Episode: 1114
Title: HPR1114: DudmanoviPodcast Episode 7 - A geeks Journey to nature
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1114/hpr1114.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:14:36

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Episode 7 A Geeks Journey to Nature
A podcast that did Manovie.cz
Hello and welcome to Episode 7. A Geeks Journey to Nature. This is a podcast that
did Manovie.cz. It's recorded live thanks to mumble server. Well that's a bit of software
but it's just server the WeConnect2 is provided by Linux Basics.com and we thank them
greatly for their assistance and help in doing that. What have we got in store this week?
Well no we had we got some updates some news we're going to talk a bit about technology
how this podcast is powered and that's really right. Let's just so we can turn down that music.
I thought I'd remixed it so it'd be quiet. So first a few updates. Well when I started to do this
blog this morning I had edited the show notes kind of a guide what I would talk about but I went
to login to my WordPress blog and somehow I'm not sure I think maybe my wife or my son had
tried to login to somewhere else and the admin I rely upon Firefox to remember my passwords and
for some reason maybe someone clicked on remember and the password had been incorrect so
I had forgotten what the password was and had to go and reset it through I think it's called
my PHP admin where you can access the SQL database and change it. So I quickly found some
instructions how to do that on our friend Google and all his well I got back in a bit of a relief
really. Another note I tried to use our door version 3 a new version came out instead of our door
2 people have been getting excited about it and I thought it looked great but when I installed it
it looked great really nice colors and everything but just pressing record and then stop
seemed to crash the whole thing so I can't be doing with that while I'm in the middle of
trying to do something sensible so I've reverted back to version 2 but I had to reset stuff up
and that was a bit of a pain but it didn't take long and it was a good practice. What other
news and updates have we got let me look at my notes oh yes how cow Theresa Tresca still hasn't
given birth she's out grazing today with her daughter and two friendly horses and every night
I wake up in the middle of the night go and check have a look in the morning go and check because
when she gives birth it's good to go and help her a little bit dry off the little calf and because
at night she is chained to one place where her food is all the cows are at night all at home
that I'm only worried that you know she gives birth it comes out the back end and she can't
she can't turn around enough to help try the cow off on the lick and what have you so
probably it's no problem I remember one year I think the first year about five years ago when she
gave birth to her first son who was called Albert we woke up in the morning I went out to have a
look and there was there was this kind of big creature there and it looked strangely like our dog
at the time we had a Bernadine a Bernad Bernadine dog and he was massive and kind of a bit of fluffy
and silly looking but the thing is this this little bull as we later found out called
down bud he he looked at different color but he was loping around and very active I was very
surprised so I had to catch him first and then get him to drink the milk and what have you
but what else what else happened well my wife had a bit of a panic this week she was just going
down past our house to her neighbors and on her way back with a bucket in hand to pick up some
apples to give to the bull and the cows for the evening there was this she was confronted by this big
pig running towards her and she had about 10 seconds of panic thinking oh my god how of our pigs
escaped you know and now we've got they're out on the road and we're going to have to try and
hurt them back and then she realized it was the neighbor's pig and although it's it's never
nice when any animal escapes if it's if you have animals and if some animal escapes and you
realize it's not yours it's such a relief because you know you're not responsible for hurting
them back anyway my wife quickly heard it heard it the big pig back up the road to the neighbor's
house and knocked on their door but she wasn't so sure if she could hurt the pig because he seemed
very stubborn and determined that he would go past but always well and the biggest relief is it
wasn't our pigs what else has been we're rushing through the news here because I want to get on
with a with the with the main feature story um our I've mentioned last week that we have I've
selected a guinea pig to kind of do some home brew research here now I don't want to mention his
name specifically um there was a bit of clashing times and he actually fell asleep um when I was
going to chat with him yesterday I mean to give him credit he was very late in the in the evening
or early in the morning for him and he'd had a long day so um we'll we'll reschedule but um his
initials are BB and you would recognize him by the depth from the the um silkeness of his voice
so we're hoping to get him back on and we're going to be talking about healthy food and hopefully
he has agreed to uh to be a guinea pig for his benefit and the outs and your benefit so he can
kind of do a little impromptu scientific study here um it's it's a scientific study that's been
done thousands if not millions of times over back in into the eons of time when people
people weren't suffering from any health related or societal related problems and we're all happy
but um sometimes to believe the repercussions of these simple changes in our lifestyle and what
we eat and do we need to retest them with it's not always easy just to believe um what we read or
something and fair enough you know we we should test and collaborate our sick sort of test and
collaborate if that's the word ourselves these things so that's what our friend BB has agreed to do
and it's just a matter of catching him what else um i want to speak just at the end of this podcast
briefly um about some more things with uh debian and abuntu i outlined last week perhaps in a bit
of a haphazard way um my frustrations or discoveries with abuntu the software distribution based on
debian i have made a few more discoveries whether they are completely accurate or whether i'm
misunderstanding um that's definitely possible but um i thought i'd share and discuss them
just briefly and i'll carry on my research and without further ado let's get on
