hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1874.txt

Episode: 1874
Title: HPR1874: Interview with Droops
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1874/hpr1874.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:41:59

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This is HPR Episode 1874 entitled Interview with Groups.
It is posted by Ken Fallon and is about 54 minutes long.
The summary is to mark the 10-year anniversary on HPR we talked to Groups one of the founders
on today with a techie.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15 that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker
Public Radio.
Or is it?
Or is it another episode of today with a techie which started this weekend, coming
10 years ago, folks, 10 years ago?
And, therefore, I have online live from the U.S.A.
One of the many started it all, Mr. Troops, how are you doing, Troops?
Hey, Ken, how are you doing?
I'm excited to be here.
I'm not doing too bad at all, not doing too bad at all.
So, for those of you who don't know who Troops is, can you give us the rundown, please?
Well, that's kind of put me on the spot.
I'm some guy who a long time ago in college was really into internet radio.
And so we created this really cool thing that didn't work.
And so we created this other cool thing that didn't work.
And then we created this other thing that was really lame.
And eventually we got to the point where we created something that was actually really cool.
And it was so cool that other people took it over and have done a much better job than we ever did with it.
And have created this whole hacker public radio thing.
It's very awesome.
Okay, so 10 years ago, you started today with a teching.
Now, before that, there was, when I started way back when I started listening to tech shows,
I did a search for podcasting, no idea what it was.
And I listened to, I don't know, did something on something show.
I think that was required for everybody at the time to listen to.
And then I searched for some Linux podcasts and came across the Linux tech show, which is still going.
And they were recommended to other shows that were going at the same, at that time,
almost in phenomenal radio.
And the other was BinRab radio.
So you are behind in phenomenal radio.
So how did that, how did that kind of go?
Okay, so I've taken a bunch of notes as I like to write things down.
And this is all from memory.
Like, I don't have records of the sort of thing.
So if I, if I don't get something correct, please forgive me.
And like, I was just living in the moment.
So it's just how I remember it.
There was a fellow named dual parallel who had a show called Radio Freak America.
And this is before, there was a thing called podcasting.
And it was just internet radio, like, go you download it, you burn it onto a CD,
you ride around in your car and listen to it.
Like, on the way to school or the way to work.
And no one had really nice AP three players that could hold this much data.
And I eventually got a PDA.
And I used to go to a friend's house, we were at wireless internet.
And I would download shows to my PDA and listen to them on my headphones that drove around.
And we were doing that sort of thing before podcasting came out.
Like, in phenomenal radio started without an RSS feed.
We had to go back and create one.
And we realized how awesome that distribution method was.
But anyway, we were riding around listening to Radio Freak America,
which was a show by dual parallel.
And it was just, it was the most different thing I've never heard anything like that for my life.
And it was essentially just conversations people were having about technology and about the hacker culture.
And that was just awesome.
And like, these people didn't know who I was, but they became my friends.
I was essentially just listening to their conversations.
And that just stuck with me my whole life.
And eventually I got to the point where they can, you know, these guys are just talking on the phone to each other and recording it.
Heck, I'm having these conversations with my friends.
We should start recording it ourselves.
And that's a big step.
Like, it's scary to go from, I'm just some guy who's consuming to, I'm some guy who's creating.
Or I'm some guy that people are going to listen to and they're going to think,
hey, it's just full of himself. He has no idea what he's talking about, which, you know, that happens sometimes.
And sometimes you think, you know, at all, you don't, sometimes you do, and you're smart.
So we decided, or I decided I would start recording something.
And I just can't put it off and put it off.
And the guy, dual parallel, involved Radio Freak America, was involved with the club called the digital dog pound.
And one of their major contributions was this thing called Benrev, which was an idea.
It was a show. It was a forum.
They had a TV show for a little while.
And just an awesome place for hackers to learn.
And so they started this radio show called Benrev Radio.
And it kind of took over when Radio Freak went away.
And it was awesome. It was just, it was very good.
It was hosted by a friend of mine named Stankdog.
We all have very interesting names.
And I was like, well, Stankdog, do what I can do this.
And I started this little show called Drupes Radio, which was horrible.
And I made a friend who listened to this thing because there was such few podcasts or they weren't even podcasts.
But the internet radio shows about this content when something new came out.
You listen to it because there wasn't a lot of content like you'd wait a week for Benrev Radio episode to come out.
And I was really excited when it came out because there was nothing filling that gap in between.
And we started this show called Infinomicon, which was kind of cool.
It was kind of lame.
And it just, it kind of drug on.
And we should have ended it long before it ended.
And sorry, I keep saying, and I'm watching.
I've never used mobile before.
And I'm watching the little meter.
And it's very neat.
Anyway, Infinomicon should have died.
And when it finally kind of folded.
The idea that had been proposed by dual parallel from Radio Freak America.
And he said, there ought to be this thing called hacker public radio, public radio for hackers.
Technology and news that should come out every day.
And it should, you know, it should be like NPR.
There should be shows on it.
There should be, you know, he was envisioning like this network.
And I'd always kind of wanted that.
And when he quit doing Radio Freak America, he had promised he was doing that.
And I was, I've been waiting years.
And some friends and I were talking about, well, we should start something like that.
