Episode: 3575
Title: HPR3575: An Edinburgh Blether
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3575/hpr3575.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:40:45

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3575 for Friday the 15th of April 2022.
Today's show is entitled, An Edinburgh Blether.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 62 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, books and Dave Morris catching up after nearly a year.
Hello everybody.
This is Dave Morris for Hacker Public Radio and I'm joined today by Mr. X.
Hi Mr. X, how are you doing?
How are you Dave?
Have a long time now here.
That's true enough, that's true enough.
Yeah, I was looking, our last show was back last year in April.
I can't believe it was as long as that.
It doesn't seem that long at all, does it?
It's funny how time is warping.
That's what I've written down here.
Covid time warp.
It gets us again.
Yeah.
So at least change.
I also made a note to myself to say, in my mind not a lot has happened,
but as I was writing the sort of notes thingy that we share about the sort of things we can
talk about.
It's tons.
Yeah.
It's a weird thing.
And I think if you hadn't written, because you had your notes ahead of main,
something like, oh, I thought that would have been of this and that would have made me of that.
So that gave me a few ideas as well.
Yeah.
It's astonishing that the Covid time has done weird, weird things to our minds, I think,
in terms of, you know, the perception of time is weird, but still.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's funny.
Going into any details in what I'm about to say, just to mention it, but I was listening
to the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, and I was at a presenter talk when anyone
was saying, you know, when Brexit happened, it's a UK thing, going to no details about that,
but it's not happened.
It's happened by defining a moment in my career, and I'll never forget that.
And then Covid kicked off.
Which I won't go into.
And then, my God, what's going to happen next?
Yeah, indeed, indeed.
Yeah, all these people saying, well, 2020-22 is going to be better than 2021.
No, no.
No, no, no.
Oh, mad, mad.
It is, it is.
So, do you want to, I haven't really written anything about Christmas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, indeed, indeed.
Yeah, all these people saying, well, 2020-22 is going to be better than 2021.
No, no, no.
Oh, mad, mad.
It is, it is.
Do you want to, I haven't really written anything about Christmas in my list.
Did you want to mention how your Christmas has been?
Have you got anything else you want to start?
Yeah.
No, no, it's fine now.
It's the first thing.
I thought, it's the first, I guess, when we talked about it, not much has happened.
At that point, maybe Christmas wasn't, didn't seem quite so far off,
but it seems to have been a very, very long time ago now.
I mean, Christmas was very, very quiet.
And I spent the time at my mum's, basically.
And my brother took a very wise decision of not coming up at that time.
He thought, well, it's not so much his self, but he thought, well,
you know, I'm going to be a lot of public transport and mixing a lot of people
and he didn't want to bring me present home with them sort of things.
So I was quite surprised and touched the, because I wasn't sure,
I mean, I wasn't going to lay down the law and say to him, well, you know,
you shouldn't come up or whatever.
But I was, I was playing the surprise, he made that decision himself.
But yeah, I had a good time and my mother pulled it all the stops.
The famous Marshmallow trifle, which was stupendous.
And she was very jealous.
And we sent him pictures of it, you know.
Very good, very good.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, that's what Christmas is all about, isn't it?
So yeah, I didn't really do very much for Christmas.
My family could often do their own thing to a certain degree.
I sometimes go off to his girlfriends, parents, who are very, very keen Christmas celebrators.
Me and I'm not so bad.
But we all got together at various points.
So that was all that fun.
Yeah, that's all that matters, isn't it?
Absolutely.
And then, of course, you know, I was not looking at your notes.
And you've had all kinds of tiles and tribulations and, and sort of domestic problems.
I don't know if you want to.
Well, actually, you've got a bit before that, because you're talking about your, your family.
I'm kind of jumping ahead.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, it was just to say really that my, it was big upheavals in my family.
I guess you'd say my son, who's been a student for the past on and off.
No, he's been a student really apart from some gap years.
Because the youngsters take gap years a lot of the time these days.
He'd been a student and he, he turned 30 last year.
What are you?
He was in perpetual student mode.
And so he finished his MSC last year.
I went to his graduation, not been to one of them, before it was fun.
And then he landed a job working in a, in the bank.
Wow.
Big international bank as a, as a coder.
Wow, very good, very good.
He's an AI specialist.
That's what his MSC was in.
Yeah, a huge change, you know, to, to, to be in, in academia for, you know, for so long.
And then suddenly a jump from that to, to, to a job, it must be a big change.
But yeah, or something to be proud of and what not.
So yeah, it's quite impressive.
I think, well, banks quite like, you know, people who've gone and got quite refined specialist degrees and some understandable, yeah.
But you can apparently get on board with, with many banks as a sort of, before you even get a degree, or maybe you're not even going to get a degree.
And then be trained up through the, through the ranks there, you know.
Right.
With the goal of becoming a software engineer or whatever.
So, yeah, it's a bit like university.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of a petrol, you know what I said?
But what, do you know what language he, he's using, did you know?
Yeah, he's writing quite a lot in Python just now but.
What are you, he's trained in Java.
Right.
So yeah, he sees, but Python, you do quite a lot of they are having Python, so he tends to use it for, sort of prototyping things.
