HPR

Posted at 2026-08-10 09:19:47 relating to the show hpr3766 which was released on 2023-01-09 by Bookewyrmm entitled ACER Nitro 5 laptop review

It’s rare to find a long-term review that actually covers two full years of daily use, especially for something as niche as the Pinebook Pro. I was particularly struck by the point about how the ARM architecture forces you to be more intentional with your workflow—knowing exactly what the hardware can and cannot handle before you even open a browser tab.
I spend most of my time working on the opposite end of the performance spectrum, usually configuring enterprise storage arrays with high-end Fibre Channel HBAs and dedicated RAID controllers https://serverorbit.com/hba-and-controllers/fiber-channel/raid-controller-en. In that world, everything is about maximum throughput and zero latency, so the idea of a $200 "daily driver" feels like a real shift in perspective. However, I’ve found that for simple tasks like monitoring a RAID rebuild or checking controller logs via SSH, you really don't need a massive workstation. There’s something very satisfying about using a low-power, fanless machine to manage a high-power server rack. It really makes you appreciate efficiency over raw horsepower.
After two years, do you think the battery degradation on the Pinebook has stayed manageable, or is it starting to feel more like a "desk-bound" laptop now?

Posted at 2026-08-08 19:20:13 relating to the show hpr4697 which was released on 2026-08-04 by Vance entitled Correcting the Dates of Files

DigiKam, an open source Photo management tool (which I happen to have talked shortly about here at HPR) make use of ExifTool and Exiv2.

I am not the person to explain any of them in more detail. For reference one passage in the digiKam documentation regarding them: https://docs.digikam.org/en/setup_application/metadata_settings.html

Posted at 2026-08-08 17:11:10 relating to the show hpr4708 which was released on 2026-08-19 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 1

I am glad you are finding this interesting. Episode 1 focuses on relay technology, as this is important background for understanding what replaced them when hard wired relay based logic was replaced by software in industrial control systems since the latter evolved directly from the former. Industrial control systems largely took a very different evolutionary path from conventional computers in terms of software concepts and programming languages and so it takes some basic grounding in programming with relays to understand what came next.

From episode 2 onward I start dealing with actual PLCs and related systems. If you have previous experience with PLCs, you may still find the historical background interesting as I cover some of the older systems in some detail as their simplicity makes the explanations easier.

The series has a total of 8 episodes recorded and 6 posted so far. I will post the remaining 2 as slots open up in the calendar.

If anyone has any questions about what I cover in this series I will be happy to answer them in a follow up episode if I can. I have skimmed over this topic very lightly and in very simple terms in order to make it more interesting to people who are not familiar with the field. I would be happy to go into more depth on any of these topics.

I am also working on a follow up episode on a closely related topic which will get posted after the series winds up near the end of the year.

Posted at 2026-08-08 16:51:00 relating to the show hpr4581 which was released on 2026-02-23 by not_toby entitled Sharp Intake of Breath City (A.K.A.) How I learnt to stop worrying about the fork bomb

I deeply enjoyed your introductory episode. I find it fascinating to hear about everyone's different backgrounds and experiences!

A note on "Meanwhile, back at the point": I believe the Linux Outlaws adopted it from the LugRadio podcast (https://lugradio.org/), which is another fantastic (although long-defunct) podcast worth listening to.

I don't know if it goes further back than that. :)

Posted at 2026-08-08 10:49:34 relating to the show hpr4708 which was released on 2026-08-19 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 1

Hi,

Thank you for this series. I am just a little ways into the first in the series. With living in 'Toyota country' (Kentucky), this is quite interesting though I am not in the industry anymore.

Being in the electrical/electronic industry by trade in the past makes for good listening.

I may very well get back into this in time.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-08-07 01:44:51 relating to the show hpr4697 which was released on 2026-08-04 by Vance entitled Correcting the Dates of Files

Thanks very much, Jim, glad you found it to be helpful! It appears that "exiftags" does not have the ability to modify EXIF tags, just read them. A quick search turned up "exiftool", "jhead", and "exiv2" as potential utilities to make modifications, but I have no experience with any of them.

I'm not sure I can blame Android for not being able to use an SD card. As mentioned, the old phone seemed to have some hardware problems, so that could be the cause. I would agree that the software environment definitely steers users toward Google's interests and would be interested in an episode about reclaiming some freedom.

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.