Shannon is a producer & podcast host on Hak5 and TekThing. She discusses her early obsession with technology & how she moved into the podcasting world.

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Show Notes:

• Hak5 – Home
• TekThing
• Home – Shannon Morse
• Shannon Morse (@Snubs) | Twitter

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found below:

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I”m Angela.
PAIGE: So Angela, today we had an awesome opportunity to interview Shannon Morse. She’s a new media podcasting host. She’s known for the show Hak5 and also TekThing is her new show. We got to talk to her about how she got into everything, gaming, and all sorts of fun topics.
ANGELA: Yes, we sure did. And before we get into the interview, I’d like to mention Digital Ocean. If you go to digitalocean.com and use the promo code heywtr, you can save on simple cloud hosting dedictated to offering the most intuative and easy way to spin up a cloud server. You can create a cloud server in 55 seconds, and pricing plans start at only $5.00 a month. That’s 512 megabytes of RAM, 20 gigabytes SSD, 1 CPU, and 1 terabyte transfer. Digital Ocean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. And the interface is incredibly simple, intuitive. The control panel is awesome. It will help you design exactly what you need, which empowers users to replicate on large scales with the company’s straightforward API. Check out digitalocean.com by using promo code heywtr.
PAIGE: And we got started with our interview today by asking Shannon what’s she’s up to in tech these days.
SHANNON: So, I am a producer and host of several different tech shows on the internets, on YouTube and on RSS feeds all over the place. Specifically, my main shows right now are Hak5, H-A-K-5 over at Hak5.org, and TekThing, which is T-E-K Thing dot com. ANd both of these involve, well Hak is obviously about hacking and internet security. And then the TekThing show, that one is about technology in general for consumers.
PAIGE: So you’re like a new media entertainer? Would you fit into that category?
SHANNON: Yeah. Yeah, I guess you would say that. You know, I was just filling out my tax docs and I was like, uh, what do I put my profession as. I guess I’ll just pick journalism.
ANGELA: Yep, I know how that goes.
PAIGE: I get to fall under the consultant category for almost everything. So how did you get into that? New media is, such like a, if we can use that term, it’s such a new thing. It’s kind of all over the place. What started that for you?
SHANNON: Well, I’ve always been interested in technology and stuff like that. And then I didn’t discover podcasting or internet media until I was in college. So, it was probably like 2003 or 2004. And I was really, really in to video games at the time. Which, I still am even though I don’t have enough time to do it these days. And my friend and I discovered this podcast called Pure Ownage up in Canada.
PAIGE: Oh my god, I love Pure Ownage.
SHANNON: Yes, me too. I’m so excited that they’re working on their movie right now. I backed it on Kickstarter when they did that. Or Indiegogo. So, my best friend and I, we drove like 20 hours from Missouri all the way up to Canada for the weekend, just to see this live premier. I fell in love with the community, and I fell in love with like how there was no middle man between the host of the show and the characters and their fans. So you could just walk up to them and like chill at a bar after their live premier show. So, for me, it felt like it was the perfect middle ground of loving technology and being able to enjoy it with your fans as well.
PAIGE: That’s really — I would have never really thought of that end of it. That there’s no middle man between the fan and the person. Because I always think about it from the technology standpoint. To say there’s no — especially then — there was no middle man between me and the content. Like, that came right from the producers of the content to me as a consumer.
SHANNON: Yeah.
PAIGE: And back then they had to just host it on their site and you had to download it. There was no YouTube or anything.
SHANNON: Yeah. A lot of us who are working in podcasting, we don’t have agents or anything like that. So the only thing that’s holding us back from reaching out to people is actually getting out of our house and getting out from in front of the cameras and going outside into the sun and enjoying time with real people. So yeah, I fell in love with it. And then after that I just started talking to the right people. I ended up meeting the guys from Hak5 and they asked me if I wanted to move out to Virginia, as weird as that is. But I moved into the Hak house, as it was called back in day. ANd they invited me on the show after I did a little bit of camera work behind the scenes. At that time I just had a full-time job and I just kind of did it as a hobby. But eventually it turned into a big full-time gig. So I’m really happy that it did.
ANGELA: So, I obviously am into podcasting. We go to conventions in different places. Mainly local, like Washington, Oregon, California, but we did Ohio an Ohio fest for technology related stuff. I get a lot of people coming up to me saying, Angela. And I’m like hi, I don’t know you. But they know everything about me. You know, has that happened to you?
SHANNON: Yes. Very much so. Most likely it’s happened most often at a convention called DEFCON. Which is in Las Vegas. That’s the biggest hacker convention in the US and possibly the world. I’ll have to check my facts on that. But yeah, I’ll go there and I’m walking down to the room where we set up our booth and we do all of our interviews and everything. People will stop me and they’ll be like, oh my god congratulations on getting married. And I’m just like, I forgot I posted that publically. Thank you.
ANGELA: Right.
SHANNON: It’s a little awkward, but I’m like dude it’s so cool that people are willing to come up and be just be like, hey congrats, and I’m like cool, give me a hug.
ANGELA: Yeah. Yeah.
PAIGE: Yeah, I actually had that experience when I first met Angela, because I had been a follower of Jupiter Broadcasting for a long time and she post so prolifically about her kids and her awesome photography of her kids and I’m like, I feel like I just know you and we just met. It’s cool to get to know the person behind it, but definitely and interesting experience.
SHANNON: Yeah. Totally.
PAIGE: And like my experience with meeting Chris at the convention, because I was star struck. Before I asked him, I was like oh I’m so nervous. Maybe he’ll just give me some advice on podcasting and it will be great.
SHANNON: I don’t try to act too star struck whenever I meet other podcasters that I listen to all the time, but sometimes you just can’t help it.
ANGELA: Yeah, I’ve had people come up and their like, I don’t really know what to say. I’m like, but I’m — it’s really cool to actually meet you. It’s really neat.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to make a confession that I was actually really nervous to ask Shannon to be on the show, because I have been watching Hak5 since before she came on Hak5 and I kind of watched her journey and that’s been really awesome to see. Especially because when it got started it was such a dude show and as a woman watching the show I was always like, yeah this is cool. And they had that one chick would kind of stop in and do some gaming stuff once in a while.
SHANNON: I’ll be honest, it was very intimidating when I first started on the show. I was not involved with the hacker community very at the time. And I was just kind of getting my feet wet into the whole process of learning all of the information that’s out there about hacking and internet security. But in the, god how long have I been doing this? Seven years? Oh my gosh, that’s a long time. So in the seven years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve learned so, so much. And I feel like a lot of this is, it’s just because I’ve gotten so involved and I made sure to ask the right questions. I come to it as a, no question is a stupid question. So I’m going to be person to ask that question, even though other people might look at me and think I’m stupid, I don’t care, because other people have those questions, but they’re afraid to ask them. I felt like I’ve grown so much just by being a part of this show and it’s been really informative for me. And I’m glad that I have some female fans out there. It makes me very happy.
ANGELA: What was your focus in college? Was it a technical degree?
SHANNON: It wasn’t, as weird as that is. I probably should have gone into theater at the time, but I didn’t, because I was obsessed with theater. I went into hospitality and restaurant administration. So I guess what I took out of college, mostly, was the business perspective. It helped me be a better public speaker, because we did a lot of presentations for our classes. And it also taught me a lot about how to run a business. So, we’ve been able to open up a store for Hak5 online. So we do a lot of ecommerce. We’ve also learned a lot about marketing and things like that.
PAIGE: So you said you’ve always been interested in technology. What did that look like as a kid for you?
SHANNON: Oh yeah. My dad had a computer in my nursery. He did. We didn’t have enough rooms in the house apparently. This is the story he’s told me. When I was a baby he just stuck his first computer, or one of his many computers, in my nursery and he would let me sit on his lap and pound at the keyboard until I figured out something that happened on the keyboard. So I’ve just been around computer my whole life. My dad was a really big influence on that for me. Also, for my Star Trek geekiness, because he watched it every single day after work, so I would sit down and watch it with him. I love my geeky influences. But yeah, I learned how to build computers when I was, probably an early teen, 11 or 12 I think was when I first built my computer with my dad. He got me into building websites when I was in middle school. So I learned a little bit about HTML and how to build a really simple anime fan gallery type website on GeoCities. So I learned a little bit there. I also got really involved with video gaming. I made a good group of friends at school who got me really obsessed with that kind of stuff. So it was just always a really good influence with me, like as far as the people that I was hanging out with. My dad was always there and he was always like, yeah come with me to the computer store. We’ll go to Best Buy and you can check out motherboards, back when they had motherboards.