And we should try to do this.
And we kind of figured we'd have, you know, 10 episodes and we'd do half of them.
But we would have attempted this idea.
And so we were trying to come up with a name for our show that was going to be a network of shows.
And we came up with today with a techie, which was a reverse acronym.
We actually just came up with a profane word to make fun of the old report who had a show called TWIT.
I don't, I don't know why that was, that was entertaining at the time.
But, you know, 10 years ago when I was in college, that was hilarious.
And so we came up with a show in DOS Man and I was recording our conversations.
And it was surprising when someone was like, hey, this is actually kind of cool.
I'm going to send one in.
And we were like, oh, all right, we've got one.
So we recorded a few shows to get it started.
We gave ourselves a couple days.
And there was such a small community.
People that were into this, it was really easy to get in touch with people who were doing shows,
or get in touch with people who wanted to do shows.
Now, somewhere along this time, it was a website called Hacker Media,
which has not been updated in a long time.
And that's my fault.
I'll take full blame.
But Hacker Media listed all these shows.
And it was a really cool thing.
A guy in Kizzle started it.
And he passed it on to me as he got out of the scene.
And so we kind of knew a lot of people in this thing.
We had a website we called podcast fertilizer,
which gave free hosting and set up the RSS feeds for people.
All they had to do was record a show, give it a name,
but host them for their first 10 episodes or more if they needed it.
And we had two shows make it all the way through 10 episodes.
It's hard to sit down and say, I'm going to record a show and be responsible
for doing this thing week after week after week.
And there's the whole people feel that they have to have something produced
by a certain amount of time, which really hurt a lot of shows.
Like I did an episode of Mid-Rap Radio one time.
But they needed someone to host it.
And we're going to host it.
And I just had to fill an hour's worth of time with no preparation.
And like that's the worst episode of that show.
But you're under this impression that you have to have media produced
by a certain time.
And professional news organizations have a lot of people.
And they have a lot of people working on that problem.
And you have just a podcast.
It's hard to do that.
So coming back to Twatches Radio.
Truth.
Truth. I completely and totally dropped out there.
OK.
Right.
I've just been talking.
Yeah, from right to the beginning.
So you're going to call what you want to do.
What would be covered?
Oh, man.
I've just been talking about history and how awesome you are for running Hacker Public Radio.
I don't know what to do.
Because you were recording.
I wasn't.
Well, I mean, we could just keep going.
I have a recording.
I can give to you.
OK.
Cool.
Yeah, sorry about that.
I never had this happen before.
I just completely dropped out.
So.
Let me finish my thought.
And then I'll show you a question.
We're on.
That sounds fair.
Yeah, go ahead.
OK.
I just thought you were being very patient.
I'm sorry.
So.
One of my original ideas of a twat tech radio was that we would get people to send in there.
Like six months or three months or one month.
Really cool thing.
So as you're learning about technology and you're coming up with stuff.
Everyone's why you're coming to something like this is this is pretty awesome.
And that this is pretty awesome idea.
We're like, why don't you record that submit a show.
We have enough people submitting there.
This is really awesome.
And the whole show will be awesome.
And so we'd ever set a limit on my quality or content.
Like.
I'm assuming the rules would be the same.
Like if someone just recorded a show and they thought it had something to do with hacker public radio and they thought it was neat.
I'm sure they was so published.
Because.
I mean, who might judge or who is confined to judge what's really appropriate and good.
I mean, if it's just a stream of profanity, that probably would be wasteful.
But to be honest, we just check it in three places to see that the audio is OK.
And I don't listen to it until they publish it.
It's a rule.
That's awesome.
And see like that's a true voice of the community.
And that's very cool.
So we were doing our twat tech thing.
Bit of radio was kind of fizzling out a few other shows were kind of fizzling out.
And we said, you know, we should really just call it hacker public radio.
The name is is sophomore.
It's immature.
We should.
It's embarrassing to walk around with a big twat on your shirt.
To explain what that means because over here, we don't don't actually know what that means.
It's slaying for vagina.
Like.
Again, I still apologize about that name.
So we got in touch with tool parallel.
We're like, hey, are you ever going to do this?
And he's like, no.
And we're like, can we steal your name?
And he's like, it's not really my name.
It was just an idea in the community.
So we're like, OK, let's do this.
And we registered hacker public radio.org.
And we kind of folded into it and twat tech kind of folded into it.
And we started something and we hoped it would work.
And now with twat tech radio, I didn't update it every day.
It was hard to get shows.
The hardest part of the thing is finding actual shows that people will submit and getting people to contribute.
And that's also the coolest thing of it because you meet all these awesome people.
And you learn to rely on people that you've never met.
And I think it's awesome.
I actually wrote a paper in college about organizational behavior and how you can do this sort of thing
and get people to work for free by contributing to the community.
That's kind of shady business school stuff.
That's what it was.
And so we had this cool name.
We had this school show.
We had all these people who had contributed.
There was a guy named a negma that used to run the show.
He used to be the Ken Fallon of twat tech radio.
And then he went away.
And it was a guy named Patrio.
And he went away.
And like with twat tech radio, we thought it was the coolest thing.
Like we had our first international person.
It was a guy named Seal from Canada.
He contributed episode.
