone, is there?
No, no, unless you go up the top of a hill or something,
say, probably even then you'd find somebody coming by us on a, on a motorbike or something,
but anyway, we'll give it a shot because I think it's worth commemorating the fact that we've,
we have, we've communicated by email on and off over the over the years,
but we'd never, never actually met, so we thought it was about time that we got together and
did that thing, so, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, go on.
Well, I was, I was just before I came here, I had a wee look, a back to see,
I'm quite bad with dates and whatnot, I thought, I've only been, I've been doing these
PR for four or five years, I wasn't quite sure, but I think it's, it's going to be come
November, December, I think it's going to be seven years, so it's quite a surprise, yeah, yeah,
yes, yes, it's surprising, isn't it? So how long have you been there?
Well, I started in 2012, so about the same, I think you might pre-date me in terms of shows,
yeah. I can realise that. Wow, because I met, I offered my services to Ken around about 2012,
and did my first show then, and then I went to Alcamp in Liverpool, to think was in August or
something, I can't remember what part of the year, anyway, and Ken went to that one and we met there,
and I was saying, oh, I'm really enjoying this PR, that community news is great, you should make
sure you do it every, every month, and he said, right, so you're going to come and join us then,
so the two of you, with a boat of each other, it's just fantastic, I love to work with one of my favourites,
yeah, we've become quite good friends as a consumer, so yeah, we're actually meeting up in real life
in Alcamp in October, so yeah, Ken can make it, make it per change, good stuff, family commitments
and stuff, so yeah, that's going to be good, so we must record something there, if we possibly can,
so yeah, well yeah, we didn't really come up with much of an agenda, I was, when I was listening to
your recent shows about how you listen to podcasts, you use mock, M-O-C, or M-O-C-P,
there's a bit of confusion, it's in the repositories of M-O-C, I went looking on my machine,
which is, which is, it's not old, it's just, I've transferred the home directories off,
off previous machines, and I found I'd used some books, I haven't anymore, and I wondered,
do you not walk around your house or move around a lot listening to podcasts, and if so, how do you
do it? codless headphones, oh right, so I'm just thinking, I'm not sure which, which episodes,
how many episodes have aired, so the first episode was a bit mock, was it, is that one that's
gone out so far? of the, the lightest two, what was it sitting on the, you did two, so there's
a second one not mentioning the colors here? I've not heard the second one yet, not heard it,
oh, a bit not, spoiler alert, no, no, no, this is going to, this is going to go out well,
we have to, no, I've not heard it yet, I think it's next, it's in next week's block,
what's the date today? it's the 24th, isn't fourth, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I use codless headphones,
it's one of these, these wireless codless headphones, so it's quite funny because I can sometimes
hear, the first thing I've been here was, there's a club behind me, and you hear the karaoke
singlets which are quite funny, you can imagine, so, so I don't know if they ever get any of my
HPR broadcasts or what, I don't know, and it's whether they enjoy that, I don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
now I'm getting, there's, I think I'm actually one of the kids over the road, play games,
and you hear them talking to their friends, no, I'll shoot this one, you get that one,
and I was like, that's, that's good, so yeah, yeah, yeah, because, you know, I'm not in crypto,
it's not Bluetooth on that, it's just open in there, you know, I kind of, is it 900, 700 megahertz,
I can't, somebody would have thought that, okay, I think it's quite good, yeah, I'd never
thought to do that, I listened to my podcast by sticking them on a portable player,
will I do both, because I work at lunch teams and what, no, I tend to put my
Sansa club on my back pocket, my headphones, and that works well, but I think, I can't,
I can't, I can't remember how I ended up getting my first set of codless headphones,
and I can't really remember, but, what, are you using Bluetooth on a Raspberry Pi to play it then?
