Series 5 - listen to the show

Episode 12a, Episode 12, Episode 11, Episode 10, Episode 9, Episode 8, Episode 7, Episode 6, Episode 5, Episode 4, Episode 3, Episode 2, Episode 1

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 12a

Sun 23 June, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne introduces the Summer Solstice Special Episode of Season 5. It's terribly sunny in Bristol, and Kilkishen is overcast, perfect weather for hillwalking.

03:30 Mark tells us about his huge big plans for the Special Episode, which he didn't actually pull off. He tells us about Sonic Pi, a live music creation application created by Sam Aaron, and recommends everyone watch the talk he gave at TEDx Newcastle. This leads to a general discussion around everyone learning to programme, sysadmin bits and the software we use and why we use it.

28:23 Wayne gives us an Ubuntu Touch update. He's been on UT now for a month and is enjoying it. He finds reading pdfs a bit laborious. He's installed Libertine on his phone, an application that allows you to run standard desktop applications on Ubuntu Touch. He's used this to install Aisleriot and Etherwake. Mark asks a question about Scopes. Wayne provides a link to Libertine documentation. Wayne goes on to tell us about some of the amazing chat taking place on the UBports Telegram Supergroup. One of its members, Mateo Salta created Wake It!Fork, an application to send wake-on-LAN messages. Wayne is using that now instead of Etherwake through Libertine. Thanks to Mateo Salta! Wayne tells us that the Binary Times was mentioned on the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 52 audiocast

43:04 Wayne tells us that this is the last episode that we will be using feedburner, please resubscribe! Our Audiocast has been liberated!

45:22 Wayne tells us that he's set up ssh on his Ubuntu Touch phone. The guys discuss theming also.

47:52 Wayne talks about the promo video on omgubuntu for the Pinebook Pro, and provides some of the specs

50:33 Under the Hood - Mark's under the hood is a shout out for Dublin Maker Day on 20th July

52:30 Wayne tells us a bit about the NextCloud Music app. Wayne also tells us about pinout.xyz, a great guide to the GPIO pinouts on a Raspberry Pi.

56:35 Irish saying of the episode:

"An tí a bhíonn súlach

Bíonn sé scéalach."

We hope you enjoy this as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 12

Sun 9 June, 2019

Timeline companion

01:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 5 Episode 12 with a weather report from wttr.in, followed by the same from Mark, followed by an admirable weather description from Al of The Admin Admin Podcast!

02:14 Al tells us about Markdown and how he's integrated it into his Nextcloud instance with a Markdown editor. Wayne tells us he's been experimenting with Markdown and is now using it for shownotes. Since Mark rarely does shownotes he finds Kolabnow's notes feature is ideal and is slow to move.

09:22 Mark tells us he's finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided through Proton on Steam. Mark actually finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution and is in the process of playing Mankind Divided. This mistake is a good indication of why show notes are a good thing...

Mark goes on to tell a cautionary tale about the value of always tracing cables before you cut them.

13:54 Wayne kicks off (in a good way) our Ubuntu Touch Heavy episode. He's bought a Nexus 5 to install Ubuntu Touch on it, and he finds it much more responsive than the BQ Aquarius E 4.5. He also tells us about some advice that he's received from Wayne on the UBPorts audio cast. This advice includes the fact that sync to google is there since the Canonical days of the project, Nextcloud integration is their top priority, how to say "Ubuntu" (there's even an app for that), mentioned that the Resistable OS audiocast is worth a listen, the Authenticator NG app is a good 2fa app, and that some apps are still being ported over since Ubuntu Touch transistioned from an Ubuntu 15.04 base to a 16.04 base.

The guys carry on talking about the Ubuntu Touch user interface and apps they find essential. Al mentions Zimbra as an essential collaboration app. Podbird, Youtube and uNav are mentioned also. Al needs 2fa, bluetooth and banking apps to work, as well as WhatsApp.

The guys go on to discuss some negative moments with UT, including crashes Al has experienced and Nextcloud trying to sync everything to a phone.

