Full Transcript for Games Without Frontiers

67 00:03:40,020 --> 00:03:43,560 I think the way that like that one we used to all use 68 00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:49,060 uh, like 20 years ago. Wine? Wine, yeah. It's like it's not using wine, it's doing something else. 69 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:55,460 It actually uses wine, it uses Proton, which is built on top of wine. Oh it does! Yeah. Oh it 70 00:03:55,560 --> 00:04:00,660 does. Okay, for some reason I, I always thought that the wines emulation was like too slow for 71 00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:06,960 real games, but I've been, I played a couple of like actual sort of fast-paced games and it seemed 72 00:04:06,960 --> 00:04:13,540 to work really well. And I really want a Steam Machine PC thing. I've been, like for the last 73 00:04:13,540 --> 00:04:18,100 five or six years I've been wanting to buy a new gaming PC but man trying to get a 74 00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:23,000 whole gaming PC up and going is like an experience you know. One of the neat 75 00:04:23,060 --> 00:04:26,600 things if you have a Steam Deck you can take your micro SD card with your games 76 00:04:27,220 --> 00:04:30,780 and plug it into your Bazzite machine and it just works so you can don't have 77 00:04:30,780 --> 00:04:34,260 to install some of your game data in both places so I thought that was kind 78 00:04:34,260 --> 00:04:39,240 of neat to be able to Steam Deck. That's really cool yeah it's it's uh if I had 79 00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:42,920 some PC parts laying around that were like worthy of this I might try out 80 00:04:42,860 --> 00:04:46,640 buys that but I'm like well I've already been holding up for five years or so can 81 00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:49,440 I just hold it a little while longer until Val's steam machine comes out? 82 00:04:50,340 --> 00:04:56,140 Well when you pick one up you'll have to review one on the show. Oh totally. What's your first one for us this episode? 83 00:04:58,300 --> 00:05:02,820 So sewing machines. Sewing machines are pretty nerdy actually. They're 84 00:05:02,960 --> 00:05:06,060 incredible pieces of engineering. If you've never seen how a sewing machine 85 00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:10,680 works it's amazingly complicated yet all that complication is hidden from you the 86 00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:12,140 user, the sewing machine operator, 87 00:05:12,840 --> 00:05:14,580 and they've worked the same way for over 100 years. 88 00:05:15,090 --> 00:05:16,800 I recently took a sewing machine class, 89 00:05:16,850 --> 00:05:19,200 actually a couple of them, learned a lot, had a lot of fun. 90 00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:22,220 If you've seen the things on how sewing machines work, 91 00:05:22,280 --> 00:05:24,420 like I'll link to a Veritasium video that's pretty good. 92 00:05:25,020 --> 00:05:26,920 The sewing machine actually has two threads, 93 00:05:26,980 --> 00:05:28,000 a top and a bottom thread, 94 00:05:28,330 --> 00:05:31,620 and it locks those threads together across the fabric 95 00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:34,260 to bind the two pieces of fabric together. 96 00:05:34,900 --> 00:05:36,660 And it does this via a hidden mechanism 97 00:05:36,820 --> 00:05:38,040 where it kind of, you know, 98 00:05:38,220 --> 00:05:40,660 it ties the two threads together 99 00:05:40,660 --> 00:05:43,400 you seeing any of this, and it does that a hundred times a minute. 100 00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:48,040 This lock stitch that it creates is really strong, and you can change 101 00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:51,700 both the horizontal and vertical spacing of the stitching via some knobs 102 00:05:51,700 --> 00:05:55,600 on the sewing machine to give you different effects of the stitch, 103 00:05:55,700 --> 00:05:57,780 like maybe make it a stretchy stitch. 104 00:05:58,140 --> 00:06:01,600 And sewing machines come with a wide variety of adjustment knobs and levers, 105 00:06:02,020 --> 00:06:03,720 and that can be a little daunting if you look at it. 106 00:06:03,820 --> 00:06:06,280 It looks almost like a Rube Goldberg machine. 