No, no, it's just, it's just, so basically you have the audio socket comes out of the back,
it comes out of the side of that, the Raspberry Pi, that goes into a transmitter, but it sets,
oh you've got, we've got a Bluetooth transmitter. No, it's not, it's not Bluetooth, it's just
analog RA, it's okay, so basically you get the transmitter and the head ones together,
and ideas, you block them and you can walk them in the house. Okay, I do know I've never
thought of that. I've got a pair of Bluetooth headphones, like occasionally using my phone,
but the Bluetooth got quite a limited range, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've always been a Bluetooth
as rubbish. Mind you, it was, it was funny, because I think, again, you'll find out by listening
to the second episode, but had a rate, difficulty finding a pair of headphones to replace my first
pair that eventually snapped and grazed up at one point in a market, and there were somebody selling
these headphones, so yeah, there were 15 pounds, I think that, actually I think my headphones
were still working at that point, these are 15 pounds, and I think they came from Japan,
so they were probably actually illegal in this country being around the kingdom, but I just
put them on and get tired of getting my ties, put them on and I walked, I walked, I walked, I walked,
and it's a big, big place, I'm kind of done walking and walking, when are these going to drop out,
you know, so they made it the whole length of the market, and I don't know how, maybe they're
going from miles, I don't know, but I've basically got to get up and walk back, these are great,
I've still got to work in with them, I'm not bothered just now, and I hand them back,
I should have bought them, and I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that sounds quite nice. But these were
digital ease ones, the way you could tell there was no hand, I don't know, he's a hand
quite appreciated, yeah, what was available, I've seen these little Bluetooth transmitters that
you can get, where you plug into a non-bluetooth capable thing, and I sort of toyed with doing that,
but on the whole my experience with Bluetooth is it's horrible, it's not worth it at all.
So the only difficulty you've got, once you've got caught a head for us, and I'll be
invariably bothering me that doing me this years or whatever, I'm doing things around the house,
and in something happens and you turn it off, you know, so you get to find somewhere
stop and mop, which is some Raspberry Pi upstairs, so the episodes that are to follow, explain
how I control that setup with the Raspberry Pi and my, which is going to stop the damn thing,
that's the typical piece of it. So I think I think I had an old compact
black top that I used to have on in the house, hit the space back, to pause, you know, but I
now use a completely different setup, I don't know, at what point I'm going to,
and might this make my before, so maybe I shouldn't say too much,
No, don't, don't let the cat out of the bag, you can help it. So yeah, yeah, that's interesting,
yeah, yeah, because I bought some of these little tiny radio devices that you can run off
of Raspberry Pi and stuff, you know, there's some hats and stuff, I think there's
Adafruit stuff that does, I can't remember the chip, but they are, well I think they're meant for
Internet of Things devices, so you would use, you know, they're not like what's it called Zigbee
and that sort of stuff, but they're not actually that, but they're, they're using radio frequency stuff,
I can't remember the details of it now, it's off the top, so what are you controlling with it?
Well, you could potentially pick up signals from a device that's data logging,
more, yes, right?
Possibly streaming, I don't know, I don't know. Right, but you know, there are devices around where
you could possibly make a portable device, you carry in your pocket, which through a radio link
could talk to your Raspberry Pi and tell it to stop playing music or something, I don't know.
That's an interesting idea. I don't know, that's not solution I used,
by the way, you'll find it when you're in it. We should need this subject to it.
No, it's interesting, because I'm going to look at a compact laptop about places a bit difficult,
and I mean, I can quite, I mean, I had a triple EPC and that, which again I'll mention for that,
that's sort of the final solution, by any means, but that's that's quite compact.
I've got a triple EPC and I still sometimes use it for that very purpose to stop and start
more, you know, but the battery life, you unplug it and pin it, it's flat, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it doesn't, doesn't I? I also have a triple EPC, which used to go around to conferences and
most things with me, but now it's so, it's, yeah, it's suffering from the same problems that you
were describing. It's very, very old. It's fine, I've got a Samsung laptop, but it used to be my,
used to miss his X's laptop, and so she gave me and said, oh, you have this, it's rubbish,
it's, it takes so long, I switch on, it's just terrible. So I had Windows 7 on the thing,
and I think I may have kept Windows 7 and, you know, partitioned it off and whatnot, and I put
the Liboon 2 on it, I lightweight so I've been to, and I don't know how old this laptop is,
and I was quite a few years old, and I think I maybe even upgraded the Liboon 2 that was on there as
well, and it's still, you know, it still boots up really quick or fairly quick, shut down nice and
quick. The battery life is fantastic, so I mean, I don't look after it, I don't do anything I
should be doing with it, you know, I leave it in charge too long sometimes, I let it, well, I don't
let it go, can do it flat, but considering the age of the thing, I can't believe that the battery
life is so good, but it's the triple EPC is so bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the power switch,
the power switch is scaled on this thing in it, and of course, like how did I fix this,
looking at another YouTube or Google search, and somebody says, oh, this is how you
said that if you're something laptop, power switch goes, you got a penis, there's us and you stick
it in this hole and you slide it across them. Oh, that's what that's fine, so that's what I do now.
I love those social services, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, why would you?