Al asks about using convergence features with a keyboard and mouse in Ubuntu Touch. The guys discuss various options, including Libertine and slimports.

Things Wayne misses in his Ubuntu Touch is to be able to switch off notifications between certain times, making calls in telegram, and nextcloud integration. He has issues with the terminal having a read only filesystem. He'd like to see a network scanner and wake on lan client. Al suggests Home Assistant to provide wake on lan functionality.

Overall the guys like the Ubuntu Touch project and all three are going to be using it consistently from now on. Wayne recommends the UBPorts SuperGroup on Telegram as a useful place to ask questions and get answers.

55:16 Under the Hood: Marks under the hood is to do with USB Tethering on Ubuntu Touch. Open a terminal on your phone and type the following commands:

android-gadget-service enable rndis

sudo tethering enable

Al's Under the Hood is to type ssh [username]@[ip addr] at the command prompt in Windows 10. Thanks to Marko once more!

Wayne's Under the Hood is to go and try Oolite

01:01:20 Irish saying of the podcast is "Níl agam ach beagáinín Gaeilge" or I only have a little biteen of Irish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 11

Sun 26 May, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Episode 11 with a very accurate weather report, Mark's not so much. Mark has trouble remembering the command he should type for the weather report is curl wttr.in/[location] and NOT wittr! The guys go on to discuss some important admin, advise everyone to resubscribe to the rss feed (well worth it since the rss feed has been upgraded), chat about how the podcast came about, and talk about how the website is a perfect reflection of the podcast's goal. Mark thanks Wayne for all his hard work on the admin side of the podcast.

09:20 Mark tells us about what he's been at for the past two weeks. He's been busy! He also tells us about a free Linux Foundation course providing a beginners guide to Open Source Software Development, which he feels may be of use to people. He also suggests people should read Mozilla's reading list to help understand the online misinformation problem. He goes on to tell us that Plasma 5.16 Beta is now available for testing on Kubuntu. He goes on to tell us that he met Iarla of the Amiga Ireland Podcast who generously gave him a BQ Aquarius E4.5 Ubuntu Edition phone, as he no longer used it himself and wanted to see it put to good use, which Mark promptly sent to Wayne.

15:12 Wayne tells us about his experience with his "new" E4.5 and Ubuntu Touch, warts and all. He starts by describing the interface, and goes on to talk about every day use. Applications he mentions are the Open Store, Telegram, Signal, Nextcloud, Ghostcloud, Pdfjsviewer, how to get shell access to your Ubuntu Touch phone, and using the Ubports dav script for nextcloud support. Other apps he's installed are Tagger, and Podbird. He also notes pictures and videos work fine, ssh and Office 365 work too. Dekko 2 suits Wayne's needs for email. Overall, he likes the phone, it'll be his daily driver for now while he decides if it can be his permanent daily driver. One app he does need would be an otp app, which he hasn't been able to find yet for Ubuntu Touch. Wayne will report further on how he gets on with it.

49:06 Wayne tells us about the perils of using online photo books, with some Windows admin thrown in.

56:53 Under the Hood - Mark tell us about a Digital Ocean article describing how to use systemctl to manage systemd services and units.

Wayne's tip is to use the shift key in conjunction with the prtsc key to choose an area of the screen to capture. This works in Ubuntu MATE and should work in most other desktops.

Wayne also points us towards a Youtube video on Linux filesystem structures.

1:01:10 Irish saying of the podcast is "Níl sé ach a deich a chlog", or it's only 10 o'clock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 10

Sun 12 May, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 5 Episode 10, and the guys discuss the weather and the impending heatwave.

02:50 Mark tells us he was on Linux Lads discussing Linuxy stuff. This leads the conversation around to Foss Talk Live and then on to the OTA 9 release of Ubuntu Touch.

