HPR

Posted at 2026-08-06 16:09:59 relating to the show hpr4692 which was released on 2026-07-28 by TheDUDE entitled Noise Music Tutorial 2: Using Audacity to Make Noise

I watched a high school student's presentation on his technique for making noise with audacity.

He used MS paint to create scribbles and drawings, saved them as bitmap images, and imported them as raw audio. He changed the composition of the noise and length of the audio by choosing different colors, making different impressions, and changing the image size. It was pretty wild, although a very manual process!

I wonder if the same kind of technique would be possible with Javascript/HTML canvas?

Posted at 2026-08-06 11:41:39 relating to the show hpr4655 which was released on 2026-06-05 by norrist entitled Tips for Glasses

Thanks for this too.

Operat0r, a lot of us geeks are over 50 I would guess.

I also keep the font size at 150% and immediately look for the scale setting on a new application. If the application is coded correctly, it is just ++<+>

This scale may increase to 175% depending on the time of day, mostly early in the morning.

Posted at 2026-08-06 00:28:48 relating to the show hpr4698 which was released on 2026-08-05 by Whiskeyjack entitled ID3 Tags and Vorbis Comments

I only accidentally discovered that HPR MP3 files had both v1 and v2 tags while preparing this episode. I noticed that the tags shown by the ID3 program did not match exactly what was appearing in the Totem music player software. A bit of experimenting showed that both V1 and V2 were indeed there. ID3v2 are at the start of the file (you can use "head" to view them), and ID3v1 tags are at the end (you can use "tail" to see them there). That made for a more interesting podcast than I had planned on.

I have to wonder how common this practice is.

Posted at 2026-08-06 00:12:38 relating to the show hpr4696 which was released on 2026-08-03 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for July 2026

Now I see why we dumped all your tea.in the harbor since you don't have our watery beer lmao. No in all seriousness it's probably due to the tariffs. They really screwed up a lot of things trade wise. Like I was going to buy a cheap used yamaha keytar, but since due to tariffs and import fees, it cost as much as a new alesis vortex, so I bought that instead. Hopefully within the decade the tariffs will be gone and American hill billy adjunct lager styles can be readily available.

Posted at 2026-08-06 00:12:26 relating to the show hpr4698 which was released on 2026-08-05 by Whiskeyjack entitled ID3 Tags and Vorbis Comments

I am glad you liked the episode.

I covered the "tail" method for reading ID3v1 tags including how to get just the ID3 tags at the end without any of the music which comes before it, plus handling non-printable characters.

Since the tags are fixed length strings of known length, you should be able to use "cut" to extract individual fields after using "tail" to get the entire block of data, although I have not tried this particular refinement.

Posted at 2026-08-05 15:52:18 relating to the show hpr4698 which was released on 2026-08-05 by Whiskeyjack entitled ID3 Tags and Vorbis Comments

i did not know that hpr uses both id3v1 and 2! that explains a lot of the trickiness i was having with some of my scripts...

Posted at 2026-08-05 15:19:01 relating to the show hpr4698 which was released on 2026-08-05 by Whiskeyjack entitled ID3 Tags and Vorbis Comments

I've written id3 tag reading code for a music catalog database, and I use the EyeD3 library, which includes the eyeD3 command line utility, which I find very useful.

Also, you can display the old tag at the end of a mp3 file by doing

tail filename.mp3 | hd

This shows a hex dump, with the text on the right. Likewise, to see the newer tags, you can do a

head filename.mp3 | hd

and scroll up to the start of the file.

Posted at 2026-08-04 10:53:12 relating to the show hpr4697 which was released on 2026-08-04 by Vance entitled Correcting the Dates of Files

Thanks for including the code in the show notes. This feels like a common problem. I have some directories full of scanned images where I'd like to preserve the scan order in terms of time but insert an entirely different date. Probably punch the resulting value into the metadata as well. This script will be a great starting place.

