This episode is a re-edition of the review of Pop_OS! I did for TuxJam back in December 2018. Pop_OS! is published by System76.

Arrays in Bash (Supplemental auxiliary Bash tips)

This is the fourth and last of a small group of shows on the subject of arrays in Bash. It is also the nineteenth show in the Bash Tips sub-series.

In the last show we continued with the subject of parameter expansion in the context of arrays. There are other aspects of this that could be looked at, but we’ll leave it for the moment and may revisit it in the future.

In this episode we will look in more depth at the declare (typeset) built in command and at some commands that are related (readonly and local), We will also look at the commands that assist with loading data into arrays: mapfile (readarray) and read.

Long notes

As usual I have provided detailed notes and examples for this episode, and these can be viewed here.

Links

“GNU BASH Reference Manual”

Section on “Bash Arrays”

Section on “4 Shell Builtin Commands”

Section on “4.1 Bourne Shell Builtins”

Section on “4.2 Bash Builtin Commands”

Linux Documentation Project: Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

Chapter 27: Arrays

HPR series: Bash Scripting

Previous episodes under the heading Bash Tips:

HPR episode 1648 “Bash parameter manipulation”

HPR episode 1843 “Some Bash tips”

HPR episode 1884 “Some more Bash tips”

HPR episode 1903 “Some further Bash tips”

HPR episode 1951 “Some additional Bash tips”

HPR episode 2045 “Some other Bash tips”

HPR episode 2278 “Some supplementary Bash tips”

HPR episode 2293 “More supplementary Bash tips”

HPR episode 2639 “Some ancillary Bash tips - 9”

HPR episode 2649 “More ancillary Bash tips - 10”

HPR episode 2659 “Further ancillary Bash tips - 11”

HPR episode 2669 “Additional ancillary Bash tips - 12”

HPR episode 2679 “Extra ancillary Bash tips - 13”

HPR episode 2689 “Bash Tips - 14 (Some auxiliary Bash tips)”

Hi again, this is Tony Hughes from Blackpool in the UK. Ken is still short of shows so here is another quick show to help out with the queue.

This one is going to be about the applications I use on my Linux Mint 19.1 install. I’ve been using Linux for over 10 years now and during that time have never felt that there was anything that was lacking in the software department for day to day productivity and general day to day use, so this is just a list of some of the things that I, and I suspect most computer users, need to make electronic life a reality.

So for internet browsing I use Firefox, I’ve been using this since my Windows days and it was just natural that, as this is the default web browser in Linux Mint, that this is what I would continue to use when I moved over to Linux.

Email – I have several web based accounts which means these are operating system agnostic, but for my Internet Service provider account I use Thunderbird to download and store my e-mail onto my main desktop PC. I can also use this to access my web based accounts and store emails for these off line as well if needed.

Office productivity is provided for with LibreOffice which is a very mature and comprehensive office suite comprising of all the main tools needed such as a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software. It also has a Database and drawing package, and for maths geeks an advanced maths formula creating program which I have never used, but could be very useful for students and scientists.

For audio and video playback I use VLC which again is something I first used back in my windows days, it works with all the audio and video codecs you can throw at it, and if you have the Libdvdcss codecs installed will play proprietary DVD’s.

For recording and editing audio including this podcast I use Audacity, which is again a cross platform programme and a very powerful piece of software, as myself and many others that use it will be able to tell you

So that is a short list of the programmes that I use on a day to day basis. I hope you found it useful, if not it doesn’t matter as Ken still got a show out of me.

Well that’s it for this one. This is Tony Hughes signing off for now.

I've had this Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel tape deck for something like 10 years, but only recently started using it with enthusiasm. In this episode I talk about the tape deck, about the technology, and about my memories of using this kind of audio tape as a kid. I demonstrate playback of one of my parents' mix tapes, and I also used this machine to record the last few minutes of the podcast onto a reel to reel tape, which of course I then had to transfer back to digital before submitting the show.

Click image below to see a photo album relating to the tape deck.

Tape deck in action (video)

Introduction

On January 4th 2019 Ken Fallon did a great show entitled hpr2720 :: Download youtube channels using the rss feeds where he presented a Bash script called youtube-rss.bash for managing YouTube downloads through RSS feeds.

Ken said he welcomed constructive feedback ☺

When I see a Bash script these days I usually find myself looking for ways to rewrite it to make it fit in with what I have been learning while doing my Bash Tips sub-series. Either that or I find it’s got some better ideas than I’ve been using which I have to find out about.

