hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4153.txt

Episode: 4153
Title: HPR4153: Steading as she goes!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4153/hpr4153.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:28:31

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4153 for Wednesday the 3rd of July 2024.
Today's show is entitled Steeding As She Goes.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 60 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, the Edinburgh HP are hosts meet and chat again.
Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radioians. My name is Mr X. This is usually how I start my
shows, but this isn't one of my usual shows. It's because I'm here joined with somebody else.
We are in the recording studio C, our usual haunt, me and...
Hello, it's Dave Morris. Yes, we're in studio C, which is my car.
That's right, that's right. So, yes. So, I don't know, do you want to start the ball?
Yeah, okay. We've got a list of various things, far more than we've got time for.
We're going to try and be selective, but I had suggested I start by talking about
YouTube channels because I've done that in the past. So, that's what I'm going to do.
So, I've got three channels. We're in the car park, so you'll hear the sands of other cars
and people coming out of the pub and you'll see too many people talking to someone in the car park.
Of course, studio in there. Some funny people live in Edinburgh.
Ken thinks this is hilarious that we do.
Wow. Anyway, we should get into joining us on time.
Anyway, I was going to talk about three YouTube channels, and I just choose various things that
I watch and I think might be of interest. And the first one of my lists, the channel name,
is A.T. Restoration. It's made by a guy called A.T., who comes from Estonia,
and he's a fan of your restaurant. He doesn't talk on these things. He puts up English
messages, not subtitles, even. Other than that, there's ambience and so he puts a little bit of
music in at the end when he's finishing, just to tell you this time to wind up.
But basically, he's doing some amazing furniture restoration. Usually, his clients are giving him
ancient things like chests of drawers and wardrobes and that type of thing.
And then he's repairing them. And the episode I've referred to is not the latest one, but it was
extant at the time. I did it. And he's restoring a 150-year-old chair or armchair.
If you're interested in this type of thing, the way in which he disassembles and then reassembles
and puts all the seat padding and that stuff in, I suppose we find that quite fascinating.
Yeah. Yeah. I could do with somebody like that. But I've got another patio all day,
dining room table. So we'll scuff the mat. And I'm not because you want to do with it,
but it needs some TLC. Yeah. This happens because things can have rough lives and they get battered.
I think it kind of got damaged and then it got worse and then it got to play with the wall.
What's it matter? So then people are even less careful when it's sort of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to miss his ex. She'd watch some home and she'd clapped up with it and
although to be fair it was me the first. So you see what was it? It was I could use that.
I could have antibacterial thing. You can use that and we'd take the family's off.
That was the first thing. And then I took one of these plug-in air freshener things and I was
policing it and I didn't realise that we walked and somehow I took it out and it spilled a little
of the table and they'd call a cut-knife and that was it. It's never gonna keep me.
Yes. Yes. I've got one of those too. Watch it for that. A pine. Not the air freshener,
but the table is just had a had a reflect. Yeah. It's had all manner of stuff including a family
eating at it or doing that. Yeah. Look at it and it's all bashed. So I don't know what you do.
But I could have it there and put something else. I don't know. Well, in my case,
with digressing a bit I know, but in my case I
years ago took it out into the back garden, into the garage and I got a belt sander and I
belt-sanded the whole thing and then put it all beautiful to the pine table and then I've
vanished it. But I bought varnish which was a floor varnish thinking that's gonna be as tough
as now. Yeah. It was not. It was awful. It spilled off consistently ever since. Wow. So at one point
I'm gonna redo it. Yeah. And you use some really, really, really good varnish it.
Yeah. So it's amazed me. My mother's got a table and she got it from, I can't believe she actually
and that's for a number of years and it's been fine. But now it seems, it's almost like the
and we were just talking about this actually where we were having a meal. I wonder if the varnish
has been designed to disintegrate at a certain age because now you can just generally rub your
nail across it and the varnish just falls off. So she's been very careful with her table and
you can see all these v marks where, you know, they're touching the floor. It's amazing.
I was taught to do sort of finishing of wood when I was doing woodwork at school. We did
like French polishing which I think it's largely the, what's it called? The scales from insects
or something what is it called? I've gotten the words to escape me too. Yeah. But you basically put
layer upon layer upon layer with this stuff on. And then you can actually put a finishing varnish
like polyurethane varnish at the top of that I think. But yeah, there are ways and means but obviously
isn't either right one. Anyway, yes, I guess. And the second YouTube is the channel is called
Phil Vandela, he's the name of the channel owner. And he's obviously an engineer of a
machinist and he has a thing about building his own bikes from many cases from a cannibalized
other bikes which he's then put together. So this particular one, building a cargo bike,
is the first of the cargo bikes he makes. And he also makes other things like furniture and
it made a beautiful desk. But this cargo bike thing is, we'll take quite a lot of capacity in the
front and he's got the front wheel is a small wheel and it's way out front. And he's got an amazing
steering arrangement. What is another name for the, for the, we are a clean on a bike? What would you
call it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Is that kind of thing? No, it's not a reclining bike. It's a straight
time bike. But it is, but it's very long. Right. And but he's made it really stable. It's all made
out of other bikes that have been cannibalized. And some aluminum tube for the, for the weight. Right.
And and and he's milling these and he's welding them too. And he's very skillful,
tick-molder. So welding aluminum, I was told it was not impossible to imagine. He says not.