PAIGE: Dude, you had the best dad ever.
SHANNON: He was awesome. He’s a great guy. He still gets really geeky with me. I’ll be like, let’s go to Fry’s and he’s like, yeah let’s go.
PAIGE: My friends call that Meca.
SHANNON: Oh yes.
PAIGE: So you did all this as a young person. And then why did you end up choosing hospitality instead?
SHANNON: A lot of it was because I really like working with people and I felt like if I went into a tech thing I wouldn’t get to work with people as much, like one on one or face to face. But I went into a lot of jobs during high school and during college where I managed restaurants or I was a server. I think I did assistant management at a Dominos Pizza for like five years. So it was really fun for me. I loved being able to make people happy and make perfect, perfect food for them and see the smile on their faces, and get really good tips out of it. So for me it was just all about really enjoying my job and being able to be around people. Because I’m a friendly person.
PAIGE: I had a very similar story where I was really involved in tech doing a lot of IT support and i kind of topped out desktop support and knew that the next step would kind of be to end up as a server monkey in a server farm, like just in the basement. I kind of had to transition. And the first interview I did where I was trying to transition, they were like well why would you want to leave this field? It’s lucrative, it’s good, it’s interesting. And I’m like, you know, I don’t want to just stare at server fans all day. I want to interact with other people.
SHANNON: Yeah.
PAIGE: Even if it’s in a non-technical space.
SHANNON: That’s why I love podcasting now, is because I can, I can use my tech experience that my dad’s taught me, and I can use what I can find online and through educational books that I can purchase and learn, and I can also use my theater obsession, and I kind of mixed the two together. And I can still talk to people face to face with interviews, and talking to fans, and going to conventions and stuff like that. So it’s the happy medium for all those different obsessions for me.
ANGELA: Mm-hmm.
PAIGE: What have been your biggest challenges with podcasting.
SHANNON: Being a woman.
PAIGE: Really?
SHANNON: Yeah, I think so. It’s been very tough for me to get over my own conflictions in my brain telling me, you know, whenever you’re around men who are in a certain technical community, they may talk down to you because you’re a female. Or if I am at a convention, I have to deal with people sexualzing me becuase I’m a woman and because I just happen to have girly parts. So it’s been very hard for me to get people to act mature whenever I’m talking on a show and I just happen to be wearing a shirt that has a little bit of cleavage or something like that. So, it’s been hard, but I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’m respected because I respect people just as much, and I’ve learned a lot about what I’m good at. ANd I also don’t lie to people. So, you know, whenever I’m on the show talking about a certain segment, I’ll tell them straight up. Hey, I”m not an expert in blah, blah, blah, but this is something that I studied and I know this is correct.
PAIGE: I’ve always been really impressed with your ability to kind of present a brand new topic and be humble about it, without being apologetic.
SHANNON: Yeah. Yeah.
PAIGE: That’s really key, especially for women. Our tendency is to be apologetic that we don’t know things. And it’s okay to not know everything, but it’s also okay to know what you know.
SHANNON: Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. And I’m totally willing on the show too to ask for support as well. Like, if there’s a certain thing that I run into, like a problem, which I’ll run into problems. Everybody does with technical aspects. I’ll ask the community. I’ll say hey has anybody else run into this problem. Can you answer this for me? Email and I’ll shout you out in the next show. So that way it’s rewarding for them and it’s rewarding for me to, because I love to learn. And I’m always willing to learn, because, you know, you can never learn everything that’s available in the world.
ANGELA: Have you done any kind of boot camp or any kind of online, specifically technical classes?
PAIGE: Yeah, like what’s your favorite resource for learning all the new stuff that you’re constantly teaching?
SHANNON: I’m a huge bookworm. So, if I can find an educational book that’s written by an expert in the field, I’m going to buy the book. I know that I could just Google it and probably find a great Wikipedia article about whatever I’m learning, but I prefer to use school textbooks.
PAIGE: I think you might be the first guest that’s said that.
SHANNON: I don’t know why, but I learn so much better whenever I can sit down and read a book. And I think it’s just because I’ve always been around books my whole life, so I’m a huge bookworm.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to say, I kind of agree. Like when I really need to deep dive a topic, like I just recently had to start learning angularjs for my job, and trying to do it with the online tutorials I was getting some of it, but when I finally was like, okay I’m just going to get the O’Reilly book and sit down and plow through it, it all just comes together so much more richly.
SHANNON: Yeah, it’s really tough too with online articles, because a lot of them start at a, you know, a more advanced topic. When I choose to start my segments at a very beginner topic. So, if I’m just learning things, I can’t start from like halfway in, like the 201 series. I have to start with the 101 or else I don’t understand a thing. So I’m very logical. I’m very step-by-step and tutorial based. I like to teach people the same way that I like to teach myself.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to say, I’ve definitely recommended you hack tip segments for several women trying to kind of get their head around some basic stuff for Linux.
SHANNON: Thank you.
PAIGE: Stuff like that.
SHANNON: I’m really happy to hear that.
ANGELA: Yeah, Paige is a huge advocate. She runs the Portland chapter of Women Who Code and does a lot of networking.
SHANNON: Oh that is awesome. Yeah, I’ve even had a few people email me and say, hey I’ve been using your hack tips as a series in my school or in my classroom. So it’s really, really inspiring whenever I have people email me and tell me that they’re using this to teach a younger generation.
PAIGE: So, what would you, I guess, I’m always interested because, especially with it being so accessible. Really, all you need is a computer, an internet connection, and some sort of microphone and you can get started podcasting. What would you say to people who are interested in sharing their knowledge in this way?
SHANNON: Definitely do it about something that you’re obsessed with. Not just something that you’re semi interested in and you kind of want to teach people about it, but something that you really know. Something that you’re willing to learn and really delve into and really become and expert on. Because if you’re not, it really come across in podcasting whenever somebody doesn’t know everything. And be willing to learn more too. And then as far as technical experience with podcasting, get a good mic. Audio is key. People won’t listen to a podcast if it doesn’t have good audio. And don’t worry about how many people are watching your show, because the ones that matter, they will be there from the beginning to the end. You don’t, it doesn’t matter if you have a million views. Don’t look at it as trying to make money, just look at it as sharing. Sharing something that you love.
PAIGE: The internet is an awesome place, because we’ve all taken the time to share.
SHANNON: I agree.
PAIGE: So we talked about your biggest challenges in podcasting. What keeps you in podcasting? What lights your fire about it?
SHANNON: For me, it’s really when I go to conventions or when I go to a meetup or something like that and I see a little boy or a little girl come up to me and be a a little bit shy about meeting me, but tell me that they’ve learned from me and they’ve been able to develope some of experience with whatever I’ve been teaching on the different shows. For me, it feels so good to know what I’m changing somebody’s view on technology. So it’s not just like, you know, when me and you grew up. It’s not like it feels geeky for them. Like, we’re look at as, looked down on, looked down up.
PAIGE: Yeah, I remember when geek wasn’t cool.
SHANNON: Yeah, it wasn’t cool back in our day, but now it’s more of a cool thing because you have these interesting people get into it that are so obsessed with it that we come across as like, I don’t know, BIll Nye’s. I remember watching Bill Nye in high school and thinking wow he’s so cool. He makes me so excited for science. I want to be that person. I want to be the person that gets these little kids excited about talking about internet security and hacking.
ANGELA: Yeah, exactly.
PAIGE: Right. Yeah, I’ve never seen anyone be able to light up a room about PGP the way that you can.
SHANNON: Yeah, I love seeing when a little nine year old girls comes up to me and her eyes light up, because she’s like oh my gosh I learned so much from you. I just makes me feel so good inside. And that’s really what keeps me going.
PAIGE: Yeah, I totally agree. Reaching out, helping the community, and just building it back. And I think hearing you talk at the beginning about how being involved in the community was what kind of jump started you into the knowledge and the place that you have in podcasting, this community, the hack community, the tech community is welcoming by in large. Like you said, no question is a bad question.
