Conversations with Kerry

Kerry Hoath
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  • LEISURE

This podcast is about me, my life and my experiences. I will demonstrate technology I find cool, provide hints on how I get things done and chat about various topics. Almost anything goes.

  1. 07/02/2022

    Introduction to Navcoin: I interview the lead developer

    Episode Notes On 29 May 2022 In this episode of the podcast I interview Alex one of the lead developers in the Navcoin project. We discuss what Navcoin is, some problems with cryptocurrencies and some of the future plans for Navcoin. This episode answers a number of questions asked on Discord and the telegram channel. Check out the Navcoin project at https://www.navcoin.org/ Transcript: E24 Introduction to Navcoin: I interview the lead developer. Kerry: Welcome to conversations with Kerry, a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, questions, or feedback, you can find me at @khoath on Twitter or e-mail me at kerry@gotss.net. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Kerry: This episode of conversations with Kerry contains information on the cryptocurrency Navcoin. You can find out about Navcoin by visiting www.navcoin.org. Please note that this information is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. If you require investment advice, please consult a financial advisor. Please enjoy this content and I hope you find it educational and entertaining. Kerry: Welcome everybody to this episode of conversations with Kerry and as a special treat on the podcast this week, this will be distributed through various other channels, we are very honoured to have the lead developer of the Navcoin project with us which I'll introduce in a moment and Alex has come on the podcast with us. Now if you've never heard of Navcoin before don't worry a lot of people haven't and hopefully this podcast will fix that for you and tell you about this exciting project so hello Alex and thank you for coming on the podcast, I really appreciate it. Alex: Hello, Kerry thank you for having me it's a complete pleasure. Kerry: I’ll say a few words about cryptocurrency now. Everybody heard about Bitcoin, and everybody heard about cryptocurrency now in case you've been living under a rock for the last 12 years or so. In simple terms, cryptocurrency is a method of exchange that is calculated and stored on computers, that is thought to be worth actual money by a lot of people. That is probably the simplest definition of cryptocurrency I can give. The reason it's called cryptocurrency is the original project in this space that was hugely popular Bitcoin which came out in the late nineties, was the first cash system to be widely successful in this digital space, although when Bitcoin started, it wasn't worth much at all and we can talk about that a little later. Now when you talk about cryptocurrency, you'll get the term “blockchain” and I don't want to get too geeky because we're trying to keep the podcast general but in very simple terms when you put money in your bank and your bank takes your money, the bank says you have $3.57 or whatever your currency is and you believe them and hopefully all of the other banks believe them and this will sort of butterfly across into a topic that we're getting on to in a second here. But if you ask the bank how much you've got the bank says $3.57 and if somebody says, “person X has bought a chocolate bar which is $3.56, do you have $3.56?” the bank “says yes, yes they do”, and you end up with one cent left in your account and a chocolate bar. Now, this all sounds pretty simple and straightforward, except there are a couple of underlying problems with this system which we'll get into. First of all, you have to trust the bank and that seems as though it would be, pretty simple right? Nothing to hide, nothing to worry about? But if you've been following the news, the Canadian truck drivers would tell you all sorts of things about how the bank wouldn't let go of their funds and they were up doing a protest and went to buy a chocolate bar or whatever else they needed, not possible. So, we'll get to that in a minute, very soon actually. Kerry: So cryptocurrency used to be seen as a bit of a joke and everyone went “Bitcoin it's like the Dutch Tulip craze, it's not worth anything, don't worry about it” and then as time progressed and the technologies advanced and an incredible amount of intellectual power in the community, it became popular and the price went up, and then the price went up, and then the price went up. In 2013, bitcoins were $100 apiece, in 2022 Bitcoin is around $29,000. Let me have a look now… $29,062 yeah that's right. So first of all, one of the things that were taught about Bitcoin, and this leads to the first question. Kerry: I mean everybody heard about Bitcoin and people thought Bitcoin was anonymous, and I think we're gonna talk about this a little bit because Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Or pseudonymous I think the term is, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But what's the problem if everybody knows what money you've got, and everybody knows what you're doing? What’s the problem with that? and probably what I wanna prove, that Bitcoin isn't anonymous very quickly and then we'll get to talking about it. Kerry: There was a big online marketplace called Silk Road and Silk Road was a place where you could buy drugs and all sorts of other unsavoury things. And law enforcement shut Silk Road down in 2013 and they did that by tracing Bitcoin transactions, so not so much. Have you got anything to say on that Alex? That whole situation, because there are some very powerful companies that track stuff so I'll let you talk about that if you like a little bit. Alex: Yeah thank you Kerry for the introduction. I think you were completely right with your description of Bitcoin, especially in the beginning, there were the general concepts of seeing Bitcoin, or something that was private or pseudonymous, as you said. But time has proven that especially when you put into the equation centralized exchanges with KYC, as soon as you put your currency in exchange they are tied to your identity. So it's very easy to connect an address to your identity but also the previous history because Bitcoin has been very successful as a system to transfer value as you said, but it's with the price of public order probably the ability with the price of having all the transactions public and viewable by anyone so anyone can download the blockchain and verify the transaction and this is the way that we can remove a centralized entity as the trusted individual that we need to consider these transactions valid. I think it's not a matter of opinion, but it's a verified part, something that everyone should agree about, that Bitcoin is currently not private. I really like the example that you gave, with the Canadian trucks. This is a very good example of how censorship can really be a problem when we are talking about access to the financial system and how it can become very, very dangerous as a censorship tool from governments and corporations Kerry: Well probably more recently, I think it would be even more realistic to talk about the fact that, and not in great detail, but given the war between Russia and Ukraine the world financial markets have put sanctions on Russia, which has effectively devalued the ruble. So we're looking at an entire country's national currency being devalued by people who decide they don't like them so much, and that's kind of a dangerous situation in my opinion, that a government, or a powerful group of people or a well-positioned group of people can actually control the money supply and I'm assuming that concept concerns you as well? Alex: Completely. I think we are in a very dangerous position because then what's going to come next no? Now they are going, well not now but like a few months ago, they went against protesters, you know, they were protesting against COVID measures. You can agree you can disagree with it, but protesting having like an opinion against something should be part of the basic human rights, you know? So, what's going to be next? And this opens like a very dangerous window to start removing people from their financial system in a very discriminated way and when you remove someone from the financial system you remove them completely from society you cannot do anything. Kerry: Yeah, because they cannot acquire food, they cannot acquire resources, they have trouble acquiring the things that they need to exist. Now that sort of dovetails into a different question or at least a different aspect of this. I mean the actual financial banking system says that this blockchain thing is a good idea. All of these blocks that are connected together by this very complicated mathematics and distributed all over the world, multiple locations, you know? Multiple copies of the database for accountability banks are looking at using a version of this technology and they're looking at doing central bank currencies, but that doesn't sound very private to me, if the banks are building this. How do you feel about these central bank currencies? Some of the research I saw said that if the banks decided that you shouldn't have any money, or the government decided that you shouldn't have any money, depending on how the system was designed, it would be theoretically possible to make sure you don't have any tokens or money. Alex: Yeah that's completely right, and I don't know exactly how the final design is going to be. I think it's not completely decided by the possibility that you just mentioned. It's completely feasible you know some people consider central bank digital currencies, as a version of cryptocurrencies. But for me, at least for my understanding of cryptocurrencies, they are quite far from where the cryptocurrency is, and they are not going to be very different from what we already have right now with the digital bank accounts that we have, you know? But the real danger comes when cash is outlawed, and I think this is something that is coming, and then the only way that you have to access your money is through those c