So yeah, there's two versions of this, of this particular video that I've referenced here,
which is a sort of short version and then there's the full, the full version. If you're
anything like me, you like to watch the full one. But I think you need to dedicate a bit of time to
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's just, I just love watching highly skilled people doing things. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I've got, I'm rubbish about what we sort of things in the hands. It's a, I
come out as a screwdriver and it's a, yeah, it's a bit soldering. I mean, my people can do that,
you know. It's funny. I don't know if I mentioned it. I remember school doing
we were working such, I was just rubbish at that. And I think I did mention, I'm sure a minute,
and I apologize to the listeners if I didn't repeat myself, but we had all had a project to do
and some coffee tables with in-lays, not beautiful stuff. And I thought, actually,
I'm an organ stand, you know, because I could have a keyboard and I thought, I could have
had four blocks of wood, you know, and it was like something like Frankenstein's monster,
ugly as hell, and you stand it wobbled, you know, and I was just rubbish, you know.
Yes. So that was terrible. My father-in-law, when we moved into the house,
he helped us to fit a shelfing and stuff. And I learned a lot of tips from him. For example,
yeah, I thought we were going to cut a shelf, I would make it fit exactly. And then it wouldn't
fit, it would jam. So you need to leave a surprising amount of room, so you measure the distance,
you see, well, I don't have to have to ensure I'm in trouble. So I think that's way too much.
But you've got to remember that you can divide that from either side. So although it seems
like quite a large gap, when you have it either side, it's not that much, but it's quite small.
So there's that. And then the other thing is when you screw in two bits of wood together with
a screw through it, the one above, you want to have a clearance hole so that the screw drops through.
Otherwise, pull it towards other ones and split it. I've done that, I've done that, yeah, yeah.
So that's took my while to learn that way. Yes, he does.
I actually built myself a chair when I was working at Lancaster, because I lived in an upstairs
apartment over a shop. And the shop immediately below me was a chemist. But the other side was
was a DIY shop. So I used to buy wood from there. So I had quite a lot, I bought all the wood I needed.
And I made this thing, which was a wooden frame chair, which had webbing, elastic webbing
between them. It came out of a magazine. And it was all joined together with dowels. There was not
a screw in it. All right, it was all dowled together. I think there was nails holding the
thing, the webbing on. And then it got a foam and then the foam was covered in fabric. And
it lasted me a fair number of years. It was very, very uncool, because it was a magazine that was
several years old. So it was sort of, it was what people did years and years ago. But I could
sit on that and watch the deli. It was fantastic. And you were able to, did you do the fabric and
everything yourself? Yeah, I bought the fabric and learned how to sew it and sew it. And I also
had to do things like, if you've got a cushion, you know, put buttons on it. You need this huge long
needle that's about, I don't know, two foot long or something. It's got a hole in each end.
No, only with the one end, the one end anyway. And you could thread through the cushion,
grow and then sew the button in and tie it off with the thing on the other side of the cushion.
I never knew that. So yeah, yeah. So that sounds like I'm boasting, but I was amazed. When you
took the cut, when I eventually threw it away, to all the covering reading off and stuff,
God, the woodwork was awful. It was all done by hand, with bracing bit and I didn't have any
electric tools. No. So yeah, but my woodwork exists, but it's not good. Anyway,
this is a digression time today. I guess you could teach yourself to do all sorts of
other things. I suppose these videos, they don't, well, there's not speaking in them. So they're
not necessarily teaching you, they're just giving you an idea, but in the end, you could find
videos that would give you a structure. As I complete the version, but some sort of thing,
my father-in-law had the stomach. And the wife said, oh yeah, it's not a spin-in properly.
All right, okay. So I plugged it in and I pulled the lever and spun and found nothing wrong with it.
So I looked at it and the strings look a bit short. And did it not move in the case it's not,
the strings are not, the thread's not coming out properly. It might be that, yeah. Okay,
so I had to be look. And there's like notches on the side of the reel for this, for the string,
and there were, one of the, one of the cords was underneath it and I thought, well, how can it,
it can't rotate out? Because because the end of the reel is in one of these notches,
so it can't, unreal, it can't possibly work. So he's fiddled with us.
What's going on? So I had no idea how to spool one of these things on. And I had a,
I was like, what was he saying? Your wife said, you could check YouTube, you could find something
on YouTube. Oh, that's an idea. So I had to be looking on YouTube and she ran off,
how to spool a stomach and you get the two strings. And it's really easy.
Two holes in the spool and the middle, you bolt the string around and there's an arrow that
shows you what's direction to wind into, to wind it up. So you just wind that way until it's all
complete. And the notches on the side, we think to pass him through it. Nope. What those are for,
and catch it, I'm not going to catch everybody out, is so that you can put this string into those,
so that when you bring it towards the string, it doesn't, so it's just a temporary line. So before you
put it through, yeah, and hook it from the string, you know, and did that. And it worked
perfectly. So he was, he was, I was like, what do you think? That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
YouTube. I've struggled with those things myself quite. Yeah, and it's actually very easy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But man,
you've been an instruction, I bet if you were looking at a structure in leafland,
I don't know some ways, because I know, I know, and yes, I've done that and you look at it and
it's like, if, did you ever look at heinous, just like that, where, where you get these amazing
diagrams, if you know what it is, you're doing, the fact that it's exploded the entire gearbox
and they all, the gears are in every direction. That's really, really useful. If you take it apart,
and you think, oh, where, where did that go? You get the answer by looking at it. But if you want
to understand how it all works, it's useless, it's useless. And that's what those, the sort of things
you get with you, with your strimmer, which is a string trimmer, I think, in the state. But yeah,
yeah, yeah, I know, I've been down that road. I have two, one of which work, no, I've got three.