It is funny.
a colleague of mine used to be a play engineer such as myself and he ended up in software
and he said surprisingly bits and pieces and Python and whatnot and he was really quite
impressed with it and he said speed wise it really isn't a problem unless you talk about
it really reels at a low level type integration stuff where there's latency concerns and whatnot
but other than that it's absolutely good enough and I was quite surprised to hear him
say that you know but yeah yeah yeah well there's also Python versions for you know
single board computers and also micro controllers I mean like for example I've got a Raspberry
Pi Pico which I haven't really used yet but but you can run a micro Python on there and do
do some fairly effective stuff all right okay be better writing an assembler or a C or something
but if you want if you really want to be very responsive but you know still do fair bit of stuff
I think all right very good very good yeah so yeah the other the other personal family stuff
was my daughter also got a job she finished her MSC a couple of years ago now and been job hunting
and then she's landed something working at Dundee University so she's out of Edinburgh getting
set up with a flat in in Dundee but you know she yeah yeah yeah that'll be a we've got you know
obviously I move hard moving maybe that'll be and we've just been obviously in the end of
the year for so long that about about my change as well for her as much as you as a boss but yeah
she does have a friend in Dundee so so that's that's quite good so that's good not completely
launched out into the nasty world but yeah yeah good to go excellent stuff so there all the
everyone's moving on and I guess nothing stays the same that's the thing has always changed
that's the thing I must admit I'm not really good with change but I think it's as apparent it's
slightly disturbing when you're kids you suddenly realize they're not just these these things
you had to stuff food in and they send off to school they're actually they're actually full-blown
people and my son has skills now that I'm not going to be able to reach you know will we just come
for me for advice on occasion that how would you do this and you know but and my daughter too to
some extent but yeah but yes you realize it's sort of semi redundant as a parent
right come to us all yes I said yeah it's very good very good oh well that's interesting yes
and then of course you were you also yeah of course you also had other other
other things going on as well because you you wouldn't too well either that was a better
chalk yeah yeah I know I know it's um when you reach a certain age now over 60 there I can
and if you've had chickenpox then the chances are you're going to get shingles unless you take some
some action against it and shingles is the same virus as chickenpox and it sits in your nervous
system all the time since you had the chickenpox waiting until your immune system gets weak
enough that it can attack you again so so I got really heavy attack for the shingle in in
January and of course as you age your immune system does does weaken as well yeah I knew that so
I don't know that so so as we said unless you take action what action can you take well you can get
a vaccine there's a shingles vaccine that's available I think you need it's not a thing that's
instantly offered but when I went to my doctors with the shingles he said okay once you're
over this then speak to us and we'll organize a vaccine because it'll come back it can come back
again and again right yeah so so it does um I don't know how effective it is but it certainly helps
so to some degree so yeah I think I think because my mother always used to say well we don't
know if you had chickenpox or not because I think my brother got it and I came up with one spot
and the doctor said yeah it looks very much like chickenpox but that was all I had so I don't know
really so yeah I had it twice as a kid I had a fairly mild dose of it it hardly was off of the
effort more than a day or two but then I got it again within a few months and it was absolutely
devastating and I was in bed for I don't know over a week I think yeah absolutely not flat so I
think I had that this was the the the viruses of the big attack we're still sitting in my system
well they're descendants were well we disease that it gets you and then it sits waiting for
another opportunity to come back and beat you up again yeah indeed indeed you know I mean I know
that you could kind of come from kind of background of that sort of side of things and
that you there's a podcast you listen to and all that but there's just so much that's you know
you just take your good health for granted sort of thing you don't know that all you I think
they'd probably terrify you to death if you know all the all the knowns of viruses and what
do you know yes yes indeed yes it doesn't doesn't do to dwell on it too much no I think if you're
getting to medicine I don't know quite you must sort of have a means of switching your brain off
to to your own condition yeah yeah that that must really you know absolutely yes of course
never thought in that seeing people come through the door with with all these horrible things
if you stop and think that could be me and you're it's going to really mess you up yeah absolutely
yeah because I mean I could go into and this is not on our last two things but I've been maybe
a little bit of a possible measure I've been watching that what's it this is going to help you
know have you seen the the jammer this is going to hurt no no so I actually I got the book and
I think my I've got got got me the book or something and read that it's it's a story of a
I a junior NHS doctor and and and basically what it went through in depth I haven't it just got
too much in it and it broke and basically in it in it in it gave up and it was just just showing
how how how difficult it is for these junior doctors you know one year or whatever it is he was
and it's a tell bus sort of thing yeah but it was say oh it was horrendous you know it's just
why yeah I'm seeing more actually yeah well it's it's true though it's true it can be pretty
devastating you've got to be made of tough stuff to to work in that that sort of world I think
yeah and did yeah so um so you have some to make well you were going you I was going to say we've
got a common topic here which is to do with boilers yes I do want to talk about yours well okay okay
so yeah so my my in laws they've got a thing about boilers I think you know that they had many
years ago they had a boiler blow up and they've got the boiler in their last house in the garage
and it blew up that I could have had a bang and a water was came up one to the door and all
stuff and so I think um and it's maybe an age thing as well as you get a bit older you get a bit more
less confident let's say so I think they're always a bit never spent anything going wrong with
their boiler and to do some to have had an unusually not a bad luck with their boiler so
in this in this new house so I think I don't know how I will this this boiler would be as long as
