Episode: 1397
Title: HPR1397: HPR Community News for November 2013
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1397/hpr1397.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:50:16

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M.
So, hello everybody. This is Dave Morris for the HBR Community News for November. Now,
with me tonight I have Ahuka. Hello. And Ken Palin is lurking in the background, but
I don't think he's going to be making an appearance. He's probably listening to us and we might
get the odd comment through the chat or something, but other than that, it's just Ahuka myself.
So we're going to try and run things as per normal, but I'm not Ken Palin, so I don't have
the gift of the gab to quite the extent that he does, but we'll do our best anyway. So we'll
start off with the new hosts, welcoming new hosts to HBR. We have, first of all, Kevin
Wischer, who was surprised to find us a new host. He's been on the horizon for, he's been
been a mainstay for HBR for quite some time, I think. And also we have Keith Murray, we have
Underrunner and Andrew Conway. Okay, so let's just head off straight into the show details.
Okay, so starting with show number 1370, logging with Octopus by Tony Palias, would that be?
You're not coming through very clearly. Yeah, I think Palias. Yeah, okay. Okay, to me.
Yeah, yeah, okay. So he was telling us about Octopus, which is a static site generator.
Not something I've really had direct experience of, how about yourself?
No, I have a, I use WordPress for my own.
Mm-hmm. I think he, he was not happy with WordPress, so he was looking for various other
possibilities. He did a nice summary of what was available there. It looked pretty interesting,
I thought. Oh, absolutely. It was a good program. I just, for me, WordPress seems to work.
Yes, yeah. I've looked at these things myself, but have not decided on one yet, but Octopus
looks interesting. I'm not sure whether you have to learn Ruby to, to use it, but still sounds
interesting. So the next, next episode was 1371, which is Pokey telling us about the sad tale of
the last banner of HPR. An epic tale. Yes, it's really sad that people get stuff that's not meant
for them and don't send it back. It was quite a sad thing. So it seems to have worked out.
Anyone who's following on the mailing list probably is aware of this.
And I'm sorry, I don't have all these names at the top of my head, but someone step forward and
said, well, you know, I work at a place that does this and just tell me what you want. I'll get
you a new banner. Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. That sounds fantastic. It's the HPR community doing
what it does, which is fantastic. So yeah, the subject of stickers and business cards and all
the rest of it was interesting for me anyway, because I'm hoping to go to Fosdem in Belgium
in February and hoping to have an HPR table there. So we're looking to make sure we've got plenty
of those things for that. That's kept both Ken and I hopefully assuming Ken's okay by then.
So that's great. I wish I could go to Fosdem, but I don't really have the budget for that.
No, it must be a hell of a journey for you. I've never been to anything as big as that.
It's 5,000 delegates are untold. 5,000 plus, which is absolutely huge, frighteningly huge.
But interesting to see what it's like. That's quite the largest that I've been to is Ohio Linux
Fest here in the United States and that's generally 1,000 or 1,200 somewhere around there.
That's pretty big. Yeah, I have no idea how they organize a thing of 5,000 delegates. That's
going to be quite impressive to see. Yeah. Anyway, pressing on, Episode 1372. This was
Hakka Mike, James Michael Dupont, talking about rootstriker.org and Federal Election Commission
data processing. Now this isn't the thing I didn't know anything at all about.
Is this a subject you know about? A little bit.
Federal Election Commission in the United States is in charge of regulating how elections are
carried out and there's certain data that has to be collected. For instance, if you donate money
to a political campaign, they have to get your name and name of your employer and what they're
trying to do is make sure that companies are not making illegal campaign contributions.
Okay. Okay. So this is a sort of oversight process that's going on here by the community, presumably.
Yeah, a little note fact. I used to work in politics here. In fact, I'm working on a show right now
where that comes into it a little bit. It sounds interesting. Yeah. So this, but the technical
sort of this impressed me from the size of the data manipulation exercise seems huge. Just judging
by what he was saying there. Yeah, impressive. Indeed. There are those who say one of the big
factors behind Barack Obama's two electoral victories was mastery of the technology and
Harper Reid was the fellow who was in charge of his IT operation and is
gotten rather famous for how he handled all of that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was obvious
to people, even in the UK, it was obvious that there was something special going on there.
I don't think our politicians have got quite that far. I'm really apolitical, so I'm not
not really much of an authority on this, but I don't think we've quite reached that level of
sophistication, but it won't be far off, I'm sure. Oh, I do believe from what I've seen that the
UK is picking up all of the stuff that the United States is doing. Bound to be. Yeah. Okay, so
so next we had your good self starting this was just the first episode of the series on security.
Well, it's the first one that I did. Yeah. I decided that we could roll in something that
Clot 2 had done and called that part of the series as well. And you know, Ken may go back and
find a few others in the archives that could now be packaged up as part of this. But what I was
trying to do in this particular episode was just sort of lay some groundwork and say, you know,
this really is possible. You know, GCHQ or in our country, NSA, you know, they can't walk on
water. They can't do things that violate the laws of mathematics. So if you want to be protected,
you really can't. Sure, sure. It's a very relevant subject, obviously, and it does need this
sort of introduction as well, I think, because I think people tend to be a little bit glib about it,
you know, how does it affect me? And you know, if I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I be
worried type of attitude? So these issues do need to be addressed. People need to be made aware.
Yeah, my favorite response to someone who says, you know, I don't have anything to hide is give me
the URL of the webcam in your bathroom. That's a good answer. Very good. Very good.
Okay. Well, it's good. I'm looking forward to hearing more and there's more to come
in the queue, I see. So, 1374 was Richard Hughes, who talked to us about
building or upgrading a hackintosh, which is something you have experienced of?