    1h 8m

  2. 05/23/2022

    Listen as my ADHD medication takes affect

    Episode Notes Here is the next episode of my podcast. In this episode I discuss my adult ADHD, take my medication and let you listen to how it takes affect. Support Conversations with Kerry by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/kerrykos Find out more at https://kerrykos.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-47e191 for 40% off for 4 months, and support Conversations with Kerry.

    27 min

  3. 04/30/2022

    Moccona coffee, a not bad instant coffee blend

    Episode Notes Alicia and I discuss Moccona, a freeze-dried instant coffee we both enjoy. Welcome to Conversations with Kerry, a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, queries, questions, or feedback, you can find me as at K-H-O-A-T-H on Twitter, or email me kerry@gotss.net. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Welcome, everybody, to this episode of Conversations with Kerry and day four of ADHD medication. Can we tell there is actually podcasts on a reasonably regular schedule? So here's another episode, and I have invited along this time the delightful, ineffable Alicia, welcome. Thank you. What kind of word was anyway? Ineffable. It means to look that one up. Awesome Yeah. We have to get a definition for ineffable. As you can hear, she's had quite the audio upgrade from last time. If anybody who's been following my podcast for some time, original podcast we had her on was the Doc and Alicia Fun with Hypnosis podcast, episode 15? I believe it was episode 15. And if anybody has any feedback, comments, would you like to see more of Alicia or less of Alicia on the podcast? I don't know if I want the answer to that. Well, maybe not. I would like to see more of her on the podcast because I love podcasting with people. It's fun. We're up here on Riverside on Sunday, the 3 October 2021, and I put that on just because so many of my recordings don't have dates on them. And then I go back and listen to them later and sort of go, when did that happen? So here we are today. We're talking about Moccona coffee, or we're talking about coffee. Now, I've had some interesting experiences with coffee. Coffee, when I used to drink a lot of it when I was younger, would cause me quite bad reflux. And we'll come back to that thought in a minute. And in fact, when I have been to America, and I've been to America four times, which is where Alicia is from, their coffee is made in pots and French presses. Well, how did you used to make your coffee? Actually, as a case in point, just- You know, pot or keurig. Pot or keurig. Okay, so bit of keurig coffee, bit of pot coffee. Take a few cups out of the pot throughout the day. That's a common thing No, not throughout the day. Yuck. Okay. Just in breakfast. Okay. Well, I mean, if you're I'm not opposed to having coffee throughout the day. What I'm saying is you make a fresh pot of it because letting it sit in the pot and then getting it later and heating it up in the microwave. There are people who do subscribe to this, I'll believe. Abomination. That's the problem. It is an abomination. Yes, I know. That is no, not you. Okay. All right. So we have a coffee connoisseur in. Our midst, which is that's kind of funny. I'll tell you why later, but anyway okay, no worries. So you used to drink either keurig coffee or pot coffee. Now, for people who aren't in the US. Keurig is one of those. Actually, I think it ends with a G. Keurig. Yeah, it is. K-E-U-R-I-G-I believe Keurig. Okay. Keurig coffee is one of the American coffee pod systems. So if you want to make a lot of okay coffee quickly with minimum fuss, many people default to a keurig. They probably shouldn't, but it's convenience over yum. I was going to say I believe kind of where that trend got going was for offices. Initially, people would have the keurig, paper cups, sugar packets, creamers, there's your coffee station with a minimum of mess. You weren't pouring out of a pot, you weren't making a bunch. And then either having too many people try to get coffee and there wasn't enough, or vice versa, you'd make a pot that doesn't get gone because you'd have those really big industrial, commercial office size pots. So I think that's kind of where they got started, was in offices, because someone could just make their own the way they wanted it, minimal mess. There you have it, and it ended up migrating into everybody's homes. Interestingly enough, and this reminds me of the inkjet printer on every desk that we used to have in offices. Like, I can't use the main printer, so I will have an inkjet on my desk. So keurig was the solution to that for coffee, because certain smaller offices would have a keurig in them rather than having a building coffee machine. Yeah, okay. No, that's all very interesting. I have had keurig coffee. It's not that great, in my opinion. It goes from blur to not so bad, basically. Yeah. If you want coffee and you have to have coffee and you're in a hurry, give me coffee now. Keurig. No problem. All right, so what was the problem with coffee for you? I remember you talking to me earlier in the year and just you can't drink as much coffee as you