107 00:06:06,740 --> 00:06:09,260 But after you take a little class, get your good instructions from somebody, 108 00:06:09,300 --> 00:06:11,960 It's pretty obvious and the intro class I took, 109 00:06:12,040 --> 00:06:12,940 they walked us through all the, 110 00:06:13,060 --> 00:06:15,120 how all the different settings change the stitch 111 00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:18,180 and that most of the time you can just ignore all that 112 00:06:18,540 --> 00:06:20,460 and just use the machine with standard settings, 113 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:21,520 which is pretty cool. 114 00:06:21,580 --> 00:06:24,780 I thought you'd have to like be manipulating the knobs 115 00:06:25,140 --> 00:06:26,400 all the time, but you don't. 116 00:06:26,940 --> 00:06:28,960 If you're interested in learning about sewing machines 117 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:32,060 yourself, you can find cheap classes on sewing machines 118 00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:34,140 from community colleges, makerspaces, 119 00:06:34,720 --> 00:06:36,940 or even for free from family members who sew. 120 00:06:37,700 --> 00:06:41,300 Like when I was a little kid, my grandma tried to teach me sewing, and I wish I'd paid more 121 00:06:41,340 --> 00:06:46,440 attention because all I can remember is that she had me thread up thread on a bobbin. 122 00:06:47,380 --> 00:06:48,900 So I remember how to do that. 123 00:06:49,640 --> 00:06:53,540 The classes that I took were from a local craft-oriented maker space, and they had several 124 00:06:53,600 --> 00:06:57,580 other useful upcoming classes once you've taken these intro ones, like how to make your 125 00:06:57,640 --> 00:06:58,680 own hoodies and sweatshirts. 126 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:03,820 They had a whole stack of fleece material that was ready for people to start cutting 127 00:07:04,340 --> 00:07:07,020 out the pattern and sew them together to make your own hoodies. 128 00:07:07,580 --> 00:07:19,620 And I learned for the instructors there that many places like this also let you either borrow a

machine or kind of like stay in the place and use the machine at different times of the day. 129 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:21,540 So you don't even have to own a machine. 130 00:07:21,550 --> 00:07:23,180 You can just like borrow one essentially. 131 00:07:24,120 --> 00:07:34,400 But if you do want to buy one, sewing machines, like a good starter machine I've learned is only about 250 bucks brand new, which compared to all this other tech gadgets we buy is pretty cheap, you know. 132 00:07:36,660 --> 00:07:38,800 when our phones cost over $1,000. 133 00:07:39,380 --> 00:07:39,500 Right. 134 00:07:40,880 --> 00:07:43,340 So why did I take sewing machine classes? 135 00:07:43,780 --> 00:07:46,980 Mostly I'm interested in making some little custom bags 136 00:07:47,100 --> 00:07:48,640 and dust covers for various gadgets, 137 00:07:48,800 --> 00:07:50,760 like my synthesizers and keyboards and stuff. 138 00:07:51,240 --> 00:07:53,720 Also maybe sew up some holes that are 139 00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:54,860 in some favorite pair of jeans. 140 00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:58,020 There's a couple of shirts that I have that are little boxy, 141 00:07:58,060 --> 00:07:59,920 and I like to maybe hem them in a bit 142 00:07:59,920 --> 00:08:01,980 to make it look a little bit more fitted. 143 00:08:02,700 --> 00:08:07,120 So yeah, everyone I recommend give a sewing machine a try. 144 00:08:07,380 --> 00:08:09,660 They're really fun pieces of technology. 145 00:08:10,140 --> 00:08:12,040 You may have one already hiding in your house, 146 00:08:12,560 --> 00:08:14,260 you know, in the garage, in the basement. 147 00:08:14,840 --> 00:08:18,040 And there's lots of YouTube videos to help you get started 148 00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:19,100 if you don't want to take a class. 149 00:08:19,500 --> 00:08:21,240 I've included a playlist of one example, 150 00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:23,640 but just type in "How to Use a Sewing Machine" on YouTube 151 00:08:23,880 --> 00:08:24,600 and you'll find a bunch. 152 00:08:25,320 --> 00:08:25,900 - See, I'm spoiled. 153 00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:27,820 My partner is really into sewing. 154 00:08:28,640 --> 00:08:31,040 She's got a number of sewing machines, a couple of antiques. 