No, I don't personally, but Richard is a friend of mine. He's one of the regulars on the Linux.
I'm sure, yes, yes, flying Richard, I recognize him. And he and I frequently interact on Google
Plus, you know, we follow each other in that sort of thing. Okay. I wasn't that interested as I listened
to it, but I got, you know, there's not really relevant to me. I'm not going to be, I'm not a
Mac person, but as I listened, I became more into it. And my son is a Mac user and is just
surprised as a surprise to me is building himself or has been building himself on new machine,
which he's turning into a hackintosh. So between Richard's episode and what my son's been doing,
it's suddenly opened up big vistas for me. It's something that sounds pretty good to do,
actually. Now that Maverick's is free, isn't it? You can, it is no cost in getting a copy of it
anymore. There's no cost. I'm not sure what the license agreement involves. Apple has never
initially allowed you to use their software on your own hardware. No, no, no, they don't want
you to be building hackintoshes, but they're not really able to stop you, I guess. I don't know.
That can just popped up in the chat.
Indeed. Hello, yeah. Hello, everybody.
Hi, hello, sir. I want you to be here for 10 minutes.
Yeah, I was really interested in the Macintosh operating system at one time.
And then I found Linux, and now Macintosh doesn't interest me at all when X is my home.
Yeah, I'm the same, really. I've not really used Macs to any great extent, apart from the ones
that they had at work, just dallyed with them briefly. But my son's a musician, and he needs to run
quite a lot of very demanding software on his Mac and his MacBook Pro's been running at Steam.
So building a nice new machine meant that he can actually carry on with his studies as he
needs to be doing. So it's quite relevant in that respect.
Yeah, and I just see here our new host, Kevin Weisher, is in the chatroom and just posted that
Mavericks is dependent on your current model of Mac.
Okay, presumably there's a power limitation or something of that. So obviously it has to be a
be a modern Mac. It's not a one of the old style. It doesn't run on the old style kit.
I would imagine you'd run into problems with device drivers like that.
Yeah, okay. So next we have another episode from your good self. Okay. Another
LibreOffice episode. These nested lists, these list things are very useful to me actually.
I've been taking your hints on board and I've got one or two templates which I've been building
sure you're going to get to that some point soon. And I've been taking some of your advice and
reworking them to build styles into them. So it's been really good. Thank you very much.
Well, you're quite welcome, but actually templates is where I started the series.
You did mention templates. You're right. Yes, indeed.
Yes, I had to do that is that styles have to be stored inside the templates.
The templates first then moved into styles. Yeah, yeah.
Will you be covering templates from the point of view of building one from scratch?
I've got one that I use for recipes. I keep my own recipe log using LibreOffice.
And you know, I want to be able to, this is again, maybe again a bit too technical,
but things like the ability to easily move around the elements of it,
you know, and fill them in appropriately. You can do some quite smart things with that,
can't you? And templates. Yeah, am I making sense?
Yeah.
Looking up what I did right now, because I thought I had done that.
You're making sense to me, Dave. Okay. That's a rare thing.
Yeah, that's true, because you're usually operating too high from the unit.
Yeah, I've got something in there about creating templates. And one of the first things I do
is creating the default template, but then I talk about creating other templates.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Anyway, thanks for that, Sue. It is, it is really good. I've been enjoying it a lot.
Yeah, it seems to be popular.
So moving on then, and next we had class two talking,
1376 talking about teaching the art of computing, which was, I thought a very interesting,
interesting point of view. What I took away from it was the need to teach the skill
rather than the product. What did, what did, how did you?
I had exactly the same takeaway from it. I love this. You know, this like should be required
listening for anyone who is going to teach computer science.
Yeah, it's certainly been the case in the UK that the move has been away from computing skills,
and it will earn towards Microsoft products, Excel, or whatever it is. And that's been within
the last, just I guess, five to 10 years that that's happened. I certainly met kids who were
learning Pascal, for example, 10 years, maybe a year or so ago. But my kids all went through
just being told how to use Microsoft stuff, mostly, I think. So I call that educational
malpractice. Absolutely. Such a bad thing to do. But there is a great ray of sunshine in the UK,
and it's called the code club. Right, right. What's that exactly? I've not heard of that.
Oh, this was a couple of women started this thing called code clubs. Sounds like an episode to me.
Yeah, I've read interviews with them in magazines and things like that.
And the way it works is that they go into a school, they get some mentors who are usually people
who are in the industry, and you know, set up these clubs. And the focus really is on learning the
coding and the technology, rather than how to type in a word processor, which is garbage.
Sure. Sure. The Raspberry Pi is also doing a lot of that. Yeah. Okay, guys, I've got to go
over a lot of my 10 minutes that I can be out of bed for this. Back to bed. Yeah. The nurses.
See you again. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's definitely an area that needs a lot of debate.
But hopefully the message is getting through. I think it's changing significantly in the states.
Not nearly to the extent that I'm seeing in the UK. There are some people.
I'm getting involved with a group here in Michigan called Pengwakon, which is a combination
Linux and science fiction convention. All right. And I'm hoping we're going to get to address some
of that. So I know a woman who is part of the GNOME project who is also very interested in it
because she's got kids. Good, good. Yes. Yeah. I guess that hopefully realization is
dawning and change will happen as time goes on. But it's sad that it's ever got into that state
in the first place. Oh, absolutely. I remember taking a computer science course in college.
And for me, I'm talking like 1978. And I had to write some programs in basic.
And, you know, the really the old Dartmouth basic where, you know, line 10, line 20, line 30.
But I'll tell you, I think that was the best foundation I could have asked for to start thinking
about how computers work. Sure. Sure. Absolutely. Oh, there's nothing like it.