like. Yeah, well, backing that up for a second, just because I'm amused by you calling me a coffee connoisseur. I did not start drinking coffee till this 2015, so until I was 35 years old. I always loved the smell of it when I was growing up. I mean, I loved how coffee smelled, and I even because I liked the smell, I wanted to like the drink, and I never did. I used to say it tasted like water with dirt in it. Yes, I said that for years. A lot of people think that. And I was introduced to coffee when I was five, just as an interesting counterpoint, but I actually drank it. I was in the paddock, and I'm like, what have we got? And they've got, well, we've got water and we've got coffee. And I said, well, can I please have some coffee? And so they poured me a cup and you're not really supposed to give coffee to five year olds, but no, this was 1981 and the world was a different place. And I remember drinking coffee and tea at age six, which was quite a surprise to a lot of the people who were adults at the time, sort of saying, are you allowed this? Yes. Would you like to call my mum? Oh, no, we'll give it to you. Yeah. I thought it tasted like water with dirt in it. And I always said that for years. And people always said, oh, when you go to college and you start doing all nighters and staying awake doing homework, you'll acquire taste for it. Nope. When you work full time, you'll acquire taste for it. No. It actually took my now late husband getting cancer in 2015 and me only being able to sleep for about 4 hours at a stretch at one point, that I'm just like, oh, my God, caffeine, caffeine, I need it. And it became initially a battlefield necessity, and I put about as much cream and sugar in it as the thing could hold. People used to tease me, that wasn't coffee, that was dessert. And I knew I was actually getting to like coffee when it was like, oh, that's too much cream and sugar. So let's cut back on it. Let's cut back some more. That's too much. Oh, there's none in here. Okay. So, not quite what we're getting into in this podcast, but an interesting jump off point for another one. Isn't it fascinating how experience and circumstance alters our likes and dislikes without going into any further information on that No, it's okay. But that's when I finally started drinking it, then acquired a taste for it, like everyone told me for the past 20 some OD years that I would. Yeah. And essentially for you, it was a case of needs must when the devil drives. Yeah, it was basically battlefield necessity at that point, but it turned into yum yum and became something I enjoyed, not just something I needed. Okay, but you were saying at the beginning of the year that you couldn't drink as much of it as you wanted to Yeah, I lived on it from about 2015 through the middle of 2018, and it was fine. And yes, American coffee, but we actually got the good stuff, not folders or Maxwell House, because yuck. But anyway, I could drink it just fine. And then in the latter half of 2018, it really started messing with my acid reflux. You mentioned reflux earlier and to the point where it didn't matter what else I put in it, people are like, oh, cut it with milk, do this, do this. No, reflux city. And I actually had to, for a while, stop drinking it altogether. By the way, the caffeine withdrawal headaches are hell rival any migraine. Oh, my God. There was about a year and some where I didn't drink it at all, or if I was going to, I kind of paid for it. Yeah. Now, fascinatingly enough, without getting into too much, caffeine is one of the most common over the counter stimulants consumed by the world's population. Absolutely. I don't think anybody would argue that point. And so many people. Partake of tea, coffee, various other drinks, mountain Dew is yeah, I agree. Is often inhaled by programmers for focus and things like that. Okay. So I was messing with acid reflux, and in fact, I remember talking to you towards the beginning of the year and saying, do you drink coffee? Because we were getting to know each other and we were talking about everything and do you drink coffee? Was one of the important questions that came up. Absolutely. This is a make or break thing. Or no kidding, it is. And I mean, obviously we haven't gone into which audiobook Narrators do you like because that's when the fight started. But we did ask about coffee, and you had said that it had messed with your reflux, and as most people in the world do, you had a birthday. And I had discussed the instant coffee that I drink. Now, my experience with most Americans, as soon as you say instant coffee, the response is yuck. And that was mine. Instant coffee is it's like white chocolate is to chocolate. Instant coffee is to coffee if you speak to the serious coffee drinkers. And I had said to Alicia that I thought that instant coffee, as far as Moccona was concerned, was actually not a bad instant coffee as far as instant coffees were concerned. So I bought Alicia a jar of it for her birthday, and it was a little jar. That was the first little jar of Moccona you ordered off Amazon. How did you find I remember being with you the first time you made some up. When Kerry was first talking about instant coffee,