One works, okay, but it doesn't feed. I don't know why. One, the other one works, but all of the
string feeding mechanism is destroyed and it's so old you can't get a basement, but I've worked
out how to make it have a permanent piece of plastic in there. That does the job of
a client. The third one is just junk. It's one of these things. I'm up on my father-in-law.
It was a draftsman and he's very good at working with wooden stuff, so he's very mechanically
minded and yet he can't seem to grasp. How these strimmers work is that it needs to be
rotating a fast speed in order to cut the grass. If it's just going slow, it's not going to cut the
grass and yet he spends most of him pumping it off the ground so that it's more times on the ground
than it is actually on the grass, so it's not even going to get quarter of the RPM that it should be.
So don't bump off the ground, you're supposed to float on the top, you know, that's fine. I've told
that. It's quite a skill. Yeah, some of them you have to bump to make the string
stand. But they only do that when you extend it. Yes, of course it is. You can see the string is
now shortened itself. Now you do that and it's more poppy. This one not all feeds when you pull
the trigger, so when you pull it, you hear it in a net going smoothly. Of course I was telling my
way because I'm not to start and stop it because everything does have a bit of strength,
so you'll go through it very quickly. Yeah, so you've got a knife inside the thing that chops off
the excess. Yeah, so you end up with lots of bits or other places. Yeah, I've done that and I
didn't get the spool stringing in right. I vaguely remember it, it may be what some string and a
shock somewhere. That's good. That's good. That's good. You'll have a bit of wind at all unless
what has happened. I had a guy come and cut my lawn. I've got a lawn at the back of my house
and it got totally out of control. I've not managed to do it and it was full of
thistles and all sorts of docks and heavy things. And the weed string trimmer thing,
just stroked it and moved on. It did nothing. I had this guy come in and he brought his
strimmer, but it brought down and I said, oh, well, I've got one, but the string on it's so feeble.
I could solve that for you. So he went to his van and came back with heavy duty spool and put
that on the thing. So it's the string and the string of the motor. So it's funny, and I might
say it was light. I've got the cheapest summer you could get and it was a very weak battery.
And I thought it would be rubbish, but it's actually been very good. I mean, it's like
going to long it. It's only for doing it really up to doing it. It's a measly brush kind of
type thing. So it's fun. Yeah. I don't know how to get to that. I could chat on this thing.
This is the trouble where we're class A digress. So I've got one more YouTube
and this one is different and this is called the Ocean Conservation Namibia. This is along the
coast of Namibia, which is there's lots of desert along that coast. I think that will be the
the west coast of Southern Africa. And there are Cape Fur seals, which are which are
really chunky. Well, actually very large. They grow too in terms of the male seals,
but they have a fur, not just a smooth skin. But picture that. Yeah, they're beautiful creatures.
You have to watch them. But these guys spotted. I think they were travel guides originally or
had kayaking groups that they would take out in that time. They saw these seals. In many cases,
I'd got all manner of stuff around them. So they had things like one of the classic ones. It appears
to be, you know, the plastic straps you get on packages, which you're supposed to
start one on top of the other. You're supposed to sharp and they're sharp. You're supposed to rip
them off and then chuck them. But many people just pull them off and leave them as a ring.
And the seals tend to play with them in the water, especially the youngsters. And they get the heads
in it. And they get this thing. And then it cuts them. It cuts right through the skin. And into
the muscle in many cases, and that fishing line, the commercial fishing line was a hell of a thick
stuff, like, you know, ultra spaghetti type thing. And that also cuts like how gill nets, which is
very, very, very fine. But it's the mesh. And anyway, it's so much. And just general garbage,
shopping bags, clean film, roughly. So what these guys have set up is this ocean conservation
in Namibia group, where there's several of them, four or five of them, who get involved. And they
go, they make periodic visits to the seal colonies. And they have they've got nets, so they catch
the seals. And then the nets got zip on the side so they can open it up, but they're getting bitten,
because those guys got big teeth. They cut all this stuff off and free them.
Yeah, it's so saddened. And I mean, the thing is, you think, well, it's so good that they're doing
this, you know, but it's almost like fighting a, you know, a billiard, a bath, a tea coffee,
absolutely. It's just, it's just, I mean, what are they going to do? It's just, I know, I know, it's,
it's, they've made a film about it. I think I'm not sure where you can see the film. I had a
team coming down to film what they were doing. So the message is being spread, but not that well.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure a, there's been countless battles and use about, about the plastic
enotions and all that, you know, and it's spreading. And it goes into smaller and smaller particles,
well, and getting food, you know, that is. And I think we sure are, you know, the point
being being made that some of these companies that make all these plastics and whatnot are like
any business are there to make a profit. And they want, and they're there to make a bigger profit.
So they're expecting to find more and more ingenious ways of making more and more of this
plastic stuff to spread around around the world. It seems to be the case. Yeah, yeah. I think I've
never seen that the BBC was talking about the, which is broadcasting cooperation, I think it's
written with the nose. They were talking about the history of plastic and all that. And it was
seen as a revolutionary way of stopping pollution. And it was actually seen to be a tidier way of
doing things. I was thinking of that. I think it's disastrous. It has been, yeah, yeah, I don't
think it was, because in my early years, there was quite a lot of biker light that was available as
plastic. And when you didn't get containers made of it, it's very, very brittle. And it was
made, it was like handles of knives or, you know, things. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So it was
that sort of thing. But then when the things like nylon and polyethylene came along,
this is all seen as being much better. I think it was not RCA. I think they made the first
because it was used in radios, you know, receivers. Yeah. And it was the RCA, Victor RCA. I think it was
of some of our personnel watching that. And they, they're the first unbreakable of a radio. And
as they were talking about his deep 37, all that, they were bashing it on the counter, showing how
strong it was. Yeah, they're the biker, they just splinter into pieces, you know. Yeah, yeah. So that
was quite fragile in its way. I think someone in my attic, I've got my grandmother's old or a
valve radio, which I, I'm not sure where it is. And it's, I think the case is made of biker light.