We're like, oh, we're an international show.
And like, how can public radio is?
I think you're out of the Netherlands.
That's insane that there's this whole world that works on it.
And that's very cool to me.
Okay.
So I've talked about starting twat tech, the intention.
And I kind of told the history of RFA in Phenomocon and Ben Rev.
So that's where we are, Mr. Fallon.
Cool.
There was an interesting discussion this week from one of the old timers.
Because I have always had the feeling with the HPR that,
and as I say, I come into this whole thing way later.
I was listening to Tee guys and then I went back and listened to the RFA stuff.
Which, by the way, is as completely as up to date now as it was back then.
Because there's still a lot of technology that's in place.
It's fecking scary.
I'll tell you that for nothing.
Those guys were way smarter than I ever have been.
And like they're all the whole philosophy of we're here.
We're in the student.
We're not going to hoard all this information.
We're going to share with the community.
That is what the philosophy of HPR is.
Our least, you know, we.
Has been so that the discussion lately has been.
We've had a look at the number of subscribers we've had.
Which is about, you know, 16 and a half thousand a month.
Wow.
Yeah.
But we want you.
Wow.
Yeah, it's awesome, isn't it?
We only had two hundred and sixty holes in the totality,
which is awesome to get me wrong.
That is awesome.
But how is this, you know, as Dave Morris said, like we're in,
we're all in the sport together.
And, you know, it's leaking water.
And a few of us have to build the water at all time.
If everybody helped out, then you know, we'd have shows for the next 85 years.
So that one of the most frustrating, one of the most fulfilling things is doing this,
is doing this, but the only most frustrating things is trying to get people to submit shows.
So what is it that's stopping people from submitting shows?
And the original question was, I always had the assumption that there is an
almost some people who listen to contribute back, but not everybody agrees with that.
And I can't remember where it was that I came up with that idea,
or was that ever agreed, or was that just assumed on my part.
Jason Scott from textfiles.com told me one day that 99 points,
something percent of the people consume,
and less than one percent of the people contribute.
And I just did the math.
That's where we're at right now with HPR.
And I think a lot of the reasons people don't contribute is they seem that it's hard,
or they say that maybe I don't have anything to talk about.
That's like, I'm not afraid to talk on the voice that are on the radio.
I'm not afraid to sound like an idiot.
But like, I'm going through my life.
I'm like, well, I just don't really have anything to talk about.
You know, no one's going to be interested in this.
And like, that's a bunch of bull.
Like, the things that, you know, we come up when we think there's cool,
other people think it's cool.
Exactly. I know that I think,
you know, that's why people won't do shows.
But would you agree that people who submit shows,
people who listen, should contribute,
or would you say, no, we release it and create a commons license
and yeah, whoever, whoever wants to can.
But I think everyone should do it.
Like, one of the really nice things I didn't start
if an Amakan radio to do,
but something that really happened
is that I got smarter.
Because I didn't want to sound like too much of an idiot.
And so I would spend some time actually researching and learning
and coming up with things.
And that kind of motivated me to learn.
And like, I would, I enjoy listening to HBR now.
I don't listen to every episode.
As I imagine most people, you know, download them
with their little podcast aggregator,
but they don't actually listen to every one of them.
It's about 50%.
I guess.
Okay.
But I really enjoy hearing that neat thing.
And like, it doesn't have to be the most elite content.
But your neat thing is neat.
And that excitement comes through.
And it excites me.
And maybe I'll learn something that I didn't know.
And I think everyone should contribute.
That would be outstanding.
We'll be outstanding.
And of course, the license is,
you can take it.
You can do it.
What you will.
Yeah.
It's totally hacker.
Eat those.
Don't sell it.
But you can do whatever you want with it.
Like, you could take this episode right now.
And you could change the words that I'm saying
to be something else.
And like, that's Hacker Public Radio.
That's awesome.
Cool.
So, did it go as you expected, would you say?
Yeah, we really expected to have like 10 episodes
of Twatchek Radio,
where we would have recorded half of them ourselves.
And maybe we were excited to get like five people
to contribute.
And so, no, it was infinitely more successful.
than we expected.
And now, originally back on Radio Freak America,
his, if you listen to the last episode of RFA,
where they talk about HPR,
their view was to have a roundtable discuss some politics
where anything was open and that sort of thing.
Are we not fulfilling the dream by doing what we're doing?
Or, you know, should have gone another direction
while you're acting?
I really think, I think I'm not a scholar of this.
But I really think the duality,
the duality,
the duality,
the duality,
the duality,
the duality,
the duality,
the duality,
I don't know this.
But I really think the dual wanted to have a network
of different voices,
different opinions.
Like whatever he says isn't always the truth,
and whatever I say isn't always, you know,
they end up the story.
Yeah, exactly,
and tell me just right here.
And so having more people can contribute,
you know, the smarter we all are as a whole.
So, I mean,
I don't think we're,
No, that's, I mean, I have no idea what you said up until now, so I'm looking forward to hearing this.
Yeah, me too. I'm always embarrassed to listen to myself, but that's okay.
All right, so the next question was talking about who code did the site,
who helped out, who should get more credit. I was learned in PHP and I wrote a lot of it very
poorly and trying to think of all the people who helped out. Everyone's got all these weird names.