all those ten years maybe wasn't quite I don't I don't know but anyway it was it failed
it then and the man came round and had a look at it and he's condemned it and decommissioned
it sort of thing and of course this was in the middle of the whether it's not well it's actually
lovely and bright and and sunny today but it's quite cold it said but it was it was horrible at this
point in time and they were ten days without heating in hot water um now yeah what it was now we of
course I was visiting one mother and she said oh but I have an immersion heater oh so they
well and I never thought on that you know so I spoke to uh now well there's there's there's
I spoke to them about it but you know some some the the builder at times it oh don't touch that
switch and and they had it in their mind if you touch that switch the house will fall down or
something so they wouldn't they wouldn't turn the tunnel animation here on you know I think
I think eventually they did near the end but at that point the last the long-term marquettles and
and and what not that came to her house to have a bath and all this stuff it was just just not
very good for my talk but I must have horrendous you know yeah really good wow yeah yeah so um yeah
so well that that's something so well that was happening that the the the uh the chap came to
to repair it and he did some some pressure testing on the gas and and find it was and you're
unusually low so well that indicates uh a gas leak so um and we need to find that wherever it is
you know but we might there's a possibility we might to pull up your floorboards and if you can't
find it there you might to go go under your uh your driveway I'm thinking well you know
what if it's halfway down the street and it's all houses in the street I think all the floorboards
okay it could be anyway you know that's what happened yeah so but fortunately it turned out to be
a leak uh leak behind the cooker so that was that was an easy thing good for that you know so um
so that that was that that's that's all all sort of the man so set it up put it on turn it on
nearly but that's it fine great end of your problems and then after he gone away so I'll just turn
the boiler off uh then shall I click what's still on click but still on click still on so it wouldn't
turn off you know so that so um so I had a look I downloaded the manual for it and there's
there's three wires that connect to the timer unit I thought ah he's probably got something wrong
with that I suppose it will be but eventually the chap obviously you could turn it off um manually
from the boiler itself so the eventually the the chap came around and he was scratching his hand
he couldn't they spent ages apart the track working what was going on finally he checked the
wiring oh what's that oh my god I could tell you that's straight away you know for some
reason it took him enough a long time to come to that conclusion yeah yeah yeah it's important
to get this stuff right like yeah it's more inconvenient than you're dangerous of course with
too oh yeah it's still still a damn nuisance yeah I think probably what it was is that he couldn't
conceive that the previous fitter had wired it incorrectly so he was going for everything else
so I guess obviously when you're too close to the thing sometimes you can be blinded or you know
don't look at the most obvious things are things I guess it's what's happened really you know
the sort of trouble troubleshooting stuff doesn't always operate in every corner I guess is it
you know this is it this is it so so so what but you you had dev you know use it's pretty horrendous
even in what I would say to them what we had no mind good yeah um I don't know if there are any
this I don't think any of this happened prior to our previous chat because according to my records
it's somewhere in sort of late March early April last year my suddenly I was in downstairs in an
area sort of dining area and I suddenly got a drip of water on my head okay what is that
so the the room directly above was my daughter's old bedroom she's she's not not used as a bedroom
but probably never but um I went up and had a look and it was drenched it was water coming through
the ceiling the whole uh plasterboard of the ceiling was sagging down full of water you know
so I went to the attic and it was just over the cold water tank
so I mean people who don't know british old fashioned british plumbing tends to work on the
principle but you have some sort of heating source it used to be a back boiler behind a cold
fire back in the oldies that that's how this this is a 1970s zero house so it's plumbed that way
and that would go up to um that that would actually feed a hot water tank which kept the water
water hot but it would actually be fed by a cold water tank which is was a sort of reservoir that
gets filled from the the mains so that was what was above um at some point that the original
tank was still there it was an old sort of steel thing um and but I'd had years and years ago
had a new tank put in they didn't want to take out the old one there's a big pain and uh so they
just put the the new tank a plastic one over the top of it so it was on a sort of um structure
which was holding it up over the top of the old tank and in doing so they cut off the outflow
from the old tank and connected it to the new tank you know it's just the overflow thing
somehow or other water was coming out of this plastic tank we're and dripping into the old
tank and then it was running out of this cut off um dangling it through and then into the ceiling
so so yeah it was actually so it wasn't even the old tank that failed it was a flippin new plastic
one that failed it was it was yeah eventually god but what I did was when my daughter and I
because my ability to scramble about underneath on attic floors and stuff like that and
poke around with plumbing and stuff is not so good my knees don't and not very forgiving but
between as we managed to grab some more pipe um from the DIY connect it to the old overflow
and also to the the newer overflow and then have a sort of tee piece in it which then ran to the
to a pipe that runs out at the edge at the ease of the house and then drips down and so so
that stopped the water actually coming into the attic but um yeah so it I felt quite proud of doing
that actually yeah yeah well well done I mean I think we we had something kind of similar
years many years ago and it was a wee bit of water dripping uh through through the
spare bedroom and when I looked out it turned out it was a plastic tank and uh what was happening was
the builders during obviously fitting the tank obviously had an idea of the cut a hole for a pipe
and they thought oh no that's the wrong place so they got it's they got a bit of plastic a bit of
glue and slapped it over the hole and uh obviously over time it's it's said you know I'm not going to
hold anymore and start to leak but I mean yeah but you mean you should never I mean yeah I mean
yeah yeah fix now we should never do it that way in the first place I have to go over pressure
pressure thingy in there yeah yeah thing which which which fixes from both sides type of thing