155 00:08:31,560 --> 00:08:35,000 So I've never had to learn it because I just asked her to do it 156 00:08:36,899 --> 00:08:41,740 You've got an expert in the house exactly and you know going back years and years before the rise of Facebook groups 157 00:08:41,820 --> 00:08:48,280 She ran a really big online sewing community and put together sewing get-togethers where people would fly in and they would all sew for the weekend 158 00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:53,140 And that kind of stuff. So oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah, there's really cool communities built all around sewing 159 00:08:53,940 --> 00:09:00,080 Yeah, it's and it can be amazingly complicated if you want it to be but it can also be like just I want to hem up 160 00:09:00,020 --> 00:09:01,920 my jeans two inches or something, you know. 161 00:09:04,080 --> 00:09:05,860 All right, Paul, what's your one for this week? 162 00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:08,680 - My second pick is a roundup of recent CAD news, 163 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:11,520 starting with Hackaday's recent story on brep.io. 164 00:09:12,540 --> 00:09:14,300 Brep is a brand new from scratch 165 00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:15,840 boundary representation kernel. 166 00:09:16,620 --> 00:09:18,760 Brep.io is a new browser-based CAD 167 00:09:18,860 --> 00:09:21,040 where all computation is done on the client side, 168 00:09:21,540 --> 00:09:22,840 including the complex operations 169 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:24,360 like fillets, lofts, and more. 170 00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:26,240 They even have a live demo for you 171 00:09:26,260 --> 00:09:28,580 to give it a try running at brep.io. 172 00:09:29,300 --> 00:09:31,840 Check out the story at Hackaday, follow the project page, 173 00:09:31,960 --> 00:09:33,580 or check out the GitHub repository. 174 00:09:34,860 --> 00:09:37,960 Next up is MicroCAD, which is very young 175 00:09:37,980 --> 00:09:40,180 in its development and still is an alpha stage. 176 00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:42,800 Their homepage calls it a new open source 177 00:09:43,140 --> 00:09:45,320 programming language that can generate 2D sketches 178 00:09:45,500 --> 00:09:46,540 and 3D objects. 179 00:09:47,180 --> 00:09:49,200 The easiest comparison that came to mind to me 180 00:09:49,220 --> 00:09:51,160 is probably something like OpenSCAD. 181 00:09:51,820 --> 00:09:53,040 They've got some really neat videos 182 00:09:53,080 --> 00:09:55,160 of how they're using MicroCAD to create models, 183 00:09:55,300 --> 00:09:57,660 including a logo, Lego bricks, gears, and more. 184 00:09:59,060 --> 00:10:03,500 And then lastly is CADQuest, a website to help you level up your CAD skills. 185 00:10:04,180 --> 00:10:07,500 It has a free and a paid tier, but I haven't tried it out personally. 186 00:10:08,180 --> 00:10:12,260 They claim it works with any CAD software, but it really looks like they prefer SolidWorks. 187 00:10:12,740 --> 00:10:16,200 So if you're into gamification to level up your CAD skills, it might be worth checking 188 00:10:16,380 --> 00:10:16,560 out. 189 00:10:17,220 --> 00:10:18,980 Lots of links in the show notes to all of them. 190 00:10:19,660 --> 00:10:20,620 Oh, that's really cool. 191 00:10:20,940 --> 00:10:23,400 I'm a big fan of OpenSCAD, OpenSCAD. 192 00:10:24,380 --> 00:10:26,100 It's got a really old interface though, 193 00:10:26,100 --> 00:10:28,540 'cause it's been around for 20 years or something. 194 00:10:29,040 --> 00:10:31,680 But there's all these CAD, sorry, 195 00:10:31,900 --> 00:10:34,080 browser-based systems now, like Onshape 196 00:10:34,320 --> 00:10:36,020 is a professional CAD system 197 00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:39,100 that you pay thousands of dollars per year for, 198 00:10:39,300 --> 00:10:41,280 and it's all entirely browser-based. 199 00:10:41,700 -->

