HPR

Posted at 2026-06-16 15:04:20 relating to the show hpr4661 which was released on 2026-06-15 by Claudio Miranda entitled Laptop Computer Woes, or How I Learned to Love My Tech Hoarding

It's always nice seeing a repair win, especially if its done with reused parts! Makes me feel justified for refusing to get rid of any of my devices...

Posted at 2026-06-15 17:02:57 relating to the show hpr4657 which was released on 2026-06-09 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

Awk is another extremely useful command to know in terms of improving performance in cases where you might otherwise need to use a loop.

I don't have any relative numbers to hand in this instance, but I know that I have increased performance very significantly by structuring an algorithm to allow use of awk.

The history of awk may be a good subject for a Unix Curio episode.

"Expect" would be a good command to cover as well. I have used this for scripted log-ins to test VMs over SSH in cases where SSH keys wouldn't work for some reason.

Posted at 2026-06-15 16:53:16 relating to the show hpr4659 which was released on 2026-06-11 by Kevie entitled Command Line Fun - Recording a show

When concatenating audio files using FFMPEG, you can create the text file listing the audio files with the following command.

printf "file '%s'\n" *.flac > podseglist.txt
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i podseglist.txt fullpod.flac

If you are using Sox, you can concatenate the files using the following:

sox *.flac fullpod.flac

I covered concatenating audio files using FFMPEG in HPR4608 in my series on Simple Podcasting and these examples are in the show notes as reference for anyone who is interested.

The FFMPEG list file is probably useful for cases where you want to order the files manually rather than using shell globbing order.

(If there turns out to be a double post from me on this subject, the electric power went out just as I was attempting to send it the first time so I didn't think the first one went through.)

Posted at 2026-06-15 11:58:49 relating to the show hpr4659 which was released on 2026-06-11 by Kevie entitled Command Line Fun - Recording a show

Concatenation is frustratingly confusing in ffmpeg, but according to the wiki https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate you can just use

ffmpeg -f concat -i listoffilenames.txt output.flac

for some reason it forces you to use a file thats a list of filenames instead of being able to use a glob, but it works pretty ok

Posted at 2026-06-15 03:16:05 relating to the show hpr4657 which was released on 2026-06-09 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

When I was uploading this episode, I started to feel like maybe I was selling "comm" short a bit. Nice to hear that it's been useful for you, Whiskeyjack. While its functionality can't be easily replicated with "cut" or "awk", those utilities can certainly make good use of the output from "comm".

Interesting to read about your experience in terms of runtime. I have taken to using a single call to "awk" in situations where I might otherwise call on several utilities in a pipeline. Your comment is a good reminder that if something will be used repeatedly, it's best to measure its runtime instead of automatically assuming that one tool or set of tools will be faster than another.

Posted at 2026-06-13 21:10:48 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

Hi WhiskeyJack,

Cool!

Can't wait to hear it. :)

Posted at 2026-06-13 11:47:53 relating to the show hpr4657 which was released on 2026-06-09 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

comm is actually a very, very, useful program in scripts if you know how to make good use of it.

For example, bash can be fairly slow when used in a classic looping algorithm over a large amount of data.

However, if you can reformat the data so that it can be compared with comm, then you can use comm as a filter without any loops.

As an example, in one application a simple loop took 3.7 seconds to work its way through the data, which was far too long.

However, by using awk and sort to reformat one file, and a combination of find, cut, sort, uniq, and awk on the directory structure to generate a second file and then comparing them with comm, I was able to filter the information down to just the records that had relevant changes, and then use the slower looping algorithm on those.

This cut that time down to 0.150 seconds, which was more or less instantaneous from a user perspective. Despite this method appearing to have a lot more transformations in it, it was 25 times faster. This is because there are actually far fewer calls to commands in the second algorithm, even though more different commands are involved.

So comm is a very useful command to know, and if you have a lot of information to process it should be one of the tools that you turn to when figuring out the best way to do it.

Posted at 2026-06-13 11:13:49 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

If you want to get the episode title from an HPR podcast episode and use it to modify the name further, then you can do that by extracting the tag information from the MP3 file using "id3v2". On Debian and derivatives, I believe this comes in the eyeD3 package. This hands v1 as well as v2 tags.

I will add this to the episode script that I am currently writing.