Years and years ago, in the place I used to work, the university I used to work, it was decided
for some obscure reason that we were going to run some summer, summer camp type courses.
There's an organization in the UK that runs, you know, young people's summer adventure holiday type
things. And there was a component which was a computing one. So we were teaching them how to write
the 6502 assembler programs, you know, kids of teenage kids, school kids, to drive little robots
and that type of thing. And, you know, they just laughed it up. They were racing ahead.
They were well ahead of us. We were still, you know, running to keep up with them.
So, yeah. Robotics clubs are the great
ray of sunlight here in the United States. There's a lot of those. And, you know, kids are very excited
by that. Very good. Okay. So, very good. Thank you, Clotu, for that one.
Next was Frank Bell doing a talk about the Zareason Android tablet. And, I must admit,
I thought he did a great summary of this particular device. It looked really nice, actually.
Yeah. And there's two things that come to my mind. The first is Zareason as a company, you know,
is one of those places that, you know, they build and support machines that use free software.
And I think it's important to support people like that. So, I'm really glad to see Frank do this.
And, you know, I know the people there, I've met the CEO and that sort of thing. And they're
really good people. Yeah. I've heard of them. I've heard that people like Dan on Tiltz has bought
several of their laptops and things. Has he bought them? Has he bought any of those?
Some somebody has, anyway, I can't, maybe isn't him. But I've certainly heard people buying their
kit and saying good things about them. I'm not sure we can get them in the UK, but sometimes
they're expanding internationally. In fact, they recently opened the New Zealand office.
All right. Okay. So maybe they're moving in the UK direction. That would be good.
So we don't have much here that there were one or two companies that sold
purpose built machines with Linux on. I bought one myself using it now, but that was some
number of years ago and they've gone out of business since then. But yeah. There's the other
company that I can think of. Now, I don't know if they're outside the United States at all,
is a company called System 76. That's what I'm thinking of actually. Yes. Yes.
Yes. I think you can buy them in the UK, but they do cost a lot in shipping, as I guess you'd
expect. Oh, yeah. I guess if you have to get international shipping that's added to the expense.
But you know, they do good stuff too. I like us our reason, but you know, they're both good companies.
Yeah. That's good to see anyway. Yeah. Okay. So next we had a whole raft of talks from
Ogkamp 13 and 1378 was a batch of talks from NY Bill, Thoreau and Tim Timmy.
And I don't know how to say his handle there, but I think that's how he likes to have it
pronounced. Well, I was at Ogkamp with the guys there as you might have gathered and it was
really good. They were NY Bill was out there with the microphone, dashing it all over the place.
Again, there's many interviews as he possibly could. Sometimes you remember to switch it on there,
here as well. He did have a few problems. That says put it that way, but you know, it can happen
to the best of us. But no, I thought there were some great interviews there. And Ogkamp was
the most interesting and exciting event. Well, you know, I'm going to say I am in no position to
look down on people who forget to turn it on because I did a talk about hacker public radio at
my Linux users group and I was going to record it. And I got all the way down done with the talk
and realized I'd never turned on the recording. And it's not, it's an easy trap to fall into
some of these recorders because you press the button once and you think it's recording. You have
to press it a second time to record it. The zoom, the very zoom recorders. And I've got one
that I share with my son that that suffers from the same thing. It's a task ham that, you know,
it's setting it up. It's making sure all the levels are right. And then the next button press starts
it recording. But unless you're really on the ball and I'm not always doing these things, it's easy
to fall into that problem. Yeah, I've got a Sans Eclipse that I was doing that. Those are good too,
yeah. So yeah, there were three days, in fact, of interviews. The second one was further,
further interviews. We managed to get Pete Cannon from the Dictorpin Rocho. He would send it
to a microphone and asked to do an interview, which was very good. Then I did a brief one.
Unfortunately, somebody started it. Started up a knitting machine right next to it's just a
zone. Switched every quarter. So hopefully that didn't drown things out too much.
And yeah, there was some good stuff. NY Bill interviewed, speaking of youngsters who are getting
into computing. Mini Geek Girl, I think she calls herself who was, had done a talk at one of the
Raspberry Pi things. I think she's about 13 or 14. Very impressive, young girl. Amazing.
Yeah, I love hearing stuff like that. Yeah, it was good. And the 1380, the episode on Friday
was the sound of four guys in a hotel room, ironing t-shirts and making a reasonable job of it,
but one or two mistakes coming across as well. I don't know if you picked up on those. It was
quite funny because I knew the voices having met them all and I'd heard the story of the ironing
disasters. So for me, it was quite amusing to listen to. I don't know how it came across for
everybody else. Yeah, I don't think that I listened to that one all the way through to be very
honest. No, I can imagine. I can imagine. It's one of those sort of ambient recordings that
you maybe wouldn't give it a huge lot of attention. Let's put it that way. I think the consensus
was, well, just let's just put it out there because I'm sure somebody will find their music.
Even it was only me. Yeah, I love the fact that Hacker Public Radio is pretty much
open to anyone who wants to do anything, but the other side of that is every once in a while.
I'm not saying frequently, but every once in a while I get about five minutes into it
to decide and this isn't for me. Yeah, yeah, that's what it's all about. Yeah, absolutely.
These things happen. So that's fair enough. So that was all camping. It was certainly
interesting. Shame Ken couldn't make it, but there we go. So next, sorry, go ahead.
Just agree with you. Okay. All right. So the next episode was 1381, which was Kevin Wischer,
who's in the background here on this mumble channel, but he was talking about how he found Linux.