so the feature for this episode is and this is reading from my notes 10 years compressed into
perhaps an hour how an english computer programmer ended up owning cows horses pigs chickens and
speaking check what is check you say the check language not the english language the check language
and after all this time is still into tech but is perhaps a little more discerning what started it
all is free and open source yes that is absolutely true anyway i hope there's kind of a primer
but what my intention was if i'm sitting comfortably maybe my wife will bring me a cup of coffee
or a hot cup of tea because i'm english after all is i wanted to outline what my experiences were
and how i got to where i am um i'm realizing as i do these podcasts it is quite a difficult thing
just to sit down and chat to yourself and it's uh along the way it is my intention just not to
to edit things so you can really hear what i'm like and i'm not going to spruce it up you know um
how it is is how it is so how did it start well um as a young kid i will call myself a young hacker
because i like literally to hack things apart and look in them i had a cupboard full of old
electrical things or old things that our parents had thought they won't use any more and
weed somehow got them some old wireless or radios um some old bits of computery things or something
no that's probably not true maybe there weren't so many computery things in those days
anyway i had a cupboard full and uh like all best hackers i took them apart and at the time i didn't
have the skill to put them back together again so i hit them carefully at the back of the cupboard
so no one would notice because i know that my mum will be a little bit upset if she noticed that i
destroyed things well that that was where it all started i was big into technical Lego and Lego
and i love building and playing with things like that i think i did i did think that i would be in
an auto mechanic at some point but i'm pretty pleased i'm not because um i think the scope for
comprehension is is a little bit limited really not um to to uh this on uh auto mechanics but
i think computer technology and science is is a wider field than just fixing or mending or
expanding on cars you know but anyway i slipped into uh like most kids i'm not sure they really have
any comprehension of what they want to do they've got the careers services and they just told
they've got to pick something you know you've got to move on from school and go and do science so
i went to college and enter to university first in engineering and then in computer science
graduated from computer science after the three or four years and uh started to be a computer
programmer but um i was infected at university by the concept of open source slackware i think
um there was a teacher at my university called Bob Dickinson and maybe i was getting
in contact with him again the university of half the churning land and uh he was a big inspiration
bit of a wacky long-bearded lin um sort of open sourcey linuxy type no insult no insult meant Bob
but um maybe it's a compliment in fact anyway he was big into e-max and slackware and all these kinds
of things and uh the first history of tuition i tried was slackware on 14 discs you know download
in them at the university because not many people or nobody had a internet at home back in i think
it was 96 or 98 something like that and um slackware from 14 floppy discs go home install it
oh no one of the discs is corrupt you could have drive back to university download anyway
the cat a long story short i was infected by the bug of open source just the the concept that
you had the freedom you know you you could look to see how something was implemented
you know you could you could learn from what somebody else shared you could see it running you
know compiled you could try to learn the whole can basically you could learn if you had the interest
and uh if you didn't have the interest and but you wanted to have it to be something different
you could make it into a commercial thing you could pay somebody to do it um but you needed to
give and pass on that freedom i share your changes share your modification share what it took for
you to be able to build it you know the know how the the the the gubbins behind what makes it do
its thing so i went in and i i worked at different places i was quite fortunate in a way
after the jobs i took because i never really kept one for for more than a year i i jumped
getting good pay pay rises on each jumper i spent some time in the city of London working for like
some financial banking consultancy so i had some good experience being a consultant
for the financial industry never a particularly good one but it was interesting experience to see
how they behave you know getting involved and seeing what salesman alike and
kind of behind the scenes a little bit and then i worked for some more proprietary software
getting into Java but along the way you know i was pretty fortunate i had a lot of free time
and uh all those jobs had fast most of those jobs had fast and uh openly available into access so
you know in my spare time or any additional time i had i was able to to research and
search to my house content you know google at that time and come into its own so
it was really easy to find stuff and to be honest perhaps even now you know you could easily get
overwhelmed with with any pursuit or study and that's exactly what i did i've got a thank all my
employees uh at the time they didn't really notice what i was doing or even demand too much from me
but um i was developing a problem all the time during those years and that was pains in my hands
and stressing my shoulders from the bad posture the the too many hours of stamina to
screen you know kind of tension and stress to do things quickly and get results you know
in a performance related way oh my cup of tea has just come thank you very much
and you're still trying to prevent everyone from shouting out there will you okay great thank you
i gave them strict commands not to be shouting at all while i'm doing the podcast but that's
no guarantee in a nice way they shout sometimes angry but uh it's a family after all and where you
anyway um i developed these uh problems and pains in my hands i had some injections you know i
remember vividly going to the general purpose doctor the GP in england and it's a sort of
incompetence that she she put an injection in one wrist and you know she was pressing and pressing
on the on the plunger at the top and it just wouldn't go in you know it's so painful she
