Episode: 1407
Title: HPR1407: Mars Needs Women, and Hacker Public Radio Needs Shows
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1407/hpr1407.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:58:11

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Hello, this is Ahooka.
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode.
This is not a series. I'm calling this episode Mars needs women and Hacker Public Radio needs shows.
This really came out of a little discussion we had during the recording of the last community news.
If some of you were listening to that, you may have known that Dave Morris and I did most of the work on that,
we had a few drop-ins, Ken Fallon made a brief appearance, or maybe even two, and Kevin Wisher, who is one of those people who have technically behind the scenes done a lot for Hacker Public Radio and has started recording shows as a host.
And he said, has anyone ever done a show on all the ways you can record and contribute stuff to Hacker Public Radio?
And couldn't think of anyone doing that exact kind of thing, so I thought, hmm, maybe I should.
So I want to go through this and I'm going to tell you that everything that I'm going to talk about is on the Hacker Public Radio website.
If you go to hackerpublicradio.org and in the navigation, you will see something that says contribute.
So this is information that's been around for a while, but if you are someone who's just been listening to Hacker Public Radio, but hasn't gone to the website and poked around, maybe you hadn't run across this.
And I'm sort of hoping that one or two people out there are going to hear this and say, hey, that's not that bad, I could contribute a show.
So that's what we're going to try and do today. Now, we're going to start off stuff you need to know, okay?
First of all, licensing. All Hacker Public Radio shows are licensed as creative commons, attribution, share alike, 3.0 unported.
And it sounds like quite a mouthful, doesn't it?
Now, you know, it's not that bad. What that means is you continue to own the copyright to your show, you're just allowing us to use it.
Now, one of the provisos is that we give you attribution, right?
So for instance, this is going to happen automatically on this show because I announced who I was at the very beginning.
And then it has to be released under the same license. Now, what share alike means is that anyone can take this and use it to make a derivative work of some kind.
But that derivative work also has to have the same license, the creative commons, attribution, share alike, 3.0 unported.
So that's kind of a standard. I've been using the attribution share alike from creative commons for a long time.
All the stuff that I do on my websites. I've got a whole bunch of slideshows that I've uploaded to slide share from things I've done from my Linux users group in similar events.
And all of those have the same license on all of that. So nothing earthshaking about all of that.
It does mean you want to be a little bit careful if you are including any other kind of content. Now, you know, should you include something like music? I never do.
Now, part of the reason I don't do that is that I don't listen to shows at the normal recording speed. I speed up all of my shows.
So that kind of makes the music a little bit weird anyway.
But the thing is, if you were including music, it would have to have that kind of a license, you know.
So if it doesn't say creative commons, attribution, share alike, 3.0 unported, don't put it in the show. That's really the best thing to say.
If there are, if for some reason you absolutely have to use something that has a different license, you have to note that when you upload the show and put that in your show notes so that the admins are going to know that.
And so they can put a tag in there that would allow people to filter that out if they're going to redistribute.
And a lot of our content does get redistributed in various ways. Now, that's just a little warning at the beginning, a few other things to know.
The show is not going to be edited, moderated, or anything else. There isn't anyone sitting there judging if your stuff is worthy of hacker public radio.
So we have a very long history that says, we're there for everyone. We trust everyone. We do ask you to let us know whether or not your content is adult only.
Up to you to figure out what that means. And the reason we do ask that is that some of our stuff will go on sites like iTunes.
And if we have four letter words showing up in something that doesn't say that it's four letter words, it gets us into trouble with them.
So if you want to have adult content, let's know. It's not that hard.
So you can signal that, but other than that, do whatever you want to do. And if you want to do adult content, do it.
Just let us know that that's what it is so that we can appropriately tell people.
You know, we have people who get two, three thousand people downloading each program and some of them may be are listening to shows along with their children.
And you know, they need to get some warning on this stuff.
You know, hacker public radio is a community site. Basically shows are scheduled on a strict first and first out basis.
Now, you upload a show and just say next available slot. And when will that be? Depends on how many shows we've got in the queue.
We never have too many shows in the queue. So usually within a couple of weeks, you know, to at most a month, your show will air.
So that's some of the ground rules about putting a show up here. So how do you do it?
Well, you book a professional recording studio and a sound engineer at a cost of two thousand dollars an hour. No.