He had a had a co-host whose name I missed. I don't have a record of it, and I don't see it on
who wants it again. Honki Mugou. Thank you very much, Kevin. Honki Mugou. Honki, yes. Yes,
I remember it now. Remember it. Yeah. Okay. No, it was I loved that episode. It was it was really
good. I love all these reminiscences of the early days of computing. I don't think we have
enough of those, to be honest with you, and the history of some of the experiences of Linux versions.
I enjoyed that very much. Well, I go back before Linux. Yeah, me too. Go ahead. I can start
talking about mainframes, launch codes. Well, I've been holding back on that one, to be honest with
you. I started on I started computing in I think about 1970 as a student with punch cards,
and I don't know whether I want to bore the world with with my reminiscences of this, but I quite
like listening to other people's. Maybe maybe you and I should do one together at some point,
comparing notes there, Ahuka. That sounds like we're just about at the same point. I think
mine was 69 at Bank of Boston. Oh, great. Great stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh,
maybe we should compare notes sometime. Yeah, we could do that.
That would be fun. Certainly, because there were some very, very bizarre things that people did
in those days in terms of the way they prepared stuff and the equipment that they had, and
there were punch cards of different source. There was paper tape. There was all sorts of other
weird technology, most of which people have not really have much knowledge of these days,
unless they're of our age. So I just feel that they would be interesting to do a little bit more
about that sort of stuff. And then we can segue right into how we used to have to walk the school
up hill both ways. Absolutely. That's the way it was. It was absolutely no doubt about it.
These youngsters, they just don't know they're born, these youngsters, they don't know.
I won't get off my lawn, by the way. Anyway, yeah, yeah, it's not
too much of that. Anyway, thanks Kevin. That was Kevin Wischer, that is thanks for that episode.
That was most interesting. That he says that they just recorded part two. Oh,
right. I'm looking forward to that. Excellent. So next was Dave Hingley being interviewed by his
brother Mike. I know both of these guys having met them last year at Alcamp and also this year.
It's a little bit of a sad tale actually. Dave's presentation at Alcamp didn't go right
because he couldn't get the projector to work with his laptop, his Linux laptop, and then had
problems when he tried to set things up the next day, finding a room. So it was just a little bit
unhappy about the way things had panned out and really quite sorry to hear that.
Well, I know exactly how he feels because that's what happened to me at Ohio Linux first a few
months ago. I had a really nice presentation that just fell apart completely because I couldn't
get the projector and my laptop to talk to each other probably. Yeah, yeah, and why it seems
bizarre that that should be a problem these days, doesn't it? Well, I think it was an older projector
and you know, I don't usually have that problem, but I certainly did this time.
Yeah, I think it was an older kit at Liverpool. In fact, he said something like it was a VGA
device. Very often, because I was one of the organizers at Ohio Linux first this last time around,
and you know, you're scrambling around, you'd have no budget, you're trying to find, you know,
does anyone have a projector we can borrow and you know, you get what you get. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, sad. I hope it hasn't put him put the two brothers off anyway, because it's good to have them
around it. Oh, come. Anyway, so next was the last community news, which we never comment on
for fear of infinite recursion, if we keep it up. Yeah, that one. That's a, then we had Keith
Murray giving us his first show, how I got into Linux and OSS, and he had an interesting journey
along the way. I thought he'd made various moves towards Linux and hadn't quite got there.
Yeah, over the years, it's quite an unusual journey. It was interesting to see that sort of point of
view, I thought. Yeah, yeah, I always like those. No, it's, I think the sort of personal history
episodes are always fascinating. Sometimes I prefer them to the technical ones, I don't know what
that says about me, but that's well, I think for me part of it is that hacker public radio is a
community, and you know, I like getting to know the people exactly. Yes, yes, that's a little bit
about their background and you know, how did you get here and you know, that just it adds a little
bit. Yeah, yeah, I think that is, that's definitely it. It's good. So anyway, 1385 was
another LibreOffice. Is that the, at the end of the nested list? Is that the end of the
of that particular subject now then? I think that's the end of the, yeah, the nested lists.
And you know, the next area is getting into the page layout. Right. I think three more shows in
that and I'm going to try and write one or two more this weekend. Oh, great. Yes. So I've already
done the stuff on page styles and a general overview of page layout. I've got to get two frame styles.
And then I think when I finish that, I should have promised the thing on outlining and then I'm
going to get in the calc. Right. Yes. Yes. You said that. And I think, yeah, I think people are
jumping at the bit a little bit there because they want to know how to drive their spreadsheets,
don't they? Well, actually at this point, so am I. I sort of feeling like, you know, I just have
to slog through, you know, the last little bit of this writer stuff. Yes. You know, my mind is
already on calc. There enough. I wish you just asked a question in the chatroom. Any plans
were draw. So let me say that, you know, God willing, if my voice lasts and hacker public
radio stays up, I'm going to go through all of the aspects of the office. Great stuff. Great stuff.
Yes. Kevin just said it's a good replacement for Microsoft publisher. I'm going to say,
the office writer is not a bad. It's actually as much a page layout or, you know, desktop publishing
program is anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It's impressive stuff. It is indeed. I've been using, I've been using
it since Star Office time. So seeing it, seeing it develop and it's been growing and improving
all of that time. It's been really good. Yeah. I actually started with Star Office. In fact,
I've written, I haven't actually recorded it yet, but I've written an episode that can ask me to do
in which I'm going to get into sort of the meta background of all of this stuff. You know,
how did I get into this and how do I put my shows together and things like that? You can't
ask for it. So I don't know what the heck. Let's do it. Oh, very good. That would be interesting.
Yeah, good. More history. I'll always like that.
Okay. So next, we had Bob Tregilus. Tregilus, how does he pronounce that, do you think? Tregilus?