There was a young guy who was younger than I was who redid a lot of it for me after I did it
and explained to me why I was wrong on a lot of things, which helped me a lot.
And trying to think his name, I've been trying to think of it all day,
there was just people hanging out in IRC, which is helping contribute in an offer to help.
And so I don't have a definitive list, but it was a lot of folks that helped contribute to everything.
So are you still there, sir?
I think we've lost him. That's okay. It's been a keep going.
That's all right. One of the questions was who paid for all this. So I had a blue host account
that I was paying a little bit of money for. And so I just added, you know, I bought a domain name
and we added to it. It didn't really cost us anything extra except paying for another domain name
every year. Eventually, Ben Reff took over. I actually don't know who's hosting
HPR right now, like it's kind of cool that it's just kind of going.
At Hacker Public Radio, I don't know if a lot of the international listeners know this,
but in the United States, there's a thing called National Public Radio.
And National Public Radio is a radio network. If it's a non-profit, it doesn't give a lot of
government funding. It's run essentially paid for by the listeners.
And so I listened to a lot of APR. It's a lot of talk shows. They have classical music, which I'm not a big fan of.
They have a lot of just smart comedy shows. And so my vehicle is set on right now.
I was just riding around a few minutes ago, getting fresh air. I listened to it.
And so stealing the HPR, the Hacker Public Radio, was for the Hacker community, not just the American
nation, but kind of for the worldwide community. And that's awesome. Some of my favorite shows,
excuse me, I don't listen to a lot of paid. I dropped out again, but go carry on. I'll listen to this afterwards.
I'm just rolling through a lot of the shows that I listened to in the beginning. I've
mentioned RFA in Ben Rev. There was a show called BassNet that was run by some of my friends.
And I had met them through the internet. These were people I had met in real life.
I met some of them at Defcon and different cons over the years. BassNet was awesome. They
contributed a lot in the beginning of Twatt Tech Radio. Pony Boy had a show, Elk Core Radio.
I think it was called Low Tech Mystic had a show, bottle of the mix links and the links link
tech show that you mentioned are awesome. I know that's so cool. Those guys are, I don't know
how they do that in their lives to find the time to do all that. I dropped out of the whole scene
eight years ago. Coincidentally, I have an eight-year-old child and another one.
I kind of had to grow up and make money to feed them. They like food, shelter, all these things.
But that's okay. Frustrating parts of the project is finding people to record episodes. You
always feel like you're a beggar. I hear you, man. I don't know if I've said this yet today,
but like Kim Falon has done this project infinitely longer than I was ever involved with any of it.
And like this is, this is, we're talking about his show. Like I was involved in the beginning,
but like this is not my project. This is not my show. And he's a hero for making it last this long.
Can I just interrupt you to say I am only here on a temporary basis until we get the whole thing
all admitted. And I'm out of here. Out of here. We'll continue contributing shows, but it's only
a temporary thing. How have we not automated this thing yet? Oh, don't start. Don't start.
You know those baby things that come along? Oh Lord, I think you have some questions about
what's going on now in troops world. Yeah. So I finished college and I was a hippie computer programmer
for a while and I worked for a bunch of little small clients. And now I've ended up somehow as a
high school teacher at a boarding school. And I am the entire computer science department here,
which is really awesome. And being a private school like there's no oversight to what I do,
which makes my life happy so that I can kind of just roll with it and go with it. This is my fifth
year teaching. Right now I'm teaching a project lead the way class on computer science and engineering
and project lead the way as a nationwide computer science initiative. Yeah. And I went and took
this two week long intensive class at a very highly respected engineering school. And like
like this is stuff like it makes the paper when your school starts teaching the stuff. At the
programming class I was teaching before. I think it was much better than this fancy honors
project lead the way class. So by doing this to make my school happy, I've kind of screwed up my
whole programming class that I was teaching before. But that's okay. Fair enough.
Like I was teaching it seems much more like college level. What's that? See that commentable
putting food on the table. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I teach a microcontroller class where we do cool
stuff with our dreamers. Right now we are building a whack-a-mole game. They have figured out how to
read buttons and how to read a potentiometer and how to light up LEDs and pick random numbers.
And now we're trying to throw all that together. And the biggest sketch that they've written so far
in the microcontroller class like school just started. I don't know 20 lines long and whack-a-moles
is much more logic. We're just doing basic things. There's no like objects and crazy things. We're
just reading pins and pushing buttons. We have a lot of fun with that. There's been no burning
incidences with the soldering irons in class which is cool. But whatever that's part of learning.
I teach a junior high class to a couple sessions. I would be much here. How old was it?
I don't know how old you're 13, 12, 13, 14. And to get them ready for high school. And so we're
learning to use computers not just to play games but to create things. And things that kids are lacking
is like just basic troubleshooting skills. They can use a computer all day and look all smart but
they don't actually have to solve a problem. And so we've literally gone into the basics like how
email works and like how we do this and what if this doesn't work or how to take a computer part
and put it back together. And like these are kids you tell them make me a word document and like
they're done and they've got it and they've laid it all out because that's kind of the digital
intelligence they have. But they don't have a problem like if there's a problem how do you actually
solve it. And I think that's very unique and like it's hard to find curriculum for junior high
kids how to solve problems and technology that's not just here's how you make a word document or
here's how you do this. Every Thursday is a code day in that class and we've been doing scratch
which is a lot of fun we did like by the other day and just trying to get them thinking that mindset.