Obviously, that's not it. Although if you want to, you can go ahead and do that. I got only knows why you would want to though.
And you know, there's a variety of ways people do it. So here's the simplest pick up the phone.
Yeah, you can literally record a show by calling. And if you go to the page and that contribute page, it is going to give you the USA and United Kingdom telephone numbers.
So we have two of them. And it gives you all the instructions. So, you know, you could just pick up the phone and blather into it for five or 10 minutes.
And there'd be a show assuming you followed directions appropriately. Now, it really can't get a whole lot easier than that.
Next thing you might want to do recording with a portable media player. All right. If you've got a media player, MP3 player, iPod, you know, whatever you got chances are, it's got a voice recorder function.
If you've got a smartphone, there's a voice recorder application that you can put onto your smartphone.
So all we ask there is go for the highest quality format that you are allowed to use on that device. And it would generally be a wave or a flag file.
And, you know, but whatever you do, set it to the highest possible quality setting. Now, you know, as long as what you record can be heard, we'll use it.
All right. Again, there's no one sitting there saying is this quality level up to our very, very high hacker public radio standards. That's not what's going on. If it's just a bunch of illegible static, not a whole lot of point in releasing that, although I'm going to say I think I've heard one or two shows that came down close to that.
I have, for instance, a Sans a clip plus. And, you know, that's great for doing things like that. Now, if you're going to use a portable media player or a smartphone or whatever, do a dry run, you know, make a couple of one minute recordings just to make sure you understand which buttons you have to press and what the settings need to be.
You know, I have to tell you I did Ken Fallon had talked me into I was going to I did a talk at my lug about hacker public radio and trying to think I think Frank Bell may have done one first for his and it was like, oh, I could do that. So I did the talk and I had the the clip plus, you know, clip to my lapel.
And discovered I had neglected to press the button one more time that it took to actually turn on recording. This is one of those things where you press once to open up the recording application.
And then you can set your levels and do all of that and then you need to press it one more time to actually start the recording and I didn't do that. So got no recording out of it.
I'm just I'm going to beg the forgiveness of the hacker public radio audience for not getting to hear me talk about hacker public radio at my lug.
I'm assuming I will be forgiven somehow.
So that's another way you can do it. Now, the way I do it is with my computer using software called Audacity.
You don't have to use Audacity. It's free open source and readily available and I think a lot of people do use it.
Is it necessarily the best thing out there? I don't know. It's free. It's open source and it's readily available.
So I have a Linux computer with Kubuntu on it and Audacity is in the repositories and I'm used to using it and it's simple and straightforward.
So feel free to do that. Just bear in mind that we pretty much do everything in mono. So you'd want to set it up for monoral recording.
Other than that, there is, you know, set it to the highest rate. You know, you want to have a project rate of 44,100 kilohertz blah, blah, blah.
So, you know, if for some reason it really needs to be stereo rather than mono, again, say something when you upload the file so that the admins are aware of that.
Now, for something like, you know, at this point I should mention that if you're not using the telephone option, you know, if you're recording with a media player, you know, you could just record the show and attach it to an email address to admin at hacker public radio.
By the time we get to looking at people recording shows with Audacity and setting levels and things like that, it's just a little step further.
So one of the things we suggest is that you contact admin at hacker public radio.org to get instructions about the FTP server.
Not terribly hard, but, you know, that's a good way to get your shows uploaded and into the queue.
Another thing you might want to do, you can use things like Skype, and Skype has called recorder, or Google plus Hangouts, and that gives you a chance to have several people get involved.
So you can interview someone or get a couple of your buddies together and have a round table, you know, any of that, and you can just record using the built-in recording functions.
And, you know, I believe you can do that with Skype, with Google plus Hangouts, you know, there's probably a few other things out there that would let you do that.
So that's another way to do it.
And, you know, getting a few people involved is good, it gives you a chance to bounce things off of someone else, and, you know, rather than feel like you have to carry the burden of 15 minutes worth of content or 20 minutes worth of content all by yourself.
It's pretty natural to have a conversation with someone, and that's something we see.
Another option you have, we have a mumble chat room.
Mumble is an online voice communication.
I think it was originally set up for gamers, so while they were playing a game against one of their friends, you know, they could be chatting with each other in audio at the same time.
But it's since become adapted as something that's just generally useful for having a group communication.