It's a fairly chunky thing you'd have on a dresser or a table or something. I don't think it's
worm. Yeah. So you've done very nervous plugging in the piece that we're in back.
Yeah, imagine all the valves are well gone. And the thing where the knob you turn to tune it is
piece of string. Yes. It's a string moment. And it's also operating in the variable
capacitors. That's right. Yeah. Because it's also thin and fresh with one another. Yeah.
And we're watching it when these repeat, there's a program on TV where they repair things,
my chap brought in a, and it was a, oh no, what was it now? It was from a foreign country,
I can't remember where it was. And it was in there. It might have been in there. And they got it
delivered, hooked, it backed it to Britain. And it's, oh, it's, oh, it's, oh, yeah. It's,
I can't remember my childhood sort of thing. When they opened up, it was broken into pieces and all
that. And I thought, well, I know that I had this beautiful glass plated front that had the,
obviously, because they used to have really intricate displays on these readers to look at fancy.
They'd have, have Luxembourg and Morgan on it. So it's a beautiful coloured display,
you know, how they're going to do that. And I couldn't believe when there was, the chap couldn't
believe it. It's the same video, you know, they rebuilt the case and they've got the glass and,
and the, the masters, using a computer, they were able to regenerate the front plate and glass.
It's beautiful. And the slot was beautiful. And the sort of fonts and lettering.
Got all that, yeah. It was, it was like a metal sheet, which has then been enameled.
And then presumably the, the, the lines of the different white bands and stuff were drawn
and then all of the markers. So they already drew all that and it was beautiful.
It was beautiful. Yeah, I couldn't believe it when I saw the, I just thought,
I've never, but it appeared like that. I can't believe how they fixed the casing,
who they used glue was like, I'm not quite sure, but they, they were able to, and I thought
they'll never be, it was, it was amazing. Yeah, yeah. So that's going to be a popular one, yeah.
Things like that being being brought back to life again.
The show I've pointed to for the ocean conservation in Namibia is one of the entire 34 seals
race you in one day. So, yeah, absolutely exhausting. Yeah.
In many cases, they're running after these, these seals and battling with them.
Yeah. And if they stand still too long, seals run past them and bite them in their leg.
Get away. I remember, and I may have missed this before, but we were at,
it was, we had a, it was actually during our, our wedding, we went to, it was,
I don't know if we were supposed to know, oh, God, that's sustainable.
So obviously it was, it was Las Vegas, but then we went to San Francisco. That was in San
Francisco. Okay. And in San Francisco, see, there was, it was all these wooden,
wooden decades, with it peers, yeah, with it, with it, we're all lying across.
I said, I said, look, look over there, I said, oh, they've slaughtered them all.
I said, when you mean slaughtered them, just, just, I said, the next thing,
you thought they killed them all? Because I think that the cannery placed nearby,
you know, and you thought the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're not dead.
No, no, no, no, they're good. Yeah, I know I've seen that. There's, there's a lot of
wild life there, or there's sea lines, I think, in those cases, I think, so, and comrades,
they have as well. Right, right. So yeah, it's, yeah, it's, yeah, it's amazing.
You don't want to mess with them, guys. No, no, no, they've got some, some good teeth on them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So, do we, if we want to go from there, do we want to talk about,
so I think I had that section here about the, the computers I've had over the years,
and it's hard to remember. I'm not terrible at memory. And I've got to not say that, and basically,
when I went, I was, when I was growing up, I was more interested in, and, and computers, it's not
going to, and electronics and, and can amateur radio, so that was really my, my, my main focus.
So I, I kind of missed the, the, the, the start of, of the computer revolution and all that.
So I think to use computers, just, just for amateur radio use. And, and I think my first computer,
there's maybe a, a single spectrum, which, and I think actually, I got, I ended up getting a,
a fancy, because I keep, the single spectrum came with these, I think the, the scribe is, like,
like, dead fish keyboards, and it's like, squeegee buttons. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Was it not a membrane? Yeah. Yeah.
A membrane, that's what it was. Yeah. Well, they were, they came like, I just picked some 80s.
Okay. Oh, 40 or what it was. I never, I never had a spectrum. Yeah. So it's not the very,
not the, not the simple as an X8 and one, it was after that. Okay. There's, there's,
any moments, it was the ones with the memories you're talking about. And so they improved these
squeegee rubber buttons, like, like, like, poking bits of dead meat, sort of. That's what I'm like. So,
it's a bit like the buttons you're getting remote control, I guess, really. Yeah. It's a bit bigger.
Yeah. It's only bigger. Yeah. So that's it. So that, that, so I think I, there was a kit you could get
where you can get a proper clacky keyboard, which you could see, put your spectrum into it.
And so I think I used that. And the idea was that, well, I used the spectrum for,
and I was, yeah, it was for decoding Morse code and the slow, slow scan television.
And so there was, you basically got a, you could build a reinterface card with a seven full one
op amp, op amp amplifier, basically. And it would, it would sense, it would switch between a
logic one and zero and depending on whether, whether it was a higher low tone or whatever.
