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Welcome to HPR, the Community Podcast
We started producing shows as Today with a Techie on 2005-09-19, 19 years, 1 months, 18 days ago. Our shows are produced by listeners like you and can be on any topics that "are of interest to hackers". If you listen to HPR then please consider contributing one show a year. If you record your show now it could be released in 6 days.
Call for shows
We are running very low on shows at the moment. Have a look at the hosts page and if you don't see "2024-??-??" next to your name, or if your name is not listed, you might consider sending us in something.
During OggCamp I mentioned to Ken that I had an electric hand warmer
and he asked me if it was any good. He suggested I do a long term
product review of it. So here is my review
I do lots of dog walking and suffer from cold hands.
I've had different hand warmers over the years:
Ones that you boil in water. Don’t last long
One that is activated by removing from its packet. Lasts for many
hours actually too long. They seems very wasteful as they are single
use.
Zippo hand warmer works well but is a faff to setup and sometimes
goes out.
This electric hand warmer is by far the best solution I've found.
It saved me twice during OggCamp as I used it on two occasions to top
up my phone. When arriving and leaving OggCamp.
This was the first time I’d used the hand warmer to charge anything.
I was very glad it worked.
At the time of purchase I was rather sceptical about the whole idea
of electric hand warmers.
The batteries are not used in ideal conditions. They get very hot and
when in use a lot of current is drawn from them.
My Hand warmer is now almost 4 years old and is still going strong
with no noticeable degradation in capacity.
It has a rated capacity is 10,000 mAh. The highest charge it achieved
was about 1 year into use. It accepted 8034 mAh of charge. I haven’t
checked again since November 2021. However it still continues to last
many hours / multiple dog walks.
I always get a bit nervous over the summer months as it is left for a
number of months unused. Luckily living in Scotland I don’t need to wait
long until the weather gets cold. Did I mention before about the
horrible weather in Scotland?
How I look after the battery
Always wait for the battery to return to room temperature before
putting it on charge.
Don’t leave the hand warmer for more than a few days at 100%
charge.
Try not to completely flatten the battery. If you do flatten the
battery then charge it up soon afterwards.
If storing it for a number of months then try to store it at
approximately 50% charge.
These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows.
There are 25 comments in total.
Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This
discussion takes place on the Mail List which is open to all HPR listeners and
contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under
Mailman.
The threaded discussions this month can be found here:
This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track
events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software.
Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web
page.
Any other business
HPR Updates
There has been a lot of activity this month on the Gitea repos
with rho`n catching up on outstanding bugs. We also had a
lot of changes due to the ongoing Internet Archive outage that is still
impacting us. A quick fix was to host the 10 day feed directly from the
HPR server, but since then we have made all the media available on the
HPR Community Content Delivery Network.
We will have three sources but if you meet the requirements for
hosting, and wish to help out please get in touch.
24/7 Home Service
Fixed IP address
Unlimited bandwidth
Fast > 500mb/sec upload
Large > 1T of storage
Permission from your ISP to run a web server
Contact information known to the Janitors
Optional: UPS
We added a html link to the comments page to provide direct
feedback from any app that supports it. Eg: gPodder opens Firefox at the
comment form.
We have consolidated a lot of repositories on Gitea, removing
some and moving others. https://repo.anhonesthost.net/HPR
Documentation is now available and includes:
Community Content Delivery Network (CCDN) A location to
track the deployment of the HPR Community Content Delivery Network, that
provides a mirror network for our content.
HPR Website Design This is literally in the whiteboard
phase of the HPR website redesign.
Podcatcher and Podcasting Platform Compatibility Where we
can track Compatibility of the clients subscribed to our feeds.
Useful Resources Where we can link to other free culture
sites that provide useful services.
Requested Topics Where we can track topics that have been
requested, and link to shows that addressed them.
Workflow issues.
Message from Dave Morriss
I am planning to "retire" from the Hacker Public Radio Janitorial
Team. I have been helping to administer HPR for over 12 years now. I
first offered help to Ken in 2012 in response to an appeal he made. We
met at OggCamp in that year, and I joined the Community News recording
for episode 1066 in September
2012. My first show was 1091 in October
that year.
I will turn 75 in December 2024, and am finding that I don't have
the energy to do as much as I could when I first joined. I also want to
be able to devote more time to the various personal projects I
have.
I plan to consolidate all my scripts on the HPR Gitea
repositories, and document all the processes I have been looking after.
I want to have completed the handover by the end of March 2025.
I will continue as an HPR host for as long as I can after
that.
I have had a wonderful 12 years as an HPR Janitor and will always
look back on it with great pleasure.
This is a look at the rest of the first season of Doctor Who. We look
at the problems of producing weekly show on a year-round schedule, and
then give a brief description of each of the stories.