SHANNON: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve had a few people look at me and just be like, you’re asking that question? And I’m like, yeah I am, because guess what, the five people behind me, they want to ask that question too, but they’re too afraid to raise their hands.
PAIGE: Yeah. No, exactly. I talk a lot — I teach an intro to JavaScript course and one of the biggest things I teach is ask questions and let me help you learn how.
SHANNON: Yeah, absolutely. Because you’re not going to learn if something goes over your head. You have to ask those questions.
PAIGE: Yeah, and don’t be afraid to ask how to ask the question too, because sometimes it’s just that you’re missing that, you know, you’re asking these questions and you’re just asking the wrong question. So go ahead and ask what should I know here. What am I missing?
SHANNON: Absolutely. Oh man, I wish I could have taken your course in college.
ANGELA: And so then, we talked briefly about your nickname. On Twitter your /Snubs, or I guess @snubs. And your website is snubsie.com.
SHANNON: Yeah.
ANGELA: Can you tell us how you got that nickname?
SHANNON: That was in high school. I was hanging out with my friend Danny and I was really into video games at the time. I was learning that I really needed to get a screen name. And I thought Shannon is not that great of a screen name so I need something cool. So one of my friends, he was like well what about Snubsie Boo. And I was like, that’s so cute. Snubsie Boo. So over time it just kind of shortened down to Snubs, because it’s easier to spell and it’s faster to type.
ANGELA: That works.
PAIGE: Sometimes what our friends lay on us, it just sticks.
SHANNON: It’s a boring question, or it’s a boring answer, but I get it all the time.
ANGELA: I think the first time I had to come up with a screen name was for Livejournal. Well first of all, it was actually AOL and I wanted Curly, but there were apparently 8,500, 700. Anyway, it wa Curly85647. When I got to choose one creatively in high school for Livejournal, I just Googled, I put a random word into Google, just picked a random word and then did it again with a different word and picked a second word and it ended up being Scaling Dynasty.
SHANNON: Oh, that’s cool.
ANGELA: I know.
PAIGE: That’s pretty cool, actually.
ANGELA: I know. It is cool. I haven’t used it anywhere else, but yeah.
PAIGE: My friends always get a little bit weirded out when they find out my online handle, because I’m kind of like a tomboy girl, backwards hats and everything, and my handle is Feather.
SHANNON: Aw, that’s adorable. I like it.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: It works for me.
SHANNON: People get weirded out whenever I walk into like a Fry’s and I’m like, I want to build a computer. And I get these looks from the reps and they’re like, you sure you want to build a computer? Like, yes. I can do my manicures and pedicures and want to build a computer too.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Do you find that because you have a fairly feminine appearance, even for women in technology, that that sets you even farther apart?
SHANNON: Oh for sure. I did an experiment recently where, and it was just kind of a quiet experiment that I didn’t tell anybody about, but you can see it on TekThing if you look close enough. So, in one episode I wore a very floral shirt. It was very, like it had flowers all over it and it was pink and it very, very girly. I was talking about some kind of technical segment. I don’t remember what it was now, but I got a lot of harsh criticism on that episode. And I was like, well I know that I was teaching the correct facts, so I’m going to try something new on the next episode. So, on another episode of TekThing I decided to do another different shirt where I wore a gaming T-shirt. So it wasn’t flattering, it wasn’t girly at all. It was just a gaming T-shirt with a bunch of consoles on it. I got really, really good constructive feedback on that one. Nobody was negative. I was like, that’s strange. So I did it again, same thing. Isn’t that weird?
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Wow.
SHANNON: Yeah, isn’t that crazy. So I was like, huh. So, it totally has to do with how you show yourself on a show. And a lot of it is kind of sexist. And I don’t think it’s meant to be, but it’s just the way that we’ve grown up and the way that we perceive women as compared to men. So women generally are perceived as lesser or we don’t have as much education as men or as much experience. Not that I’m a feminist, necessarily, I might be sometimes. But, I’ve noticed a big difference depending on what i wear on the show.
ANGELA: Right. Well, and if you just put it into sentences that somebody reads, it’s like if the audience is thinking what does she know? She’s wearing flowers.
SHANNON: Exactly.
ANGELA: That sounds weird. But it was like, oh she might know something. She has a gaming shirt.
SHANNON: Yep.
ANGELA: That’s so bizarre.
SHANNON: It’s totally bizarre, but it’s true. And that’s the way our society has been taught.
PAIGE: It’s an unconscious bias and that’s the hardest part about it, is it is by and large an unconscious bias. I get treated very differently than most of my female counterparts because I wear baseball caps, I wear T-shirts and jeans, and most guys just treat me like one of the guys. So it’s kind of interesting because I feel sometimes like I get to be a double agent to like infiltrate and be like, advocate for women. And they’re like, but you’re one of the guys. What’s going on?
SHANNON: That’s hilarious. It’s terrible, but it’s hilarious.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: But at the same time, it’s interesting because I’ll get the unconscious bias the other way where I show up to women’s event and because I don’t look very feminine, I can get the judgement in the other direction too.
SHANNON: Oh yeah, for sure.
PAIGE: It’s very interesting. Although, the geek community is more accepting of that.
ANGELA: Accepting, yes.
PAIGE: Which is good. Speaking of dressing, interestingly, one last thing that I’m’ always fascinated by, who’s your favorite character to cosplay?
SHANNON: Oh, heck yeah. Um, I would say Sailor Mars. She’s my favorite.
PAIGE: Oh, good call.
SHANNON: From Sailor Moon. If nobody has watched it, Sailor Moon is amazing. So good.
PAIGE: Yeah, you went old school.
SHANNON: Yes, it’s totally old school but I made my first Sailor Mars costume when I was in college and I loved it so much. I even dyed my hair black and I grew it out so it would look like Sailor Mars. There are pictures. There are pictures on the internet of my Sailor Mars cosplay on my Twitter.
ANGELA: Yeah, I was just going to say, who are you dressed as in your current Twitter picture?
SHANNON: Let’s see, my current Twitter I think is just my, oh yeah, that’s my Renaissance festival costume.
ANGELA: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, awesome.
SHANNON: I just decided to dress as a Ren Fair person.
PAIGE: I’m trying to put together my very first cosplay costume and it is a big reach, because I want to cosplay as Baymax from Big Hero 6.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
SHANNON: Cool.
PAIGE: But I’ve been a costumer for a long time. I do a lot of Renaissance fair and all that jazz. I like costuming, but this is an interesting. I want to do the blow up and figure out how to make it work.
SHANNON: That is really cool. I wish you tons of luck. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.
ANGELA: i actually have a fan for material to blow it up.
PAIGE: All right. We’re going to have to talk.
ANGELA: Yeah. That’s great. It’s for a Hulk costume, but you could totally just use it for that.
PAIGE: Oh, that’s neat. I should look into that. So cosplay, what about cosplaying do you enjoy, Shannon?
SHANNON: I like being able to dress up and pretend to be somebody else. It’s the theater thing for me.
PAIGE: I always like the idea of be all you can be.
SHANNON: Yeah. Oh man, it’s so much fun.
PAIGE: Yeah, it’s very fun. I highly recommend that if you’ve never played dress up as an adult, you at least give it a go. At the very least it’s an interesting psychological experiment.
SHANNON: It is. It’s kind of like Halloween every single day.
PAIGE: Yeah, with less candy.
SHANNON: Yes, with less candy. Well, unless you buy it from the grocery store next door to the hotel like I do.
PAIGE: Feel like you might have done that.
SHANNON: Maybe.
ANGELA: Might be from experience.
PAIGE: Just one last question. You have mentioned that you go to conventions. What’s the next convention that you’re headed to?
SHANNON: Let’s see, the next one will be this summer. If will be DEFCON again. This will be, I think like my sixth DEFCON. Wow, that’s a lot.
PAIGE: Oh wow.
SHANNON: And after that, I’ll be going to Dragoncon for my first time this year, so I’m planning to cosplay at that one.
PAIGE: Are you skipping PAX this year?
SHANNON: No PAX, yeah no PAX for me.
PAIGE: Oh bummer.
SHANNON: Do you go to PAX? Maybe I should go.
PAIGE: Yeah, we’re up here in Seattle, so I’m planning to go to PAX this year. It will be my first year. It will be a good time.
SHANNON: It looks amazing. I have friends from Missouri that go to PAX and i’m like, oh man, I live so much closer, I need to go.
PAIGE: You really should come up.
SHANNON: I’ll take you up on that.
PAIGE: Awesome. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us Shannon. This has been amazing. We’ll look forward to seeing you on your shows.
SHANNON: Thank you so much. And it was a pleasure talking to both of you.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can find a full transcription in the show notes at jupiterbroadcasting.com or also at heywtr.tumblr.com.
PAIGE: And also, any links to Shannon’s shows will be in the show notes. So if you want to check her out, go ahead and take a gander there. You can also find us on iTunes. Subscribe to the show there. Or if you prefer an RSS feed, it’s’ available at jupiterbroadcasting.com under the heywtr show. And you can also follow us on Twitter @heywtr. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | transcription@cotterville.net