is it well well that that that's right and I couldn't work out you know I'm thinking because I
had I've got a jacket on that I'm thinking well how is it leaking there's there's enough where
it can leak from it's only when I've actually pulled the jacket away I thought what's this
bit of plastic and I was flapping and I thought oh for a good sake you know so I got uh as you see
a plumber's fitting it fitted that hole and then you got a you got a cap which you can screw on
which seals it and that and that was some simple stuff but just what they should've done in the first
place so yeah I know exactly it's talking about but luckily it didn't come to the situation whereby
you know that the ceiling was almost down and three to eleven but now that starts at her rate it was
it was it was grim so yeah we couldn't we couldn't get a plumber very quickly but we did manage to
to book somebody but he was going to be a few weeks before he arrived so doing our own leak
containment was was important but so yeah I get an estimate for the tank replacement it was
going to cost about two thousand pounds to to do it so I looked because I had a boiler in the
kitchen the back of the wall of the kitchen venting out to the side wall of the of the house and
and I also had my hot water tank just sort of underneath it in the kitchen underneath a work time
so I got some advice and all the neighbors say oh no we got all that ripped out ages ago
so I got somebody to come in and take out all of these tanks the one for the central heating
there's a header tank for central heating keep the pressure up like the cold water tank the hot water
tank the old boiler and put a new boiler up in the attic on the outside wall of the the
gable end of the house and so it was it's the most bizarre pipe work you've ever seen because
it comes up the middle of the house and then goes right across the other end of the house and
it's a new gas pipe and all these stuff but but it's much much better it's fantastic so
right yeah I can imagine like people from around the world asking for some not understand all
these tanks a lot of danger of houses I know I know it's I think I was watching somebody
setting up a house in an American guy doing this and he he had installed a pressurized system
which is what I've now got so the the the boiler is kept at pressure by the mains pressure
and so that means that the the radiators and all the water fittings are coming out of mains pressure
even the hot the hot water comes out of mains pressure so and it's also a a conby boiler so
you get instant heat yeah well yeah it takes a little while for it to yeah to switch to full
last and for it to get through all this this miles pipe work yeah yeah yeah but it's so much better
good good good I we've still got a tank which obviously these are quite inefficient and my my
mother had a had a shower in a old house it was a higher altitude we can higher up up the
hill from where I live and she was always having problem with her electric heated my electric
shower because you know we probably know the way these things work is it's it's the flow rate
across the the heater that determines the temperature so that's how when you turn the knob to change
the temperature it's adjusting the flow rate it's not doing anything to the heater at all and if
you're not got sufficient flow rate to get a cool enough temperature then the the the the shower
says oh no this is outside range and turns the heater off then it goes stone cold you know and then
it turns to have back on it goes rusting hot because it's not my floor so it was hot cold yeah so
it's actually nuts so what you can do I mean you could turn it to level one where it only puts on
one heater rather than two but it's a big rough change and that means you can only get a trickle
through the the shower head but before it gets too cool so you either have a trickle or you have
it going hot and cold all the time so because we live quite high up as well I was determined not
to have that situation because it used to drive me to minted and so we got a shower that gets fed
and it's but unusual it's fed from the hot water tank and it has a power shower and it mixes
things together what it means is you can you can just flow rate to anything you like you can turn
taps off and on it doesn't affect anything so it is great but the obviously the boiler tank
is inefficient I mean that's something and especially with things out at the moment that's maybe
not good idea well that's right when I consider that my old boiler would start up I don't know
how about six or something then it would heat the water in the hot tank which would then be
available for whatever you want to do in the in the morning I've got a gravity shower so
because the the head of water from the attic is on the ground floor so it would get pretty good
pressure from there and you know one of these with a with a thermostatic tap on it and that worked
great but of course you wouldn't use all of that that water the hot water so it just spend the day
cooling down and then come the evening it would start again and start heating it up again
so you had water first of whatever baths or whatever you want to do yeah no I'm not efficient
not at the top of the tall and of course we've got we've got storage heating so when it's
costing as a fortune so I did the thing was going to have when I fixed plant the moment I did
things going to happen when when that comes to an end I never thought we'd get into so much plumbing
but it's funny I had a conversation I get in another conversation with the in laws about
about this and I was saying to them that they've got a reasonable sized house just bigger than
the actually need but it was difficult because when they moved the house last time it seems and I
have spoken to people before about this and I can't they couldn't seem to end a grass bit they say
oh no you know builders only build what the market what people want I said no that's not the case
if they know they can get you know more money from they seem to I think I make more money from flats
or from houses with you know quite a number of rooms on them and because what you found was that I
think by a law they had to make so many say two-bedroom houses and it was obviously the minority say
they'd have 10 two-bedroom houses and they'd have 50 these much bigger houses and what they found
is that they go to a builder and these houses were all sold out before they even built so there's
obviously pent up demand for people wanting to buy these two-bedroom houses but the builders are
not prepared to build them so it's the market's all broken basically you know but so that's
where they end up with this big house and so they've got this huge big tank you know and they
oh the water's not hot enough of course as you know probably know by a law the the limit the
temperature of these thermostats on these things now so you can't burn yourself but I said to them
you know look if you put your hand under that hot water tap can you hold it there no well how can
it be too cold then you know you're obviously putting too much hot water I always talk about