00:10:44,300 Like, why doesn't this exist in a more open-source way? 200 00:10:44,380 --> 00:10:48,000 And it's really cool to see some of these CAD systems 201 00:10:48,440 --> 00:10:51,920 that are available just so nicely there. 202 00:10:52,020 --> 00:10:54,140 I really want to try out this B-Rep. 203 00:10:55,320 --> 00:10:56,300 Yeah, I'm not quite sure either. 204 00:10:57,639 --> 00:10:58,040 [LAUGHTER] 205 00:10:59,300 --> 00:11:00,180 But it does look interesting. 206 00:11:00,839 --> 00:11:01,520 Totally, yeah. 207 00:11:02,220 --> 00:11:03,280 What's your next one for us? 208 00:11:03,860 --> 00:11:06,680 All right, so I do all the synthesizer stuff. 209 00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:09,360 And someone that I've been following on YouTube for a while 210 00:11:09,520 --> 00:11:11,280 is this guy named Moritz Klein. 211 00:11:11,540 --> 00:11:12,620 He's an online instructor. 212 00:11:12,860 --> 00:11:15,000 I think that's kind of what he described himself as. 213 00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:16,660 He's also a circuit designer. 214 00:11:17,220 --> 00:11:18,340 And he does this all on YouTube. 215 00:11:18,900 --> 00:11:21,440 And it's all for analog synth circuits. 216 00:11:22,060 --> 00:11:23,600 And the reason why I bring him up 217 00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:25,800 is because his most recent video that came out 218 00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:28,220 a couple of weeks ago is how to build a drum 219 00:11:28,460 --> 00:11:32,980 sequencer using just chips, digital chips, analog chips, 220 00:11:33,440 --> 00:11:34,880 no coding, no microcontroller. 221 00:11:35,440 --> 00:11:37,320 And the whole thing is really understandable. 222 00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:41,220 It's the way that sequencers were made back 223 00:11:41,380 --> 00:11:43,200 when the original sequencers were made, 224 00:11:43,860 --> 00:11:45,420 like in the 1970s or whatever. 225 00:11:45,940 --> 00:11:48,840 But what's really cool is that the sequencer he designs 226 00:11:49,460 --> 00:11:52,160 has been simplified, has been kind of pared down 227 00:11:52,260 --> 00:11:53,700 to just what's necessary. 228 00:11:54,260 --> 00:11:55,880 So it's really understandable, and it 229 00:11:55,920 --> 00:11:56,880 makes it easier to implement. 230 00:11:57,700 --> 00:12:00,140 And it's also-- the choices he's made 231 00:12:00,180 --> 00:12:03,380 has made it very usable in the final form, the final circuit 232 00:12:03,500 --> 00:12:04,240 he builds. 233 00:12:04,780 --> 00:12:07,640 And the video he has walks you entirely all the way 234 00:12:07,780 --> 00:12:09,480 through that and kind of his thought processes 235 00:12:09,660 --> 00:12:12,540 as to why some of the things he's done he did. 236 00:12:13,140 --> 00:12:14,699 This drum sequencer video is the latest 237 00:12:14,700 --> 00:12:16,780 in his series of building a whole set of modules 238 00:12:16,840 --> 00:12:18,820 to implement a analog drum machine, 239 00:12:19,330 --> 00:12:22,260 sort of like the venerable TR-808 or TR-606,

240 00:12:22,290 --> 00:12:23,540 you might've heard the drum sounds from. 241 00:12:24,300 --> 00:12:25,840 All these videos are very approachable 242 00:12:26,400 --> 00:12:28,300 and the sounds that come from his circuits 243 00:12:28,460 --> 00:12:29,340 sound really nice. 244 00:12:29,460 --> 00:12:31,320 They sound like in some ways, 245 00:12:31,540 --> 00:12:33,780 exactly what you'd expect from these analog drum sounds, 246 00:12:34,080 --> 00:12:35,840 but also they're tunable in ways 247 00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:37,820 that the original circuits weren't. 248 00:12:38,090 --> 00:12:40,040 So you can make new sounds, which is really neat. 249 00:12:40,460 --> 00:12:42,260 These drum synths videos do assume you know 250 00:12:42,320 --> 00:12:43,479 how to read a schematic 251 00:12:43,480 --> 00:12:45,120 and have a basic understanding of electronics, 252 00:12:45,460 --> 00:12:47,100 but he has another series for beginners 253 00:12:47,920 --> 00:12:49,600 that teaches you those skills 254 00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:52,340 while also helping you build little synthesizer circuits. 255 00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:53,440 So it's really nice. 256 00:12:54,040 --> 00:12:57,520 And if you are worried about getting 257 00:12:58,220 --> 00:13:00,200 the physical stuff hooked up, 258 00:13:00,500 --> 00:13:03,320 he also works with the fairly famous modular synth company, 259 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:06,320 Erika Synths, to make a set of DIY kits 260 00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:08,180 that are based on his videos. 261 00:13:08,800 --> 00:13:13,280 And one of his kits is this thing called the EduLabor. 