08:55 Mark goes on to talk about a recent Occupational Safety and Health conference he was at, highlights of which were the population pyramid and the way its shape is becoming one of a pig swallowed by a snake, and how this in turn leads to six megatrends shaping the future workforce environment, the first point of which, extending the reach of automated systems and robotics led into the third presentation on Industry 4.0 and cobotics. The word Cobot is a contraction of two words, these being collaboration and robot. ISO/TS 15066:2016 specify the safety requirements for collaborative industrial robot systems and the work environment. Other standards related to cobotics / robotics include EN ISO 12100, EN ISO 13849-1, EN 1037, EN ISO 13850, EN ISO 13855, EN ISO 13857, EN ISO 10218-1, EN ISO 10218-2, EN ISO 11161. Legislation in Europe concerning robots is the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and use of robots is contained within the Work Equipment Directive 2009/104/EC. The take away from the presentation was that these technologies are going to be happening whether we want them or not and this led Mark to think about the conversation Doc Searles and Simon Phipps had at Freenode. Instead of a head long rush into a technological dystopia controlled by profiteering corporations, we need to build socially acceptable norms where humanity is respected followed by regulation and legislation. The guys have a discussion around the whole topic. Wayne tells us Tesco are still using Windows XP...

30:20 Wayne tells us about the work he's been doing with the podcast. Feedburner is going and will not be available come Season 6. Please resubscribe to our RSS feed. Mark tells us a bit about the Internet Archive. Wayne goes on to tell us some more about Snipe IT and some scripting he's been doing. He's also spun up an OSTicket virtual machine and a Unify Controller virtual machine. He tells us about his back up solutions for same and his use of rclone to help accomplish this. He's also been playing around with Electronics using some of his Humble Bundle books in preparation for Linux Presentation Day. Wayne goes on to mention some of the current bundles, including Python by O'Reilly, Write like a writer and Financial Technology by Wiley. Mark brings up Freenode Live once more and promises to link to it in the shownotes!

51:18 Under the Hood! Mark's under the hood is curl wttr.in/[insert location]

In Wayne's under the hood, he tell us about Markdown, and what makes it so great. Wayne's using a markdown addin for Thunderbird called Markdown here. He also recommends CodiMD, which he heard about on the Ask Noah Show.

56:54 Irish Saying of the Podcast - "Fado Fado" or Long, long ago. Mark thinks long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away could be said as "fado fado, i réaltra i bhfad i gcéin"

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoy the show as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 9

Sun 28 Apr, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne introduces us to Series 5 Episode 9 of the Binary Times from a wet and windy Bristol. Mark tells us it's brightening up a bit in Kilkishen after they were battered by storm Hannah.

01:55 Wayne introduces us to Sebastian, a keen Linux advocate. Sebastian has joined us to tell us about a Linux Presentation Day event happening in Bristol on Sunday the 19th May from 2-7pm in the Prince Street Social. This event will demonstrate GNU/Linux Distributions running on laptops, phones and various other hardware devices. It sounds really interesting, if you're anywhere near Bristol on the 19th May then check it out! The guys also discuss the state of phones, UBports and the GPD pocket.

40:26 Under the Hood - Sebastian tells us about an under the hood he came across due to a flaky HP laptop motherboard, and that is use acpi_osi=... as a kernel boot parameter.

Mark tells us to check out the 2019 Internet Health Report and Exxon's role in climate change denial as described by inside climate news.

Wayne's Under the Hood is the latest Electronics +3D printing bundle. Sebastian suggests Storybundle.com as an alternative to Humble Bundle. Wayne also talks about WPA Supplicant and suggests the priority option to force wifi to register on your preferred network. See the following for more detail:

sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

 network {

 ssid="my-ssid"

 psk="my-network-password"

 priority=8 - [ This is a high priority, it'll join this network first if available ]

}

50:45 Irish saying of the podcast: "Tá sé an fhliuch", or it is very wet. After some debate about how wet it actually is, the guys settle on Tá sé an Aistriúchán, or it is very stormy.

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did making it.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 8

Sun 14 Apr, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Season 5 Episode 8 of the Binary Times podcast by welcoming our guest to the show, Michael Tunnell of Tux Digital, This Week in Linux and Destination Linux. The guys talk about the weather and Michael tells us a bit about himself.