hot water but I said you know actually it makes sense to have your boiler other than worrying about
legionaries disease that might be a big issue but if you turn the temperature down to it is
almost the maximum temperature that you require and not not add any hot water then the lower the
temperature then the slower it will cool down and the much less energy will take the heat up
so you save power by running it out of lower temperature but do you think you could grasp that no
it's yeah yeah I mean these things these things are sort of ingrained in in in all the people
I mean I can't stand myself when I was a kid we just we had no heating in our house other than
the the coal fire in the main room yeah I can remember that yeah yeah with the back boiler and then
there was a hot water tank through in a cupboard in in one of the bedrooms and so you'd put the
you'd light the fire but you wouldn't leave it on all day you'd come back from whatever I often
used to come back from school and and be us to build a fire and then you'd have that going pretty
strong to make enough hot water so you could hang it up a bath later on you know I bet yeah yeah
you know and you'd be going and checking your hot water tank is it hot yeah it's hot yeah you know
well we I think we we had gas I think we did a cool bit I was going I was very young at the time
but my granny had that and she had a damper do you know do you remember the damper and I think
I had a car to pull it to pull up the chimney and you pulled this thing up or down or something to
do something I'm not because you were dead because I never got me that myself but you know a bit
dampers and how would they work and what they are I think it I think it was a sort of slider that
went backwards and forwards because when you looked at up the chimney in our house there was a
there was a sort of metal rod poking down from the back of the chimney and you'd you'd grab that
with with some tongs or something and then slide it forward and that would close off the main chimney
and make the heat go up around the back which joined in with the chimney and they would get
you'd be sending it all to the to the back boiler I think was it was it not a song about the damper
on the spot we've got the chimney the same way as I'm sure there was a song about that you know
from a telltale to the kind of thing that it probably was yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah feel feel
feel free to end up into writing if you know what that song is but yeah my dad bought a new new bungalow
in Norwich which is in East Anglia for you not from these parts and we'd moved from London to get
away from the smog and bought this new new bungalow and it came with all this stuff and we were
amazed at how wonderful the fact that there was a gas point next to the fire and that was where
you plugged in your gas poker so you could light the fire there I mean to go in all this house
new newspaper and bits of stick and stuff and making a fire that you then had to put coal on top of
you're actually just throwing coal in and poke this poker into it a lit poker into it and it
would it would set the set the stuff I think that's it that's incredible well I think the gas
book I can remember the pace been at the fire and all that but you just made me something to
so I was I was one of the relatives had a work they did them I think they moved house and we we
visited them and they had the cooker and had this it was a white cooker and it had this one thing
on the end with a with a cable and it was certainly transformed to a little boy it's funny
something's happened you think oh I did just remember that you know because when I was a wee boy
one of my granny's had a had a cooker and it had a pipe that came down the side and it had
a kind of one thing and you lit it and that was to light the like the rings you know and this
and this cooker had that now at that point when that was wee boy it must have been an ancient cooker
then and I remember the other thing I was a member is when I used to go to my granny's kitchen
as this smell like gas you know and of course when I was in this these relatives house I thought
I can smell gas but that's changed a lot time I couldn't I couldn't believe it you know
the goodness how well that cooker was but yeah yeah I do remember those I can't remember
maybe my grandmother had one I can't remember exactly but I do remember those things they
they were supposed to switch off you poke the sort of rod thing that you put the flame to into a
socket which meant to turn the gas off I think but do you know how effective that that ever was?
and do you remember the it was like a big cylindrical battery I think and you screwed
something up or something and it was like a I think night it started to glow at the tip
and that was used to light gas as well yeah yeah yeah yes yes either that or a thingy with a
flint in it like from from a gas lighter you you could buy a pack of flints from the
tobacanis and it's a thingy clicked and it would shoot sparks out which would which would light
the gas yes yes and then were the days and that was coal gas in my dough I remember all the gas
ometers around where we used to live oh that's right of course that's another ball of
condition isn't it because they've got all the gasometers which means and my my father-in-law
had dealings with that and at one point he actually climbed one of those things at one point
he's terrible with heights as well so I don't really manage that but of course because because
yet they haven't got these there's no there's no buffering in the system and Britain we know
as per usual Britain there's everything on the cheap cheap and cheerful and then when things
go wrong you've got no resilience and you're struggling you know but and I remember he said to me
and I think they were talking about something about this to do with the things that are happening
just now in the world about gas supplies and whatnot and I remember my father's father-in-law
saying to me years ago that you know you can't stop gas supplies and if you were to stop the gas
supply you did the go around every household and turn the tap to seal it before you could bring it
back up and then bleed it through one at a time or something at that so yeah I mean it just
sounds unbelievable you know makes sense yeah wow that's never thought no almost people don't
that's it so yeah if Brett must have done it there gas we'd been a big trouble yeah yeah yeah we used
to live in in an area a town called Oxbridge which is not far from just down the road from
Heathrow Airport now wasn't Heathrow Airport then but I remember we left when I was six or my
memories a bit hazy but I remember my dad would go to the local gas works right and to get a
barrow load of coke and I used to go with him in the back and but watching that place what they
were doing there was they were extracting the gas from coal and the residue was coke which
has had a lot of the fractions removed from it right right but you know because you got cold
tired and all that sort of stuff out there so what does this look like is it a solo I mean I don't
yeah it's it looks like bits of coal but it's all it looks like it's it's all full of holes it