Yeah, exactly, amazing what you can, you can continue to use beyond it's official lifetime.
So what happens is there's two pieces of plastic either behind the plastic switch, and it pushes over
it over the real switch, and inside, and over time, you say that across one of these pillars
snaps, and there's only nothing you can do with it, so that's a job basically. Yeah, yeah, I often
wonder if we were talking about 3D printing briefly earlier on, I wonder whether getting into that
sort of stuff, you could actually make replacement parts, I'm not sufficiently sophisticated with
the 3D stuff yet, it might be quite a fiddly design, I don't know how you would get
all the dimensions accurately, but you probably could with a pair of fine calipers and stuff,
which you can get rid of for about £7, so maybe there's not a thing called, as I say, is it not
some like, things are thinking me or something like that? It's a thing of us, yes, yes, so I wonder if
I would say, there's a thing, you'd be surprised what you can find on a thing of us, yeah,
yeah, I do that quite a lot, yeah, I've been looking for, what was I looking for recently,
I was looking for something to, oh I can't remember what it was now, well I've recently
set myself up a new desk to work, put my PC on, I built a fairly large cased machine,
I've got two monitors, and over above the top of that I've put two shells on the wall,
you know, a metal shelf rack, you think, and because the shelf above my monitors is a nice
height, so I don't bang my head on it, so I can put my microphones on it for use with HBR
recordings and stuff, yeah, I keep on having ideas about how I could put some LED lights underneath
there, and I've got some little LED screen things, oh yeah, I've been coming, I love people
yeah, and it'd be really nice to be able to display the state of things, there's various things
around the house, or there's the state of HBR as well, which would be, we should be
fun, so I keep on looking to see if anybody's come up with designs for gadgets that you can use
to mount bits of electronics onto surfaces and stuff, so Thingiverse is great, I've not found
a huge lot, but there's a hell of a lot of stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about your
monitor, and I've got, I've got an early flat panel monitor, and I think it's a V7, it seems like
German design, it's really good value at the time, and a colleague who works it, oh yeah,
you know, you can get a mount for these things, you can swivel it out, I really recommend it,
so I had a look, and it was very cheap, it was very substantial,
but that was the thing, so it's either way, we'll accept a monitor up to set up some
signs, and I thought well, why does it matter what size it is, because it's going to be clear of
the desk anyway, so ordered this thing, and I'll attach it to the desk, so screwed it on, is it,
any of that, but it's fine, there's no problem with that being there, that's good,
so, but bigger than what it's usually confirmed, there's nothing wrong with that,
a lot of my hands are going to make trouble, but don't get mad, that's what I was just doing,
I'm heavy, so, but I'm paying to be honest, you're really careful, and you just
lightly go out, just hold it, just touch it, it pulls against it,
I actually installed something like that recently, which is a thing with like four hinges on it,
so you, and you can pull the monitor, I think I can do that, it's like a bit swivel on it,
so similar, my cat, my daughter's cat actually, but it's become mine, I didn't have my daughter
leaving it with me, keeps thinking I have some great places to go and rub our head in and stuff,
so you're just sitting there looking at the monitor, and the cat comes up behind it and moves it,
so it has this advantage, but it does do a nice job, yeah, yeah, these are good, yeah,
so, David's body is, what's that, each two, yeah, that's a zoom,
zoom is two, yeah, fancy thing, and I've got my, well I was 100% at fight pin from China,
it's got a record playing, stop sort of thing, so, I've been testing, I've been
sitting there with a tiny bit of, of the two, so, as I can pass, and I'm sure it'll have been
no one here as good as the zoom bit, I've been just, just to see anybody, yeah, the trouble with
these handheld mics is that they are, was it John Colt talking about this recently, condense
a mic, right, just pick up everything, right, right, for miles, yeah, and we're sitting in a garden
of a, yeah, there's nobody around, nobody here, just got some of that, a traffic, yeah,
just next to a junction, so, yeah, and it seems to be the day of the motorbike as well,
you know what I'm going to ask, yeah, so, yeah, you might get the better quality,
oh, I don't know about that, I don't even think so, yeah, in terms of what it's, yeah,
yeah, I can send you the file and you can, you can, you can, you can, yeah, that's gonna be fun,
all right, so, shall we call it a hold, then, yeah, we're about 18 and nearly 19 minutes in,
that's exactly, yeah, it's tons to say, yeah, but then we'll stop it there and, yeah, we
must do this again another time, yeah, we must do it next time, but I'll take it off,
okay, public radio,
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