Today I'm going to go into more detail about what I mean when I say
Plain Text Program. I want to emphasize that this is just me. Others may
have different ideas on this topic. This is how I try to write Plain
Text Programs. I will feature other people's work that I still consider
to be Plain Text Programs that do not follow all of these
guidelines.
I want to thank the hosts on the monthly HPR Community News podcast
for inspiring me. They had questions. I also want to thank those making
comments. I'm new to Hacker Public Radio and I will try to be more
timely responding to comments in the future.
What Is A Plain Text File?
Text files are usually edited in a text editor or in a word processor
and saved with the .txt extension. They consist of a string of
characters. Text files can be divided into lines using the newline
character, \n, or the carriage return and newline
characters, \r\n. You don't have to type these characters.
Your editor puts them in for you.
Text files do not have to use the .txt extension. Most programming
files, like .php or .c files are plain text. I will only be discussing
programs that are open source and that store their code in text
files.
Plain text configuration files often have no extension. For my Plain
Text Programs I use config.inc.
There is no difference between text files and plain text files.
People often say plain text files to distinguish them from word
processor files like .doc or .odt files.
Plain Text Programs use text files to store text like a title or a
blog post. When I talk about Plain Text Programs I also mean something
more than this. That's what this podcast is about.
No Database?
Plain Text Programs do not use a database like mysql or postgres.
Also the file system does not imitate a database, creating keys,
indexing, etc.
Instead the file system performs the database functions by accessing
files which can be text files, graphics files, or other files. These
files can be all in one directory or in multiple directories in a single
directory tree.
If password security is required in a Plain Text Program that runs on
the internet I make an exception to the single tree rule to allow
passwords to be stored outside of the webspace.
So the assets a Plain Text Program accesses are just files in the
file system.
No HTML Or Other Markup
Required
I have no rule against allowing html or other markup. But I do not
assume that the maintainer knows how to do this or wants to learn it.
The reason I started writing Plain Text Programs was to avoid html
markup. I want to be able to type text files, save them, and upload
them, without being concerned about anything except the text itself.
The text files holding the content are written in block paragraph
style with a blank line between paragraphs. Text files are not required
in a Plain Text Program but most Plain Text Programs do use some text
data which should be stored in text files.
If this is a web application, links can be copied and pasted from the
browser with no additional markup required.
Other assets in the directory, like .gif, .jpg, or .png images,
display automatically.
I use the file names for meta data like title, caption, or sort
order. I can also sort chronologically using the file timestamps.
If there is a hierarchy of directories the program can use the
directory name of the child directories for the link text. For instance
the Delta Musicians directory tree can have a Table Of Contents at the
top level that lists the musicians in alphabetical order. Each musician
gets their own subdirectory and the name of that subdirectory is used to
generate the link and link text for that page.
Then, each page can use Dirt Simple Photo Gallery and the program
generates the caption from the image's file name.
All configuration is also done in a text file. I use a well
documented config.inc file that initializes php variables.
The maintainer of the application is never required to edit source
code.
Does Plain Text
Mean There Is No GUI Interface?
No. I write mostly web apps so they run in the browser interface.
Also, Plain Text Programs do not require a GUI. It could run in a
terminal or as a cron job. The program could play a music playlist or
run a slideshow with no input at all.
What Do
I Have To Know To Maintain A Plain Text Program?
The maintainer of the program will have to be able to 1. Create and
edit text files in a text editor or word processor 2. Copy and paste
links, iframe embeds, file names, titles, etc. 3. Rename files 4. Upload
and download with ftp
Executive Summary
A Plain Text Program does not use a database like sql. Instead it
stores the assets in the file system and accesses them using the file
system.
A Plain Text Program does not require html or other markup. Text
assets are written in block paragraph format. If the maintainer prefers
to use a word processor instead of a text editor that's fine as long as
the files are saved as text files with the .txt extension. Most word
processors support this.
Plain Text Programs can support links if the links are copied and
pasted into the text file with no markup required.
Plain Text Programs can support iframe embeds if the embed code is
copied and pasted onto its own line in the text file.
All of the assets for a Plain Text Program are stored in a single
directory tree. This is one of the main advantages of Plain Text
Programs because it makes them easy to backup and restore so they are
very portable. I sometimes make an exception to this if I want to save a
password on a webserver outside of the webspace.
A Plain Text Program uses the file and directory names for meta data
like titles, captions, or sort order. The file timestamps can be used
for chronological sorting.
All configuration is done by editing a well documented text file. The
maintainer should not have to edit the program code.
The maintainer should be allowed to edit the program code. I will
only discuss open source programs that store the program itself in text
files.
More Questions?
I thought so. Comment on Hacker Public Radio or at Gamer+DBN. I will
include links in the show notes.