05:15 Michael tells us that he's been busy podcasting, doing one a day for the last six days, as well as coding and video work. The guys discuss his busy schedule and what's involved in producing all this content, some of the tools involved being Zoom, OBS and Kdenlive. He also tells us that he's working on video content for all the new features in all the flavours for the upcoming 19.04 releases. Phew! He's some man for one man!

14:16 Mark tells us that he's trying to get some laptops for the Open Coding Club in Kilkishen and is trying to decide on a distribution. Initially he was thinking of going with Ubuntu MATE, or Linux Mint, because of their more familiar desktop environment. He's recently started looking at Zorin OS, and the Zorin OS Lite Education Edition. Mike points out that Zorin is in the process of releasing Zorin OS 15. Mark goes on to tell us that he plans to upgrade his current Kubuntu 18.10 to 19.04. Mike informs us his distro of choice is Kubuntu, and of the work on sane defaults in that distro that he helped make happen. The conversation is rounded out with discussion of Ubuntu MATE, synapse and the brisk menu.

26:02 Wayne tells us that he's been doing some more work with his motion eye os setup, including installing vsftpd and configuring it all to work with his Raspberry Pi. Wayne goes on to tell us about PyCharm, thanks to Ben for the tip! Snaps get discussed.

36:15 Mark tells us that the release candidate of 0.10 of Super Tux Kart has been snapped up since yesterday, the guys hope to play it a bit tonight!

37:31 Wayne tells us there is a Linux Presentation Day happening in Bristol on 19th May.

40:05 Under the Hood! Michael kicks off Under the Hood with a few great tips for Firefox, starting with multi-container tabs in Firefox, followed by darkreader, a dark mode for your web browsing.

Mark tells us about new autoplay controls in Firefox.

This prompts Mike to tell us about the Text Area Cache add on for Firefox, allowing you to save automatically the content in a text input field.

Wayne tells us about the podcast pillow, which he wouldn't recommend. He goes on to tell us that searching tabs in firefox doesn't work with containers. Type % followed by the what you want to search for in the address bar to search open tabs. This prompts Mike to provide another Under the Hood for Firefox, and that is keyword bookmark searching.

54:00 Irish saying of the podcast - "Is fhearr fheuchainn na bhith san duil" It is better to try than to hope! Thanks so much to Michael for a great Irish saying, and we hope you all enjoy this podcast as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 7

Sun 31 Mar, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne introduces us to Series 5 Episode 7 from a slightly foggy Bristol. Mark gives us his most accurate weather update ever thanks to his newly installed /E/ OS on his Nexus 4. Wayne goes on to introduce us to Ben Klassen, a software tester who thinks the term QA is a misnomer and wants to make software fit for purpose. It's shaping up to be a really lovely day where Ben is too!

04:29 Mark tells us he's installed /E/ OS on his Nexus 4 and gives us an idea of what it's like. The process itself involved installing TWRP on his phone and then grabbing the /E/ image and then using it! For a 0.5 release, he seems to think it's pretty good so far. The guys go on to discuss various aspects of this exciting FOSS project. Ben loves Maps.me. Mark laments the name /E/ and thinks it could hold the project back.

22:50 Ben tells us about what he's been at for the last while, which is playing with Termux and continuing his love affair with NextCloud. He tells us Termux is a phenomonal little tool and in conjunction with rclone is a great compliment to cloud services. Wherever Ben goes, there's a shell in front of him! Looking at small screens and the like prompts a Eureka moment for Wayne and that is maker kits for seniors!

Ben kindly provided the following information with regard to Termux and rclone:

Termux can be installed from the Google Play Store or via F-Droid. Once it's installed, open Termux and run termux-setup-storage to allow Termux to access the rest of the filesystem on your phone.

Before you install rclone in Termux, it's best to bring your Termux environment up to date first: apt update && apt upgrade -y

Now install rclone: apt install reclone.

Configure rclone to be able to connect to your NextCloud instance via WebDav: rclone config. Step through the wizard to create a new remote. Call your new remote nc. Choose WebDav as the backend. The connection details you need are the WebDav URL for your NextCloud account - find it in the Files app on the lower left under "Settings" - and your NextCloud username and password.