And now you've got a scanning line when slow scan television, scan across the screen and build
up the picture slower. And I thought it was quite interesting. And it could also decode more
code as well. So that, that was the first, first one. And then I think, I see my memories a bit,
a bit sketchy, but I think I think it was a dragon 32. That was a, that was a Wales computer
Yes, we are. I do, I remember the name dragon 30, was it, it was a case for one, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I had a similar, similar type to the Sinclair in terms of, at that point,
in terms of all kinds of British built computers, but on that team, I think I had a
Sintonic interface on the side. And I actually got, I just remembered that one of the,
radio shows I was at, there was a, a pen plotting mini printer that I got, I mean,
printers were very expensive at the time. And I had, over the years, I got, I had various ones as
ones that, that, that heated up a silver foil. And then I got one that, actually heated up,
was the paper, I think I actually, the special, I remember in thermal paper, I remember,
was might be, I'm not sure. And then when I got this platter worth, oh, this is what I want now,
even those colors you can pick the thing, pins, and all that, but I'd never had a pen plotting
printer before. And it draws out the letters, so it takes forever's, it's so it's not really
designed for, for, for typing text, you know, so it's fun to watch. It's not a raster. It's not
drawing and I think you're holding the pen.
Yeah, we can also squeaky loses as well.
So it was quite very funny to watch.
So I mean that was cheap but useless really.
I loved to play that.
I know it was fun.
We had pen plots at work.
We had sort of flat bed ones which had a,
you switch them on and there was a vacuum underneath
so we'd pull the paper down and lay it nice and flat.
The last thing you wanted was
if you'd paint a catch on the paper.
But these were for student nuisance stuff.
We also had drumplotters at work.
Oh yeah, drumplotters.
Yeah.
The drum was back in the width of this car.
So you'd remember the, you know, sort of an A0 size.
Yeah.
A print of work.
So what graph?
So I was sort of A4.
You know what people know about this type of an A4 paper.
It's A3 twice the size of an A4.
And A3 twice the size of an A2.
It's a very, very thick, yeah.
And they would have multiple pens.
Yeah, but they'd roll the paper up and down
and then the pen would run across on the carrot.
But yeah, but that was,
that was the expensive stuff that universities had for drawing.
I know at my work they have that,
we've got giant big printers
that they've got an ink cap
that they'll put you call them ink,
jet things.
They've got it from one to the other.
And they've got like this beautiful colour.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Obviously.
I always wish I could have grabbed one of those
when they were still available.
Anything big like that.
But I only live in a little high,
so that would have been insane.
You put the thing out, I can't remember.
It might have been Epson.
Oh really?
But it was tiny, it was only a wee.
I'm not even sure with the A4 piece of paper
with that texture.
I can't remember where that's actually been,
but it was small.
Really, really, really slow.
I don't know how long I'll take to that.
I'll say it into a bit further as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a sort of etching.
Yeah. It's like a sketch.
It's like a sketch.
So I think,
so I could run
a packet video programme.
And I think it's a little bit vague,
but I think there was a promo
on the side and it pushed up
into the packet programme.
Okay. So which was quite neat.
There was quite a few machines at that era
that were where you could plug a
plug a prom into
for the sort of software
and maybe had an operating system
in Rome.
And then you could plug something else.
It made it very, very easy
because you just basically turned it on
and popped the dedicated packet programme.
So because the packet was
sort of a modified version of X25
called AX25 Amateur X25
and it's designed to be used
over the radio network
and it switches it.
You get bursts of packet.
You could actually listen to it over
if you listen to another video
which I got.
And stop and listen for the other
spores.
But it was very slow.
You could send a message
to the other side of the country
and also download binary files
and you got the back and the main
and all that.
So yeah, we got all the fun.
I tend to not do that.
That wasn't so much for there.
That wasn't so much for the
Diagon Thet 2.
Was the Dragon 6502
based machine?
I can't remember. I think it was.
I think I vaguely remember that as being one.
Because the spectrum was a Z
Z-18.
The chip was a Z-18.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
So yeah, yeah.
Anyway, that was...
I do remember...
Did you ever come across the thing
called the NASCOM-1?
That was one of the very, very earliest.
I think it was a Z-80.
And you're just a bare board.
No, I don't remember that thing.
I think you may be getting the electronics magazine
when you build your own computer.
Yeah, I don't know how you bought it.
I never had one.
It was cool going down there in a delegation
to see this wonderful machine
leaving our mainframe behind.
Wow.
Wow, it does what...
I mean, it does what is Dini.
You were just...
I don't know if it was true or not,
but you were saying about your...
I guess you're completely...
you're talking about the...
the back system that you had.
And I said it was huge and no less of it.
But it was really weak and...
I would not be surprised.
I mean, I'm guessing...
Yeah, I would guess.
I imagine a Raspberry Pi 5
would kick there.
I remember someone saying that
was it the...
if you take out something like
a credit card that's not a CPU
and a credit card that's more powerful
than the NASIC computer that took into space
I think it was actually...
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.
You don't realise how things have changed
until you make those components.
I think I've touched this before,
but the...
the problem of talking about the Ganges
computer and I have gotten to that.
But the Ganges computer
took me to the moon and all that.
The...
trying to get...
trying to shoehorn that computer
into the...
the...
the rocket was so difficult
and I think they had something like...
a two teams one was something like
whoever it was, the other team
where...
the team that...
the first one...
ended up in the size of a room sort of thing.
And the other one managed to get down to the size of a...
a big...
a whole...
a whole...
cupboard sort of thing.
And the conclusion was that all the way they could possibly do it was using
integrated circuits and of course
they were not certified for space use.
And it was so cutting-edge.