The post Early Tech Obsession | WTR 30 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Paige Hubbell, WTR cohost, discusses her theater work with her carpentry degree and all the random jobs she had along her technology journey!

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Show Notes:

• Priyank Sharma WTR 11
• Wakatime: Quantify your coding
• Vim editor
• Vim Adventures
• Geeksquad

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found below or also at heywtr.tumblr.com

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela. Now, Paige, today I want to ask you about how you stay energized. What is your favorite caffeine source?
PAIGE: That’s a really, kind of a loaded question, because I don’t stay energized with caffeine and it does give me a little bit of the focus kick, but I’m a non-responder for caffeine for the most part. I can drink three or four pots of coffee and go right to bed.
ANGELA: No…
PAIGE: I know. No, I wish that it weren’t the truth.
ANGELA: You’re a freak of nature is what you are.
PAIGE: Yeah, pretty much. I’m a true ADD candidate, but that’s okay. But, I love coffee. I really do. I will always, always pick a good coffee over almost anything else. Right now, I am blessed to live in Portland, which has Stumptown Roasters and they have this amazing cold press coffee that is nitrogen infused, so it comes out of a tap and it looks like a beer. It gets like a foam head and it’s so incredibly smooth, and I just hit it with a little heavy cream to smooth it out a little bit more, and it is like the best thing on almost any day.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Yeah, so Stumptown. And if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, they also sell it in little brown glass bottles in your grocers’ freezer. I think Safeway carries it and stuff.
ANGELA: Cool. Well, I don’t drink coffee. I don’t like coffee.
PAIGE: What? Get out. Get out.
ANGELA: But his is my house! Okay. I also have never done an energy drink, ever.
PAIGE: Ever?
ANGELA: Ever.
PAIGE: Oh man, I can pound those down, no problem.
ANGELA: No, it’s really great. Yeah, I know. Well, so I react to caffeine, even more so. Like, if I have caffeine after 11, I’m going to be up tonight. Like –
PAIGE: 11 in the morning?
ANGELA: Yes.
PAIGE: Oh wow.
ANGELA: 11 in the morning.
PAIGE: You’re a real responder.
ANGELA: I have — so my source of caffeine is Mountain Dew, and I have it typically between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m.
PAIGE: Well, that’s totally normal though, because caffeine actually has a four hour half-life. So, for most people it’s still in your system, even from the morning.
ANGELA: Yeah, so, I have three young kids under the age of five so I really kind of need this energy boost. And I know it’s not the best place to get it, especially not, you know the flame retardant filled chemical yellow dye mountain dew.
PAIGE: You’re just preserving yourself for later.
ANGELA: Right? Yeah, right. I am not going to catch on fire.
PAIGE: Nope.
ANGELA: So, that is what I do.
PAIGE: What is it about the Dew that’s different for you?
ANGELA: I don’t know. I don’t know.
PAIGE: Has it just always been your drink of choice?
ANGELA: Yeah, I’ve liked it for a very long time. Dr. Pepper is right up there with it, but mostly it’s been Mountain Dew. And so, I have a daily Mountain Dew.
PAIGE: I’ll share a little secret today. Angela had both Cheetos and Mountain Dew, and I was like man, this is like nerd heaven right heaven right here.
ANGELA: Okay, it was an emergency snack in my backpack and I just needed something to eat.
PAIGE: You know, sometimes you’ve got to have that. We’ve talked about guilty snacks before.
ANGELA: I didn’t get breakfast this morning, so.
PAIGE: That’s okay. You should see me in the grocery stores right now, because the Cadbury Cream eggs are out.
ANGELA: Oh, yes.
PAIGE: So, today, we are doing something a little different and we’re flipping the mic and Angela is going to interview me. Hopefully this will give you guys a little more insight of my background and what I’m in to. We talk about different things like my journey, getting started, being a self-taught developer, and a couple other things.
ANGELA: And before we get into the actual interview, I want to mention that you can support Women’s Tech Radio by going to patrion.com/today. Now, why is it today? Because, Tech Talk Today is our thank you show that we produce four times a week with daily tech information as a thank you for people that are supporting the Jupiter Broadcasting Network using Patrion.com/today. So, if you go there, you can subscribe. Sometimes there’s bonus content and sometimes there’s announcements, things that you can do. We’re about to adjust the milestones, so if you are interested in supporting the network at a whole, which supports all the shows, you can go there. Patrion.com/today.
Okay, Paige can you tell me how you got into technology?
PAIGE: How I got into tech? So, it was kind of a long winding journey for me. I remember being kind of in like middle school, and I had a lot of friends who were dudes and they were super in to video games. I remember the first time I was like, okay I got the family computer. I talked my dad into letting me have the last one and keep it in my room. I really wanted to play — what was it — it might have been Diablo 1. You had to have a sound card, and I didn’t have a sound card. I was like, oh man I really want to play this game with my buddies. They’re all loving it. I don’t really care that much, but — I went out, I saved up my pizza money, or my paper money from various things and I bought myself a sound card. And then I had to open up the computer. Which is like, a big deal, because we don’t open up computers in my house. Nobody is technical enough I had to bust out the screwdriver and I was so scared. It was back when the whole U shape lifted off the desktop and you could slice your jugular open because they were so sharp.
ANGELA: Oh yes. Oh, yes.
PAIGE: And I totally did that the first time. I cut my hand real good. So, there’s blood involved in my journey right away. And I put the sound card in and I was so proud of myself. I didn’t — I ended up playing Diablo probably for like two hours, because you know, I like video games.
ANGELA: Oh, I was hoping you’d say you turned it on and it didn’t –
PAIGE: No. No, naturally gifted with hardware.
ANGELA: Awesome. Shocking, especially then. You know, put thing in slot, turn back on generally worked. And that just really got me started. My parents were pretty supportive. For major holidays they got kind of creative. A couple years later they got me a DVD drive, and it was before DVDs were — before you had them in your home theater. So, I had one for my computer. And they bought me Top Gun, because it was one of the first movies out of DVD, and oh man, I watched that movie so many times. But, I had to put the drive in the computer myself. I got pretty into hardware really early. And then in high school I was trying to impress some friends and so I started to learn a little bit of HTML. I think little, happy birthday, websites on Geocities and whatnot. That kind of got me started. And then, I spun off for a while. I wasn’t good at math necessarily. I was really good at science, so I went to college hoping to be a biology professor. That was kind of what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach anatomy and –