262 00:13:13,460 --> 00:13:21,259 I think it's a it's a it's a breadboard system that has a bunch of parts already built for you to let you power and 263 00:13:22,060 --> 00:13:28,160 Monitor like with a little tiny oscilloscope and control like with knobs and buttons and stuff the circuits you build on a breadboard 264 00:13:28,980 --> 00:13:33,560 And of course you can always just wire up wire up all the circuits that he talks about on your own breadboard 265 00:13:33,700 --> 00:13:34,520 This is kind of what I do 266 00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:40,539 but having the labor would make it a lot faster because I'd have to like pull out my little 267 00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:43,920 Power supply and pull out my knobs that I can plug in the breadboard 268 00:13:43,950 --> 00:13:46,040 But the labore has all that kind of already set up, you know 269 00:13:46,050 --> 00:13:49,540 So it'd be much faster and so even though I've been doing electronics for decades 270 00:13:50,540 --> 00:13:54,000 Watching his videos has improved my analog skills, which I don't use nearly enough 271 00:13:54,640 --> 00:14:00,380 And it's helped me think about how to implement some of these emulations of analog sense circuits in code, which is where mostly I live 272 00:14:01,360 --> 00:14:02,040 So so yeah 273 00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:07,680 I think it's highly recommended two thumbs up if you're interested in how analog sense work or just analog circuits give this video a try 274 00:14:07,820 --> 00:14:09,179 I'll have links in the show notes 275 00:14:09,180 --> 00:14:15,620 Yeah, I took a look at the labor and it's it's an investment. It's about $300 or I think 260 euros 276 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:16,760 But it looks really neat 277 00:14:16,800 --> 00:14:18,460 It's got the the breadboard lying around 278 00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:23,960 In the middle and then laying around it is all those different modular stuff that you can plug in which 279 00:14:24,500 --> 00:14:30,340 Tended to go for what I think of about 60 to 70 euros as well the plug-in so really neat system 280 00:14:30,740 --> 00:14:34,099 Yeah, yeah, it does all this stuff all the all the music stuff is always so expensive 281 00:14:34,100 --> 00:14:35,200 and it's always kind of a bummer. 282 00:14:35,560 --> 00:14:38,780 And like, it's like, oh, then I'll just save the money 283 00:14:38,900 --> 00:14:41,140 and do it all myself with a normal breadboard, 284 00:14:41,210 --> 00:14:43,300 which is totally doable, but, oh man. 285 00:14:44,350 --> 00:14:46,940 So yeah, I don't have any of the Labore stuff, 286 00:14:47,100 --> 00:14:49,660 but it's something on my wishlist 287 00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:52,000 if anyone wealthy wants to buy it for me. 288 00:14:52,820 --> 00:14:55,120 - Well, our GitHub sponsorship page is open, so. 289 00:14:55,500 --> 00:14:55,860 - That's right. 290 00:14:57,060 --> 00:14:59,080 All right, Paul, what's your final one for this time? 291 00:14:59,560 --> 00:15:00,940 - Way back in episode nine, 292 00:15:00,940 --> 00:15:02,440 we talked about Radio Free Fedi, 293 00:15:02,580 --> 00:15:05,900 a streaming radio station made up of artists on the Fetaverse like Mastodon. 294 00:15:06,780 --> 00:15:11,920 Just over a year ago, Radio Free Fedi shut down on January 1st, 2025. It was a lot of 295 00:15:12,040 --> 00:15:15,300 work for one person to curate all the music, prep it for listening, and manage all the 296 00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:19,480 infrastructure behind it, and I'm glad we had it for the time we did. I've linked 297 00:15:19,480 --> 00:15:22,860 to an article in the show notes that breaks down the timeline of how the station came 298 00:15:22,860 --> 00:15:23,500 to an end. 299 00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:28,859 But all is not lost. The Indie Beat Radio was raised out of the ashes to share Fetaverse 300 00:15:28,860 --> 00:15:34,580 musicians with the world. The Indie Beat Radio federates with Bandwagon FM, which is an alternative 301 00:15:34,740 --> 00:15:39,280 to Bandcamp, allowing artists to sell their music online using their own Stripe account 302 00:15:39,280 --> 00:15:45,020 to keep 100% of the revenue, unlike Bandcamp. It's also federated with Mastodon, Loops, 303 00:15:45,020 --> 00:15:50,560 and more to share their music with their fans, and it's 100% open source. Artists who opt 304 00:15:50,560 --> 00:15:54,979 in on Bandwagon