Posted at 2026-06-12 16:50:42 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

Hi,

I tend to go down rabbit holes, and this is one such time. After a quick response to أحمد المحمودي, I decided to try a 'fix'. This is further proof that I am not a programmer and should not be asking too many questions of AI. Still, it was a fun endeavor for me, and see it as useful to see where I went wrong.

Thank you for the constructive critique and hope to hear your next episode. :)

P.S. A useful reason to rename the episodes is a project I may talk about later when use Rockbox on an Ipod classic. A titled show as a file name is easier to see what I want to listen to than hpr1234.mp3.

Posted at 2026-06-11 16:57:57 relating to the show hpr4657 which was released on 2026-06-09 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

cmp is, while not as useful as it may have been, still quite useful for testing whether two files are bit copies of each other.

Posted at 2026-06-10 08:15:59 relating to the show hpr4656 which was released on 2026-06-08 by Swift110 entitled My review of musicozy sleep/exercise bluetooth headband

I have never heard of these before but think the concept is great. My wife has recently been asking me to research a set of headphones for her to use at the gym: I will suggest these. Thanks for sharing.

Posted at 2026-06-10 08:14:12 relating to the show hpr4654 which was released on 2026-06-04 by MrX entitled What's in my component Box?

In an age of recycling and re-purposing items, I find that geeks are always a step ahead as we have been doing this for years. I laughed out loud when you said that you weren't sure why you kept an item and thought: good, it isn't just me.

An excellent show as always MrX; keep up the good work.

Posted at 2026-06-10 08:11:43 relating to the show hpr4653 which was released on 2026-06-03 by Thaj Sara entitled Starting the Habit of Reading

Thank you very much for posting this, I've never read any of the Battletech books, but I may keep an eye out for them. I enjoy reading physical books, I've tried ebook readers but I really don't like the experience, although I have found myself listening to audiobooks more, especially in the car or when stuck doing a mundane task.

Thanks for the tip on Openreads, I've never come across it before but I think we will take a look at it for a review on an upcoming episode of TuxJam.

Posted at 2026-06-09 23:31:58 relating to the show hpr4657 which was released on 2026-06-09 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

Another great show on these often forgotten commands. Glad to hear you have some more episodes in the works! Looking forward to them!

Posted at 2026-06-08 18:01:33 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

I have been following this saga on downloaded podcast filenames and am still as confused now as ever when it comes to understanding what this is all about. I still don't understand why Newsboat needs to come into the picture.

I use a cron job to run a bash script to automatically download podcasts, including HPR. They just appear in a directory that I have set aside for holding new podcasts.

While some podcasts have rubbish audio file names in their RSS feed that have to be fixed, HPR isn't one of them. Their URL is just fine.

What you need to do is to extract the audio file name from the RSS feed using something like basename, and then specify that name to wget using the -O option for output file name. This results in a file with a name such as "hpr4644.mp3" being saved. No after the fact file renaming is necessary.


I'll do an episode on a simplified version of what I use that just does HPR podcasts.The next slot I can use is in July, so I will plan to have it for then.

Posted at 2026-06-08 13:12:08 relating to the show hpr4656 which was released on 2026-06-08 by Swift110 entitled My review of musicozy sleep/exercise bluetooth headband

i often listen to podcasts and stuff when i go to bed so using one of these would be very useful!! the only downside would be figuring out how to use it with my mp3 player since it doenst have bluetooth

Posted at 2026-06-07 22:26:34 relating to the show hpr4644 which was released on 2026-05-21 by Archer72 entitled Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat...

Ken,

I did some more testing, and the script is not quite ready and breaks on some renamed files, leaving i.e. hpr1234.ogg in Podboat

I'll try again.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-06-05 12:11:33 relating to the show hpr4655 which was released on 2026-06-05 by norrist entitled Tips for Glasses

Great recommendations. I do avoid hand soaps, as many included a lotion residue.

I may check out those mid-range progressives. I use dedicated computer glasses which are great, but I need to remember to change back to my progressive lenses when I get up to walk around and such.

Posted at 2026-06-04 23:37:27 relating to the show hpr4653 which was released on 2026-06-03 by Thaj Sara entitled Starting the Habit of Reading

The books on your list have beautiful covers!
About the Cardio code, I was expecting some sharing of the specifics of the content (so we all could do better cardio!).
Nice to see you accomplishing your audacious (20-a-year) reading goal! Thx 4 'dā' share! \o

Posted at 2026-06-04 23:25:42 relating to the show hpr4650 which was released on 2026-05-29 by Ahuka entitled Playing Civilization V, Part 12

Hey, Dear Ahuka, Thanks, Help'd understanding!