I would think, yeah, Tregilus or something like that. Yeah. However you pronounce it,
it looks like this is going to be a series and I love it. This particular one took me back
to the days of my youth because, you know, they're talking about what's called the underground or
alternative press here in the United States. Yeah. That's what I grew up with. I was this
anti-war hippie back in the 60s and 70s. Yeah. Well, I think I'm not sure. I was that much exposed
to, obviously, I knew about those sort of movements in the states, being of a similar age and stuff,
but I don't know that much of it came my way anyway. Maybe I just never looked.
You were subject to being drafted. Of course not. No, no, no, no. But I mean, it was well known
that nasty things were happening over the pond there. There was a lot of sympathy towards
the problems, but yeah, I don't mean we had an in-depth understanding of it, at least I didn't.
So yeah. Yeah. No, it's interesting. It is, as your own Dr. Samuel Johnson once said,
knowing that you're to be hanged and a fortnight focuses the mind wonderful.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yeah.
subject to the draft and the possibility of being sent over to Vietnam does really focus your mind
on the issue? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, yeah, I can sympathize with that to
to certain degree, as a kid, there was, there was still conscription to the army in
after the Second World War in the UK, which was, I don't know, not quite clear why, but it continued
on for some number of years after the end of World War II. So it was a subject that as a child,
you knew that there was a possibility that that would continue when you grew up and you might
by yourself dragged off to the army. So, you know, so it's always a bit of a fear of
mind as a young boy. So absolutely. Anyway, that's, we look forward to hearing more about that.
Next, we had underrunner giving us his first show on his Christmas lights synchronisation set up.
And wow, this is an impressive project. The notes are really good. I did find that. I was reading
reading through as I listened. This project seems to have grown and grown. Could have done
with the picture. That was the only thing. Just a picture of maybe of the finished product would
have been nice, but still, no complaints. Very good. Or a video on YouTube. Oh, absolutely,
even better, yes, yes. But it certainly sounded quite a project.
So next, we had Sigflop boning in an episode which she did just off the top of the head
on the JavaScript language, which I found really quite fascinating. I've looked at it,
looked at JavaScript just briefly and thought, oh, yeah, yeah, there's JavaScript. I don't
want to have anything to do with that, particularly. But can I maybe start rethinking that point of
you? What did you think? Well, I think almost any time Sigflop does a show, the first thing that comes
to mind is I wish I was smart enough to follow every single place. Yes, yes.
And I'm not. And that's, you know, that's simply life. You know, I often listen to it and think,
boy, if I could just do half of that stuff. Absolutely. Yes.
But I also, I think her view of what's good in the world of programming languages is certainly
to be considered. She seems to have a very deep insight into these things that I certainly don't
have. So I did, after listening to her program and hearing about the ins and outs of JavaScript
and Node.js, which is the server side aspect of it, I did go off and install it just to have a look
at it, you know, the Node.js thing, which is a way of writing. You can, it's got a web server capability
built into it. So you can build your whole application from scratch pretty much with it, I think.
So it's, it's a fascinating thing, but boys, it blew your mind.
Her power. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's really complicated because of its
asynchronous capabilities, which is the point that she was making in her second show where she,
she just came up with some, came back with some corrections to watch it said previously.
I think to help clarify the synchronous, asynchronous elements of the of the language,
which I personally find quite helpful because I didn't, I wasn't quite getting what she was
saying in the first, the first show. So it's glad over that. Yeah. I, I know a little bit of
JavaScript. I was back when I was on the faculty of a local university. I ended up in charge of
the website. So, you know, I did a certain amount. I was nowhere near being an expert and it was
more like find something that does kind of what I need to do and get in and understand the code
enough with the app. Yeah. Yeah. I've done similar sort of stuff, but it's been largely, in my
experience, the, the business of taking the HTML structure and doing things with it or bending it
in some way with JavaScript. You know, if you want some sort of something dynamic to happen on
the page or something, JavaScript is the way to do it. But what's being what the way that people
are using it now is to, to, to be a primary language for developing whole applications, which is
a very different take on the, on the subjects, I think. So definitely, definitely need some, some
investigation, I think. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, a good couple of shows from Sigloff.
Yeah, thanks for that. Very good. So, finally for the, for the month, we had your good self again,
telling us about the basics of encryption, which I listened to that a couple of times because it's
pretty, pretty dense, densely packed with info there. It's very good. I enjoyed that.
Yeah, it's, it's an interesting topic. Yeah. I think it helps to get some of the background stuff
so that when you get into technically how to do it, you understand what the issues are.
Yeah, yeah. I like your point about the transfering codes and ciphers, which I'd note it down here,
that it's, it's, it's easy to, to, to misuse these terms, which I think I've been guilty of in
the past. So, that's good. That was good. I was glad for that. Heads up. Yeah, I mean, it's,
it's got even people who are professionals, you know, get sloppy about that. So you refer to NSA
as codebreakers. And really what they are is ciphers, you know, it's a, it's a, it's maybe a small thing,
but I like to just be clear on what the distinction is. Yeah, yeah. I think it's, it can be quite an
important point if you're, if you're digging deeply into this stuff. Yeah, it's, you're either trying
to hide something or you're not. Absolutely. Yeah. Very good. Okay. So that's, that's all of the,
the past month's shows. And normally Ken likes to do a review of what's been going on in the
mailing list. So I've tried to put together some, my summary of things there. So,
feel free to, to, to correct me and redirect me, yeah, hooker as, as I go through this. But
first, first item I, that came to mind to, to mention was Hacke Mike, that Mike DuPont's
work that he's doing in developing a, a publisher tool in Python, which is not so much a tool,
but a, a set of, a library and a set of, set of capabilities to allow you to,
um, do everything from the, the, uh, show notes to the, to the publishing of your, your, uh,
HPR show. Um, I've looked at this briefly, so I'm not sure I've fully grasped all that it's
capable of doing, but it, it, it, it looks like a great idea. I'm really glad there are people
working on stuff like this. Uh, I don't understand it at all.