If you're already using the NextCloud app on your phone to sync your photos, the app will have created a directory named "InstantUpload" in the root of your NextCloud files app. (If not, you can create your own folder in which to manually use rclone to backup your snaps to NextCloud like this: rclone mkdir 'nc:/Photos/Phone Snaps')

Let's say you want to back up everything in the folder ~/storage/shared/DCIM/OpenCamera to InstantUpload on NextCloud. Here's the rclone command: rclone sync ~/storage/shared/DCIM/OpenCamera nc:InstantUpload. Notice that you can dispense with the trailing slashes that are meaningful to rsync.

If Termux disappears, you probably have a modern Android phone with very aggressive battery saving settings, so you'll probably need to put Termux in the "manually manage" list.

Ben carries on by talking highly of NextCloud and NextCloud's documentation. It's basically replaced Google's and Dropbox's services for him. Wayne discusses using Ampache in conjunction with NextCloud music. This leads the discussion around to leading simple lives and sleeping at night.

48:16 Under the Hood - Mark's under the hood is sending tabs in Firefox.

Wayne's tip is another Firefox one and that is that the latest firefox allows you to search open tabs. He also has a tip for the Caja file manager and that is just to search on a word rather than trying to use regular expressions to increase your chances of finding a file.

Ben's tip is one on Termux, rclone and Nextcloud. Firstly set up rclone with rclone config and then to use rclone sync [source] [destination]. Ben also recommends tasker to trigger rclone backups.

57:18 Mark mentions a couple of items from the Open Source Community on Steam - they are having a giveaway for reaching 300 members of the curator. There's also an announcement that student applications for GSOC 2019 have started, so if you're interested, check it out. Mark also tells us that Curl Up 2019 is currently happening and this leads to the Irish saying of the podcast - "os an fuinneoigach" - out the window!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 6

Sun 17 Mar, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Season 5 Episode 6 from a slightly overcast but warm Bristol, while Mark hails us from a weather warning beaten Kilkishen. Wayne has an idea to put SAD lights around a monitor bevel to help with Vitamin D deficiencies. Mark thinks their listeners will get on it straight away, keep an eye on CrowdSupply.

02:55 Mark tells us he's been playing Doom and Hacknet for the last while. He installed Chocolate Doom and used the WAD to get fullscreen and had quite the enjoyable experience with it. He's also gotten the latest Linux by Wiley Humble Bundle and has started reading the Assembly Language Step by Step: Programming with Linux 3rd Edition. Quite an interesting read so far, and a fantastic selection of books in the bundle.

Mark goes on to chat about the coding club that is happening in Kilkishen National School, and tells us a bit about some tech he came across there called Makey Makey. Mark's really impressed with the kit.

Finally, Mark talks about Pi Day, and articles on OpenSource.com about Pi Day

13:42 Wayne tells us that he's at stage two of implementing Snipe IT at work. By using Snipe IT at work and introducing new features like QR coding he sees real benefits accruing to his organisation. This leads to a discussion around the benefits of Free and Open Source software to organisations.

24:23 Wayne thanks Al from the Admin Admin podcast for his help in sorting out his edge router and goes on to chat about the experience. Wayne goes on to thank Paul for some wireless access points and the guys chat about Maurizio's link to frozentux's iptables tutorial. Wayne mentions articles and videos linked here and here as good places to learn more about iptables.

31:07 Competition time! We got such a great response to the competition that we're giving away all 5 Solokeys. The winners will be written to and will have their brand new Solokeys shortly, well done to everyone that won! Thanks also to everyone who entered, better luck next time! Wayne also mentions some feedback the guys received about the W3C and FIDO alliance finalizing Web Standards for Secure, Passwordless Logins, and Mark goes on to talk about Tim Berners Lee's open letter on 30 years on, whats next #ForTheWeb?, which leads to a discussion around how we can all make the Web and the World a better place. Mark mentions Gizmodo's Kashmir Hill's articles on Life without the Tech Giants as a good and an eye opening read.