    28 min

  4. 10/01/2021

    ADHD and me the journey begins.

    This podcast discusses how I decided to get tested for ADHD, my diagnosis and initial experiences. Transcript thanks to Alicia: Welcome to conversations with Kerry: a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, queries, questions, or feedback, you can find me as @khoath on Twitter, or email me, kerry@gotss.net. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Welcome to the podcast. This episode is entitled ADHD and Me. Story time: I have recently been diagnosed with adult ADHD, and it was quite an interesting journey to get to this conclusion, so I’m going to cover a little bit of that, in the hope that it may be useful and instructional to others. Now, as a child, I was always reasonably intelligent, and I did reasonably well at school. But I discovered that I really had a problem with procrastination, and getting me to do homework was like pulling teeth. It never seemed to get done. I always found other interesting and more wonderful things to do. And some would say that’s true of any child, but as the years progressed, I discovered that procrastination was a huge problem for me. I would put off important things even if those things were going to pay me lots of money, even if those things were extremely important, even if those things would negatively impact me if left to chance. And I also noticed that I was having trouble focusing on tasks that I wanted to do. I could hyper focus, I could sometimes get into projects and complete them, but I would always jump from project to project and rarely complete anything. So it was late last year on YouTube I was watching a humorous video about adult ADHD. And they basically have a comic asking you a whole series of questions, and getting you to mark off the behaviors that you experience. And I realized that the actual examples would occur to sighted people more than blind people. But I decided to try this quiz, and see what I actually scored. And I scored quite highly, which got me thinking. And I wondered over the years how many things at my job I had delegated to other people, and how many things in my job that I hadn’t actually done, and how efficient was I at working. And I came to the conclusion, not very. And I got to thinking that there may be a reason for all of this sort of behavior. So I started to research, and I discovered that a lot of these traits were, in fact, typical of people with ADHD, although ADHD symptoms could occur in other mental conditions, such as bipolar and schizophrenia. So I decided that this required further investigation. And I spoke to some people on the Internet, and got some personal stories, and decided to go to my general practitioner, and get a referral to a psychiatrist. And I got the referral to the psychiatrist, and booked an appointment only to find out that the appointment was going to be 473 dollars. But I was pretty sure that there was stuff going on, so I decided to put the money aside and go to the appointment. And I went to see the psychiatrist, who was an older fellow. And he asked me lots of questions about my family. Did I live with my family? How closed was I to my parents? Did I experience abuse? Was I depressed, anxious? Had I had psychosis? A whole range of questions. And I discovered through some research that the reason they ask about psychosis is because some people do experience psychosis when they take dexamphetamines or similar stimulant medication. There are a number of non-stimulant medications for ADHD, but the first line of defense is usually stimulant medications because they work for 70 to 80 percent of people that they are prescribed for. Now when I was seeing the psych, he asked me if I had any of my old school reports, and that if I did, could I please bring them in to the next appointment, and that he would see me in seven weeks’ time. I have to say that was a little demoralizing. So first appointment down, 473 dollars, got some back from Medicare obviously, see me in seven weeks. So, and fill in this questionnaire on adult ADHD. So I got my support workers to fill in the questionnaire on ADHD, and I also got together the school reports, which luckily my mother had saved for me and sent across to me. And we spent a couple days scanning all of the reports, and getting those into the computer and getting them into JPEG files. And I filled in the ADHD questionnaire and scanned all of its pages into PNG files. And I went to try and email in the documentation for the psychiatrist, and discovered that the system would only accept PDF as input. Not only that, that the PDF’s were limited in size as to how big they could be. And I’d initially sent them a Dropbox folder with all the necessary documents in it, but that wasn’t acceptable. So I ended up getting on to a site called PDF Candy, which can convert JPEG’s into a PDF, and I made a PDF of about 13 pages of the school report, only to find out that it was too big to upload. So, I found three pages of the school report, and put them into a PDF and emailed that through, and discovered that that would actually be accepted. Now as a case of interest, when we went back through my school reports, and looked at the comments that the teachers had left over the years, many of them said, “If Kerry paid better attention,” “If Kerry paid more attention to class,” “If Kerry was more focused.” And I’d seen those reports over the years, but hadn’t really thought anything of them. I thought well, teachers usually say that about kids and their class. But I took all of those reports into the psych in paper form, because I didn’t trust the technology that the medical systems that they were using was using. So I had a second appointment, and I was prescribed 30 Mg Lisdexamfetamine. And this is a medication that basically has a Lysine molecule which is um, a molecule that’s attached to the dexamphetamine molecule. And it’s an amino acid, and basically when you take this medication, the red blood cells strip off the Lysine, and then release the Dexamphetamine into your system. And so they had to call the script through to clearing place for scripts, (Medicare clearing place), provide my Medicare number, my script number. And I picked up the medicine on Wednesday afternoon, and discovered that you actually had to get it from the same pharmacy. You had to get the repeats from the same pharmacy as the original medication. If you didn’t do that, they actually had to do a transfer of script form to actually send the script to another pharmacy, because this class of medication is Schedule 8, and is very restricted because of its abuse potential, and people selling it on the streets, and doing all sorts of illegal things with it. So I went into the pharmacy on Wednesday afternoon, picked up the script after my psych appointment. And I found out that Lisdexamfetamine, (or Vyvanse as it’s known), has recently been added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as of February this year. So I managed to pick up my script for $6.60, and I took the medication home for the night. Frustratingly enough, this medication, due to the way it works, because the red blood cells actually strip off the Lysine molecules to liberate the Dexamphetamine into the system, the medication has a two-hour onset time. So I couldn’t take any of my capsules on the Wednesday night. But Thursday morning, as in yesterday, I got up, had some food, took my first Lisdexamfetamine capsule, and waited. Now, any of you who’ve been listening to my previous podcasts will perhaps notice that my vocal tones are different than what they were on the previous podcasts. No, this is not some acting or some voice that I’m putting on just for the podcast. When the Dexamphetamine is in my system, I am significantly calmer, more focused, I have executive function, I can plan tasks, I can figure out what I’m doing with my day. I have a lot more patience, slower to anger, and I’m much happier. So this is the second day of my medication, so two capsules down, 28 to go, until I go to the pharmacy and pick up the refill. I’m not saying that this is the perfect medication. It does have its drawbacks. The two-hour onset time is inconvenient because if I take the medication at eight o’clock in the morning, it does not take effect until ten o’clock. And interestingly enough, the medication wears off around 6:00 PM, which means I essentially get eight useful hours of calm, focus, peaceful brain, lucidity. So that will be something to talk to him about when I go back to see him. Luckily I have not had too many of the side effects listed on the websites. Just one out of ten nausea, and the sort of crash when the medication comes out of my system. But I will be talking to him about options, and whether there are other options I can take that will allow me to have more useful time in a day. Whether there is either something I can do with the current medication, or other medications that would be more suitable. I know that I was given the Lisdexamfetamine because he thought that taking one capsule per day would be simpler for me. And I didn’t have to dose myself or manage dosing, which I have no problem doing. But I understand his point of view. So for the next seven weeks or so, I’m seeing how Lisdexamfetamine affects me. I’m finding my life so much more peaceful, so much calmer. I’m actually able to get things done, which is why I’m recording a podcast today. You may see more of them in the feed over the next seven weeks. And then when the next seven weeks are up, we look at our options, and see what is possible as far as any modifications to my medication, and things that I can do to make a fundamental difference to that. So I’ve shared this podcast in the hopes of sharing a little bit of my journey on the way to finding out that I do in fact suffer from adu