looks like pumice you know and it will burn for quite a long time on a gas on a coal fire and you
can use it to sort of supplement your coal because we said coal that had quite a lot of what was
it like the it was quite tarry coal you'd see it sort of melting and and guns coming out of it
and that would that would burn like like mad ones it got hot but you put a bit of coke on top of
that and it would sort of keep it keep it under control of it and it would it would also you know
heat up and give you a good good hot fire and whatever yeah so yeah so the gas works just down
the road from from where we lived that's really the point of my other story and then all gas
ometers around because they made the gas and put it into these gasometers which if you don't know
was a was a sort of cylinder crawl or cylindrical device very large size of a sort of block of
houses type of thing which you pumped gas into and there was a cylinder that that raised the
the things sort of grew higher and higher inside it yeah it was kind of like tell a scorpion
and and the sections would rise up there was like there was like a framed and don't don't say
which it was attached to and and the different sections moved up as it was filled sort of thing
yeah it's quite quite something mm-hmm used to see gasometers beside the motorway on the way to
Glasgow I'm not sure if they're still there a lot of people kept them as a sort of piece of
industrial archaeology so yeah I don't I don't know so the truth for them are still there or not
yeah I'm not being that way for a time I trained to to Glasgow yeah anyway yeah yeah yeah enough
to to to much amazing wow yeah yeah it's amazing how how these topics can take you off
down all the different rabbit I'm sure it'd be quite interesting for people who don't know
the idea but how things are done back in the in button you know but hi hi yeah yeah there's no
wonder that Oxbridge suffered from as bad as smog as the as London itself I mean it's sort of
greater London was then it was on the outskirts of London you get tube from central London to
Oxbridge and that that's where it terminated so but the smogs were dreadful you know you I
remember coming home from school through the smog you couldn't you could hardly see across the
the road you know you really had sort of grow up your way along by the edge of the pavement
find your way home yeah I mean it's probably we've been for my time but I'd I'd imagine that
you know Edinburgh would be quite smoky as well back in the day you know I'd imagine that
I've seen problems as well yeah but then the country you know yeah yeah I'm not sure whether the
I think London the London area suffered because of the sort of geography of it that it all the
the the the smoke and the fog it was basically a fog which then got filled with smoke because
the smoke couldn't rise up high up into the air right right it was kept down by the by the fog
but yeah the first one who was in London killed loads of people right right yeah so that's
enough reminiscing like okay so what what was our next topic you heard um you know you so you
got a new ADSL it was a bit more topic that people in HBL maybe maybe for my ADSL connections
and stuff so that sounds a bit fancy so I have had this house my connection the internet has been ADSL
which is over a phone line and the street outside we've had cable installed some long time ago
but there's no way I want because it the deals were you buy their TV cable thingy from virgin media
or and then you get internet along with it and there's no way I wanted all that junk coming
into my tummy but um so I stayed with ADSL which was which was not too bad it was something like 19
megabits down or maybe about one and a half up but you know as as ADSL goes that's not too bad
but recently within the past couple of years there's a company that's been installing
actual fiber along the street um and that's a company called city fiber that's doing a lot
or most of Scotland quite a lot of England too I think I think it is the sort of main installer for
fiber around the the country so they put um they put they put all the infrastructure in
so but then after they installed it they had contracted to have only one supplier over it for
I don't know year two years I can't remember I just happened to notice that um there was
some information that said uh such and such a company now available on city fiber and I
realized that the the um ISP that I've been using all the time I've had internet was now available
over fiber so I was straight on the phone to book it so I got um I've got a fiber coming out of
the wall of my house they blew it they actually connected it all up put all the the ducting in
through my garden and then they put it through the wall and then they got this compressor thing
fed piece of fiber into the into the from a spool into the um the bit by the wall and blew it
out to the the connection unit across the street I knew that it was done I've never seen that
done before it was amazing they only took five minutes the guy is connecting the the other end
and then the guy another guy connected my end and put a box on the end of it and there you go
he said oh that's you you got yeah your fiber is up and running I thought when you said the
the bluer to start with I thought they'd blown something up you know it's called blown fibers
so it's just blown down the the continuous ducts that go from your house to the junction box
effectively I didn't actually get to see what the junction box was but still you know
so that's pretty cool yeah very good very good I mean I don't think we've got just we've got fiber
but not not to the not to the house I think it's it's oh I get I was about 21 22 uh down and up
I don't know what it is seven or eight I'm not quite sure what it is up the way to the truth
but to tell the truth you know I I had before I got before we got fiber we had 0.75 down you know
so it was rubbish we actually had lower speed than the BBC said this slowest connection
Britain had so that you're telling lies here you know it's nonsense and of course they were saying
things all you can't do blouse and unless you go I can't what it was two or five mega bits of
some arms and that's rubbish you know I can browse internet perfectly satisfactory 0.75 no problem
spot server it's just when you're doing streaming uh there's an issue nothing more than that and I
find with with the 21 I mean yeah I would love 300 that would be amazing but with the 21 I've
no no need for for more than that I mean I've seen I've seen my wife streaming something like
well I think at one point what had the wife streaming something I had the teleon and I was
upstairs streaming something and it was all working fine no issues no dropouts seemed like a good
stable connection and I got a of course the the ISPM with every so often I come back so oh if
you stay with us for 18 months we'll give you this deal and then can I do it in the middle
or when you're in a three quarters with your contract so we'd be sneaky to sort of lock you in
on the other hand but on the other hand it's cheaper so you're saving money and you're getting more