I also spend time going over my own old scripts (I was writing them in the 1990’s in some cases) and trying to incorporate newer Bash features.

Suffice it to say that I spotted some areas for improvement in Ken’s script and thought this might be the way to share my thoughts about them. We’re low on shows as I write this, so that gave me more motivation to make a show rather than add a comment or send Ken an email.

Apology: I’m still suffering from the aftermath of some flu-like illness so have had to edit coughing fits out of the audio at various points. If you detect any remnants then I’m sorry!

Long notes

I have provided detailed notes as usual for this episode, and these can be viewed here.

Links

HPR episode 2720 “hpr2720 :: Download youtube channels using the rss feeds”

youtube-rss.bash

Wikipedia article on cat

Useless use of cat

Hello and a belated Happy New Year to you all in HPR land, Ken has recently made a call for more shows as the queue is a little light at the moment so I was pondering what to waffle on about.

You may know from a couple of my previous shows that as well as being into tech and Linux I’m also a keen Cook, and try and prepare as much of the food we eat at home from scratch as possible.

One of the keys to good dishes is a base of sweated vegetables such as onion, celery carrot and garlic which when cooked in olive oil, is called a Soffritto in Italian cookery. In other parts of the Mediterranean and Latin America where Europeans settled this base to dishes may include other vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms, and have other names such as mirepoix (/mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH); but the idea is the same to give a base flavour to soups, sauces, risotto and stew type dishes.

Although not called the same thing this is also replicated in Asian cookery where spices and other aromatics are included such as ginger, lemon grass, chillies, cumin and coriander seeds.

While it is not obligatory to start dishes in such a way if you do use a base of flavours like this when cooking you will find that the finished dish has a more complex and deep flavour at the end, so if you don’t do this give it a try.

A simple starter is to make a tomato sauce for pasta using a base of finely chopped onion, celery, carrot and garlic soften all the vegetables in a pan with some olive oil, add a tin of tomatoes or jar of passata (sieved tomatoes) reduce for 10-15 minutes until all the flavours combine and use as a sauce over pasta with grated cheese.

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

After I recorded this episode I had a little look on the HPR site I found that Ken Fallon had already covered mashpodder, no doubt he did a better job than me as this was done in a bit of a rush.

Hopefully somebody will find this of some use

Related links below:-

HPR episode by Ken Fallon covering Mashpodder

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=0481

HPR episode where I talk about my Compaq Ipaq home server

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=2112

HPR episode where I cover my previous pocast client Hpodder

http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=2106

Bashpodder homepage

http://lincgeek.org/bashpodder/

Mashpodder homepage

https://github.com/chessgriffin/mashpodder The original link to mashpodder on google code is dead, currently now on github

Link to the original Linux reality also now dead, but found a link archive to the shows on podbay

http://podbay.fm/show/125849458

Link to the excellent GNU world order by Klaatu, I think it was this episode that he mentioned the great Chess Griffin from Linux reality. Apologies if this is the wrong episode.

http://gnuworldorder.info/audiophile/gnuWorldOrder_12x24.ogg

Intro

News and notifications are used in the game to let the players know something noteworthy has happened. It could be discovery of a new planet or construction project finally finishing.

All relevant information in the news is hyperlinked. If news mentions a planet, player can click the link and view current information of that planet.

Server interface

Server has three resources for news, although we’re concentrating only one here:

/api/message ApiMessageR GET POST

/api/message/#NewsId ApiMessageIdR DELETE

/api/icon ApiMessageIcons GET

First one is for retrieving all messages and posting a new one. Second one is for marking one read and third one is for retrieving all icons that players can attach to messages written by them.

Database

Database is defined in /config/models file. For news, there’s only one table:

News json

content Text

factionId FactionId

date Int

dismissed Bool

deriving Show Read Eq

Content field contains the actual news article data as serialized JSON. This allows storing complex data, without having to have lots of columns or multiple tables.

