Episode: 1426
Title: HPR1426: A Visit to Reglue
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1426/hpr1426.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 02:09:18

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The
Hello, David Whitman here from St. Helens, Oregon.
I'm going to very poorly, I guess, today try to attempt to talk to you about my visit
with someone that I've been following on Google Plus and over the internet and been in contact
with for a while, Ken Starks, and I visited his facility in Taylor, Texas, and he heads
the Reglu project.
Information on the Reglu project can be found at reglu.org.
He also has the blog of Helios, which is, I believe, because he used to, the Reglu project
used to be called the Helios project.
Now this project is near Austin, Texas, and Ken has been at this for quite a while, and
the project is to distribute computers to underprivileged children.
You might ask why is it called Reglu when we look at the website, you can see that Reglu
is recycled electronics and you can new Linux used for education.
Reglu in a nutshell gives free Linux computers to underprivileged children and their families.
Now, I was in Houston, which is about 2.5 hours away from Taylor, Texas, and I had an extra
day and a rental car, so I thought, got a hold of Ken, and thought, I think I'll drive
up and see what this project is all about, because I heard a lot about it.
Some of you may recall that Ken had been helped when he had cancer and needed some money
and he had an Indiegogo project, and they raised enough money to help him with the throat
cancer, and so Ken has kind of a gravely voice, it never bothers me a bit, but I didn't
even ask to do a recording there because I just think he's a little sensitive about it.
I started out pretty early from Houston, Houston's a pretty good size city, it's very much
urban sprawl, because Houston has no real zoning, just goes on and on forever.
And if you've been there and looked at the map, there's concentric freeways around
it, so I started out early in the morning thinking I'd beat the traffic about 6 o'clock
in the morning, and it was not good enough to beat the traffic out of Houston, and I had
to probably go 30 miles or so 35 miles before I got out of the traffic, but I made it out
and hung the drive up there, it was sort of wet and it was a really beautiful country,
stopped to get a little something to eat and the cowboy hats and the pickups were around,
and a lot of ranches along, and the highway that I was on was not necessarily all freeway
all the way up there, so I got to see some of the countryside, it's really beautiful.
Here it's pretty hot and humid in the summertime, and can get humid and cold in the winter,
but it seemed real good to me because I'd left 8 degrees Fahrenheit, weather in Portland,
so Ken was waiting for me when I got there and I went to the address he'd given me in
Taylor.
Taylor's a small town that has an old style field to a 50s field, and you can tell when
you drive in there that the good business times for Taylor, Texas, at least the times
of expansion were in an earlier time, it has nice brick buildings, the kind you see on
shows like American Pickers, and that where they go into small towns that are brick buildings,
Texas is pretty flat, and I'm a little more used to mountains, but the town had just that
nice field to it, and you could tell it's a place where quite a few people live, but it's
not really close to a big city, it's sort of a suburb area, and I finally found the
address where Ken was at, and it was, it looked like it was right next to a school and a building
again built, and I don't know when, earlier in a century, and Ken was in there, and what
I came into, and I came into the building was a room that was like a one room schoolhouse
that had a bunch of desks in it, like a school room, and in one end was a shop, I could see
there was a partition there, and there was a shop, and it was very clean, but there was
desks around with computers, so it had a classroom style, and then it had the teachers desk,
which of course, where Ken was at, with his big monitor and his computer. I was interested
in how the program worked, because I'm actually interested in helping young people and others
with Linux computers. Now myself, I've probably placed under 10 Linux computers in the few
years I've used Linux, I'm always interested in another way of doing it, and something better,
and actually, I just really love the open source community, and Linux in general, like the way
that the philosophy of GNU works, so I wanted to talk to Ken about it, and he accepted me in,
and we sat around and talked and just talked shop, I asked him about his classrooms, and he explained
that they have actual computer classes there that are, they teach people from the very basics,
this is a keyboard, that's a USB port, that's a monitor, you plug in a microphone here,
use the mouse there, so they have real basic computer classes there, and when they give computers
out, they give them out with Linux on them. Now one thing I asked Ken about was, about how
come he didn't use that other operating system to put on the computers, because most computers come
with Linux, right, and because they have the market share, they were the right place at the right
time, and so most computers are shipped with that, they actually gave him a cut rate deal apparently
on Windows, but it wasn't enough to make it viable to be able to pass computers out to children
to help them learn, so we talked shop, and there was no classes going on there then, and he showed
me around a little bit, and showed me the shop, and I have a nice workbench there, now this thing was
full of computer parks, computers in a, not a big pile, but they were, there was a lot of computers
there, a lot of baskets on shelves, real sturdy shelves with hard drives, there was speaker systems
there, there was monitors, there was memory for computers, thumb drives, equipment, there was
a workbench there that had a big plug strip on it, and wires all hooked up, and so Ken and I worked
a bit on getting, one computer getting Linux onto the computer so that it could go out to its
destination where they, when they had a place to donate the computer, and we fiddled around with
that, and we talked a little bit, he showed me on the wall, a friend of his made a fighter plane
like an old biplane, I guess, or some sort of World War II looking things, and he would pry the
little windows, designed for windows, or whatever, sticker off, and put the kills on his plane and on
his plaque, and it was completely full, I took them pictures of it, but they didn't turn out very
good, I took them with my phone, we fiddled around there a bit, and then we went down to a barbecue
place, and let me see if I can find that here, it was called Louis Muleur's Barbecue, and it's in
Taylor's Texas, in authentic Texas barbecue, now one of the goals I had when I went to Texas was,