It's, um, I, because I'm, I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to doing stuff like this,
I found that because I, um, I couldn't always remember what I was supposed to be doing to prepare
a show if I was doing one. I made myself a sort of checklist of, you know, have you
remember to do this? I remember to do that. Um, and I was thinking of coding it into something,
just for my own use, potentially for other's use, but, you know, you start with yourself and
then maybe expand it. Um, I was thinking of doing something along, along these lines,
but mine was going to go right from the beginning of what's the name of your show, you know,
and then it would make us a, a directory to store all the show details in named with that name,
and it would use that store that information to, so it would then know how to construct the
name of the file that you're going to send to, to the FTP server and that sort of stuff.
But it looks like Mike is, is already way, way ahead with that stuff. So, uh, so I think I'll just
sit back and watch. Well, anything that, uh, uh, you know, makes it easier,
but yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm finding right now that it takes me almost as long to do
the show notes as it does to record the show. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.
Well, do I think that's a good thing, personally? I'm a great believer in, in good show notes,
because, because, you know, sometimes you don't always absorb the information completely through,
through your ears, you know, through listening to it. So it's something to read as well, and
something to come back to and refer to is, it's quite important. Oh, absolutely.
So, so there's also been discussion of the infrastructure for the new year show.
And I know that Kevin Wischer is hoping that he's going to get some, some of the people who are,
going to be involved in the background elements of this to discuss this soon. He was hoping,
I think, to get them together this evening after this recording, but I don't know whether he's,
uh, he's going to, he's going to get anybody tonight. Um, but, uh, there's things seem to be coming
along, coming, coming together, or certainly certainly works being done to, uh, to get stuff,
in a better state than it was last year. And for anyone who is listening to this program and
does not normally follow the mailing list, and I suspect there are a few. What we're talking about
here is we, we do this, uh, it's actually more than 24 hours, I think, but, uh, you know,
continuous new year show that, that, you know, takes the beginning of the new year from one
part of the world all the way around again. And, um, you know, this people dial in for a while,
and then, you know, go off to do other things. And it's all done on mumble. So what, what Kevin
is doing is trying to put together a kind of a federated group of mumble servers that can, uh,
connect everyone in, uh, and if you are up, Kevin wants to talk. Sorry, interrupt, but actually,
we have, we're going to be using the same mumble server we used last year, the one from
OpenSpeak, uh, John Newsteader. Uh, it's like, it started out being the Linux basic, uh,
mumble server, but it's kind of expanded to be just an open server for anybody now.
Uh, last year we had some issues with the two bot machines that kept dropping out of the room.
I've personally spoken with John Newsteader and he has found the problem on, on that hosted
VPS to get that fix. So we won't have that issue this year. But what I'm trying to get coordinated
is our group of ice cast streaming servers so that we can produce, you know, provide the
live stream for everybody to listen to. We just need the one mumble server and we just need
a cook, uh, about four ice cast servers to mirror each other and so that we have plenty of, you know,
uh, plenty of, uh, we go, well, well, well, I'm actually going to have an MP3 feed and an
obfee just like we did last year. So it's basically the same setup. We just need to get
everybody that's providing those for ice cast servers. Uh, Ken gave me access to the
HPR VPS, which is going to be the main feed that the two bots will be pumping audio to and then
off that main HPR VPS, the four mirrors that we, uh, need to provide the live stream. So I've,
I'm providing the MP3 bot that will be pumping out the MP3 feed and then I'm also providing the
first mirroring server off the main HPR VPS, uh, Cobra 2, I believe.
Okay, um, so Kevin, uh, you, you were trying to get some ice cast servers, is there anything else
you need from the community that we should mention here? I know, we just, we just need the four,
well, actually, I'm pretty sure we've got two already just in line for the MP3 side and then I
just need to get in contact with crayon, he, he did the aug bot and I'm not, I can't remember who
provided the two mirrors for the aug stream. So that's what I'm missing right now is to get that
all figured out. All right, good. Okay, good. Thank you. Also, while we're talking about the new
year show, uh, you know, well, the technical stuff is going on now to prepare for all of it.
This is open to anyone in the hacker public radio community, uh, you know, if you can connect
to mumble, then, you know, please feel free to jump in and spend some time with us new years.
It's a lot of fun. Everyone involved loves it.
I agree. Uh, the first year, uh, which was what, uh, the 2011, 2012 new year, they just did a 12
hour and that turned into the following year, which was last year to be the 24 hour show and
the first year I wasn't involved with thought we didn't, I don't think we even did a stream.
I can't remember, but, uh, I helped in that 12 hour period to, you know, get people in a separate
room to test their audio before they went into the main room. We need people to volunteer to do
that, you know, to help people with audio issues who are new to mumble. Um, I caught two and I
that first year hung out in the, uh, sound booth or whatever, just another spare room that
were the main show wasn't being broadcast from and just help people with their mumble issues,
got them set up before they moved in there to, to do any speaking.
And I think Poke helps with that kind of stuff too.
Yeah, I haven't heard from Poke lately.
But regardless, it's a 24 hour show, so everybody needs to, uh, you know, we need people to
volunteer particular various different times. I, I'm sorry, I'm back another 10 minute session.
And when is the actual official start time? Is it going to be the same as last year?
Whenever, uh, the first, she'll, whenever the first time zone goes into, uh,
into the new year, then we do it and we stop after the last time zone goes in.