So that's how we do the community news every month, if you've ever heard those usually Ken Fallon is the host or leader of that discussion.
But last time around Dave Morris stepped into that role, and Dave and I have been involved the last few months, certainly as participants and all of that.
And the way we do that is we go to the mumble room.
Now there's instructions there. You basically have to download a piece of software called a mumble client.
And then there's instructions on the website that here's the name of the server and the port and all of that.
So you can start a conversation that way.
And this is something Kevin Wisher likes to do.
In fact, you'll see on the site that there's a mumble tutorial that he put together.
And there's also a couple of short shows on configuring audio quality, and that sort of thing.
So what Kevin has done is he's used the mumble room to do a couple of shows now with his friend, Honki Magoo.
So that's another way to I think a very convenient one to record a show.
I would say it probably be a good idea with something like that to have a headset so that you can hear the other people through the headphones.
And the reason I say that is if you have a big honken microphone sitting in front of your computer and you're getting audio from the computer, you're going to get feedback.
And that's not a good thing.
So a headset is probably a good idea for that.
And in fact, you'd probably want to use that for Skype or for a Google plus hangout as well.
Now, if you have any questions, just email admin at hackerpublicradio.org.
And someone will be happy to respond and let you know anything you need to know about getting your show published.
And there's also a couple of IRC channels that are mentioned.
And again, all of this is on the contribute page at hackerpublicradio.org.
And so, you know, you can go into the August planet channel on the free node network.
And you're going to find people to chat with who are also podcasters and can give you ideas and suggestions.
Finally, if we take a look at requested topics, there's a lot of them.
I'm not going to go through all of them.
But I'll tell you that a couple of things are very, very popular.
Most people do sort of an introductory pod if it's their first one for hackerpublicradio and say, hey, how did I get here?
Now, if you're a Linux person, it frequently becomes how did I get into Linux?
You know, you don't have to be a Linux user to be a hacker and to record shows for hackerpublicradio.
I think a fairly high percentage of the folks here are Linux users, because that's the sort of thing a hacker just might do.
But, you know, if you're a Windows user who is into technical things, you're just as welcome.
So, don't let that stop you.
So, you could do one, how I got in the podcasting, how I became a geek.
Another one that frequently happens, we've had a number of people do, what's in your bag?
You know, a lot of folks will have a backpack or a bag or something that's just full of stuff that they haul around with them.
Well, you know, what's yours? Do you have some tool that we don't know anything about? Maybe you want to share that.
Then, you know, all kinds of stuff. I'm just going to, you know, your favorite Android applications.
Introduction to wireshark, music theory.
Episodes for the Linux Professional Institute or the Networking Series.
Grub2.0. How to build a house. Bitcoin.
I've had a number, number, a couple of episodes at least. I think there may have been more than just the two I see here on how to solder.
You know, just one of those basic hardware hacking skills, but if you haven't done it, how to weld, how to fix a car.
Beginners guide to new plot. And one of my favorites, get broke. I fixed it.
We've had some very memorable episodes that fall into that general category.
So, you know, there's a lot of stuff. Ken always says anything that's of interest to hackers.
And we've decided that pretty much everything is of interest to hackers. So, I can't imagine.
I'm not saying this is a challenge. I just offhand. I can't think of anything that would not be an acceptable topic.
So, don't worry about that. And, you know, if you've been listening to hacker public radio, you've probably got a good idea of just how diverse all of this is.
So, we have things that range all over the place and cover every conceivable topic.
So, you know, just have at it. Have a good time. And, you know, again, you know, if you wanted to get some suggestions or talk to someone, you know, try the IRC channel on Cass Planet.
So, you know, that's a good place to do, get some information. And so, that's all of the different ways I can think of to record a show for hacker public radio.
So, all of this, again, if you go to hackerpublicradio.org, there is a navigation area on the right side of the page. And about halfway down, there's a link that says contribute.
And every single thing I said is on that contribute page. So, if you check that out, you can get all of this in writing. You get links to additional stuff. And, you know, you're going to find that very easy to do.
So, I would say that the main thing is just get started. Get in there, record a show. Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Five minutes doesn't have to be a big deal.
I mean, if you're anything like me, you're going to do one or two shows and discover that you really like it. But, you'll never know until you get in there and do it.
So, this is Ahuka, signing off for hackerpublicradio, reminding everyone to support free software. Thank you.
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