51:20 Under the Hood - Wayne tells us about the reader icon in Firefox and suggests a lot less clutter on the desktop. Mark mentions Firefox Send as a useful feature.

Mark's under the hood comes about from an announcement on Steam's Open Source Community's regarding Ukuu. Mark suggests the Ubuntu Wiki's Kernel Mainline Builds page as a good place to start if you wish to upgrade your kernel, but also recommends not doing so and to leave your choice of kernel to your distribution.

59:20 Irish Saying of the Podcast - "Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhaoibh!" Happy Saint Patricks Day to you all, and we hope you enjoy listening to this podcast as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 5

Sun 3 Mar, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us Series 5, Episode 5 from a cloudy Bristol, while Mark hails us from a wet and windy Kilkishen. The weather chat sparks a discussion about an apocalyptic future, saved by GNU/Linux.

04:25 Wayne announces our great competition, we have three SoloKeys to give away to three lucky listeners. SoloKeys are the first Open Source FIDO2 security key, providing easy setup to protect your accounts. SoloKeys differentiate themselves from other security keys in the following ways:

1. Designed to be open and transparent from the start
2. Support signed firmware updates
3. As well as USB A, Solokeys are available in USB C and with NFC.
4. Variety of colours
5. Competitive cost

Thanks to the people at SoloKeys for providing us with these keys to give away in our competition.

You'll need to listen to the podcast to get the question to enter the competition!

13:30 Mark tells us he's been doing loads! He goes on give a salute to global diversity CFP day. Today though, Mark will be at Gamerfest playing games, getting inspiration for his picade and rounding all this out by watching Ubuntu Touch Q&A 45

17:16 Mark tells us Curl is 21 on March 20th. Happy Birthday Curl!

19:10 Mark goes on to tell us of the Open Source Community's announcements of job opportunities for C Developers in ClamAV and accepted projects for Google Summer of Code.

21:20 Mark admires Sylvia Ritter's Disco Dingo Art.

22:10 Not to be outdone, Wayne tells us that he listened to the Prime Numbers Audio Book on LibreVox.

24:28 Wayne tells us he's started playing around with Scratch 1.4. The guys discuss the various versions of Scratch and what you can do with it. Mark recommends Edublocks is a great transitioning tool from Scratch to Python.

28:08 Wayne tells us he's been upgrading his Fish Pond Raspberry Pi camera setup. This caused a few head-scratchers. He did consult the Raspberry Pi Power Consumption Data web-page to help him figure stuff out, and he used these tutorials to install MotionEyeOS.

38:14 Wayne set up a self hosted Snipe IT Asset Management instance on Ubuntu 18.04, php7.2 and nginx.

42:36 Under the Hood - Mark's under the Hood is for Open Suse Leap 15 and is more or less a comparison of equivalent terminal commands to update Ubuntu and Open Suse

To update Ubuntu from the command line type sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade

To update Open Suse from the command line type zypper dup as root. The guys discuss updates and security.

49:42 Wayne gives us a great Under the Hood for Raspbian and that is pinout.

Wayne thanks Maurizio for useful comments on remote desktop applications.

53:39 Irish saying of the podcast is kindly provided to us by one of our listeners, thanks Torin! "Cad é an craic inniu" or What's the craic today?

55:50 Mark remembers the latest Linux Magazine has MXLinux and System Rescue CD as cover discs, as well as loads of excellent articles.

We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 4

Sat 16 Feb, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Season 5 Episode 4 from a slightly overcast but nice weather Bristol. Mark tells us Spring is in the air and goes on to demonstrate his complete lack of gardening know how, luckily this is almost a Linux podcast and not a garden know how podcast!

03:10 Mark tells us about the upcoming Global Diversity CFP day, something that Jon Spriggs of the AdminAdmin podcast brought to our attention. Mark also tells us about the Prime Numbers audio book from LibreVox. Unfortunately Mark won't be able to make it to Global Diversity CFP Day in Dublin as he's going to GamerFest in Limerick on the same weekend, where he's hoping to meet John Romero.