So that's for strong, strange reason, there's something like 28, 29 hours instead of 24 hours.
We're such a, we're such a hit and popular that Leo report is copying us this year. He's having
a 24 hour podcast this year. Yeah. I heard about that. He's staying up though. I don't, I think
it was only one or two who stayed up last year. Also, this topic of food is completely banned.
Yes. How about, um, file managers that only give you one window?
That is also on the list of stuff that we need to, we need to, we need to designate an official
person that can kick anybody off when they start talking, talking about dual-paying file managers.
Absolutely not. No, it's, uh, it's an open forum and I can argue with them while you want.
Um, I, yeah, I, I would ask people, um, there's no reason why, um, what really worked quite well
was, um, if people could bring something to the table, like a short technical segment of 15 minutes,
you know, technical segment, um, you know, uh, as well, think of topics like what was the best
hack that you did all year? What was the best podcast you did all year? What, you know,
what are you thankful for for the last year in the field of tech? That sort of stuff so that we
can keep the conversation going and have those regular regularly throughout the year.
And what was also pretty cool and I really liked was, um, I think Becky, you can
start at this once, uh, you know, welcoming a various different time zones as the cross, which
was kind of nice because it broke up, uh, the conversations that were going over, over and over
the same topic again. Yeah, now the way the time zones work, that means it, uh, the day starts
in a little of the Pacific where the international deadline is. No, no, that starts, it starts way,
the other side, it starts even before that, it starts just left of, um, the US because
what happened was all those islands where on the other side of the international deadline and
there's their vacation days where we messed up with people and they were under voices and everything
they were invoicing two days later and all that so that a whole goal of those islands
moved to the other side of the international deadline. So even though, so they
maintained a two hour difference the other side of the international deadline because they're that
far away, but they're still considered to be part of that same day, weird or what. And vice versa
works the other side. You learned something new every day at Hacker Public Radio? Yeah, it was a big
shock to everybody because I, I looked up when it was the first time and then dude, dude, oh, it's
already New Year's day somewhere, so there you go. So I think in any case, it probably means we have
to start like 12 or 14 hours before you get to midnight at Greenwich. Yeah, I think it starts
around 10 o'clock in the morning, 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, UTC. Well, CET time, so for me,
in 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, but we'll put the actual times worldwide onto the website.
I'm sure Dave Morris has a script for that sort of thing. I'm sure everyone in the locker somewhere
out there will go and look. Okay, so so the next thing I have on my list was to mention Danny
Meeks, who was the person who kindly offered to print a replacement banner, as was mentioned earlier on.
So thank you very much for that. And there was a mumble discussion about the design scheduled.
I'm not sure whether that actually came to pass or not, but there would, there'd certainly been
some movement to to finalize the design, I believe. Yeah, I remember there was discussion about
doing that. I don't know anything more about it at the moment. I'm afraid though.
Yeah, be either. I think the meeting was planned. I don't know if it's going to end yet. No, no.
Okay, then Ken pointed out that there was an indie go-go campaign for a new magazine called
Linux Voice, which was the people from the people who had previously been working for another magazine,
whose name is just escaped me. I've got a copy of it here. Linux format. I have a copy here on
the desk beside me, so I should know. Yes, so you're very kindly flagged that up. And I think
a number of HBR people went over and threw some money in their direction. And it looks
like that campaign is doing very well. Last thing I saw. I hope they do. I signed up for a
print subscription, which is like 90 pounds for me, because I'm in the United States. 90 euros
or 90 something. The thing that I think is the two things that come to mind. Number one is that
these guys were all at Linux format. I don't know what this means for Linux format,
but up until now, I've always thought it was the best Linux magazine that I was aware of,
and they're the ones who made it that good. Absolutely. Yeah. And the other thing is that these guys
as I put it walking the walk on this, they're talking about all of their content is going to be
freely available through Creative Commons like nine months after they publish it.
And they're also saying that 50% of their profits are going to go to support
free and open source software, and they've already gone to their community to say give us some
ideas about what we might want to do. Now, the first year, those profits may not be enormous.
Getting a magazine off the ground is not for the faint of heart, but it really tells me that
they're going about this in a way that I want to support. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
It's quite interesting to see the publishing movement of this sort coming into being. Don't
you think that it's because in other parts of the publishing world, things are dying,
and or they're putting up paywalls, or that type of thing, keep everybody out,
whereas these guys are trying to walk a line between making money on it and having an element
of availability through the mechanism you're just describing. Sorry, guys. I need to go again.
I don't know if I'll be able to do that. Thanks.
Dirty looks from a wife and not in a good way. I just wanted to say, coming up here is a discussion
about we need shows. Obviously, we can continue to need shows. We use 260 shows every year.
We storm through lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of shows, and people have
been very good about getting them in. What I'd like people to think about is how can we get
a more guaranteed stream of shows coming in? What is it that we can do, or is there any other
ways that we can motivate new people to come in, or ways that we can get people to stop
procrastinating and send in shows? For example, I know of three or four different people who have
shows recorded and they're not edited and they're not uploaded. We need those shows coming in,
guys, and we need to continue feeding the queue. How do we feed the beast is a topic that I don't
expect to be answered here, but it would also be one that we should discuss at length during
the New Year's show. With that, I'll leave you on. Thank you, guys, for taking the time to do
this recording tonight. Okay, thanks, Ken. Take care, Ken. Take care of yourself.
Okay, so I think Ken's probably said all that needs to be said on the more shows issue.