And they basically had to either...
well you do it this way or you can't do it at all
was the final conclusion.
And they were so...
they were so nervous about using something like
ICs for...
space travel.
And what they did is they...
they sort of...
I'm just...
I'm just...
they had these...
ICs and
the...
they were so...
if there was a tiny screen perfection, they would say...
fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.
Each of these ICs cost...
huge...
unbelievable amount of money.
And so what they did was they had...
only tiny amount in the past.
And the only...
the purest best one would be used for the...
for the mission.
And so then...
and each one cost...
an...
to waste.
So what NASA did is they said, right...
for every bit of equipment you bought from now on...
you must...
if you can at all...
you use that IC because they cost them...
bloody thoughts and they're not going to waste them.
So all the engines were forced to use these ICs
and every...
and of course these engineers then went...
oh, this actually did very useful.
And they went off into industry the next thing
and explored enough of people wanting to use these ICs.
So they hadn't been for that...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the way things change over the years is quite a matter.
It's...
there was some functionality been not enough...
for the job in hand.
Yeah. They would still...
they would still manage to do...
to use it just to sort of...
things that you put into it.
Because it's so expensive and you can't waste that sort of thing.
And of course all that knowledge that these engineers had...
went off into industries as they moved on.
And then...
I don't tell the people in the air that that was...
that was a salad at all.
So my next computer...
now I go back to where I was talking about.
Ah, this is too much.
Amiga...
Amiga for Ohio.
I think...
I've finally feeling it was a...
a dedicated EX25 program you could run.
It was quite sophisticated.
I think...
Amiga just about struggled to run it on its own sort of thing.
It was quite an advanced...
was that a 68,000 or something?
Yeah, it was quite advanced.
And it also had...
what do they call it?
Bit blitting and stuff like that.
Yeah, it built into it.
So that was quite sophisticated.
I remember reading about it at the time.
I never had one.
But yeah, it had some quite sophisticated and advanced features in it.
I wonder if the Dragon 32 had some sort of modium that did some of the extra work.
I can't remember.
But I seem to remember that...
I was introduced to the packet video on it on Amiga.
And I'm sure it was all done in software.
And I think maybe that's...
it was quite a...
and I was like multiple windows all working at the same time.
And doing stuff that was same.
Or maybe it was like a mailbox.
I can't remember that.
Maybe that's what it was.
I can't remember that.
But I was working in like a university at the time.
And that was in the era when inter-university data communications was...
I think it was pre-X25.
Maybe X25 was coming along.
It was all another protocol called HDLC at that time.
Which later on, X25 ran over HDLC.
Yeah.
For, you know, wire style communications.
But...
Yeah. I can't remember what my friend used to do his...
his...
packet radio,
X25.
I don't know what the...
the differences are between X and AX.
But it was to do with the different packet sizes.
And more robustness because it's obviously over a real link.
But...
Yeah.
And I think...
I said my memory is a bit hazy.
My PC was a 386.
And my keyboard just popped up again here.
A 386 DX.
What was that 386?
A DX32, I think it was.
Running Windows 3.1 if you all remember that.
I remember that.
Yeah. Absolutely.
That was when you need to run startup doors.
And then...
I changed into...
config.cs.
And I would have access to all of them.
And it did CD drivers and memory,
we all thought that was...
We all thought PO's PCs were nonsense.
I mean, I say we or...
Yeah.
I mean, the people who worked on mind frames looked at it and said,
that's just a toy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just shows how you can predict the torture.
No, that's...
We thought it was rubbish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the...
Whether fax is slow scan television,
most code and...
and packet radio.
And it had a basic mailbox system it as well.
And you could turn your computer off and leave this thing running.
I think you could also turn it off.
And it would remember the messages in your mailbox as well.
I'm a wee bit hazy about that.
But I had that for a while.
I think I ran that with my...
A 386 DX32 thing.
So you could...
To keep the memory.
Yeah.
It was basically...
I went through a CDL link to the...
to the MoDM.
And I was like...
I had a fancy DOS emulator program.
And I thought it was custom like...
Packed out of packet or something like that.
I couldn't find a reference to it anyway.
There was a strange DOS program which was...
And it was quite...
It was got a lot of options to it.
And there was a huge manual came with it.
When you go and look back in that era.
That particular slot of time which was sort of 1970s.
Maybe in maybe early 80s.
There's nothing very, very little on the web.
Because I assume that it's all in paper somewhere other.
Nobody's ever transcribed it.
Or maybe they are transcribing it in the archive.
But a lot of the papers go.
Yeah.
It just shows how lucky we are.
Yeah.
But there is stuff going back to...
maybe after that time.
Yeah.
That particular year.
I went back looking to see...
How did universities do networking in the 1970s?
And there's nothing.
Yeah, yeah.
We...
I think I remember using...
What was it called then?
Oh, it was for DOS.
What was it called now?
No, I can't remember what it was called now.
What did it do?
It was a networking on DOS.
It was a DOS thing.
It wasn't Net Beauty or something.
Keeps something like that.
It was a DOS program in Iran.
It was something that REN Windows used it.
I don't remember much about it.
No, we used that at one point.
And I think I mentioned before that we used a network using...
...quacial cables.
And you would link them all together.
Clicking to make the link and Google it.
She's like, tums a focus on it.
Can I just click that.
You want to click that and make a hole.
That was quite funny.
It reminds me of...
When I moved to Edinburgh,
was working at the University of Indonesia,
eventually retired from her at Wart University.
We had a boroughs mainframe.
Which I never...
I think about boroughs because they're quite big companies.
And we've come to that place.