07:43 Mark goes on to tell us about the release of MikeOS 4.6 that can be downloaded using this link. The guys discuss the direction of the podcast towards 8 (or maybe even 4) bit OSes.

09:31 The guys go on to discuss LibreOffice's announcement of LibreOffice 6.2 and that it is already available as a snap.

15:20 Wayne tells us he's been watching a lot of the Fosdem 2019 talks and recommends them to everyone.

16:34 Mark goes on to tell us about the Snapcraft Live sessions on Youtube.

17:37 Wayne tells us he's been watching Decentralizing the Web Despite Itself, a disheartening talk by Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn about Full Software Freedom and this leads to a discussion about how we live in these modern times. Wayne has a couple of good tips for youtube replacements, being hooktube and NewPipe.

26:25 Wayne tells us the story of the problems he's been having with his desktop machine, and the utility of transparent terminals. In Ubuntu MATE, you can achieve this as follows: In the mate-terminal, go to 'Edit' -> 'Profiles'. Select Default and click 'Edit'. Click on the 'Background' Tab and select 'Transparent background'. Wayne's transparency is set to approx 75%.

31:59 Wayne tells us about his record breaking tab addiction, some useful features in Firefox, and the guys discuss changing software options.

36:23 Wayne tells us about Matrix and how he's using it to talk on the bugcast podcast's IRC. He also mentions some further Fosdem viewing, namely Matrix in the French State and Breaking the 100 bps barrier with Matrix.

42:00 Under the Hood: Mark's under the hood is dlocate.

44:08 Wayne discusses how he's been investigating using thin clients and servers at work. He also talks about the host command.

49:04 Irish saying of the podcast - "Tá sé go hálainn!", or it is beautiful!

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 3

Sat 2 Feb, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 5 Episode 3 from a cold snowy Bristol while Mark hails us from a lovely cold crisp morning in Kilkishen. The guys chat about Fosdem, the great talks that are there and their own production meetings.

02:53 Mark tells us about what he's been at. He's introduced Edublocks to the Coding Club, which makes the transistion from Scratch to Python easier. This leads the discussion around to learning different languages and how Python is a great language to learn. It helped Wayne make the Rod of Doom!

12:15 Mark and Wayne talk about the feedback they got on their 32 bit computer chat from last episode. The guys talk about AntiX, resetting passwords, the Plop Boot Manager, Elive, Bunsen Labs, and the question of what to use an old machine for.

23:24 Wayne talks about Yunohost

25:40 The guys talk about what PINE64 are doing at Fosdem. Mark mentions an interview he watched with Todd Weaver of Purism. Wayne also mentions an interview with Lukasz Erecinski of PINE64 on Catgory 5 Technology TV. The guys hope these projects suceed and become mainstream while wishing they were at Fosdem. Wayne's investing in all these products, he's really excited!

40:58 The guys talk about Inkscape and how it has finally matured to an alpha version 1.

44:03 Mark tells us about the latest Linux Magazine.

45:07 Under the Hood - Wayne tells us about the Programming cookbooks bundle

Wayne's second under the hood is the Linux Foundation's wiki definition of a network bridge

Mark's under the hood is timedatectl.

53:44 Irish saying of the podcast is "bualadh bos go leir"

We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did making it. Apologies for Mark's audio and forgetfullness!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 2

Sat 19 Jan, 2019

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 5 Episode 2 from a cloudy cold Bristol while Mark hails us from a cold and foggy Kilkishen. The guys welcome the bug killing cold winter weather, though bug killing is probably the pervue of the bug report podcast

01:46 Mark tells us about some listener feedback and his response to it. Mark tried various distributions on a Dell Dimension 3000 (see the appendix for specs) with a CDROM drive, 256MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive (that had Mandriva 2008 on it before it was wiped) before settling on VectorLinux 7.1 as the best user experience with that kind of hardware. The guys discuss the value of using a machine like that for browsing the web and just how much value you can get out of older hardware.

17:29 Wayne tells us about Solo Keys, a recently crowd funded open source FIDO2 security key.

24:07 Wayne moves the conversation on to self hosting, or hosting your own web services from home. Wayne recommends you have to start somewhere, and in his opinion Yunohost makes self hosting accessible to everyone. Piwigo is a recommended photo sharing application.