and of course the the three of me in a new router and I an Amazon what do you call it an Amazon
Alexis thing is it or something like that so that's the echo that's it equals it's so it's
sitting in and I covered along with the router because I can't be bothered reconfiguring this new
and it might probably have faster Wi-Fi but again everything's stable and so all of them work and
fine I just can't be bothered changing the old ones I've stuck with all things no fair enough
I got a new router with my city fiber connection my SP pushing a different a different
router for fiber obviously than the NESL one but it came with wireless six which I'd not even
heard of but you do get much better coverage it used to be with my old NESL router that when the
family turned up and you know with with with multiple phones and tablets and Apple Watches and
whatever they yeah they they would kill the route it's like too many wireless connections and
just fall over but this one has dealt with everything that's been thrown at it and kept things
really really quick so that's good because I think my mother she got a new router and she always
complains that you know the connection isn't stable it was before and always in the back my mind
everything's I can compromise that you you know if you're trying to squit more bandwidth down the
line over Wi-Fi well maybe you're maybe you're spinning across a wider spectrum of frequencies
I don't know but I could imagine that that might be faster it could also be a less robust connection
but it obviously seems not to be the case for yourself and no it seems to be really robust
compared to what it was I've actually got quite a lot of ethernet connections around the house in
fact I'm sitting here next to the kitchen table and I've you believe I've got an eight ports
or five ports switch on the table there which you can switch on so because the scenario
was several people would arrive I mean my kids and their friends whatever and they would have
laptops and they they'd try the wireless and it was really awful and then they I'd say well just
switch that switch on take one of those cables plug it in and you find everything will be good
and it was you know the router handle multiple ethernet but but I don't really need that anymore
that's good it's really good for them anyway just showed you I mean I'm probably it's probably
just complete laziness in my part you know because I've got IP addresses and of course that's
that's I had a wee BT router a hundred years ago and you could add almost limitless fixed IP addresses
but I think this this actually I think it's limited to seven or eight or something like that
I think some of it I have to really be careful which ones are fixed because because it's
so limited what it can do and yeah so it's fixed from the router and rather than from the individual
device so when it sees a particular MAC address it assigns a particular IP but whether that's
the best way to do it whether I should do it from the device itself who knows but I can't be
bothered so I'm still lazy I don't know the answer to that actually I've pondered that on my
my new router I spent a bit of time putting in all of the MAC address to fixed address details
and stuff for the DHCP service and that's so that's what what I do my Raspberry Pi's have got fixed
addresses and and and so on and so forth just makes life so much easier but yeah you could do the
other way around I think Ken has done that in his home setup I've never really talked to him about
the pros and cons so yeah I think I think I think a chap I knew he so he set a range up above that
and kept that allocation at the bottom free and then they just send them manually within each device
I think I thought oh remember that's that's a way to do it yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't I don't know
I found the downside with my new router is that it doesn't it can't do what the previous one did
the DHCP you can it's part of the protocol you can nominate your DNS server for each device
I think I don't know if you can configure it per device but you can certainly configure it such
that things that get sort of DHCP addresses get a different DNS so that's how the pi-hole system
works or can work pi-holes thing that intercepts advertising calls to advertisers and and just
there is some dev nulls and whatever it does to them but it in order for pi-hole to work you need to
nominate an actual local DNS and I can't do that with this router for some reason the guy
at the ISP I was talking to I said why can't it do this and he said I don't know I should have
never come across this but there's a new a new router that they've just started to roll out to
customer so I'm going to hassle them about this again soon I think but but you can
I've got two possible strategies one is to to bring up one of the ADSL routers just as a
as a non-ADSL but there's something sitting on the network and then use its DHCP which I know
can do that right right so I'm nearly I'm nearly there but I just got to the point throwing the switch
yeah there's always a demand for network it finding down time it's not always easy the other thing
you can do is you can there's a you can run DNS on the pi-hole itself a DNS and DHCP I should say
so you can you could just switch off DHCP everywhere and just point everything obviously you
can point your router at the DNS you need to and the DNS can be your local local um pi-hole machine
so how do you get that to have a fixed address I'm not sure at the moment but anyway um
but yes so it will then handle the DHCP and the DNS and and do all the magic that it's supposed
to do which is pretty nice means you can anybody coming in this house immediately gets
there um all the connections to known advertisers blocked which some people find is a pain if they
specifically using vendors you know people who are doing you know collecting tokens or something
like that that gives them shopping time right right um yeah no I don't do that I must I must I
but I'm just a bit a bit lazy really in there and just uh kind of pragmatic uses that
but it's an interesting or whatever but I just I just like to do that do a wee sort of thing you know
yeah I don't really worry too much about that but yeah I blame COVID myself there you go
yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so much you're using the
you've got to blame something but yes yes so we've um have I talked more than you I think I might
well that is it's okay doesn't it doesn't need to be uh to balance around like that I don't know how much
uh I mean I'm I hope where we'll go from here I mean I've got I mean I'd read a bit about
about bad weather but that kind of fringes and what we're talking about with the with the boilers
and stuff and then I don't think about well I've got I've got a chrome book I just like we can
mention that sort of thing which I'm I'm quite enjoying it's it's it's um it's just again it's
lazy to convenience I'm using it just now for for these for these show notes um we just flip it open
and it's instantly on flip it close it's instantly off again so that that is really really