Obviously, things are getting a little bit difficult at the moment. Got a week's worth
ahead of us and then very little, but the next month or more. Obviously, things are getting a
little bit strained, but hopefully that... The thing that I want to emphasize, anyone who's listening
to this, you don't need to have a fancy studio to do this. Mr. Gadgets, for instance, I think
just has a portable recorder in his car and just talks into it while he's driving around Kansas City.
That seems to work fine. It can be pretty simple. We were talking earlier about how I'm so dumb.
I can't even figure out how to turn on the recorder, but something like a Sansa clip,
you can just record something into that, just talk into it, and you've got a show in 10, 15, 20
minutes. You've got something. The main thing is get in, get going, and I think once you get
your feet wet, you discover it can be a lot of fun. Yeah, I think so. A lot of people I've spoken
to about this have really enjoyed that process of breaking through the first show barrier,
and then moving forward from that, because it gives you an ego boost to have actually achieved
that and gives you the incentive to come up with some other ideas and get on and do more.
Everybody has something I'm sure that they could tell the world about through the HP
route. Yeah, and I remember when I got started, it was because of that new year's show,
the first one. I just, you know, listening to that, I just thought, well, heck,
that can't be that hard. I should give it a try. My first one was how I got into Linux,
like so many people, but by the way, even if you don't use Linux, how about a show about
how awesome Windows is? I mean, there's someone out there who thinks that. We're open to all of that
stuff. You know, just the only thing that we say is just put something into it that you're
interested in. You know, what is your passion? I think that's the best way to come up with stuff.
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Has anyone done an HP R show describing how many different ways there
are to do a HP R show? I've written one that I may even try and record this weekend
that talks about how I'm doing the Libra Office series. That's just one way. I don't know that I've
heard anyone go through all the different ways. Now, there haven't been, there's been one or two
that I've heard, but nothing has really given, given a broad overview of the sort you're,
you're implying that, given. Good idea. I mean, Hockey McGue and I did ours off of a mumble server.
We just, you know, decided on a time to meet. We discussed, we know kind of what
others have shown us. We had put together and then we just both hit the record button at the same
time so that he's recording on his local machine. I'm recording online and that's pretty much it.
Many throw the file into Audacity. Edit out any stuff you don't want in there. I think probably
the biggest drawback for people is maybe using Audacity. I don't know. It is quite daunting if
you haven't used it before. Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. It does have lots and lots of
controls and it's not entirely clear what they will do. That was my impression of it anyways.
It's taken me quite a while to find out when I need to use what and how to do it and so forth.
So yeah, that happened one or two shows that have looked at Audacity. I think Nido did something
a few months back on the subject, but this is room for more. I'm sure. There's actually a podcast series
called the Audacity to podcast. Cool. Your point Kevin about doing a mumble
shows, a show across mumble. That's an interesting point because if there's two of you
and you can get a conversation going, it's often a lot easier to come up with something than it is
to sit there on your own with a subject. I've certainly found that the odd occasion where
I've done a joint show with Ken, in particular, it's been pretty straightforward to make a show
that way. In fact, we've done one show that wasn't even, I didn't even know it was going to be a show.
It was just a way of communicating and then we recorded it and it was a show. It's a good
point. I agree because like me, I'm not a very boisterous person that was when Honky and I
did it. He kind of prodded me along and I kind of prodded him along and we kind of had some
moments of silence and it works out real well if you're not real out going. He's just like
talking to someone on the phone, a long, long friend. Honky and I have never met in person. We just
were met on IRC. We started, I think, the Linux Basics. We used to have an open
lug mumble meeting on Friday evenings. That's when I first talked with him. So I know it's just
been an online acquaintance that I've met through IRC and such and we just got together and made a
show. It's really nothing to it. Yeah, get mumble installed and have a go, I think, is the message.
I mean, this server here can be used to record your shows. It's open to the public. Indeed,
indeed. The hack public radio room is not often in use so get there and use it.
So good. Okay, so shall we just go to the last item then from the mailing list which was
the torrent that's being set up for distributing shows. The origins of this go way back, I think.
It was a suggestion. I think it was made some time ago and was discussed briefly on one of these
shows which was why can't HBR shows be made available through bit torrent? I think the
that's evolved. I'm not really completely able to speak with this, I have to say, but I think this
is evolved a bit into a way of distributing the archive shows because the shows obviously
go back in time right back to the original show and they're on the HBR server and also on archive.org
and or we're at least are in the process being put up onto archive.org. So the should anybody wish
to go back in time and listen to earlier shows then getting them through a torrent would be a great
idea. And I think some of the discussion was talking about how you would split them up into
into batches so you could go back to to get to reasonable size chunks. So yeah, and that does seem
to make sense to do it in that way because we've got 1400 shows roughly on hacker public radio.
There was 300 preceding it today with a techie and then you know depending on how far back you
want to go people will talk about predecessors to that. Yeah, it's a lot.
The other problem that the people have looked at is you need to come up with a new torrent every
time a new show is it released because that would mean you have to update the torrent every day.
Yeah, yeah. So there's been a lot of discussion about this and I think deep gig is in the process
of setting up a demo torrent for a for a speaks. Some shows in speaks format. So it sounded
something like that. Yeah, yeah, I just have not really dug deeply into this. But it looks like
there's quite a number of people getting involved with this. So I think it's got its own momentum.
So that's good to see. Indeed. Okay, so I think that's the end of our agenda there.
Have you got anything else that you wanted to raise the hooker?
No, I think we're almost at an hour and 20 minutes at this point. So it's probably a good time
to wrap it up. I think you're right. Yeah, Kevin, have you got anything you wanted to add before we
sign off? Nope, I'm good. Okay. Okay, then thanks everybody for joining us and I forget how can
Enzy's things. I'll leave him to do that next time. Thanks everybody. We'll see you all next month.
See you all next month.
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