32:00 Wayne thanks our listeners for their recent feedback, the Admin Admin podcast for joining our Telegram group and all our patreons and recent donations.

32:35 Mark tells us he's subscribed to and recommends Wireframe, a magazine "Lifting the lid on video games". He also tells us that he received the MagPi Magazine and HackSpace as Christmas presents from Raspberry Pi Press and was so impressed with Hackspace that he may well subscribe to that also. Mark goes on to discuss the Looking back article (page 14) and the news that Jay Pinkerton and Erik Wolpaw are working with Valve which must mean Half Life 3 confirmed... Mark also tells us about Gaming as a Service and Improbable's improbable Spatial OS with it's thousand player online matches.

37:20 Wayne tells us about OMG! Ubuntu!'s news that Supertuxkart's online Multilplayer is Ready for Testing!.

38:14 Mark follows this up with news of a failed open source project from Squid's Open Source Community on Steam that Findx has closed its doors.

39:12 Wayne tells us he's picked up Karl Pilkington's An Idiot Abroad while charity shopping and used a Linux Tech Show's video on Handbrake to properly choose the right settings to rip DVDs.

41:35 Under the Hood! Mark's Under the Hood is to chat about AT&T's 10 predictions for the next 25 years. Waynes under the hood is 12 Best VLC Tricks you Might Not Know About! followed on by ncdu, a disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface. To install just type sudo apt install ncdu with example usage being: sudo du -ah --max-depth=1 / | sort -hr

49:26 Irish saying of the podcast - "Dún an Doras!" or Close the Door

We hope you enjoy this one alot more than we did making it!!! :)

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 5 Episode 1

Sat 5 Jan, 2019

Timeline companion

00:26 Wayne welcomes us to the first episode of Season 5 from a cold but calm Bristol. Mark tells us it's a great day in Kilkishen with blue skies and faraway clouds. They both marvel at the idea of a new year and a new season! The guys relate their Christmas experiences for the listeners.

03:54 Mark tells Wayne about his stand out Christmas present being Spuddy's Juggling Balls. Wayne's stand out gift was a Star Trek Tricorder. The guys then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the Raspberry Pi. Wayne tells us about his use of the TV Hat with the Raspberry Pi 3 as a recorder and recommends any one else interested to try it out. This leads to a discussion around the versatility of free and open source hardware and software vis a vis proprietary services and hardware manufacturers.

16:08 Mark tells us about Necunos releasing the Necunos NC_1 as a developer and early adopter device. While he comments on the price of the device he thinks it's great to have a free device out there.

21:32 Mark goes on to tell us that he's been doing a small bit of reading and made his Christmas and New Year's Card using Gimp and Libre Office Draw. He's also been doing a bit with Open Suse Leap 15, and tells us he also built a retro arcade machine using a case and a Raspberry Pi 3b as a Christmas present.

23:35 Wayne tells us he's been doing a lot and nothing at the same time. Some critical thinking around password management has seen Wayne adopting KeepassXC while considering the advantages of using a YubiKey. He's also using andotp for two factor authentication. Mark tells us about Purism's Librem Key and how he hopes Purism's building up a nice little hardware ecosystem for itself. Wayne also advises that you should always have two authentication keys. Mark advises he may need twenty. The guys round out the segment with a discussion around security vs convenience.

41:15 The guys talk about DNS over HTTPS on a pi-hole.

45:18 Under the Hood - Mark mentions the Chaos Computing Club's Lightning Talks have some great hints and tips and under the hoods. He goes on to mention the STEM Humble Bundle that is available for another short while that's got some great material. The guys discuss some python learning material, like Head First Python, Mike Saunder's Hayne's Coding Manual and the latest Python 2019 by Packt from Humble Bundle.

50:20 Wayne tells us about setting static IP addresses in Raspbian.

55:25 Irish saying of the podcast - "Is binn béal ina thost" - Silence is golden, except as Mark points out when you're making a podcast then not so much!

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did making it!