banged it in my arm right in in in my wrist there some quarter zone or some injection
and um and it wouldn't go and it ended up that the needle was sort of blocked at the end so she
got a new needle injected the bottom line was it made no difference it still was hurting i was having
some sort of work paid for massage and physiotherapy and it was it was a pain there was one more one
of those nagging constant pains you know it creates a kind of frustration and it just kicked me in
the the backside and reminded me do i want to be doing this the whole of my life do i want to be
sitting at a computer is it something what i that i want to do so uh fairly quickly based on all the
free time i had i started looking for more jobs um a quick reminder if you've just dipped into the
middle of this podcast you are listening to dudemanovie.cz and this is episode seven and we're just
talking about a geek's journey to nature so uh back on where were we yeah so i had these injections
it made no difference and i started to look to see for some alternative um i got it interested
in ecology and uh eco eco villages um i realized i needed to get away from the work and and
to find some some place so basically i found an eco village um which i felt some affinity with
and seemed interesting um the one i chose was it was called falcon blanco in uh ibiza spain
well an island off of spain and i thought that sounds cool you know go and see what these people
are about and learn something so i ranged with my boss to uh take a six month break in my mind
i didn't intend to come back maybe in his mind he didn't intend to employ me i don't know
but i think i think that he probably did and uh actually i did come back after six months
or five months and i worked there another two months just for some spending money to an
a kind of different job so i must thank those employees they were really great at morant in
actually they've changed their name recently been bought out by another american company so i don't
know they probably changed their name again but um i rented my house um which you know i had a
mortgage on and it was a bit stressful but uh i found someone to rent it put it in it with an
agency and i packed all my bags and i traveled off and um the experience i had for six months was
quite phenomenal to be honest because um it was a very special eco village um they had concepts
of eco-ness but um it was really about facing your preconceptions and your your sense of reality
and that my same stress out strange but their their method of doing it was that their way of income
was to go around the the bins and the sort of dumpsters in on the island of Ibiza they also had
agreements with quite a few supermarkets in the main town where we would go and pick up the
disposed the disposed wooden padlets because they were quite expensive to dispose of and transport
back to the mainland because you know there was this bottle neck of the ferry line and uh in
exchange for picking up those pallets they would they would allow us to and they would deliberately
put into a certain place um at the back of their shops for us all of the out-of-date products
you know the cans and tins damaged things and we would go and pick up all of that and then we'd
go back to the to the little um sort of oasis home away from home and um sort through it and take
the things which we thought had more value for ourselves to eat and uh then sell and we had there
was a shop on the on the place on the property and people would come so they'd be a lot of like
washing powders some food stuffs it was it was amazing really the amount of stuff they threw out
the the island of abyssa is um a big tourist resort and really quite affluent but at the same time
very wasteful you know you can go you can get all your clothes and everything from the dumpsters
in fact i remember one time our computer broke it stopped working and uh you know we just
sat there in the evening and we we put out the intention it sounds a bit hearty farty or um
in new agey you know i was going along with them at the time and and i'm always trying to be open
to new experiences so throw myself into it and and experience it but uh you know put the message
out there that we need a new computer and lo and behold we get in the big dumpster dive in
palette picking up van go off to um abyssa the next morning i think it was me and one of the girls
and down by a dumpster was a computer we took it home you know installed i think it was
xp at the time and and it worked perfectly there was absolutely nothing wrong with it i think
even had a monitor so we got a monitor um a box an old box with a pc in it and it worked fine so
we had a new computer anyway that was the the island there there was an associative problem you know
the the guy there because you're picking up rubbish and a lot of it can seem useful
it's very tempting just to keep accumulating and um it's slowly quite slowly became apparent to me
that even if we clear up all the rubbish that he had accumulated he was accumulating more
at a faster rate and it was an impossibility to keep up that there were literally palettes and
palettes of of stuff and it was our job to kind of sort for it all store it but then nothing
was done with it you know so it became really a massive fire risk in the summer and uh
often palettes then would be you know left out in the rain and quickly it would become kind of
useful goods to it be transport transferred after a few rainings and washes to complete absolute
rubbish that had been rained on and spoiled so i i realized it wasn't really a future and i actually
needed a place of my own so so i was in charge and and what i really wanted this community wasn't
some kind of haphazard eco village is i wanted to find and founder my own family so i had a
braver who'd already gone to the Czech Republic he'd been sucked there by an opair he'd fallen in
love with in England and we'd all met in a pub together and there were free free Czech opairs
and he'd very quickly narrowed out the one of them that he liked the best and he was a very fast
mover and um likewise he quit his job and moved to the Czech Republic before me about three years
four years before me two years three years maybe anyway and uh got married in the Czech Republic and
um built his own little house and has a nice life and now he has free children maybe four
even actually going very big guns at it anyway so um i thought it would be nice you know my twin
braver is in the Czech Republic why don't i at least come and see if it's not possible to settle
in in some region which is closest you know try to you know we're gonna move far away from our