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Yeah, because I had an awesome experience in high school in anatomy class and I was dissecting cats, which is kind of gross.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: But it was just really fascinating. It really clicked with my brain. The biological organism just makes sense to me, so I was really fascinated with that. But, I got to college and it turns out that I’m really bad a chemistry. Like, I’m kind of bad at math. I’m epically bad at chemistry. And so, I flunked chemistry my freshman year, and that didn’t go well. So, I was like well, you know, you have to go through several more tracks of chemistry to stay a biology major, so I switched. I was like what am I going to do? I was a little bit in a rebellious phase so I was like, I’m going to be a theater major, which in my mind was the best way to go to college and become a carpenter. Yeah, because I kind of had a little bit of a back and forth with my dad where I was really interested in a lot of these more masculine things like carpentry or computers or whatever, and he didn’t know what to do with that. He was very supportive, but he just didn’t know what to do. And he’s an architect, so I was like theater is kind of in between that, and I’m going to learn some drafting and he can kind of help me out a little bit with that. It will kind of be an in between, but you also had to work in the shop, so I did learn a lot about how to use power tools, but also how to do design. That I’ve cared for a lot, so there’s definitely a lot of value there. But I got out of college. To have my first theater job I had to have my college education, my full degree, and I got to make $10.00 an hour.
ANGELA: Oh man.
PAIGE: So, you had to have a college degree to have this job, $10.00 an hour.
ANGELA: Yeah, so frustrating.
PAIGE: And it was 2003, so $10.00 an hour, it was livable, but definitely not comfortable, and definitely not college degree material.
ANGELA: Definitely not.
PAIGE: So, I did that for a couple years. And I loved the work, and the work became gradually more and more technical, because I was interested in behind the scenes theater, because I’m not an actor, although I play one on the radio.
ANGELA: Like right now?
PAIGE: Yeah, like right now.
ANGELA: Yeah, like on Women’s Tech Radio, okay.
PAIGE: Yeah, on Women’s Tech Radio, I’m an actor.
ANGELA: She winked.
PAIGE: I did. I did. Hard to tell on radio, which is why I’m not a good radio actor. So, I wasn’t into that. I was into design and tech stuff. And I worked professionally as a sound technician and a lighting technician for several years, and it got me really into things like signal flow and programing sound systems, because most sound systems in theaters at the time were transitioning over got a fully software based system, and you’d go in and you’d write your effects more — almost like a program, where you’d be like if I push this button does these things, and there’s these three speakers.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: So it had kind of some of that same feel.
ANGELA: Instead of a hardware or a mixer board or whatever.
PAIGE: And so I –some things I had as a mixer board and some mixer boards at the time were becoming programmable, which was pretty cool.
ANGELA: Okay.
PAIGE: So that was kind of neat to kind of learn some of that and start to learn programing again, because I had been interested in programing before. And in college, a friend had tried to talk me into learning some programing, but I got started with Perl, which turned out to be a terrible idea for me. It just didn’t make a lot of sense. It was very intimidating. And I can do HTML and CSS, but you guys can do this Perl thing. So, I kept helping my friends with all these HTML and with hardware problems, so I was doing all this, but then I was doing theater. And theater was what really kind of caught my passions, but it was just — it just didn’t pay. I just couldn’t really make a living doing it, and the work would kind of dry up and then go up and down in spurts. So, a couple of years doing that, and finally I got laid off enough times, because you’d go in and out of work depending on when shows were happening, that I took a job at Jiffy Lube.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Yeah, so I went from the prestigious career of theater to the prestigious career of Jiffy Lube. And luckily at that time, I also had a friend who was really involved in Geek Squad at a corporate level with Best Buy, and she was kind of doing a program to bring women into technology through Geek Squad and do all these cool things, and I got pretty — I started actually helping them before and she was like, let me work and let’s try to get you a job in Geek Squad so I can actually bring you on these projects. So, I’m at Jiffy Lube over the summer. It’s like 100 degrees, I’m working on engines. It was not pleasant. And so finally we get it set up and an opening comes up at Best Buy, I’m like oh this is great. Such a step up from Jiffy Lube to go over to Best Buy. I went over, started working there, and they gave me the job offer and they were like, we’re really sorry, we thought this higher paid job offer was going to be open and we were going to hire you for that, but would you be willing to take this other one, because we would really would like to have you and the move you up later. I was like, yeah cool, let’s do it. They were like really? We were surprised, we didn’t think you would take it. I was like, you have air conditioning. I’m good to go. You want to pay me minimum wage, okay. Anything to get out of the heat at that point.
ANGELA: Yeah, no kidding.
PAIGE: So I got out of Jiffy Lube, into Best Buy. And I kept building my hardware skills and my software skills, not programming. But in Geek Squad I started to have a lot more challenges that were really interesting and kind of an environment where — especially at the time it was very much like what can you learn on your own? There wasn’t a lot of support from Best Buy, but my coworkers were very adventurous in technology, and they were constantly like how can we automate things? How can we look at things as a different process? And my brain just really kind of clicked with that. It was like, kind of like it augments my natural laziness.
ANGELA: Yes.
PAIGE: You know, I like to tell people that I think programmers are a really neat mix of people, because they are eternally optimistic and severely lazy, because you’re always convinced that you can make the computer do something a better way, but you’re convinced it will work this time, because a lot of programming is like banging your head up against that wall. Why does it not work, and then, and then huzzah, and then why does it not work? It’s just that up and down, because it’s so binary in a lot of ways. So, I did the stint at Best Buy, Geek Squad, and it was a back and forth journey. I got to do a lot of really cool things. I did go work at corporate in Minneapolis, eventually, Geek Squad summer academy.
ANGELA: Oh yeah.
PAIGE: Where we would kind of travel all over the country every summer and bring camps to either girls or under-privileged kids who didn’t have a chance to touch technology, and we’d teach them things from digital music to some basic scripting to how to build the computer. And we’ve have races for desktop building and play DDR. And it was just a really phenomenal experience.
ANGELA: Can you tell me a little bit about what you do today?
PAIGE: Yeah, cool.
ANGELA: At least one of them.