can have their songs stream on the Indie Beat Radio, which features over 305 00:15:54,980 --> 00:15:59,780 thousand different tracks. Where Radio Free Fedi featured just a few channels, the Indie 306 00:15:59,850 --> 00:16:05,040 Beat Radio has ten channels, streaming everything from Bonkwave to Jazz to an Everything channel 307 00:16:05,160 --> 00:16:09,760 to Rock and more. Friend of the show Andy Piper even created a GNOME Shell extension 308 00:16:09,860 --> 00:16:13,700 for listening to the station if you're a GNOME user. And then they took it to another 309 00:16:13,800 --> 00:16:19,320 level on Sunday, December 28th, and launched the Indie Beat Television. Imagine MTV, but 310 00:16:19,360 --> 00:16:24,960 by Fetaverse Musicians. The Sunday that it launched, I just happened to be up at 6am 311 00:16:24,960 --> 00:16:29,480 time for the launch and I'm glad I did. I was blown away by the quality of the videos. 312 00:16:29,920 --> 00:16:33,600 I knew there were some really good musicians, but there are some great visual artists too. 313 00:16:34,240 --> 00:16:38,000 Visit the homepage to see the schedule of different shows that are available, including 314 00:16:38,140 --> 00:16:42,600 one that is just animation videos, which are really cool. And the timing couldn't be better. 315 00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:46,860 On New Year's Eve, MTV announced it was shutting down its remaining music channels. 316 00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:50,460 So now you can visit the Indie Beat television when you need a video fix. 317 00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:55,120 A big shout out to everyone who has donated their time to these projects, including Ben 318 00:16:55,200 --> 00:17:01,040 Pate of Bandwagon.fm, Kirsten Lambertson of the Indie Beat Radio, friend of the show Axwax, 319 00:17:01,340 --> 00:17:03,560 Limebar, and I'm sure I'm missing more. 320 00:17:04,140 --> 00:17:06,920 Go check out the streams for both the Indie Beat Radio and television. 321 00:17:07,760 --> 00:17:09,040 That's too bad about MTV. 322 00:17:09,180 --> 00:17:11,579 On the one hand, it's like, yes, we outlived MTV. 323 00:17:12,439 --> 00:17:17,299 On the other hand, it's like, man, MTV was like, when it first started, it introduced 324 00:17:17,300 --> 00:17:21,140 me to so much music that was not playing on normal radio. 325 00:17:21,839 --> 00:17:23,740 Like later, it became like a super popular thing. 326 00:17:23,780 --> 00:17:26,040 And so it became an echo of what was on popular radio. 327 00:17:26,140 --> 00:17:29,920 But those original VJs were just playing stuff you would never hear unless it was 328 00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:31,640 unless you were near a cool college. 329 00:17:32,320 --> 00:17:36,520 So, hey, now we've got college radio across the Fediverse with with Indie Beat 330 00:17:36,700 --> 00:17:38,860 Radio and Indie Beat Television. 331 00:17:38,900 --> 00:17:39,260 This is cool. 332 00:17:39,300 --> 00:17:40,240 Exactly. It's pretty neat. 333 00:17:40,300 --> 00:17:44,520 I've

been tuning in just even just in the background at times and some of the 334 00:17:44,580 --> 00:17:47,060 songs, I'll whip my head around and go, that was really good. 335 00:17:47,100 --> 00:17:49,400 and I have to look up who the artist is and write it down. 336 00:17:50,280 --> 00:17:50,380 - Totally. 337 00:17:51,100 --> 00:17:52,220 - What's your last one for us? 338 00:17:52,860 --> 00:17:55,960 - All right, so something tonally shift back down 339 00:17:55,960 --> 00:18:00,660 to the super nerd level of GitHub and get repos and stuff. 340 00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:03,340 In GitHub, there's this thing called GitHub Actions. 341 00:18:03,780 --> 00:18:04,340 They're really cool. 342 00:18:04,780 --> 00:18:06,980 You set up this little YAML config file 343 00:18:07,540 --> 00:18:10,000 and save it in a special directory in your repo. 344 00:18:10,540 --> 00:18:12,560 And anytime you do a specific action, 345 00:18:13,120 --> 00:18:16,020 like say, commit a file, publish a version of your repo, 346 00:18:16,180 --> 00:18:19,360 create a new tagging repo, GitHub will spin up a server, 347 00:18:19,960 --> 00:18:24,200 run the code in that config file, and give you the output. 348 00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:26,780 And so what people often use this for 349 00:18:26,900 --> 00:18:28,740 is for continuous integration tests 350 00:18:28,900 --> 00:18:31,580 where it'll recompile all the code in the repo 351 00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:34,500 and run tests against it to see if the thing you just checked 352 00:18:34,580 --> 00:18:35,640 in broke the build. 