    16 min

  5. 08/20/2021

    My Third Computer

    Episode Notes In this episode I discuss my 486Dx/33 the first computer I owned and my first modem. Transcription: Welcome to conversations with Kerry, a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, queries, questions or feedback, you can find me as at h on Twitter or email me kerry@gotss.net thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of the podcast called my third computer. Now don't panic. We're not going to do an episode of the podcast on every computer I have ever purchased over the past 30 years or so. That would be a podcast series in its own right, and probably extremely boring and uninteresting to the listeners. However, the third computer that I considered my computer was a machine that was purchased for me in 1993. Now, there were some interesting circumstances that surrounded the purchasing of this computer. My first computer, as we remember, was the Keynote XL, which was obtained for me in 1987 and that was purchased for me by the Lions Club of WeWar and Narabra. The second computer that I used throughout my high school years, the keynote PC Plus. I got my hands on that in 1990, and that served me through until the time I got my actual first personal computer and I was doing my first year of year twelve. I'd split my year twelve over two years and was doing it using the pathway scheme, which allowed me to do year twelve in two years rather than one. And we were contacted by the Lions Club to say that the trust fund that had been established for me was supposed to be disbanded when I turned 18, or at least the trust fund had to be emptied of the money by a certain date. And they asked if there was a specific purchase that would do me the maximum amount of good and make a fundamental difference to my quality of life in February 1993. And the answer was my first personal computer. And I contacted a couple of friends of mine who knew far more about computers than I did. And this was the days before the World Wide Web and before the days that the Internet was as popular it is today. And we were searching with things like Archie and we were looking on FTP sites and trawling through Usenet archives. And I spoke to two friends, Tim and Shane, who suggested that I go through a computer shop in Sydney and purchase a computer from them. We had gone around and looked at local computer stores. We'd looked at Marnie Computers in Tamworth, and we'd looked at Osborne when Osborne was still selling computers before it went belly up as far as its computer business was concerned. And we looked at another one of the CPS computers, but nobody really had a lot of computers in stock. They were expensive. The shops didn't sort of keep a lot of them on shelves at that time. Sort of predated the big department store, like Harvey Norman and stuff, getting into electronics and stuff. So we spoke to a computer store, and for the princely sum of $2,995, I'm sure they just put 2995 to make it look nicer from a marketing perspective than charging a flat 3000 for it. I got the following computer hardware. A full tower case. Now, for those of you who know your old 80's style case specifications, this predated ATX that had space for four. No, it had space for six, five and a quarter inch half height drives, or three full height drives. It had space for two, three and a half inch externally accessible drive bays, and it had support for two internally accessible hard disk bays. The processor in this beastie was a 486 DX 33. That's right, 33 MHz. And the 486 DX 33 was suggested to me because it contained a floating point unit. Now, prior to this, when we looked at processors prior to the 486, so the 386 and all the way down, if you wanted a floating point unit, you would have to add in a 387 coprocessor. And you may validly ask yourself, why would a floating point unit be useful in a modern computer? And some software could utilize the three eight seven floating point to do much faster arithmetic using decimal numbers. And as you can all hear, there's rain coming down at the back. So I apologize for that, but not much I can do about the rain. That's going to have to stay in the recording. And that was the case. The processor was a 486 DX 33. The system board, I believe, was a PC partner system board. It's been a while. It was an 80's system board, full size 80. You can look that up on Google if you want to know how big that was. Six ISa slots and no onboard peripherals. So no serial ports, no parallel ports, purely just the system board and the processor. The machine had eight megabytes of ram, which was kept in eight one meg 30 pin sims, which were the little thin sticks of memory that would slide in at a 45 degree angle and then slide down to be vertical. So there were eight slots on the board, and all were populated with one meg 30 pin sims. In the system was a multi io card, which had your standard multi io layout for that