PAIGE: So, I do a ton of things. I’m kind of an overachieving in my spare time. Mostly, I work as a sort of mid-level developer. I do a lot of automation on the server. Right now I write mostly in node.js, which is a JavaScript framework on the server. I also do automation in Ruby and I’m currently transitioning to a full-time developer position working with Angular, the new agency out of PDX Code Guild. So, we just started a PDX Code Guild agency.
ANGELA: Cool.
PAIGE: I’m pretty excited about that. It’s kind of a project I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’m very excited. I get to be both the project lead and one of the developers, and kind of really stretch myself. So, it’s very intimidating, but I’m very excited.
ANGELA: And PDX Code Guild, that’s in Portland?
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: And you do something else in Portland.
PAIGE: I also am the director for Women Who Code in Portland. I believe very strongly that meeting up in meet space is really important for us as developers. It’s too easy to hide behind the monitor and feel like you’re alone and not connect with the community. And of all the communities I’ve ever been in, the geek community is hands down the most welcoming.
ANGELA: Seriously.
PAIGE: The most understand. Because, we all have social issues. I know Angela well, so it’s easy for me to talk to her, but I have my shyness too.
ANGELA: Now. Yeah, she was concerned about starting the show, but we play really well together.
PAIGE: Yeah, the first time I met with you especially, because I had a little bit of start struckness meeting Chris and you, because, I’m like, I’ve been watching them on the YouTubes for forever and they’re like, stars.
ANGELA: Yeah, I know. We do get that.
PAIGE: This is crazy.
ANGELA: There is a small level of celebrity, but.
PAIGE: Well, in my eyes you were celebrities. It took a lot of guts. Actually, meeting Chris at OSCON that first time, I almost didn’t talk to him.
ANGELA: I am so glad you did.
PAIGE: It took, like a seriously — I felt really — I felt a little weird, because I definitely followed him around the floor, like sort of slightly trying to see if he wasn’t busy for like probably an hour.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Yep. So, and then finally they were sitting at little table instead of interviewing somebody, I was like, could you give me — I’ve been watching the show for a long time. Could you give me some podcasting advice? He was like — and we got talking and he was like, well we want to do that show. And the rest is history.
ANGELA: Yep, and then he said email my wife.
PAIGE: He did. He did, in fact.
ANGELA: And you did.
PAIGE: He was like, Angela is interested in this, because — I’m so glad that you were. It’s been fantastic.
ANGELA: Definitely. All right Paige, what tools do you use on a daily basis or that you recommend?
PAIGE: Sure, I’m a little out on the geek edge. I’m a VIM’er. I use VIM, which stands for Vi Improved. It’s an editor, a text editor that’s based in the terminal. It’s available on all of the operating systems, but it’s included with any Linux distro, pretty much, but a lot of other ones too. It’s all terminal based. There’s no mouse movement. You move with the keyboard, and it’s called a modal editor. It’s really a lot to get your head around, but I had some really bad repetitive stress issues. It started in college. In college I kind of got one of those crazy, funky keyboards.
ANGELA: Oh, yeah. Chris had one of those for a while.
PAIGE: Yeah, it helped, but it never really solved the problem. I started traveling a ton, and so I was working on my laptop all the time. You can’t bring a gigantic keyboard with you for the laptop.
ANGELA: Yeah, no.
PAIGE: It just doesn’t work. And so, my RSI got kind of bad again probably two years ago. And so, I was like what if I just suck it up and learn VIM, because I had heard a lot that it would help to not be going back and forth to the mouse, and have a lot more movement with the keyboard and just kind of keep your hands on that home row, and it totally does. It was a huge investment. I was slow. Like really slow the first week, the first couple weeks. It took –
ANGELA: Oh yeah, I can imagine.
PAIGE: – probably a month to get back up to speed. And so it was a huge time investment, and I definitely worked extra hours at work to try to make up for that. Two years later, I have no RSI unless I’m playing too many video games.
ANGELA: Yeah, right?
PAIGE: And that’s from the mouse. And I’m fast. I’m faster now in VIM than I am on any other text editor. I just fly. It feels like –
ANGELA: Great.
PAIGE: It makes me feel cool. It’s like that super nerdy thing. I’m like, I do this super nerdy thing. And I can log into any server on SSH and know that I’ve got a great text editor that I know how to use right there. I really encourage everybody to at least learn either nano or VIM, because if you’re going to be a developer, at some point you’re going to – hopefully at some point you’re going to touch the server and the server — if you learn that, it’s always available to you. And it is a huge learning curve, and as you like to ask, an awesome tool –
ANGELA: Yes.
PAIGE: – to get started with this is a website called VIM Adventures. It gives you kind of this little due and you have to walk him along on this little adventure using only the VIM keyboard commands.
ANGELA: Okay.
PAIGE: And it builds them up for you as you go.
ANGELA: That’s great.
PAIGE: Yeah, it’s a great way to get kind of the basics down.
ANGELA: Did you see, by chance, the most recent — not the most recent, but one of the recent Faux Shows where I talked about learning Markdown?
PAIGE: Yes.
ANGELA: Yeah, that was — it had a really good tool as well for learning Markdown. And you couldn’t move forward unless you did it right.
PAIGE: I should check that out. I forgot about that one, because Markdown has been a struggle I’ve been having lately.
ANGELA: Oh really?
PAIGE: Because GIT encourages you to write your read me files in Markdown or GIT Hub at least.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: And I don’t know Markdown. And every time I’m like why does this paragraph not work. I can’t remember.
ANGELA: Oh, do Huroo Pad –
PAIGE: Oh right, Chris talked about that on Coder Radio a while ago.
ANGELA: Yeah, well and we talked about it on that Faux Show. All you have to do is — it’s super easy. It’s just a GUI, I guess, a graphical user interface, and it automatically puts it into Markdown.
PAIGE: Oh, okay. That’d be a good cheaty way to learn it.
ANGELA: It is. It is. Yeah, you just select it. You say, this is a link and then it –
PAIGE: And that was like a — it’s an HTML 5 or a node kit app, right, so that it works on anything, I think?
ANGELA: Yeah, it does work across platform, yes.
PAIGE: Across platform. The wholly grail of cross-platform development.
ANGELA: Yeah. Now, I happen to know that you use Wakatime.
PAIGE: I do. And they have a VIM plugin, which is fantastic.
ANGELA: Oh really?
PAIGE: Yep.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Very exciting. And they also have an X-Code plugin. I’ve been doing a little bit of X-Code lately, trying to learn Swift. That’s a lot to get your head around. I love it. It actually really upped my game a little bit and made me more conscious of trying to — because one of the things that will happen at my job is I do a bunch of stuff outside of coding and if I go too many days not touching my JavaScript or my Ruby, I definitely notice the lag when I get back.
ANGELA: Uh-huh, yeah.
PAIGE: Like I don’t have the snappiness of the recall and I have to look up more functions and stuff.
ANGELA: Sure.
PAIGE: I really have to go to the documentation a lot more. So Wakatime kind of keeps me a little more honest about that.