convenient and for the simplicity of just getting on line um you know because during the week
uh my room was converted into an office and I've got to put everything away and and and set things
up and and whatnot so I can't get access to my PC so from that point of view just just to get
online to to do online stuff that the people need to do I mean it's not in the now at the stage
where you really need an internet connection to surviving society almost it's very difficult
otherwise you know on my wife's parents obviously find that a bit of a problem because they've
not got the internet um my mother's quite it takes time away but um yeah and could just just um
so the chromebook had that I had a curious problem with the chromebook uh I was trying to do these
notes and I had difficulty logging on to multiple accounts we're using kind of um google um
notebook thing uh google word I think it is and uh it wouldn't let me set up another account
oh it's just popped up it's all stopped it's picked up me saying that no shush shush I used that word
you should never utter sat with a jeep and I won't utter it again and uh so yeah so so that the um
I had to actually use install Firefox um on on the chromebook and that allowed me to do a bit of that
but then I did a bit of G-O-O-G-L-I-N-G-Ing and it came out it turned out well it was my wife
found it actually it was it was down to um hangouts android app that I had installed and it was kind
of obviously and I'd been replaced and once I removed it it allowed me to have multiple um accounts
because when I tried to clear a new account it would just go round and round in circles forever
uh and nothing I would could do would would solve it so yeah obscure thing hangouts was causing a
problem bizarre wow yeah so I'm glad you managed to solve it that that would be very frustrating
I'm sure yeah yeah just just as an example just the other day and this might be
vagal interest in first or I don't know how much we'll get over but the the the Scottish
sort of Scottish census has come through the door just the other day I'm about to fill that and
that was ideal for the chromebook um so the census happens every 10 years and ask a whole
through questions about you know what kind of general questions they're not not you know
not but the finances are whatever but you know are you well you know do you speak scots of what that
means um things like that yeah or please a question yeah yeah that's quite good actually
there's been quite a lot of battling about the subject of scots um on twitter that I've noticed
oh right I mean obviously Gallic is the is is a language of its own but is scots a language is
that is the thing you know the business of say I can instead of I know and all those sorts of
words that you find in Scotland which I think are wonderful and delightful sometimes they they
sound amazing but you know are you being asked whether you speak those sorts of those sorts of
well well you go there's a there's a help section explain my mother got very confused about it
but I mean it was talking about a glass region and vessel pieces and then we added it well
if you can understand broad scots whatever that means you know if you were listening to Billy
Conley or on episode of of um of what's it called that um oh um oh that that soap um oh um
shield engine all that you know one of those things then you would then then then then that's
that shoe you know so and I would say yeah and generally I can I can I can pick up most of the
the scots sort of tongue and whatnot so um so yeah CSI so yeah yeah yeah it's I don't know
this this might make our make our um this episode uh flag it is is um is um what's the word uh
haven um what's what do you use uh explicit yes yes because just just before I started this
podcast I had to go out and do uh do as I as we call it or I like I call it a totally patrol so
there you go I was out doing that so that's all sorted and bloody for like wave coming back
yeah yeah yeah um yes there's a which uh account called is it uh miss penny punny or
Lenny penny or something like that but who's as a linguist who who who who keeps it gives you
a scots word of the day some of those absolute gems and then she she explains it speaks it
and then speaks it slower with some titles and then she she explains what the what the word means
yeah I I remember a colleague was was that a show and I don't know if it's an end but a
thing or something and it was there was a chap on and he was um trying to be funny and wasn't
funny he was going on about um uh scots words are these scots words are are great you know
uh you know and it's a picked one on on on my on my colleagues or things uh so you there you there
and it's sort of you've been asked one point so go go go go it's case say something then
so so my colleague just just turned her like them and said I'll away and bail your head
and of course the whole was up and up and that fits a laughter and he could finish his show off
that's the perfect response yeah yeah it was always very good to put in folk down I must have
uh uh the um I used to work with the guy who came from the Aberdeen area uh he would sometimes
drop into sort of avidonian accent where it's not really an accent there's there's different ways
of saying things in different words so you say you say fit instead of what and stuff don't you
and you think I think so I think so yeah yeah I'm not I'm not massively up in it myself
but like you say you get the justice that I would think you know so oh yeah yeah yeah yeah once
you realize that there's a sort of shift in the way that things are said and different different
vocabulary then you know it's it's uh you start to latch on to the to the whole business
I find it amazing and fascinating yeah yeah well it's it's so good good fun isn't I mean we're
we're all so different so yeah indeed indeed well I don't know if this is maybe quite a good
uh it's just a good place to to blink do you think or do we I think well we we in elapsed time
hopefully the final recording will be less than an hour we we we we've we've reached an hour
elapsed time doing this so so it probably we probably should call a halt at this stage just just
for the sake of yeah I mean it sounds good same reasonable length I show at the end of it but
yeah it just goes to show how many things we we need to catch up on and how many topics we
have chat about we should do another one of these before before too many weeks are out you know
I absolutely and I like like good yeah look forward to that yeah it's fun it's really fun to do
this it's a really interesting chat so all right then we'll we'll call it quits now and uh
maybe see see everybody again not too distant future hopefully how do how do we call off again
um how's it doing can do again we normally well yeah we say um some sort of pre-handle that Ken does
have completely forgot what we we we take turns to say hack and public radio so so goodbye from
hacker public radio there we go so there you go that's it thanks very much mr ex it's been
very fun yeah me too you're welcome cheers everybody bye bye bye
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