besides actually being successful in the business I was going there to do was to find some
Texas barbecue, because I'd heard a lot about it, I'd only been in Texas as I passed through
airports, so I never really got a chance, you know airports aren't going to really have good
barbecue, or authentic barbecue in that, so Ken and I went down and he knew just what to order
for himself, and this guy whips out this big piece of beef, and cuts him off some for a sandwich,
some white bread, pickles, and some onions, some sauces, and I ordered half a rack of baby-back ribs,
and I couldn't really, well I was kind of being polite, but I couldn't eat all of it really
right then, so I took it back with me to my room in Houston, and I left a little later in the day,
and that, but that was a real nice experience, I suggest if you get to Texas,
try some Texas barbecue and ask for some of those sauces, I will confess the next day,
I think it was the next day, yes I went down, the barbecue was so good, the baby-back ribs,
I went to another place near the airport, and got a full rack of barbecue, baby-back ribs,
some coleslaw on that, and I ate the whole thing, and I actually didn't even eat dinner the next
night, I was so full, and kind of nibbled around on breakfast and lunch, and no dinner, and it's
kind of back to normal by the next day, but this was a really nice place, you can look it up on
the internet, it's at www.luymuleroombarbecue.com, that's Louis-L-O-U-I-E-M-U-E-L-L-E-R-B-R-B-Q.com,
if you get the tailor, or round Austin, look can up and take him out to lunch there, it was really
very good, and Canon I talked a bit more about the project, I don't know exactly how many computers
they've given out over the years, there's some information on their site, I think this is a good
project, and I think while Canon is doing this, and it's been very successful with it in the Austin
Texas, Taylor Texas area, I think it's something that more people should be doing, and it's something
you can do as an individual, is to pass out computers to others and put in Linux on there,
you know one thing I really like is the fact that Linux is free as far as cost, and it's also open,
and it can make the difference, you can discover that computer nerd is just out there that doesn't have
an opportunity by giving him a Linux computer, I don't know that I can really do justice to my visit,
it was really one of the highlights of my December, I encourage you to read the blog of Helios,
and if you have a little extra money or a computer, you know, Reglu has a donate button on their
website, and I wish if you could send Canon a little, I sure you'll put it to good use, I just
really had a good time, a good experience there, community I live in is fairly small, and I've been
working on trying to get some Linux computers out here, I haven't really made good contact,
because with the right people yet, but I'm working on that, and I plan on trying to get at least
four or five computers out to eligible recipients within the next year, which is right now, 2014,
and I would ask that if you'd like to join me, just grab up some computers, I actually prefer laptops
myself to give out, I just like their portability, but I'm gonna nose around here and see if I can
get some regular desktop computers too, I've already gotten a couple monitors given to me by the lady
that rents a barber shop where I get my haircut, and I did a little disc recovery for her,
and they were cleaning out some stuff, so I got a couple small monitors, they'll work there,
they're kind of old, and then I stripped down the computer that they had, I'm not really all
that fluent in the electronics part, I really haven't torn down that many computers in that,
but I think this is something anyone can do, and the FreelynicsBox.com by the Tilt Skies is another
way to give out computers, but I'd like to thank Ken and his group, because there is a group that
I didn't meet that is there that runs this organization and has done so much for their area
to further computer education, and Linux, which is really what computers is all about,
is free software and helping one another. Some of the things I'll give a shout out here to
somebody, Randy Knowsworthy, some of you know him from Google Plus, so I think he's had a
HPR episode, I hope he has. He's working with Ken on getting a ISO together to be able to put
on these computers. One thing I want to talk about that I think is important, and I'm just going
off the cuff here, is that Ken, he has this down, donating computers. One thing that we talked
about was he said when they go into a home to place a computer and give the introduction to it,
he makes sure there's a parent in the room with the regluar Helios representative at all times,
and so they don't get any of this accusation that something went wrong, that the adults there
there has to be a responsible adult, then he talks about how they give them the ability to change
the passwords. He has a password already set up, and a user on there that can be changed easily.
He uses the distribution, it's easy to use. Another thing they do there is they have a way
that they assure donors, that their computers, the personal data will be wiped off the hard drive,
and they're using a deban software to scrub the information from the drive, and he of course
will allow you to keep your drive if you want to. He's got a pretty deep organization there,
and I'm sure they went through some growing pains. If you're interested in doing something like this,
I strongly suggest that you get a hold of Ken, Ken Starks, and he can be found at the blog of Helios
or on the regluar page. He frequents Google Plus quite a bit, and so you'll always see a few
things from him day to day on Google Plus and some humorous things, and he has a good sense of humor,
and Ken actually does some writing for some internet, new sites also, and he seems like a fairly
accomplished guy. He's a little older than I am, and I wish I was a lot younger than I am,
so I would strongly encourage you to take Ken's example, his enthusiasm, and start working with,
if you can, to spread the Linux word and get computers to some people. There is a nice testimonial
on the regluar page, and I'm sure there's a lot more there. They have some nice artwork also.
Well, Ken, I want to thank you for working so hard to help people to get computers,
and I think you made the right choice by going with Linux, and I really appreciate your work.
One other thing I will say here at the end is that Ken, his organization, there's a story about
why the Helios project turned into reglu, but his organization is a 501C3, so if you have donations,
they're tax-aductable in the United States. I'm doing this unprepared, so I just want to call
your attention to this project, and try not to call any attention to myself. Actually,
I feel pretty clumsy doing HPRs, but I really love the project, and thank you very much,
and see you around the internet.
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