And I also make all my classes read and take notes by hand because I'm a jerk I guess but as much
as I love technology and I love computers and all these things and so I make my living
if you don't know how to take notes and like organize your thoughts so computers are really going
to help you. It's just it's just just kind of a fill in and so I've been supported by that research
from the OCD show that's more than 20 minutes on the computer a day and you're actually the kids
are not benefiting from us. Yeah that's awesome. I taught a reading class this summer and one of
the kids wanted to type up his paper and I let him it was I mean it's four kids in the class I
kind of read on the social experiment and I don't know if I could do this at public school without
being fired but it's private schools kind of neat. I let him type his papers and I let the others
hand write it and so that as they're drafts like I they go through a draft they turn it in I'd fix
it and send it back to them to fix it. Every draft they wrote it got progressively better and
better and better. Meanwhile the kid who was typing it he'd write a draft I'd tell him what to fix
and he would just edit that same document and so at the end of the week of writing this paper
I mean we didn't like spend all day on this we were reading books and exploring and doing cool
things bad everyone's drafts and they were all like they all agree that his sucked like his was
just bad compared to theirs and we tried to figure out why his was so bad compared to everyone
else's and they were looking at the drafts and they were like because he's not rewriting the thing
he's not thinking he's just oh I have to change this word I'm gonna change it I'm gonna change
this word I'm gonna change this one word and kind of the whole class kind of came to the realization
in seventh graders it's you know 13 year old boys they came to realization that they got better the
more times they did something and like that that was awesome that I could teach them yeah yeah yeah
so I'm not necessarily to say that you can't do that because I quite often will write four paragraphs
of text and then just take a few sentences and re-write it and re-write it and re-write it and
re-listen to it but he was just trying to be quick and get done I know what you mean yeah
and that's that's part of life too yeah and if you have to write it out you are forced to rethink
the second time so it's going through the second time so I'm sitting in my desk right now I've
got my Linux computer on it I have several Linux computers and Raspberry Pi's in the classroom
some servers I've got just components laid out from kids building stuff with our dweenos I've
got to clean up what do you what do you run on as a distra I haven't asked I'm a straight up devian
user so for the students I'm letting them use xubuntu on the desktop computers in my classroom
okay cool you I was thinking of you should then perhaps get them to record shows for HBR
so I thought of that and one of the lessons in my junior high class this year is going to be
record a podcast and if we can record something that's kind of cool I will totally contribute it
I just have to make sure we take the school's name out and their name out and you can put it on
hobby public radio if you want yeah hobby public radio might be better for the parents
yeah that'd be true I don't know it's cool don't you do it early stuff we have a maker space and we've
been building crazy things in that I'm trying to involve more kids and just creating if you actually
just take a mic and have a go around and have them explain give us a tour of your classroom
on what they're doing that would be cool that would be cool then we could all send in postcards from
different parts of the world what do you reckon that'd be me get them to send them to you you can
scan them oh look something different getting them physically come on and like technology wise I
just went on a road trip this summer as a teacher I get these brakes now and we spent 40 days on a
road trip across the country my wife and children and I and I didn't even bring a computer with me
I don't own a cell phone anymore I exist for work and then the rest of the time is mine to read
and to experiment and do things cool what you're reading anything cool right now I'm reading Walter
Isaacson's book hecklet's name it's not the Steve Jobs when it's the inventor's one but the history
of technology so you're still keeping your keeping your tools and even when you're offline but I
make the kids read in my classes like we've made books outside of class just like you'll do in college
and the I've I don't know 50 high school students that are all going to read free is in freedom
by richer installment by the end of the year awesome and I told them all not to buy it from Amazon
I told them they needed to buy it straight from the free software system or foundation
excellent I love that I love that so if anyone from there is listening I deserve a t-shirt for that
absolutely um then we started with a simple book about kind of interaction with people
because I think a lot of technology kids want to live on that machine and they don't want to
interact with each other work together all my high school classes we do like we do programming
it's paired programming so my micro control class my programming class we work together as teams
and like that's hard for high school kids to do and like to work together effectively but I think
that's an important skill that I need to be teaching them yeah actually that's hard full stop doing
though with somebody else and I just thought a big battle this year they want us to use the computer lab
for all my classes and I don't want to use the schools computers for my programming classes I had
to last year um because I want them to learn to use their computer for work and their computer
I don't want it to be seamless whether they're sitting on the couch in my classroom or sitting at
the table or sitting in their room that they've got their work environment with them and that's
like I have to you know walk around and make sure they're not on Facebook because we're not
filtering what they're doing on their computer or playing stupid games but I don't really have
that trouble yet and I think that's a good lesson because they get to college no one's looking for
that you know some kid wants to just waste their tuition money so they can play on Instagram all day
this professor's not gonna stop them yeah turn off the don't care and so I'm trying to instill that
lesson now and I think we're doing a lot better in all of my classes this year not using the schools
computer lab because like I have a bunch of couches I got at secondhand stores and like I turn
the lights on to them and I have all these layouts and like we sit around and we argue and we
we write stuff on those I want to be in their last troops sounds cool
we're doing scrum agile developments oh my god like like our first major assignment in the
project lead the way class was a scratch game and four of the smartest kids in the school got
together and made a crappy scratch game because they didn't take it that seriously so they got a