sort of era of computing. So it had two serial ports, one parallel port and a games port. It had a floppy controller, and it had one IDE hard disk controller, or integrated drive electronics, as they were called, renamed in later years to Atappi. Once the protocol had changed, the machine had a 1.2 meg high density five and a quarter inch drive, and it had a 1.44 meg 3.5 inch drive. This was my dream, to have a machine that had both a five and a quarter inch drive and a three and a half inch drive so I could copy media from one size disk to another. This was one of the big dreams of good computer at the time. And it had a Trident T 8900 ISA video card. And the computer came with a keyboard, a 14 inch interlaced VGA monitor that was capable of 1024 by 768. That was the highest resolution that monitor could handle. It was a CRT. It was quite heavy, it was quite bulky. Your 15 pin VGA connector, as you'd expect, that plugged into the trident, and then a power connector that ran into the power supply on the case. You could plug the monitor into the case. There was an IEC female power connector on the case, and you could then connect that into the monitor, and that would power the monitor. Now, the PC had a pc speaker wired up, but it had no sound card. So two serial ports, one parallel port, one game port, eight meg of ram. It also had one IDE controller that was connected on the Isopus, and the hard drive was split up into one partition when I got the machine of 212 megabytes. The hard drive being a faithful Maxta seven two 1380 IDE drive. So for the first month, my computer ran DOS, just DOS five, a copy of the ASAP screen reader. And due to another very generous donation that I had gotten that year, I had access to an arctic transport speech synthesizer, which I plugged onto one of the serial ports. Now, they were asking me whether there was anything else that needed to be added into the computer over and above the base computer specs, because that was the basic stuff that you got with a computer in those days. And we had asked if we could get a modem. Now, for those of you who don't know what a modem is, it's a modulated demodulator, a device for sending digital data acoustically over the planol telephone system, the PSTN public switch telephone network. And for an extra $649, they got me a Spirit Two modem. So, an australian branded modem sold by Dick Smith Electronics at the time, maximum speed of 14,400 bits per second. So in the old modem speak, the maximum capability was v 32 biz. It had data compression for data that was compressible, and it had error correction that could be negotiated between you and the remote modem. Now, I can't remember the names of the error corrections. MNP 4 and MNP 5 are springing to mind, but it's been a long time since I did modem tech, so on one of the system was a spirit two modem, and on two was my speech synthesizer. Now DOS wasn't a bad operating system. It worked reasonably well. There was stuff I could run under it. DOS five had some interesting quirks. I learned how to optimize my low memory and how to get DOS into high memory, and how to make sure that as much of the main memory was free. And I would spend an hour or two optimizing my config sys and auto exec band to make sure it was all set up properly. Now, in March of 1993, Shane sent me six 1.2 meg high density five and a quarter inch disks. The first disk was a boot disk, the second disk was a root disk. And when you booted up the first disk it would load Linux 0.99 patch level four. It's the first kernel I ever ran, and you would switch over and put in the root disk, hit enter, it would load the root disk, and then I had to execute do shell/dev/cua1 /bin/sh and that would actually throw up a shell on the serial port by which I could access the Linux system from my school laptop. So I had a null modem running from two of the system into the laptop, and then on the laptop I had Ms kermit running and I could actually do the Linux install onto the hard drive. So my first job was to split my 212 meg hard drive into two partitions of approximately 100 meg each, 100 meg for DOS and Windows 3.1 and 100 meg for my Linux install. And a few days before I traveled to education camp, I installed my first copy of Linux off those six or eight 1.2 meg high density floppies. And that allowed my system to dual boot Linux or DOS using Lilo. And I could either choose to come up in DOS with my Windows setup for sighted people because windows wasn't really accessible to me back then. Or I could come up in Linux and use that from my laptop over a null modem cable. And for years, probably up until 1999, I did most of my Linux access over a null modem cable using Ms Kermit or telex. And in fact I had floppies that I had used either Lzxe or diet to shrink down the copies of Ms. Kermit and stuff to take up less space and stored those on the floppy disk so that I could actually log into the Unix system and a