ANGELA: So you want to — for people that haven’t listened to episode 11 of Women’s Tech Radio with Priyanka Sharma, do you want to briefly explain what Wakatime is?
PAIGE: Yeah, totally. I’ve been getting a lot of people into it lately.
ANGELA: Me too.
PAIGE: It’s a tool — statistics for you as a developer. So, we all are — especially developers are usually obsessed with statistics for our site, or people who do social media, you’re like what’s my bounce rate? What’s my load time? And you have all these awesome statistics for your site. What Wakatime is trying to do is give you those sort of feedback statistics for your coding. It’s not super finite yet, but it tells me, I’ve spent this much time in this language today. I’ve spent this much time in this project folder today. It also helped me with client work. I’ve bene able to track my client work easier, because I know I’ve actually spent three and a half hours today on this project for this client, and I can bill really easily because of that.
ANGELA: Nice. Yeah, because sometimes — well, I think with most people these days, we are all multitasking.
PAIGE: Mm-hmm.
ANGELA: Not only are we multitasking, but we typically don’t finish one thing before moving on to another, and then we go back to it. If it can — if you only worked in a certain programing language for that client and you just keep going back to it or whatever, it still — the total time you spent in that language was just for that client. It’s really easy to pull that out.
PAIGE: And they have plugins for everything. And they’re even getting programs — I’m super excited, I think they might be done, I know it’s on the list, they have a Photoshop one. So, I’ve been trying to talk some of my graphic designers that I’m working with into too. Be like, how much time are you actually spending in the browser and Photoshop, all that stuff. It’s really cool.
ANGELA: Wow, great.
PAIGE: Yeah, I got my buddy at PDX Code Guild Agency to install, and he was super excited because they had Pitron (ph.sp), I guess is the Python one, and so yeah, like everything.
ANGELA: Well, I want to ask you, what are you excited about? What really gets you going in technology?
PAIGE: What gets me?
ANGELA: What keeps you up at night?
PAIGE: I think it’s all the ways that everybody touches technology these days. There’s nobody who’s not interacting with technology on some basis. We’re at this point where because of that we can now use technology to change almost anyone’s life. And I’m really excited that I can look at somebody who is a mom and be like, well I know they’ve got a smart phone in their pocket, because everybody does. What itch can I scratch for them? What things — and I love — because of that I love talking to non-technical people. What are these problems they have? I was talking to my sister the other day and she was like, you should totally write an app for this. I need something where I can do home management. I can give my husband a chore and set a due date and he knows what it is and it shows up on him, and it shows up on him, and it pops up for his notification. I was like, I don’t’ need to write an app for that, there’s totally one out there. But knowing that these are problems that people are seeing, and I constantly have way more ideas than I can execute on.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: Which, I think anybody does really, who’s at all into this sort of stuff.
ANGELA: Well, and sometimes people just need the push too, like you just need to tell you sister go look for that app, you know?
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: I’ve been meaning to get an app for taking pills. Right? Because I take a thyroid synthetic hormone every night, and sometimes I forget. I’d like an app where I can tell it — like I can clear it and say yes I took I today. That way, at the end of the month I could be like, okay how many days did I forget, or did I forget it, or did I just take it? Like sometimes I forget, because I take it a night, and I lay down and I’m like, did I take it or not? Well, I’m going to take two tonight, or whatever.
PAIGE: I’m sure there’s an app for that.
ANGELA: I am sure there is. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and look for it.
PAIGE: Right. Also, that sort of thing would be a great project — first project for you.
ANGELA: You’re right. Yes. Stay tuned.
PAIGE: And I love teaching. The exciting thing about that, it’s the same thing. Because technology is touching so many lives, you know, I run Women Who Code Events. I teach an intro to JavaScript course. I teach it kind of weird, because a lot of people are like, oh I’m going to come and learn some JavaScript and I really don’t care if you know any JavaScript when you finish with my course, but if you can start to ask questions about programming, that’s so important. Because, for me, I’m a self-taught developer and it took years — many, many years, and a lot of hours, and a lot of blood sweat and tears. As we talked, literally blood sweat and tears.
ANGELA: Yes. Yes.
PAIGE: I think the biggest hurdle that I see, and I think the biggest hurdle that I have is that people don’t know how to ask questions, because you just don’t know what’s possible. You just don’t know what things mean.
ANGELA: You don’t know what you don’t know.
PAIGE: I mean, can you, as someone who is just getting into this stuff, tell me the difference between a programming language, a library, and a framework?
ANGELA: No.
PAIGE: Exactly.
ANGELA: They don’t even sound familiar — or I mean similar.
PAIGE: Yeah, and — and people — that’s a vital piece of learning programming, is, you know, a programming language is how you talk directly to the computer.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: Libraries are sets of tools that fit into that programming language, and then frameworks are a way of thinking and a way of organizing work in that framework. Each of those pieces adds functionality to the original language, but they’re all in the same language. Teaching people that and how to ask those questions, because if I have someone who is coming up and is like, you know, I have this question about rails, and it turns out what they actually have is a question about Ruby, and trying to explain the difference there. It’s really difficult.
ANGELA: Right. Right.
PAIGE: It’s so vital. And I like to explain things with cats. All my lectures have cat videos.
ANGELA: Okay. Well, Page is followable, her handle is Paigetech.
PAIGE: That’s true. P-A-I-G-E-T-E-C-H. And I’m pretty much just on twitter. That’s pretty much me. Mostly, if you want to follow me, check me out on Women’s Tech Radio, or come by if you’re in Portland. Women Who Code events, especially the JavaScript one, come by, take a class. They’re all free.
ANGELA: Good. Well, thank you for telling us more about you Paige. This is well overdo.
PAIGE: No problem. I look forward to flipping the tables.
ANGELA: Stay tuned for that.
PAIGE: Awesome.
ANGELA: All right, thanks.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Be sure to check us out at www.jupiterbroadcasting.com. You can check for the show notes, and you can also use the drop down for contacting us. Just select Women’s Tech Radio in that contact for. Or, you can email us, WTR@Jupiterbroadcasting.com
PAIGE: You can also follow us on Twitter @heywtr or on Tumblr at www.heywtr.tumblr.com. You can also find us on iTunes and if you have a moment please leave a review. We’d love to hear back from you.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter – transcription@cotterville.net