parents but why don't we at least us bravers as twins stay kind of close you know so
my came out i found eco villages and there's something called woofin um it's called
willine workers on organic farms and if you're a young person looking for opportunities to travel
on budget and to maybe go to farms maybe to to help out in a more sort of open air environment
you don't have to be necessarily a big ecologist but it's a great way on a budget to travel and to
meet different people see different lifestyles but so there's this thing called woofin
and um i found a kind of position at a place in Czech Republic near Olamorts which isn't
actually far from where i'm living now and um i stayed there and helped the guy for about four or
five months and um i was kind of interested again you know should i make my own family inside an
eco village or should i be you know completely independent and again there were problems with
that guy that um he was he was quite of a quite an activist pushy ecologist very well meaning
but upset a lot in his life by what's happening in the world and and try and a little too forcefully
and um aggressively to uh to see and create change and um hi it was a wonderful learning experience to
be honest to be thrown in and well voluntarily i put myself into all these positions and
became intimate with these people so i must thank them all um along the way but um you know
have to make my own way in my own decisions and be my own boss so i left that place
little bit of a conflict um but it was time to leave i um threw another friend that i'd met
from there i uh i found a flat to vent in the local city which to be honest was a massive contrast
i'd never lived in a block of flats and i've always had at least some garden and i'd spent almost a
year with like outside life making and constructing building destroyed you know very practical
down to earth lifestyle and it was a bit of a contrast to be suddenly thrown into a into a into a
block of flats um but i was doing a little bit of teaching not that i really needed the the income
to teach english but more um to sort of integrate myself learn a bit more check and uh meet people
so i did that for a while quickly realized that uh teaching english to people who aren't really
self-motivated or engaged isn't really my thing i'm i'm to be honest i'm i'm a wonderful teacher
if somebody is passionate but um if they just feel like they should you know to get a job or if
they're not really interested then um i'm not going to push anybody you know and um i don't believe
in that kind of teaching model so um i i gave up that actually at the same time i was doing that
that was when i met my wife and it was a very interesting meeting uh for another mutual friend
who just kept saying you've got to meet Vera you know you you just have to meet Vera she's so
lovely she sings so beautifully and she wants a family she'll be perfect for you and you know
he's he kept saying that when i met him but he he never arranged to to get us to meet and
you know it seemed a little bit strange to me so i never pushed it and um the funny thing is he
kept saying that to um my wife as well to Vera he kept saying oh you've got to meet me or he's
really lovely you know oh and i think she said oh and he's really rich you know the funny thing is
now when we reflect together that actually put my wife off completely because she didn't want to
meet some rich spoiled Englishman you know and actually um she had some some inclination that i
was black and uh she had some a little bit of prejudice towards that you know or actually she
said she had this image that i had a leather jacket and i was some leather jacketed black inkling
which is very funny but we did eventually meet um the guy invited me to his little birthday party
and uh and of course Vera was there as well and um it was very funny because we both had the feeling
that we of course we'll get married have children together and be living together for many many years
to come and that is exactly what happened you know um but uh um yeah of course he he mixed up the
telephone numbers when we when we asked him can you give me her number and she asked can you give me his
his number that he gave us both the wrong number somehow and we were waiting a week or two weeks
and uh surprised
which was interesting
there's somebody on mumble who uh who is it it's breeze breeze who he's having problems with
his audio and can't hear but um he's not in my channel right now just a quick reminder um this is
episode seven of dude manovie um a geek's journey to nature and um we are recording live using
mumble um as i said before without half an hour into the episode now i'm probably going a bit slower
i'm drawing it out longer than i'd intended but maybe we'll make it a two-part episode um so um
you can catch this live as a nice guy there called breeze tried to but it had problems with his
mumble audio and said he's looking forward to listening to the recording instead so thank you very
much their breeze and um but you just just come to the website dude manovie.cz and um the instructions
there on the left there's a countdown to when the next live recording will be and if you've got
any questions or you want to join in the conversation we've got a um a we've got a
we've got a little forum area over on the Linux basics forum i'll put a link in this show note
and somehow integrate into the dude manovie.cz website anyone interested in how to pronounce the
dude man dude manovie.cz domain name it is dude manovie.cz and that is our family name here in the
Czech Republic Czech Republic it's a Czechic Czechalized version of our family name um i just
mentioned that because on a recent episode i think one two two of uh Linux basics door
says a very kind things about me and the podcast and he also said he wasn't sure how to
pronounce it so there's a quick help to you door and thanks a lot for your help you you're a good
funny guy. Anyway back on with the episode on so i'm now in the Czech Republic i've met my wife
and um she is at that time studying a terribly difficult and stressful university she's she's
eternally determined young lady and um she was studying Japanese studies combined with English
and russian i think at the same time she was very crazy she spent two years in Japan and she had
just come back from Japan and was continuing with her studies when i met her so you know uh
fate brought us together and we were we were combined but um it was terribly stressful and i was just
trying to help her with her English studies and be patient until she'd finished um we both quickly