I also am frustrated with the ability to pry files out of Google's walled garden on my phone. I'm using an open source app to synchronize several directories on my phone including my photo directory, so I can work off of synchronized copy and never have to explicitly move or remove anything from my phone.

This sounds like a show in itself, and is on my to-do list.

Posted at 2026-08-03 22:21:42 relating to the show hpr4696 which was released on 2026-08-03 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for July 2026

hi, sorry again about the mic issues!! im stuck using the builtin mic for my laptop and also it was like 4 in the morning and i just woke up :P

also he/him

Posted at 2026-08-03 14:08:08 relating to the show hpr4705 which was released on 2026-08-14 by Trollercoaster entitled Free Software Is Wasted On You Teens

Hi Trollercoaster,

Brilliant show.

I hear it took 5 beers to quench your thirst.

Meant in the best way,
Cheers!!

Archer72

Posted at 2026-08-03 10:16:09 relating to the show hpr4696 which was released on 2026-08-03 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for July 2026

Hi Ken and Kevie,

Thanks for the shout out. Glad ya'll enjoyed this. :)

Archer72

Posted at 2026-08-03 10:12:47 relating to the show hpr4678 which was released on 2026-07-08 by Whiskeyjack entitled High Resolution Elapsed Time in Shell Scripts

Hi,

I second an episode on DEBUG, that would make a great show!

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-08-02 19:29:26 relating to the show hpr4676 which was released on 2026-07-06 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for June 2026

Hi Ken,

I would be interested to hear more about your use of Comm on your NAS as mentioned in comments about UNIX Curio #8

Cheers!
Archer72

Posted at 2026-08-02 11:50:11 relating to the show hpr4696 which was released on 2026-08-03 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for July 2026

Hi Ken,

The guilt trip was on myself, for not getting out more often.
The radio gives me a reason to reach out to real people.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-07-31 00:37:40 relating to the show hpr4677 which was released on 2026-07-07 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes

Checksums of various sorts were used in serial communications protocols to detect errors. There are a variety of different algorithms for these and they were intended to detect transmission errors. They were an additional step beyond simple parity bits.

It probably didn't take much imagination to extend this concept to files which may be transmitted over communications links which may not have error detection or correction built in.

In my upcoming series on industrial controls, I mention one industrial serial protocol which originated around the late 1970s. There were two variants of that one protocol, one optimized for serial links, and the other for radio links, and they used different checksum algorithms!

I get the impression that this just wasn't really seen as a problem in those days, so it's perhaps not too surprising to see Unix file checksum utilities using different checksum methods. The reasons may have been as simple as the two were optimized for different use cases, although we may never know at this point in time.

Posted at 2026-07-28 03:43:23 relating to the show hpr4684 which was released on 2026-07-16 by operat0r entitled Sim Racing on the cheap!

While I'm not a sim racer myself, I love the intersection of computers and hardware and I love glimpses into other people's hobbies. This provided both. Thank you!

Posted at 2026-07-23 19:14:55 relating to the show hpr4688 which was released on 2026-07-22 by Whiskeyjack entitled Downloading Podcasts with a Shell Script

That sounds like a fascinating idea. I hadn't thought of that. I have my RSS reader follow the various podcasts that I listen to, but I hadn't thought of using that data for anything.

Perhaps you should do a podcast episode on that topic.

Posted at 2026-07-22 23:14:22 relating to the show hpr4688 which was released on 2026-07-22 by Whiskeyjack entitled Downloading Podcasts with a Shell Script

It's always cool seeing other peoples solutions to similar problems! I use a python script to parse my rss reader's sqlite database to download podcasts :P

Posted at 2026-07-22 13:43:46 relating to the show hpr4681 which was released on 2026-07-13 by Antoine entitled My Disabilities

Hi Antoine,

Thank you for sharing your story.