crappy grade they started and I think this is the lowest grade any of them have ever gotten in
high school I mean it was like a C I mean it's not like the end of the world it came from you
and it came from me and like that was kind of a big wake up and so we had to turn in our first
list of tasks our first scrum for Friday and like those kids they had a list they were they were
ready their user stories were very good they were they were ready to roll and like do a good job
with it and like they've been emailing me incessantly we're working on android apps using
app and vendor right now and they just keep emailing me try this why does it this far try this
and asking the questions about it and I'm excited about that I don't have a cell phone so it
doesn't bother me all the time I consider my computer and you know answer all their questions
then go yeah awesome excellent how is up inventor what's that how do you find it up inventor well
it's part of the curriculum that we have to use in that project lead the way class but uh it's
cool and like they're not learning to I don't know they're learning how loops work and they're not
having to worry about sim and colons and in current places and worry about putting all this formatting
that like when I learned a program that was what my life drove around was the logic and then all
this you had to get everything just right that attention to detail and like with app inventor like
if the block doesn't fit it doesn't work and so they really learned it a lot more about the logic
in the beginning than just the formatting of things which I don't know if that's good or bad but
it's it's neat I am really annoyed with you that you have not already sent in several a whole
fracking series on what you do and over there all right so I'm a prick and I had it in that I'm
sorry yeah there you go yeah well one of us had to say it as well but now that I know you exist
we fix that now that sounds awesome and the other cool stuff you do I found a strobe scope the other
day while cleaning out the little storage room in my closet a strobe a scope do you know what that
is and no clue well the front of it it's that strobe a scope and it's like it's this old machine
like the 60s as we have all this old technology that people use to teach electronics with like
you know function generators and all this stuff and it's a strobe scope I said what the hell is
this and I look at the other side it's strobe light it's a scientific strobe light and so I just
set that up my classroom I think it's kind of play with it and we have like a little raid before
class in the day with the scientific strobe scope because it's science science science there you go
like a couple my kids are responsible enough to have a laptop like what I'm a senior in high school
he's about to go to college and he had some like pornography on it and his mom took away his computer
right but like he's in my programming class like he needs a computer so he's using a raspberry pie
in the back to do all this classwork and like that's just awesome it is so cool actually
what does how does come on it's awesome it's slow but he's either done speaking of 1960s technology
my father and all uh he's an ex-teacher and they were carrying out all the old analog stuff from
school so I have a two-channel oscilloscope lots of function generators counters and a bench
multimeter in my possession else it's very very happy they were cleaning out some stuff this
summer to it added a new classroom and there was a bunch of all the oscilloscopes and I tested all
of the one of them worked oh and I've got it now the other ones should go on eBay for parts
they're beautiful old machines and it's probably like a fuse or something yeah exactly it's
missing and they're not using that class I don't know where they've all put them to have they
it done away yeah exactly I know the guys in work they they'll take the oldest oscilloscope because
they think they're more actors for what they do but they're heavier and can take more stuff yeah I
mean if you dropped one of these things on your toe you would definitely yeah that's what we're doing
the cool project in my classes this year they're projectly the way I think the Android apps are
the coolest thing that they're gonna do then we're gonna get the Python and PHP and it's just kind
of an overview of computer science it's not like we're really gonna make much like most of the
Python's I even write in Python code it's just ending someone else's Python code yeah just I
don't think that kind of takes away some of the creativity of it so yeah on the other hand I mean
when you when you do blogs to work you one of the functions you have to do is take somebody else
that's cold and improve it you know it is a thing that is true if my programming class we're learning
command line PHP this semester next semester we're gonna learn processing first year I just did
a whole year worth of processing for my programming class and it was it was awesome what do you
mean by processing? there's a language called processing they have the whole little environment
some guys MIT started it and it's essentially you just write and see with all these graphical
libraries and so hello world and processing it doesn't say hello world it's just
just draw circle on the screen make it move around cool that would be another show probably
for me gender pressure and then the microcontroller class we obviously want to build robots that
find each other so I think that's gonna be a big highlight and the PHP command line PHP class
the major project of the year is going to or the semester is gonna be we're gonna build a
radio station broadcasts in the classroom that's all running on Linux and command line PHP and
you know have a catalog of shows have a catalog of commercials and every day I'm gonna come in
and say this is what we need to do to add to our radio station and the class is as a whole it's
gonna have to continue broadcasting the radio station while they come up with the solution
and I'm gonna have at least silly printers like you can only play one song in a row and then you
have to have you know a minute of talking and so 30 seconds of talking station identification
all this crap and we're just gonna pile it on so they're gonna be in like an intense they're
gonna come to class and be in this work mode where we have to keep this going while we fix this and
I hope we don't break the radio station yeah yeah and I think that's gonna be really cool god this
used your class sounds like a Sunday Sunday movie thing you know where are they
where are they out of the box thinking teacher comes in and affects all these kids' lives
I don't I don't know how lucky these guys I hope these guys realize how lucky they are
I think one day they will I have one of them right now that is from last year who works in our
dining hall at the school and he it's a he didn't do very well he worked out through high school
it's a little boarding school and he just needed extra money yeah and so he worked in the dining
hall he's going to college now but he works at night in the dining hall so I see him all the time
and he was one of my star students he's working on computer science he's taking all the first year