Yes, and it had, its terminals were run, we had set things up such that there were lots of
simple RS232 terminals around the campus running over three, three wire systems.
But the real way you're supposed to interface with these things, if you had the money,
and these are commercial machines that you expect to be a big business and spend a lot of money
was to use their addressable screen terminal thingies. They were monochrome, but they worked on
the principle, but each one had a two BNC connectors in the back, one of which was upstream,
and the other one was downstream. Rather than a TPC, I don't know, yes, without a TPCS.
No, it wasn't that sort of networking, you actually need to have all the machines on
for the guy right at the end to get anything. Everybody in the media had to be on it.
But that's the same network I'm talking about, because how you do it is you use a TPCS,
and you have one cable into the input, one cable in the output, and the third one would go into
the socket, but your terminal basically had a TPCS in that. And as you see, if somebody broke
that link and it had a terminal in the end, if you have a terminal in there and have a
thing that echoed stuff by a guy who did the right, the balance, the whole thing.
Yeah, because you could tell I had one, and other people down the corridor in other offices had
them, and you could tell that the guy upstream had unplugged his or had switched it off us,
and when everybody else has went down and said, Charlie, you turned to you, yeah, sorry.
Oh, then with the day.
Oh, what? It was such crap.
Kind of like you thought it was a business or something?
Well, yeah, yeah, when we heard of Ethernet, when you just had this long bus with TPCS in it,
and on all the same traffic, well, same principle, but we're just wide up different.
How's it you're saying?
I think my final thing about my current PC is a Dell OptiPlex X business machine,
runs a Ubuntu 18 LTS, where it's a 5-year-old, I go 18.
And I've got Windows 7 as well, which I need, because in order to program some of that,
I'm actually going to get that I've got, it's got 4GB RAM, and a Pentium dual-core E5500 CPU,
apparently, clocked at 2.8GHz, that means anything to me, particularly, but I know it's slow,
I turned it on and got a couple of key come back, and it's booted up, that sort of thing.
But it's amazing what you can do, actually, it's not, I don't think it's slow.
Well, to be fair, I think Ubuntu gets, I think that, obviously, that latest Ubuntu 18 that I had at the time
is a bit slower than the previous ones. Every time I'm forced to upgrade, it gets a bit slower because of it.
But considering, unlike, isn't running like a bag of nails, it runs perfectly fine,
it's just a bit slow booting, really. And I can't believe how long I've been to support,
Ubuntu 18, that's quite impressive. And I can still get the repositories and
download software, it's okay, we'll be the latest stuff, but it's still working, and it's still,
and you get software patches occasionally and all that, so it's pretty good.
And I've been able to do a bit of video editing on it, and it was surprising,
and, although I said, we know here that it terrifies me, the thought of, well, I can't get to do
anything anyway, but the thought of having to replace the PC gets on point, and do
them with a new, what's it called, the secured boot, and all that stuff. I don't like any of that
works. I'm a BIOS man, so I don't know how many of you. Of course, you've beat yourself.
I recently bought a state of the album, I don't know how to state it out, but it's
hell of a lot faster than what I had before. So, mind of Ryzen, AMD, Box, lots of memory and
a big beefy graphics card and stuff. So, yeah, but it's still sat on the floor waiting for me to
have fun the time to turn your scenes out. So, you see, you've not installed this software,
right? It comes with software. I bought it from Tuxedo, computers in Germany, and it comes with
something they call Tuxedo, or this, I'm not sure what it is. But is it Linux? Yeah, oh, yeah,
oh, yeah, Linux, Linux, built specifically for running Linux. So, yeah, it's pretty good.
It's a desktop machine, so it's in a big, big case with fans and all that sort of stuff.
Although, it's just, you can actually want to cool it.
Fountains of Versailles and my desk and stuff. I think I'll probably give that one a minute,
wow. But yes, it's, but yeah, I can't say much about it other than it. The box is black.
It's got a computer in it. And I'm looking for it at some point in the future. I'm going to
just not be so busy on HPR things and set it up.
You're a bit like me, my Raspberry Pi, I can't get like done either, and I'm looking at my,
I've got an old Raspberry Pi that I use as a server up and up in the room, and it's, I think,
I know about 90% full LSD card, something like that. So, I need to, a plan was to,
to sort of get this other one up and running before I run out of space.
Yeah, yeah. I've got, yeah, my, my Raspberry Pi development gets bogged down, so
easy. I've got two pi-4s that I set up after Christmas, running pi-hole. One's running pi-hole.
I'm going to put the pi-hole on, but it's the plan, but it, all the other plans to do so.
And I've got a lot of other pi's lurking about, no more fours, but I've got five. I think I said
to do this before when we were chatting, but trying to work at how's best to set up a pi-5.
I've got all these din rails with, with pies on them. Right. And you know, the sort of rails that
you get in electrical housings and that type of thing. And so, I wanted to try and mount the pi-5
on the din rails, but it means I really need to invent a carrier for it, which I haven't done yet.
I was going to screw it to a bit of a hard board, like, or Mason, is that called it?
Are you going to print yourself one, are you?
Well, probably in ultimately, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Back in, yeah. Of course, I've all got my own 3D printer, of course.
It would be fun to, I do have a 3D printer.
Yeah, yeah.
As I've said before, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I did rebuild the enclosure for it.
It still needs some, some work to my enclosure.
You're pretending recently, yeah.
No, I haven't. I haven't. It's, yeah, I really need to come up with a Raspberry Pi 5 case design,
or there are ones out there that I could use. But, yeah.
It's still a bit new to five, isn't it?