For those interested, these are the 2 book descriptions courtesy of Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_Exile


- Archer72

Posted at 2026-07-22 02:07:59 relating to the show hpr4669 which was released on 2026-06-25 by Kevie entitled HPR Beer Garden 14 - Super Strong Lager

Dunno how they are sold in Europe, but in the USA we drink that stuff in 40oz bottles, like men LMAO. Although sadly they switched to making the bottles out of plastic which ruins the taste. In college my go tos were Hurricanes which were $1.99 per 40oz and Mickey's which were in 40z ore smaller wide mouth bottles shaped like hand grenades, which yes I played baseball with. anyway I love the series guys and can't wait till you cover Cream Ale (recommend Genesee Cream Ale since it's the essential brand for the style)

Posted at 2026-07-21 10:53:42 relating to the show hpr4685 which was released on 2026-07-17 by Lennart Benschop entitled Listening to SSB stations in the early 1980s

Hi Lennart, I enjoyed your broadcast. Thank you for sharing.

Cheers,
-Lucinda
56F, UK/US, Field Scientist, and Analog builder, tinkerer

Posted at 2026-07-12 03:20:02 relating to the show hpr4677 which was released on 2026-07-07 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes

Oops, I was switching between tabs when editing my comment and forgot who I was replying to. My apologies for misidentifying you!

Posted at 2026-07-09 22:48:47 relating to the show hpr4678 which was released on 2026-07-08 by Whiskeyjack entitled High Resolution Elapsed Time in Shell Scripts

I'm glad that you found this episode interesting.

I wasn't aware that you could use DEBUG to measure the time that an episode took to run.

Perhaps you could do an episode on this to tell us how to do it? I am sure that a lot of people would find that very interesting.

Posted at 2026-07-09 14:38:32 relating to the show hpr4678 which was released on 2026-07-08 by Whiskeyjack entitled High Resolution Elapsed Time in Shell Scripts

I didn't know there were so many ways to measure the exact time, I just usually use $EPOCHREALTIME for stuff.

Did you know you can also catch DEBUG on bash to implement a "time last command took" field to your prompt? It's a bit of a hacky solution but it works pretty well.

Posted at 2026-07-09 01:50:23 relating to the show hpr4677 which was released on 2026-07-07 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes

Whiskeyjack, I appreciate your support on this and past episodes. There's another UNIX Curio coming, life got in the way of me recording it but things have settled down now. Another episode is mostly written, and I have two more solid ideas. However, these will require more research than usual so it will likely take me longer to get them out.

Agreed that systemd is a great topic, but I am not the person to explain it. I have not adapted to it well and need to look up man pages most times I want to do some basic thing. However, this makes me think that the subject of UNIX init systems over the years might be up my alley (though would also require significant research). Will give that idea some consideration, thanks!

Posted at 2026-07-08 11:32:04 relating to the show hpr4677 which was released on 2026-07-07 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes

cksum seems pretty useful! seems like a useful cross-platform way to make hashes, and its age does sort of work for its advantage there!

also, you can use comm to pretty easily check a list of chksums :)

im still most likely going to still just use md5sum, but its nice to know that theres a UNIX alternative ^^

also, for topics you could cover busybox or apropos maybe?

Posted at 2026-07-08 09:46:44 relating to the show hpr4672 which was released on 2026-06-30 by Ken Fallon entitled Hey Mum, I'm on Spotify !

Hi Ken,

Great show, and also laughed at 'Look at this great thing I did'

I get the same response in my household :-)

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-07-07 21:17:41 relating to the show hpr4677 which was released on 2026-07-07 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes

Really happy with this series. At the end, you asked about ideas for further episodes. Perhaps a brief introduction to systemctl and journalctl commands (in the systemd world) would be a good topic. As a greybeard, I was reluctant to embrace systemd, but eventually came around as it seemed nearly inevitable. Both are very useful for tracking down system problems, especially journalctl.

Thanks again for a great episode!

Posted at 2026-07-06 15:07:47 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

Ken shows a safer way to get episodes from HPR

https://www.hackerpublicradio.com/eps/hpr3962/index.html

Posted at 2026-07-06 13:48:39 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

Hi Ken,

I believe that you did sign up for a show about using XML Starlet for feeds.

;-)

Cheers,
Archer72