classes and to use some profanity he's like college's bullshit like I could do all this stuff
already and like that's awesome so he's learning all these things on his own much less you know
the basic college stuff he's so far ahead of the kids who've gone to fancy school for computer
science excellent excellent excellent excellent and what better way to finish their projects
than to submit a show here for a HPR a whole series in fact
awesome awesome awesome awesome stuff well I hope you mentioned as many people as possible
because as I say I don't even know who to contact from way back when and when I just took it over
all I really was in contact with was Enigma and I got basically here are the keys good luck
yeah that's how these things yeah it is yeah and it's what I've been doing for the for the last
while as Dave Morris and John Colton everybody else will attest to I don't know I've said this
enough but you're you're doing an awesome job with it and the community appreciates it whether
they tell you that or not yeah but it's it's actually I'm not I'm not really I really don't feel
that I'm doing anything it's it is the community and I know that sounds cheesy and all but really
all I'm doing now is posting the shows I've got just think of it this way there's a lot of people
to do all the stuff so it's they would probably also sporting those shows and learning that
knowledge and getting that glamour and perfect for you know if you haven't if you have not started
to watch videos 10 years ago saying hey dude record me an episode and you put it up there and you
encourage it though they wouldn't be doing any of that work yeah but hopefully we can get more
people people who listen to the shows to start to start also send an in shows but also
going other people to come on and to send in shows because then we like we have a list of
really cool stuff that we can do I would like to be doing rather than you know begging people for
shows is actually the last the last thing on my list but I don't want to be doing so do we miss
anything that we should have been talking about to have a chat actually oh I'm sure that we have
I don't think I've ever talked to you this long I actually have one you ever talked to you I think
I don't think we have have we ever had a conversation I don't think so I don't know on the
email we have you see this is weird because I've you're listening to so yeah exactly I've been
listening to so many of your shows that yeah I know stuff by the way you're um you're
geocaching do you get geocaching still oh some um it's kind of gotten overrun with the popularity
yeah and it's not as interesting as it used to be like it's it's become a game of let's see how many
we can find as compared to let's see how awesome of a cache I can make this one yeah you know
that one you did on the canoe did anyone ever find that okay so two of those we hid that day with
the canoe one of those has been found once by a guy who has like thousands of geocaches found and he
wrote like an essay about how awesome of a time he had finding this geocache and how it was like
one of the greatest ones he'd ever found he went to the spot he had a bar of a kayak he fell over
he almost drowned there were alligators like it was awesome um he also found the one that climbed
up the the tree I've checked on both of them with like last couple years they're both well the tree
I don't know if it's I don't think it's still there I can't get up there to get there the trees
falling over all the way the one in the water is still there and dry and then some guy who was
fishing just randomly saw the one in the tree I bet his kids were climbing on it they found it
and he posted on there that he had wanted to start geocaching but you know he'd never really
tried and had bought a GPS yet so uh there's that like we we drove 40 days the summer across the
country like we went to the upper peninsula of Michigan all the way down to the Gulf Coast
of Louisiana and in geocache at all we rode bikes and explored camped out and shot snakes and
cool stuff yeah as I've said before I'll say it again my plan is to like one day get a
go with the kids and just go visit all the podcasting people around the state it would be awesome
see we made our plan that we would just kind of explore like my grandpa was from upper
Michigan and like I went there as a little kid but like he died but I was like four so like we'd
never gone back and so like we just kind of went to look at his whole town and we had written the
I knew his address it's our letter the people that live in his house it's like can I stand in your
backyard and like just look at my grandpa's view over the water and they were they were very welcoming
and like they knew people that used to know him so like they took us around and like introduced
us to all these people who like knew me from being a child which was cool and like they suggested
to do stuff and like our whole trip was just kind of suggestions people were like oh you should go
look at this it's real pretty and we're like well that's only you know 400 miles an hour let's do it
we were I don't like driving on the interstates we like just kind of ambled along back roads
and we had we're driving through this town on the way to a cave that my son had been reading about
in a book and he was like well you know we're going to Kentucky you know mammoth caves in Kentucky
so let's go there so we're driving there and we're driving this little dinky town and there's a town
built on top of a cave and horse cave Kentucky so we stopped there to like look at it and they like
they were like how old are your kids and we're like oh they're you know seven and eight you know
like well they're supposed to be 10 to go like legit caving but you know they seem up to it's
it's like if you have any boots and I'm like no you know I just bought sandals on this
road trip and then like oh we've got some boots you can wear and like you know we've got all
caved up and like helmets and flashlights and spent like three hours crawling through mud in a cave
and I'm like trying to fit through all these little tunnels and like have this awesome experience
and like we weren't planning on doing that at all that day and then the guys like oh you've
ever seen a moon though and we're like what are you talking about he's like there's a waterfall
the full moon hits the certain waterfall in the Cumberland gap of Kentucky it makes a rainbow
but it's white because it's the moon and we're like oh that's awesome so we're like you know
coming as they know we're there and like there's no full moon inside
we're playing very well but like they were like oh that's kind of this place where all three
states meet like we just kind of yeah of course we just aim but along the country for 40 days
also all of which would have made valid chills just by the back. Well sorry I don't have
anything to record on like I brought the tip up just the old school candle like the
same it has books that was the only technology I brought my GPS I call shenanigans and that one
this is from somebody who posted a show from someone who had recorded on there with the left
ear of headphones. Okay so I have a tape recorder I will bring that with me on my next adventure.