realized that the best way to get to know each other because we were a bit older at the time we were
both almost 30 or 28 30 and we we weren't ready for just messing about we wanted to see you know
is this a one will i marry you you know should we have children together or not
so we decided to to move in together to to save costs and to sort of test you know to to know each
other intensely and to test to see if we could tolerate each other so we did that fairly quickly
to be honest after about two weeks of meeting um and you know i was really pleased because i can
move out of that horrible um block of flats which is called a panelak in english in Czech which
literally means flats made from panels stuck together which is very funny and very true
so i escaped and we moved there and it was very nice very small place so we had like one little room
and it was atop of the house so the the ceilings were so sloping in that you would bang your head
you know if you stood up too quickly but we had loved a few less you know and we were living on
the fumes of love so it made it all worthwhile anyway so um it was about a good four months
while she was finishing her studies and then she'd had lined up a very well-paid job as an
interpreter a Japanese interpreter for and a Toyota massive Toyota factory that was being bought
built in the Czech Republic so the problem was it's a very male orientated environment and my wife
is a short soft girl you know and it was very very overwhelmed to be honest and the the Japanese
culture that they're imported and the the insecurities between the new Czech employees and the
Japanese culture because the the Czech employees were being treated like kind of children they
were being taught how to how to screw up screws in in in plastic fenders of cars and it was
taking so long for them to get on with their actual work and to be like a Czech work because
that they were used to so there was a lot of insecurities and conflicts and my poor little wife
not then wife but to be the stuck in the middle of all this so she had a kind of a kind of a nervous
breakdown a tension and without any hesitation I went and picked her up and bought her home
and quickly then realized that you know if we're going to have a family she didn't need to do that
for the money you know I had already budgeted and I had like five years of a five-year plan worked
out and I didn't need to find a job for five years because the Czech Republic was um really
economically advantageous for me I had some savings from for my well-paid job in England as a
computer programmer and I've been pretty good at saving up um and also the house I'd sold
I was very lucky it would sold at a and a profit the the house prices just were magically up at that
time you know I was stressed when I was selling it thinking is it going to suddenly plummet now
is it going to plummet because it seemed like it was artificially high and I could then have
been in the negative you know but I was lucky and it didn't and I had savings and I tried to schedule
sort of plan how long they would last and what I would spend my money on and I was living very
very cheaply at the time so we uh god I'm really drawing this out so apologies I hope this is
still interested if you want this to be more interesting come along and listen live and ask
questions and interact and then I won't be tempted to draw it out so long so there's a challenge out
to all of you um there was a guy today breeze who tried and uh I challenge anybody else to try
and it also makes it more interesting because uh because I'm interested in listen to other people as
well back on we're about 35 minutes I had a reminder in my left here a big bing bong that you
couldn't hear five minutes ago reminding me um see you carry on let's see so we went and got a
very cheap old check made car so we could travel around and easily look for houses more or less
one of the first houses we found was um because I already hit in my mind that I wanted some kind of
homestead I was already inspired by some sort of organic vegetarian growing they were like extreme
macrobatic vegans I wasn't quite that extreme I didn't quite see it but I was always open and I was
naive I was happy to get inspirations and learn from people and sort of sort of integrate myself into
into environments and then you know from what I see in here try to judge if that's if that's you
know sound or if it has a future or how how do those people live off that those the kind of fumes
that that technology creates you know so I knew I needed a place with some land and space so we
found a place and it was a pretty big oldish homestead that needed fixing up the the old parents had
died and the the young now sort of 50 odd children I think there were four children they'd all
moved off somewhere else and weren't interested in the house and to be honest it had really been left
to disrepair there were holes in the roofs and and um if we we decided fairly quickly we fell in
love with the place it had massive gardens and it had about I think about 4,000 square meters
like directly connected to the land but the the biggest thing that I really liked was there was
there was an apparent possibility to buy up to another 20,000 less two hectares or about four acres
of land which was the original sort of farm in land connected with a homestead and that was right
behind the the actual homestead there's a kind of pattern in the Czech Republic villages that
you'd have like a central circle of houses and then at the back of each homestead sort of
fanning out like a pie like a big circle you'd have each of those homesteads the original ones
would have a piece of land of course in recent years last 50 or 100 years the the children have
of each generation have progressively sort of squeezed houses into the sort of front road-facing
land and then they've built land you know houses behind so it kind of becomes
messed and mishmashed and squeezed but more more importantly the pressure on the on the land
behind that was the original mainstay of the homestead is diminished or even just lost you know
and then what with the in the what was in 1920s onwards or 1910 the pressure of socialism to
unite all the all the land together and basically have all the all the independent homesteaders
working for the what was called the Yezadere which I'm not sure what that really means in Czech
but basically the the co-op farms you know that you as a farmer you for the advantage of having
access to machines and modern technologies you give up your land you allow with the fields to