353 00:18:36,100 --> 00:18:38,020 And then it'll send emails or whatever out to people 354 00:18:38,180 --> 00:18:39,120 saying, hey, you messed up. 355 00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:40,440 So it's really great. 356 00:18:40,460 --> 00:18:41,680 There's a bunch of other cool things. 357 00:18:41,780 --> 00:18:43,280 If you do CircuitPython development, 358 00:18:43,380 --> 00:18:45,780 you'll notice that if you have a library, 359 00:18:45,820 --> 00:18:46,700 if you're doing a library, 360 00:18:47,220 --> 00:18:49,040 when you create a new version of your library, 361 00:18:49,220 --> 00:18:51,380 it'll automatically create all the build products 362 00:18:51,500 --> 00:18:55,440 that the CircuitPython tools need to publish your library 363 00:18:55,840 --> 00:18:57,440 to Circup and other places. 364 00:18:57,980 --> 00:18:58,800 So it's just kind of magical. 365 00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:02,280 The hard part is getting that config file, 366 00:19:02,380 --> 00:19:05,080 that YAML config file formatted correctly 367 00:19:05,100 --> 00:19:06,800 to do the things you actually need it to do. 368 00:19:07,220 --> 00:19:08,740 How do you actually see what changes happen 369 00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:10,660 is while you make a change to the file, 370 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:12,880 you check it in, you commit it, 371 00:19:12,940 --> 00:19:14,280 just like any other file in your repo, 372 00:19:14,760 --> 00:19:16,600 and then you wait for the action to run on GitHub, 373 00:19:17,360 --> 00:19:19,580 and then you see how it breaks, and then you repeat. 374 00:19:19,700 --> 00:19:20,780 And that can take a little while. 375 00:19:23,820 --> 00:19:27,660 So there is a cool tool called ACT, just A-C-T, 376 00:19:28,180 --> 00:19:31,740 that lets you run GitHub actions locally on your computer 377 00:19:32,220 --> 00:19:33,480 or on your local server. 378 00:19:34,650 --> 00:19:37,340 You just CD into your local repo and you run ACT. 379 00:19:37,940 --> 00:19:40,399 And you can give it command line arguments if you want 380 00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:43,000 for more detailed fine-grained running, 381 00:19:43,100 --> 00:19:44,280 but that's pretty much all you need to do. 382 00:19:44,860 --> 00:19:47,500 And ACT works with the power of Docker, of course. 383 00:19:49,140 --> 00:19:51,400 It's not exactly the virtual environments 384 00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:53,680 that GitHub uses for its action runners, 385 00:19:53,840 --> 00:19:54,500 but it's pretty close. 386 00:19:54,940 --> 00:19:58,860 You can tune the size of the Docker images it uses. 387 00:19:58,860 --> 00:20:00,940 If you're doing something really standard 388 00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:05,060 that's just like some simple like Node.js libraries 389 00:20:05,060 --> 00:20:07,700 or something, you don't need a really big VM, 390 00:20:08,040 --> 00:20:10,360 a really big Docker image to do that, to do those tests. 391 00:20:11,060 --> 00:20:13,080 For me, because I'm doing like usually hardware stuff, 392 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:16,000 I kind of need like the biggest Ubuntu Docker image 393 00:20:16,120 --> 00:20:20,560 to sort of fake out the system to know that I had installed 394 00:20:20,640 --> 00:20:22,880 the various USB level drivers and stuff. 395 00:20:23,460 --> 00:20:26,900 While ACT is kind of geared towards Linux based actions, 396 00:20:27,600 --> 00:20:32,120 you can also do Mac OS and Windows GitHub actions 397 00:20:32,560 --> 00:20:33,680 if you're on those systems. 398 00:20:33,960 --> 00:20:36,519 By the way, if you didn't know that you could run 399 00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:39,880 Mac-based and Windows-based GitHub actions, you can, 400 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:40,600 and it's cool. 401 00:20:40,780 --> 00:20:42,460 It's one of the ways I test my programs 402 00:20:42,580 --> 00:20:43,780 across multiple architectures. 403 00:20:44,340 --> 00:20:46,600 But you can also run your GitHub actions locally 404 00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:48,740 if you have a Mac or a Windows box. 405 00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:51,480 What I've been using it for is to do the sort of 406 00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:53,980 iterative design of getting the YAML config file. 407 00:20:54,400 --> 00:20:56,840 Usually I'll have a separate repo that I use 408 00:20:56,980 --> 00:20:58,720 for testing all the changes, 409 00:20:58,840 --> 00:21:00,900 'cause one of the things you'll see is, 410 00:21:02,140 --> 00:21:04,100 for every time you