Thank you thank you if somebody can record a show while swimming down the river in front I think
you surely can record a show. This shows it's because they're full of excuses like myself.
There you go there you go I'm not buying them from you though you got me into this mess thank you
very much. Boss here's the thing actually you know my experience with this HPR thing is that
people have been universally nice. Yes and there hasn't been any negativity at all in this
entire time that I've been involved with this how how is this possible when you turn on the news?
We're all the bad people we're all the nasty people especially when you when you think of like
attackers and they're bad nasty people. That has a sub in your experience as well or are we just
lucky? I don't know I think it's kind of a small town in that we all kind of live in this community
and we all want to help each other out. Cool. Did I? Yeah. We never had any trouble either with
anything now that you mentioned it like I don't know it's just been it's been a overall positive
experience it's neat to go to cons and like you have this relationship established with people you
have never met. Yes exactly and the fact that this is the first time that we've actually spoken
to each other and have not realized that this is the first time we've spoken to each other it's
kind of weird. Yeah this cool. Okay so I'm going to get off my lazy butt and do that. Why do we not
have a Wikipedia page after 10 years? That that is very strange to me. I think part of the the
Wikipedia rules are you're not allowed to make a Wikipedia page about yourself. And I think that
everyone that knows about HPR is involved in HPR. So that would be against the results right?
Yeah that's actually on the on the on the subscription page things you need to know
and the last of is once you submit a show you can no longer edit a Wikipedia page. So pretty cool.
So I think I think we've covered everything that's on the list. Did you ever get that
do you remember getting an email from me say about 10 years ago saying I would do a show about a
satellite dish pointing thing? No but I have a copy of it that you said to me the other day
and I'm going to search my Gmail because I never delete anything and I'm going to find it respond.
Thank you very much. This folks procrastination I think this is one of the things that I find
the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We have the same
it isn't a show unless it goes up unless it's on the server it's another show. And 10 years ago
I wrote to troops go hey I've got this great idea for a show now I've got kids and stuff so I can
take on whatever but I can definitely do a whole series of shows about satellite dishes the
pointing and DVB and all the rest and have it done any of them? No. So anyway this is my excuse.
I'm totally promised to make a lot for shows that I've made. I think every time we talk I'm like
well I'll do this so that I never do anything and I'm also really mad about this is part one
like part two never. Yeah I just started a series on oh god here we go again. I'm talking about
my own shows as well if you go back to my my first ones now I just record them and just throw
them up I don't care that's the easiest way. Although sometimes I start them and like it goes wrong
it's the show is completely jinx year you recorded 14 times and the battery goes oh Kevin.
There's a Kevin. Okay so I recorded a show once for Empanamacad and we were drinking during the
thing and we had gone outside and we came back in and we forgot to hit record and we spent like
40 minutes recording and then we discovered that we had not hit record at all and yeah no that's
I have I've done that and thankfully I have like a Sansa clip for getting back up interviews but
I really had to go back to my Sansa clip several times. So that's how that works. I wish more
people record shows I wish I would contribute more I will try my darkness to do more of that when
it gets in big diesel battery so I can get my tape player going or tape recorder. So basically
there nobody is required to submit yours but you're encouraged to submit yours that's all we're
saying is it. I mean you should be some of the people who contribute like you should be some of that
1% like let's make it 2% like if 2% of the people that listen to this thing submit it stuff like
the like the world will change. It would it would make your life so much easier yet.
Drew's thanks very much is absolutely great to hear from you again and it's good to hear that your
family is doing good and I'm very interested to go back and actually hear the rest of this interview
but unfortunately I can't do that because I only listened to the shows once we're posted so
Well I've got to go to a football game and help officiate so I've appreciated this time and I
appreciate all your work that you've put into it and all the people who contributed to the show
and made it what it is it's infinitely better than anything we had ever thought we would have
and if you can get in touch with some of the other guys that really love to have him on as well
especially coming up to episode 2000 and 2048. But I talked to my to Dawesman and he has like a
lot-picking thing he's doing today. Oh excellent so yeah get in touch also can you email me
the the shower uploaded to the FTP server or something like that though. But I certainly hope that
my little laptop here will handle this 58 minute long recording and I hope so because I don't
have a recording of this. Awesome this might be the episode just you and I here.
All right was you talking to yourself mostly so excellent. Anyway folks thank you very much thank you
troops. Thanks all the guys who set up. Let's go back to Radio Freak America, Infanomicon,
bin rev, today with a techie and everybody who's been on the HPR. June and tomorrow for another
exciting episode of Hacker. This is where you say public. Oh I'm sorry public. Radio.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org. We are a community
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