Yeah, although there's a lot, I've got a 5 with the card underneath it, which holds NVMe
M2, is that called an SSD?
Yeah, it's like, I can't remember what size it is.
Nothing huge, 500 gig or something, but getting something that will hold that and also keep
a bit of a dust off and be convenient. I've got my Raspberry Pi's up on a high shelf
near my desktop machines, so I want to do something similar.
And, yeah, it's all things that I'll be doing that soon, but then soon doesn't come.
Oh, absolutely, I don't know what to do.
Probably, I'll get off something I'll fall over and I'll have a little fair-faiting
6-man Raspberry Pi on my PC, or maybe both at the same time you don't know that.
Yes, I had a, I wasn't going to talk about this, but I did have a thing recently with,
it was in April, my current desktop machine suddenly failed on me, and it was because I had to apply,
I tried to apply an update, and somehow rather the update, it got itself, it might be something
to do with the Debian change over, because Debian versions are changed within that period,
or not that precise period, but just before where the updates are decided,
well, you do actually need all this software here, I'm just going to chuck it out,
usually it says, this is all going to go, but we've got all these lovely new ones to replace,
so we didn't do the replace bit, it ended up with a machine that was more and less dead,
because of the update, so.
Would a Debian, the thing was, I don't know, did Debian beast, what was it?
No, it's a Debian testing, which you might say is my own fault, I deserve everything.
No one, it took me the whole weekend, maybe four days in total,
you were just on a point in place to start on your PC, and then this all hell broke loose.
I did manage to repair it by a voucher of going into the console, it wouldn't boot up,
but it would go into some sort of state where if you did Control Alt F1,
yeah, actually, the quantity you can get into the console, so I've done that for three years.
Then you've got a console, a globalness route, and then I could try
repairing it by using app to install things,
granted I managed to bring back KDE to a point where it would actually log in again,
wow, and then there was quite a lot missing. Why when I click on this icon, does it not start up?
You know, thingy, well, because it got deleted, but the icon didn't.
Yeah, it sounds absolutely like me.
But, well, yeah, that was my own stupid fault, not doing proper upgrades, I think.
Right, I got a summer situation, I was, my last brief pie, was it my pie?
It was something I upgrade, I think it was, yeah, it must have been the pie,
and it was my server, the one I'm still using, and I upgraded it once before,
and it was successful, that's asked for a number of years, and then I upgraded it again,
and next time it failed, and just, just, exactly, I just gave up as well.
Because I think I, because I think I managed to have it shrunk it down, I was able to
repeat it back on the SD, so roll back basically, and just give up.
So it's not about the date, but, yeah, which is why I need to get a new pie,
yeah, but yeah, I did, my laptop also, the laptop I had was running KDE neon,
I hadn't, I don't use the laptop very often, but is there as a sort of fallback,
if things go bad? And I tried KDE neon, and it was basically telling me, well,
you've left this so long that you can't update anymore, because the, the, the,
the repositories with the next stuff you need to move to, to get to where you want to be.
It's gone, it's gone, there's nothing there anymore, so, so I went, oh,
curse words, yeah, and I just blasted Linux mint on it, just, just, get it going.
Linux Mint looks really nice, is there's not played with it for years?
No, it needs a lot, so I'm quite looking forward to, to getting that, to figure out.
Yeah, it's a trouble with, you know, this lovely process and everything,
people just, I'm guessing the, well, I don't know what to do with it, but when does
the, just, just chuck the laptop being getting you when I suppose people do, yeah, yeah,
but like, well, that's an i3, so it's fairly weedy, but it's still, yeah, very useful,
with the Linux, with the Linux version of it, it's still usable for all manner of things,
so yeah, it's useful to have something that you can, I was going to bring it with me today,
but I haven't got it set up yet, but maybe next time we meet, I'll bring it.
I still use my, well, it's only related to, to log into my server, but I still use my
triple EPC, as I use that, it's very, very useful for that sort of thing, you know.
Yeah, mine is still, still alive, but it's just a good deal.
Yeah, yeah, I think plugged in all the team, but that's all right.
Yeah, it's, yeah, it was, it was a lovely machine, I used that a lot at one time.
Yeah, which makes off crushed.
Yeah, I think more or less.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I was very sad, yeah.
I managed to get the, the anti-modus of discount when I bought it, I think, I think I said,
right, I'm going to remove my windows off here, because it wasn't the one that you got with,
with the version of Linux.
All right, I've just missed that, and it came with windows, and I said, I'm not going to use
windows, I'm going to blitz it, so can I get a discount please?
Yeah, and they said, it sort of looks like, wow, god, we're going to have those.
Yeah, but I got, I got a, got a 50 quinoff, it wasn't that bad.
So, I felt like one something anyway, even if it wasn't.
Wait, wait, wow.
Is that one with this, the bigger screen actually, because I think I've got this,
I've got this, I've got this, I've got this, the seven of them was a small one, a small screen,
I think.
Yeah, it was just something like a 1,000, something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was, that was a nice, neat little machine, yeah.
So, we're at, we're at an hour.
No, no, no, I think I spoke very good.
An hour.
Yeah, wow, hit that ham.
Yeah, I don't know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah.
I mean, we get, get to talking.
Yeah, yeah.
After having spent a good,
Lee time having lunch together and, yeah, and then talking as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, well, I hope, I hope there's been some interesting comments in there,
people will not switch off immediately.
So, so it's good.
Yeah, thank you very much.
I, I'm, I'm, yeah, I want to be back at the some point I'm shooting the future.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bye for now, everybody.
Bye to everybody.
Bye.
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