wanna make a change to the YAML file 411 00:21:04,140 --> 00:21:06,020 as another check-in to your GitHub, 412 00:21:06,360 --> 00:21:10,780 you have this history of this litter in your GitHub history 413 00:21:10,870 --> 00:21:12,500 of just all the things you've done 414 00:21:12,580 --> 00:21:14,320 to try to make the config file work. 415 00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:16,860 And so I've been doing that in a separate repo usually, 416 00:21:17,360 --> 00:21:19,080 but now I can do it locally instead 417 00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:21,660 without cluttering up my Git history. 418 00:21:22,730 --> 00:21:22,820 (laughs) 419 00:21:22,820 --> 00:21:24,060 So I'm hoping it'll be a little faster for me. 420 00:21:24,060 --> 00:21:25,460 I just discovered this a couple of days ago. 421 00:21:25,840 --> 00:21:26,520 So it's early days. 422 00:21:27,140 --> 00:21:28,020 - That's gotta be faster 423 00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:29,900 because I don't think everyone realizes too 424 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:31,220 that on the free tier of GitHub, 425 00:21:32,500 --> 00:21:33,360 you've got to check it in. 426 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:34,260 And like you said, 427 00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:35,820 kind of messes up your commit history. 428 00:21:37,020 --> 00:21:39,100 But then you have to wait for an available runner to start. 429 00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:40,380 So if you can do it locally, 430 00:21:40,540 --> 00:21:43,380 you're just saving seconds just there. 431 00:21:43,520 --> 00:21:45,560 By the time you're doing multiple of these, 432 00:21:45,620 --> 00:21:46,640 you're saving a lot of time. 433 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:50,080 While the GitHub Linux runners are usually pretty fast, 434 00:21:50,780 --> 00:21:54,060 the Windows and Mac runners on GitHub 435 00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:55,280 are actually pretty slow. 436 00:21:55,880 --> 00:21:58,080 And so if you've got a spare laptop 437 00:21:58,820 --> 00:22:00,040 running one of those OSs 438 00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:03,420 and you need to do Windows or Mac type builds, 439 00:22:03,980 --> 00:22:06,220 then doing it locally could be so much faster. 440 00:22:06,360 --> 00:22:08,060 Like, you know, just waiting after, 441 00:22:08,420 --> 00:22:11,040 wait five minutes for the Windows runner to become available 442 00:22:11,420 --> 00:22:13,020 and then run the Windows runner, 443 00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:15,840 which seems to run at like 1/5 the speed of my laptop. 444 00:22:17,340 --> 00:22:17,660 (laughing) 445 00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:18,780 It's like, come on. 446 00:22:19,260 --> 00:22:20,160 - And I'm looking at their homepage, 447 00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:21,580 it looks like it's available in Homebrew 448 00:22:21,700 --> 00:22:23,000 to run on Mac OS as well. 449 00:22:23,760 --> 00:22:26,260 - Yeah, yeah, just do brew install act and you'll get it. 450 00:22:26,740 --> 00:22:28,340 Yeah, I've been mostly playing with this in Linux right now 451 00:22:28,420 --> 00:22:30,260 because that's kind of where I do a lot 452 00:22:30,260 --> 00:22:32,320 of my iterative stuff for the actions. 453 00:22:32,900 --> 00:22:37,280 But yeah, we'll see if I start to move into the Windows thing or the Mac thing. 454 00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:38,320 I think it'll be pretty cool. 455 00:22:38,710 --> 00:22:39,360 That is pretty cool. 456 00:22:40,560 --> 00:22:41,200 Well, that's our show. 457 00:22:41,580 --> 00:22:46,100 For detailed show notes and transcripts, visit www.thebootloader.net. 458 00:22:46,740 --> 00:22:48,240 You can also order a free sticker. 459 00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:51,980 We've got stickers available and linked to that on the homepage as well. 460 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:54,580 Until next time, stay positive. 461 00:22:54,820 --> 00:22:55,520 (bright music)