all be joined you know no more no more hedge you hedge rose in between them and individual parts
you can maximize your your use of the land and you know increase the the manner which you
you exploit and and apparently the profits I think if anybody looks into the details and
thinks about it ecologically not that I'm a big ecologist in the extremist view but you
don't have to look far to see that it's it's really a misguided way and this will be a subject
for a future episode I won't go down that rabbit hole too much because I really would ramble
for a long time but we bought that house very quickly and we kind of I thought we had quite a
good understanding with the owner that within a few years you know once we've demonstrated that
we really need the land it wouldn't be any problem to buy that extra two hectares for acres
it seemed really nice so we went and bought the land in hindsight we perhaps should have listened to
when when we were buying the land we were up in the solicitors office you know we had
in those times you could still buy a land buy a house by just getting all the cash out so
we went to the bank we got you know think it was about a million crowns it cost us which
said about 40,000 crowns I'd like that 30,000 I can't remember exactly but so that a million
crowns we we took out the bank we had in our brow lymph envelope we're going to the office the
the three the two brothers and the sister or the three brothers and the sister are there
and halfway through the negotiations or the sign of the contracts the the sister the more sensitive
of them she collapses completely from sort of the hotness and dehydration or whatever and you
know they're all about 50 60 70 years old these brothers and sisters so you know they have to
help her out she only just manages to sign it and then when we get outside there's a clamp on
our car you know we'd parked and we hadn't put a ticket or any expired because we'd taken so
longer than I know so we had to phone the police and you know my wife and I were just so excited
because we finally the first time we possessed them because it was ours you know I was so excited
we can be the bosses you know we can make our own mistakes or successes anyway and in hindsight
because of the way it went with the relationship with those people and our sort of constant
asking so can we buy the land already you know we we need it we have two horses we have two cows
we need the land you know we want some grazing area they just wouldn't sell us a land you know
we were we were already using the sive extensively for all our harvesting of hay and and maintaining
land so you know that was for all of those animals and you know we had goats initially and we
built up slowly that's maybe another another episode but the long and short of it was that
we were cutting lots of neighbors lands neighbors gardens and and doing that it wasn't always
possible to to cut it at a time that they wanted you know we had to cut it when it was when
it was the next piece the cut when it was the right time of year to cut and you know we weren't
interested to maintain English lawns we wanted to cut just two maybe three tons a year to make
hay with you know the grass at the beards and length and most of the neighbors were very happy but
there was one piece of land where you know he you know we were relying on upon it and he he didn't
really care for he was pleased we were cutting it but you know there wasn't the communication and
this just really reminded me that sort of bad dependency if the land isn't yours you know we
had animals to feed at that time there was one big farmer in the area that we would buy hay from
if we needed any extra you know when we first got the horses we bought hay for them because we
hadn't hadn't sort of accounted for for making hay for them and we didn't have enough land to cut
but we were we were cutting in all the ditches and you know I was pulling it back and forwards
all with a hand card you know the time I didn't have a car or a trailer or hadn't trained or got
any horses to do the work for me so well one day I just came home and really enough was enough
me and my wife just decided if we can't buy the land what is the point you know it was five years
in already and we had just finished fixing the house you know new roofs we had gradually moved
from one room around the house as we fixed individual rooms we would move to the next room you know
as we fixed upstairs we were living downstairs then we moved upstairs so we could fix downstairs you
know we'd already had our first child and it was difficult to imagine moving somewhere else after
doing all that you know but it was so critical to us to have our own land and to be in control
that we just decided right let's go down on our bikes we'll go and see the the main boss of the
the family and just ask him are you ever going to sell us a land we went there and confronted him
to be honest we weren't polite at all because we wanted him to say no because you know we didn't
expect that he would just turn around and say yes and of course he said no I will never sell you
that and never won't be yours so we knew then and there that we had to do something else
something else happened at the same time there was another sort of piece of land that we could buy
and um it wasn't directly connected to our land you know it was like a few me like
maybe a hundred two me two hundred meters away we couldn't see it from our homestead but
it was just one hectare and we tried to negotiate with the ladies there was like
free old babki free old ladies grandmas who owned that and we tried
or rather an old lady and her two daughters I think but we tried to negotiate with them and
they were all right they were so excited and we we almost got to negotiation
and then my wife just phoned and they said no no we we've decided not to sell it
and we were like flabbergasted shocked what why why well it turned out that they they
decided that they can make about 20 times the amount of money if they sell it for building plots
instead you know so not only were we annoyed that we couldn't get it but we were doubly frustrated
well no more damn little modernized houses with more town people you know nothing against
your town people but it's just in in the long run you'll probably realize that you need a bigger
garden and it'd be better if you even if you don't utilize a land now build a house with
a large area which is yours you know don't be too close to neighbors because um the way I see it
will all need more land in in the future you know to be more independent that's a subject for