Posted at 2026-06-02 17:24:01 relating to the show hpr4649 which was released on 2026-05-28 by Lee entitled What did I do at work today? Part 3 Section 2

I think PHP is ok for what it does, but I really don't like the language that much. I've been considering moving my site to Ruby or Go for a while now...

Posted at 2026-06-02 16:44:45 relating to the show hpr4633 which was released on 2026-05-06 by Lee entitled Ham Radio Licence

Thankfully the foundation exam is multiple choice, but it is important to recognise the following terms:-
- Pointy signal-spikey bit
- Long wire dangly-doo
- Metal pokey-poke
- Linear wave catch-a-me-bob
- Bendy frequency rubber-stub
- Wire stretchy-poo
- Scoping prong-a-me-jig

Posted at 2026-06-02 11:22:47 relating to the show hpr4633 which was released on 2026-05-06 by Lee entitled Ham Radio Licence

Very interesting show as always. I love your podcasts (I'm new to HPR (just found it a few weeks ago) and you've been one I know I can always go to for an interesting show).

Is 'uppy downy thing' the technical term in the test for an aerial? ;)

Posted at 2026-06-02 10:52:54 relating to the show hpr4649 which was released on 2026-05-28 by Lee entitled What did I do at work today? Part 3 Section 2

Great episode, and I agree with your views on how nice PHP is

Posted at 2026-06-02 02:38:55 relating to the show hpr4651 which was released on 2026-06-01 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for May 2026

hi! sorry i had to go before recording started i was pretty busy over the weekend/friday volunteering at a convention and i had to go do something. hopefully next community news i can pop in ^^

also things are slowly starting to maybe swing back to going good again so i MAY go record a show again soon

Posted at 2026-06-01 21:13:58 relating to the show hpr4650 which was released on 2026-05-29 by Ahuka entitled Playing Civilization V, Part 12

Itihnk the main reason is that the algorithm at the heart of the game reduces Happiness both as your population goes up and as the number of cities goes up. Now I can tell a story about how large, sprawling empires tend to not pay attention to the desires of average citizens, and that might be plausible, but my recollection is that Rome did reasonably well for a few centuries nonetheless.

Posted at 2026-05-29 14:21:14 relating to the show hpr4650 which was released on 2026-05-29 by Ahuka entitled Playing Civilization V, Part 12

If I could ask: why pupeting other States (City-states) reduces internal happiness? Could it be explained by the perception of wasting internal resources for power, without benefits to the population?
If I could note: marvelous exclusive little Building for Austria, the Coffee House!: increases in 25% the generation of Great People! This tells a lot about the reality of coffeee! (or about the perception of the developers.)
Here is a non-player. The size of the episodes, and the cadence, make them a pleasure to learn even without prior knowledge.
It. Thanks, Ahuka!

Posted at 2026-05-27 13:20:13 relating to the show hpr4647 which was released on 2026-05-26 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #7 - Compression

It's always annoying when a good technology is locked behind a patent, but at least this time it backfired.

I'll miss this series, its one of my favorites

Posted at 2026-05-27 03:33:12 relating to the show hpr4567 which was released on 2026-02-03 by Deltaray entitled Movie Recommendations for Hackers

From this show, and because of this show, I came to watch (1) Gattaca, (2) Surrogates, and (3) Matrix.
The first, oh - wow, what an epic. s2 :)
The 2nd, loved a lot too. A bit "melo" dramatic in the message it aims to inspire, but very well done.
The 3rd, at first I lost interest in the beginning and stopped, seemed that the movie aged bad, but tried again days later and loved to know Matrix. Very worth it, thanks for the recommendation. (The 1st only, the 2nd I didn't like from the beginning so no.)
Ah, also (4) The lives of others. Applauses to it.
In a few weeks, I came to watch more movies than I had for many months, and it was very enjoyable. I may come here futurely, when wanting to see something, to check another recommendation. Thanks!

Posted at 2026-05-27 00:29:32 relating to the show hpr4647 which was released on 2026-05-26 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #7 - Compression

This has been a great series, and I hope you do find more topics to cover. If I can think of any, I'll add another comment here.