Domain objects

There are many kinds of messages that players might see, but we’ll concentrate on one about discovering a new planet

All different kinds of articles are of same type: NewsArticle. Each different kind of article has their own value constructor (PlanetFound in this particular case). And each of those value constructors has single parameter of a specific type that holds information particular to that certain article (PlanetFoundNews in this case). Adding a new article means adding a new value constructor and record to hold the data.

data NewsArticle =

StarFound StarFoundNews

| PlanetFound PlanetFoundNews

| UserWritten UserWrittenNews

| DesignCreated DesignCreatedNews

| ConstructionFinished ConstructionFinishedNews

data PlanetFoundNews = PlanetFoundNews

{ planetFoundNewsPlanetName :: Text

, planetFoundNewsSystemName :: Text

, planetFoundNewsSystemId :: Key StarSystem

, planetFoundNewsPlanetId :: Key Planet

, planetFoundNewsDate :: Int

}

Given a News object, we can turn it into NewsArticle. These are much nicer to deal with that densely packed News that is stored in database:

parseNews :: News -> Maybe NewsArticle

parseNews =

decode . toLazyByteString . encodeUtf8Builder . newsContent

Because parsing arbitrary JSON might fail, we get Maybe NewsArticle, instead of NewsArticle. It is possible to write the same code in longer way:

parseNews news =

let

content = newsContent news

utf8Encoded = encodeUtf8Builder content

byteString = toLazyByteString utf8Encoded

in

decode byteString

Similarly there’s two other functions for dealing with Entities (primary key, data - pair really) and list of Entities. Note that parseNewsEntities filters out all News that it didn’t manage to turn into NewsArticle. They have following signatures:

parseNewsEntity :: Entity News -> (Key News, Maybe NewsArticle)

parseNewsEntities :: [Entity News] -> [(Key News, NewsArticle)]

Writing JSON encoding and decoding is tedious, template Haskell can help us here:

$(deriveJSON defaultOptions ''PlanetFoundNews)

$(deriveJSON defaultOptions ''NewsArticle)

Turning Articles into JSON

News articles aren’t much use if they stay on the server, we need to send them to clients too. We can’t have multiple declarations of same typeclass for any type, so we declare complete ne

Storytelling has had a formula for yearsAndYears. Some people speak of it in disdain ("it was too formulaïc") and others (creative writing and intro film teachers, mostly) praise it. Everybody else (us) is a sucker for it.

Here is the literal formula, in pseudo code:

{A}

{A} Reinforced

{Z}

{A} Returned

{B...Y}

{Z} Returned

You can (and should, because it's free and you can throw out your work if you don't like it) practise this formula by plugging in events to represent A and Z, where A and Z are polar opposites.

Really obvious examples are any given romantic comedy:

{A} Jack is A="single and free"

{A} Scene to reinforce that Jack is in relationships with no strings attached. Jack is {A}.

{Z} Jack meets Jill, realises she makes him happy. He decides he's had enough of being {A} and want to be {Z=married}

{A} Reunion with old school mate makes Jack question his resolve. He leaves Jill so he can be {A}

{B...Y} Plot happens. Jack does stuff, Jill does stuff. Funny? Tragic? You decide!

{Z} Jack realizes at last that he's only happy with Jill, and that being {Z} with Jill is the only way to be truly free.

You can also try it with the old Evil Empire plot line.

{A} Jill is an {A=obedient citizen}. Loves her mama, loves Jesus and America, too.

{A} Scene in which Jill witnesses a Rebel being mistreated unjustly, but does nothing to stand up for what is right, because she is {A}.

{Z} Jill meets Jack, an outlaw and rebel against the Empire. He's in trouble, so she helps him evade the police.

{A} Jill, horrified at her own rebellion, conforms all the more. She is dedicated to the Empire, and works diligently to hunt down Jack and his rag tag band of rebels.

{B...Y} Plot happens. Action, laser guns, laser swords, nationalism, motorcycle gangs.

{Z} Jill, seeing the devastation her allegiance has caused, realises that the Empire is actually Evil. She joins the rebels to fight for freedom.

Now go practice this. Soon you will be telling stories, jokes, and anecdotes that have a clear beginning, a clear conflict, and a clear ending.

For Christmas 2018 Santa – well, Mrs mcnalu – gave me a BBC Model B which was my first computer back in the early 1980s. This request was heavily implied in TuxJam 70 - Gift for Geeks.

I can highly recommend the seller who, as you will hear, was extremely helpful when this 36 year old bundle of 8 bit loveliness became very poorly on Boxing Day. It came with a Turbo MMC installed and you can see it in action on another BBC Model B in this video.

The noise you hear at the start - the beeeeee BEEP - is the sound of me turning on the BBC. I mention in the show that mode 0 of the Beeb, as it is affectionately known, has 80 columns and 40 rows. This isn’t quite right, there are only 32 rows in mode 0.