another podcast but um so with those two things going on we decided we've got to find a new house
so independently my wife and I on separate computers we we searched and searched and the internet
was amazing because um because we you know they had pictures descriptions you hardly have to
visit places so we could search hundreds of different homesteads and I found this particular one
and it looked like virgins from a castle you know it looked very beautiful I mean said it wasn't
inhabitable and that was a bit of a problem because at that point already we had you know one child
we had an inhabitable house you know it wasn't perfect but you know we were used to it and it was
safe and warm whenever I think we had an inhabitable house and um we also had you know cows, goats,
sheep, horses so we had to find a place where we could move where we immediately they could
believe as well you know we had all the husbandry equipment and lots of stuff so it wasn't a matter
of just packing some boxes and making sure it was close to our place of work um we had to move
everything the animals was more complicated so anyway we went to visit now I'm thinking I might
save this for the next episode because we're already at 46 minutes and um I'm just going to mention
a few more things about uh when we bought that first house um it was funny you know you go to look
at a house and we're probably very naive people you know and we were just in love with the house
you know had great big fixed stone walls and there was there was a massive barn for storing hay
it needed fixing but um you know it's very historic and up in the loft they left a lot of the
historic machines and you know we basically had no value you had like historical it's like a
value of interest to us and but most of it was was unusable and really just fit for some sort of
museum just for a friend attainment you know and there's plenty of those in check anyway
because there was so much of this stuff up in people's lofts but um the interesting thing that we
never noticed when we came was there was there was no running water in the house you know we only
noticed after we bought it and uh you might laugh but um you know we just took it for granted that
there was that that was there because there was an old lady who was living up to a year before we
came and had a look it'd been empty you know a year and there was also no toilet you know
inside or outside there was a kind of like a bash down locked down um sort of relic of some old
outside toilet but um so they've obviously done a lot of clearing up and um I think they'd
clear it up any relics of an old outside compost toilet now I think about it there was probably
some old wooden thing and a hole that they'd buried but um when we spoke to neighbors after we
had bought it that they described how much material and wood was in the yard outside and
that it was a real mess so they must have tidied all of that up before um we'd moved there
or we'd bought it rather they tried to sell it but that was just an interesting tip bit that um
actually there was a kind of sink in the kitchen and we just assumed we didn't look carefully
that there was a tap but there were no taps coming out the wall and the only way to collect water
was a bucket underneath the sink but again the the passion of love and excitement and
unis carried us along and to be honest still does today so that's the end of episode one I think
of uh what did I call it? Episode one of a geek's journey to nature
how a computer programmer with uh to be honest a love for nature but no experience or
no sort of real practical understanding of what it means tried to work things out
quickly and another thing we were I was also very naive during those periods just assuming that
all the villagers around would be interested in you know cutting grass with a sive
or you know spinning wood with by hand or you know cooking honest sourdough bread or you know
traditional ways of preparing foods I just assumed that they would be interested in that but um
I you know and so so I would we would when we first moved there we'd be invited to people's
house and I we would share with them our excitement like as town people
discussing to this how we're excited and they would maybe politely sort of nod but I think inside
them they're thinking you're crazy you know what you want animals for just buy a jumper don't
consider making it yourself you know and and you don't want to keep a pig is too much work you know
you can just buy it cheaper and um I think I've come to realise that a lot of people in the
a lot of them not everybody you know I don't mean to put everyone into the the same bucket but
a lot of people are doing it through doing the old things through kind of inertia you know
and maybe they don't have the education for a better job or more money so it's a way to make
your things a little bit cheaper and um maybe often it's the older people which are still keeping
the animals or you know want to keep a pig but once they die you know the younger people haven't
really not in all cases haven't really been integrated into looking for them or having that passion
towards keeping them saying that there is a big growing trend of people especially people who come
to our courses what we do courses on how to use a sive and cutting grass with ease you know
for men and women and children to spell in the myth that you've got to be somehow mature and
strong to do it you know and it's an exhaustion because it doesn't have to be but um we you know
one of the advantages of doing these courses are we meet so many people just for a brief time you
know one day and we we get to hear about the things they're doing you know and we've got a real
feeling that there are so many people in the Czech Republic or even worldwide who are excited
you know passionately excited you know not for a sense of profit not for a sense of
I don't know but just for a sense of excitement to see what's possible and get in touch with nature
you know so that's that's a great thing that's happening but a lot of them are really
thanks to Western A price and the real comprehension of what is healthy food people are returning
to to appreciate that keeping an animal even if you intend to kill it or if you're exploiting it by
taking milk and maybe if if it gives birth to a cow a bull that you you will kill it but you're
trying and in a respectful way to kill it in a fast way you know and don't send it off to the
slaughters and let it be stressed do it at home learn how to do it yourself in a quick way
you know just kind of say a blessing before you do it and thank thank the creature for his