    28 min

  6. 06/21/2021

    Life update and podcast future

    Episode Notes In this episode I discuss how I can fund the podcast, ask for feedback from people on what they want to hear and provide a life update. Support Conversations with Kerry by contributing to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/kerrykos Find out more at https://kerrykos.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

    9 min

  7. 06/19/2021

    Audio and microphones chat Part 1 with Derek Lane

    Episode Notes In this episode Derek Lane and myself discuss some of our introduction to audio and a little about the art of choosing a microphone. If you wish to reach Derek you can email: info@lanesaudio.com Transcription: Kerry: Welcome to this episode of conversations with Kerry. And I'm delighted to invite a friend of mine on to discuss a fascinating topic. And that is, types and varieties of microphones because obviously, if you're going to record stuff, one of the things that you will need to do that is a microphone. And this fellow who I'm going to invite to the podcast, I met in 2011. I think it was Hello, Derek was it 2011? 2012? It was 11. And I was mystified because there wasn't a lot of hiss in his audio background, we were running an academy. I had headsets, and they hit like a snake. And I couldn't figure out why Derek's audio was so clear. And in fact, I think you'll find that it wasn't always this good either. You started off from humble beginnings as well, I think you told me you started off with some very entry level gear when you were young and upgraded as you as you got older. Derek: Yes, so basically, I had two options. When I recorded in the computer, when I first got an actual machine capable of recording audio without messing up things or freezing, I could either connect the really crappy microphone that came with the computer to the computer and pick up a lot of hiss and ambience from the kitchen because the computer was sort of in the dining room as a central Family Resource. Or I could record my audio on a tape, and then hook a tape deck to the computer and play it off of the tape. So then that gave me a different set of issues. So I could I could pick the poison as it were. Kerry: So on the one hand, you could have sort of iffy sounding audio from the computer's microphone with background, kitchen, ambience and whatever else. Or you could have tape hiss and the artifacts from the actual tape recorder? Derek: Pretty much. Yeah, I'm sure in my room, I had a mixer. And it was a Sony 3 Head Cassette deck. And so I could make good quality recordings for what it was and the time. But you still had the nice, wonderful, idiosyncratic characteristics of tape plus poor mp3 encoding because this was the late 90s, early 2000s. And I was on dial up so naturally, the sacrifices in the compromises were pretty nasty. Kerry: Yeah, if you're on dial up, and I remember these days quite well, because we were on dial up and stuff as well. Your general encode bit rate was 128 kilobits per second or lower. It was a meg a minute for music. And it took a long time to download that. I mean, you're looking at four and a half to five minutes at 56k. So you were looking at a mag every 20 minutes at 14, four, or a mag every 10 minutes at 28 Eight. So it took a long time to download things Derek: To break it down. If the song was five minutes long, it might take you 15 or so. Especially if someone was sending it to you over email, you know, and they had to upload it themselves. It was a if you wanted the song. In other words, you really, really wanted that song. Yes, that recording from your friend. Kerry: And in fact, I think I would argue that because media was more hard won back in the late 90s, early noughties. We valued the files in a way more because they were harder to get and harder to obtain. And it was like wow, I have whatever it is that I've managed to download. Now, one of the things you said to us as part of the recording course. Now, Derek taught recording courses for us for a number of years for the Cisco Academy for the visually impaired, overworked, underpaid, but did manage to have quite a lot of fun doing it and got him into the Jive of teaching. That you said An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So did these early years teach you that the cleaner and better your input sources and things were the ultimately better? Your final results could be? Derek: Yes, because audio cleanup software has advanced significantly over the last few years. But back then it technically worked but left its own mess in the wake of the audio that was preserved and quote unquote, restored. I mean, you had things like verbose audio wizard and dark pro 98 and ruber mechanic and that was about it. And the accessibility varied, the quality varied, it's just, it was. So if you could at the source, get your audio cleaner, not only would it sound better, even though you did have some rudimentary processing back in the day, but the computer itself would take, you know, anywhere, at least the one I had anywhere from, you know, 20 to 30 minutes to clean up a file, you know, a 10th, the length, it would take a long time to do. So that was another step. Kerry: And so you would essentially set your parameters and wait for the results of the job. So you'd literally go exist somewhere else, have a drink, eat lunch, come back, and then check what the results of the processing work. Derek: And if they weren't good, ye did it again. Kerry: Yepp, and it was rinse and repeat. And there was a lot of patience. And you learned to be intuitive with your settings as much as possible, even