life and what you know the theory of my life as I say that because I really mean it and um you know
to integrate what we can exploit and use from animals but making sure that we serve them and they
serve us a real mutual relationship of serving each other anyway we're up to about 50 minutes here
on the podcast and uh come back next week for part two of a geek's journey to nature where I'm
going to complete when we moved into our new homestead which we've been we've been here for now
five years and uh basically we started again from scratch making a new homestead fixing it all and
struggling so in the last ten seven ten minutes I I wanted to quickly mention again this whole
thing about technology um I'd meant this week to reformalize but the structure of the podcast you
know um I need to get some sound bites in there really just to remind myself and listeners
the sort of motivation I'm not quite sure how to do it yet but you know this podcast is about
technology it's a tech podcast but for me I'm gonna I'm calling it real tech you know because I
I was thinking about this I listened to lots of tech podcasts you know computer and programming
and Linux and you know that kind of tech gadgets you know and uh I just quickly looked at the
the Wikipedia definition and I've got it here at the top of my website and it says you know technology
is making modification usage and knowledge of tools machines techniques craft systems
methods of organization in order to solve a problem so I want to emphasize in this podcast them
you know technology needs if it's gonna be good technology it needs to solve a problem
and that technology is about making modifying and using and knowledge you know of tools
it's not just about oh somebody else has the knowledge and they will sell us something it's not
just about a gallon you know some gadget you buy it's been my experience in the last few years
I buy a gadget like an iPhone you know I'm trying to be open like there was one point where I was
you know trying to get rid of all these gadgets because they just create stress and I was frustrated
that they weren't serving there you know who was serving was I serving them or were they serving me
I was spending all my try and just trying to get them to work how I wanted them to how I thought
they should it's still my feeling quite a lot of the time that would be treated like beta testers
you know I love technology gadgets like the like the next geeky gadget loving person but um
being a bit older and with a family now I have other priorities and uh and I need to make sure
that uh anything come using serves my greater purpose you know and the greater purpose of
of um humans coexistence with nature you know how our family integrates together
relations with the animals you know our our ability to get the animals to collaborate with us
not through fear but through collaboration and good leadership this is something else I would like
to talk about in another episode is uh techniques and knowledge and tools for for horse training and
dealing with animals that I learned which actually extend completely and very well to humans and
children especially and which I've been using I feel quite successfully on my own wife and my
children and uh all of those things I call technology you know and according to this definition
in Wikipedia our technology so it's the kind of the purpose of this podcast is to to
highlight this perversion of the term technology towards things we can just buy yeah I'm not
against people making profit but um I'm tired for one of being a beta tester although I enjoy
testing and playing with things um I just think we should be honest with what it is you know if I buy
some some computer and it's sold as a development board and you know you can tweak your stuff
that's great but if I'm if I'm sold so Incas have finished product then I want to know it's a finished
product wow you can hear the music coming in and um if I'm going to be good at doing this I should
really respect that uh two minutes music before the end so before it really forces me out and let's
have a quick look I've got a few more minutes I'm going to quickly mention about Ubuntu um after
last week sort of semi rant I didn't want to be too unfair I'm not sure how it sounded but um
I've still been looking into understanding how distributions work you know whether it's
derived from Debian you know Ubuntu is derived from Debian and then there are so many derivatives of
Ubuntu um I started a few different threads over on the forms at Linux basics really trying to
understand how these things are you know I was looking at um was it though the um some license
in trademarks it was called like a trademark agreement for the Ubuntu and I'm I'm not completely
sure I agree with or understand it or that it's really really a very good um trademark description
there you know I've got a lot of questions as I read it I have the feeling that they are actually
restricting what you're allowed to do to the to the um derived works from Debian you know they
take it from Debian and I feel that they are actually restricting what you can do that didn't seem
to be much mention of you know there are no restrictions as long as you share the source code
because it was my understanding with the gpl you're able to sell stuff you're able to make money
from it but you must pass on the same freedoms that you got you know when you got the works and
for that to be true it's my understanding you just need to share the source code you know the
whole trademark issue using the Ubuntu trademark I think that's completely valid you know that is
owned by Ubuntu it was a surprise for me that anything Ubuntu not just the U but anything we
Ubuntu so that's X Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu all of those are trademarks of Ubuntu that is my
understanding I could be completely wrong and I'm happy to be corrected but it made me look at it
you know I'm running out of time now just another 30 seconds so we'll do all this to an end but I
did have some interesting discovery which I'll talk about or go and look on the forums about
Ubuntu's use of something called I think the popularity tool popularity contest which is a
Debian package and it didn't seem to me that Ubuntu are following the rules that Debian I'm not
sure Debian is forcing you but but saying so that's going to be a discussion for next week's episode
hopefully now we'll see how this information and music is coming in and we'll be off come back
next week for dutmanovie.cz thank you very much for listening
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