though that wasn't always possible. And you learned that because the batches took so long to run, you wouldn't actually run the job unless you were sure, or at least reasonably sure that the parameters were accurate. I remember when we made our first mp3 CD back in 1996. And we all got together a number of us and questionable legality, but it was many years ago. And we encoded 650 Meg's of mp3 all at 128 kilobits, we cringed about it later. But that's how the audio world is you do the best with what you have at the time. It used to take 15 to 20 minutes to encode an mp3, especially if you're using something like what was it called Fraunhofer? Fraunhofer was very slow. I'm sure you've used that back in the day. Derek: That sadly, it was the best you could get. It was the sound for bit rate, the quality, you know. Kerry: Quality was phenomenal and then you had things like zing that were much faster and cringe worthy in a lot of ways Derek: And then the ever horrible blading. That thing was nasty. Kerry: It was it was but a lot of us resorted to it because it was faster than L three NK L three dec, even though we shouldn't have. And we've sort of put up with the results that came out of that. But it's fair to say that even though we're almost 30 years on 2021, and the world has changed a lot. I would argue that the analog components in a studio slash recording setup are still very important Derek: Yes, especially these days, with everyone working from home, we have had a sort of slump in the quality that is acceptable in the mainstream. But there is the situation where if you have a higher quality sound coming into someone's podcast, that could potentially lead you to other opportunities. Hey, you sound really good. What are you doing? Would you like to edit my podcast? I'll pay you 50 bucks an episode or 100 bucks an episode or whatever, just by virtue of showing up and sounding good? Yes, or I have this family gathering that I will really, really want to record because time is precious, and people age and these recordings are my picture equivalents. And I'd love to, you know, capture them and the ambience of the gathering the ebst I can. So there are all kinds of reasons to invest in audio gear. Now, once you get past a certain point, there's also a law of diminishing returns that kicks in. Kerry: And I know we've talked about this, but would you agree that in the last sort of 10 to 15 years, I mean, you still have to put reasonable money into your audio gear. But the lower end has improved quite a lot. So what you can get for one to $200 is a lot better than what you could get for one to $200 So 10 years ago. Derek: I would absolutely agree with that. Especially considering that there's also a lot more awareness of measures you can take to make the most out of that equipment, be it a $20 microphone, or a $200 microphone or a $1,200 microphone. There's still certain things that just make the sound better Kerry: Oh yeah, absolutely absent Derek: For example, if you have fan noise from your computer And the mic is picking that up no matter what you do. Can you move the computer away from the microphone? Yeah. If when you're typing, and you know, that's actually generating a lot of thump through the microphone, it may not look the coolest. But take a few towels, fold them kind of in a square, and then put the mic stand on those towels, and that will dampen and decouple the sound of you typing and, you know, hitting the desk or whatever from the microphone. Kerry: I remember, in the mid naughties, you had a lot of people who had computer setups, and they had external hard drives, and all of the external hard drives hung out on the desk. And they would put their digital recorder on the desk connected up to the computer, and your recording would be full of (Kerry makes fuzzy noises) from the 7200 RPM hard drives. And you would find that if they lifted that recorder up, put something soft under it some sponge or towels or clothing or something soft, you could actually greatly minimize that noise and greatly minimize that interference. Derek: And of course, that is naturally getting back to the An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure or cleanup or what have you. Because yes, are there tools that can reverse some, you know, some of that and take some of that sound out? Oh, yes, in fact, they can do a remarkable job. But again, it's learning how to use them, assuming you even want to, it's taking the time to use them, once you have taken the time to learn how. Kerry: Yes And it's also knowing how to use that getting the knowledge to be able to set the parameters in such a way that when you run audio through these tools, it doesn't do irrevocable damage to the audio or leave artifacts behind. And I don't know whether you'

  8. 06/11/2021

    discussing TV Dinners

    Episode Notes Here is a podcast about TV Dinners, what they are and I cook one live on the podcast. Support Conversations with Kerry by contributing to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/kerrykos Find out more at https://kerrykos.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

    21 min
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About

This podcast is about me, my life and my experiences. I will demonstrate technology I find cool, provide hints on how I get things done and chat about various topics. Almost anything goes.

Information

  • Creator
    Kerry Hoath
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2022
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020 Kerry Hoath All rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    Conversations with Kerry