The post College Degree in Carpentry | WTR 22 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Is Kodi the one true open source home theater system? We look at the latest release of Kodi, formerly known as XBMC. Discuss the projects current state, and what the future release holds.

Plus the BQ Ubuntu Touch devices runs into some GPL issues, Microsoft’s Secure Boot policy change, our picks & more!

Thanks to:

• Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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HD Video | Mobile Video | WebM Torrent | MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | YouTube | HD Torrent

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— Show Notes: —

Brought to you by: System76

Kodi Home Theater Software Review

Kodi 14.2 Helix – Release Candidate | Kodi

We are proud to announce the release candidate of Kodi 14.2 in which we further try to improve stability. As you may all know by now, we have a new name, a new logo, and a wide variety of new features, but underneath the new coat of paint remains the same software we all love. 14.2 will become the the second and final bug-fix release in the Helix range. As we have mentioned in our Kodi 14.0 release announcement, we will be releasing these extra releases to squash down any issues left after the first big release. Below you will find a list of fixes so far. In the Kodi 14.1 release announcement you can find the sum up of previous fixes done in the Helix range.

Fixes so far

• * Fix: Application stopped responding on Windows
• * Fix: Gap-less playback on MP3
• * Fix: Playback of rtmp protocol
• * Fix: Scanning of newly added episodes
• * Fix: Fix multipath source scanning
• * Fix: Loading external subtitles in some cases
• * Fix: packaging of PIL module on Android. This fixes some script error when using weather add-on
• * Fix: Fix video playback on all platform after refresh rate change
• * Fix: Various bugs that were present in PVR add-ons.
• * Fix: Save weather location
• * Fix: Fix filtering of foreign add-ons
• * Fix: FTPS handling
• * Fix: use LastWrite instead of ChangeTime for file system on Windows
• * Feature: Bump OSX SDK to 10.10

Kodi 14.2 Release Candidate Available

Kodi 14.2 Helix is a stable bug-fix release over the existing Kodi 14 series. The 14.2 version is the second and final planned bug-fix release before Kodi 15. With today’s Kodi 14.2 RC there’s a handful of bug-fixes.

HOW-TO:Install Kodi for Linux – Kodi

The installation instructions within this section reference repositories that are officially sanctioned by Team Kodi.

Downloads | Kodi

Kodibuntu – Kodi

XBMCbuntu is a combination XBMC/operating system for use on PCs that are mainly just running XBMC. It is an alternative to installing Windows or a larger (and sometimes more complicated) Linux-based OS.

• Kodi – ArchWiki

Kodi is a free, open source (GPL) multimedia player that originally ran on the first-generation XBox, (not the newer Xbox 360), and now runs on devices running Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Android and iOS. Kodi can be used to play/view the most popular video, audio, and picture formats, and many more lesser-known formats, including:

• Video – DVD-Video, VCD/SVCD, MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, Matroska
• Audio – MP3, AAC
• Picture – JPG, GIF, PNG

— PICKS —

NVidia Dev Box

Sent in by Phillip B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT72N1cmNno

Desktop App Pick

Pithos

Pithos is a native Pandora Radio client for Linux. It’s much more lightweight than the Pandora.com web client, and integrates with desktop features such as media keys, notifications, and the sound menu.

Weekly Spotlight

Document Freedom

Document Freedom Day (DFD) is the international day to celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards. On this day, people around the globe come together to run local events and let the public know about freedom of information accessibility. Join us by attending an event close to you, help spreading the word or see other ways of how to get involved.

Linux Action Show at LFNW | Offical LAS 2015 Shirt

We are releasing another set of LAS shirts in preparation for LinuxFest Northwest which is at the end of April 2015! We hope to color Bellingham Technical College with LAS supporters donning their favorite Linux podcast!

Our Past Picks

These are the weekly picks provided by the Jupiter Broadcasting podcast, the Linux Action Show.

This site includes a separate picks lists for the “Runs Linux”, Desktop Apps, Spotlight Picks, Android Picks, and Distro Picks.

— NEWS —

Windows 10 to make the Secure Boot alt-OS lock out a reality

Should this stand, we can envisage OEMs building machines that will offer no easy way to boot self-built operating systems, or indeed, any operating system that doesn’t have appropriate digital signatures. This doesn’t cut out Linux entirely—there have been some collaborations to provide Linux boot software with the “right” set of signatures, and these should continue to work—but it will make it a lot less easy.

The BQ Aquaris Ubuntu Phone’s Kernel Appears To Be A Toxic Mess

Carsten Munk of the Mer Project and Chief Research Engineer of Jolla has raised some concerns about the Linux kernel used by the BQ Aquaris E4.5 smart-phone running Ubuntu Touch. The kernel appears to have module source-code marked as confidential and other markings that would not comply with the GPLv2 license of the Linux kernel.

In a blog post out today, the Linux Android-based kernel used by Ubuntu on their first smart-phone is difficult to find the official source tree. When finding a kernel source tree for the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition Phone, Carsten was greeted by many “confidential and proprietary” statements from MediaTek, the company whose SoC is powering the phone. In other modules are confidential and proprietary licenses from other vendors too.

• Mer – a mobile Linux distribution: Some doubts about GPL, licensing and the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition phone

• License comments on some of the Ubuntu phone sources : Mailing list archive : ubuntu-phone team in Launchpad

Hi all,

Some of you might have seen today’s blog post from Carsten Munk, from the
Mer project, where he pointed to conflicting comments in the kernel sources
of the Ubuntu phone for bq devices.

We are working with bq to understand the situation and planning to publish
the final E4.5 Ubuntu edition sources next week. We are confident that
these will address any questions raised by the preview source tree.

Thanks to everyone who expressed their concerns and your patience as we
resolve this.

Cheers,
David.

• Have You Paid Your Linux Kernel Source License Fee?

When asked for source code, MediaTek asks for money. They literally charge a Licensing Fee to device manufacturers for Linux Kernel source code.

DuckDuckGo 2015 Open Source Donations

We just made our Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) donations for 2015, totaling $125,000 across five projects. Thank you for all the community nominations.

Our primary focus this year was to support FOSS projects that are bringing privacy tools to those who need them. We chose four projects we think are of paramount importance to achieving that goal

ownCloud Client 1.8 Has Been Officially Released with New Desktop Sharing Feature

“This release brings a new integration into the operating system file manager. With 1.8.0, there is a new context menu that opens a dialog to allow the user to create a public link on a synced file. This link can be forwarded to other users who get access to the file via ownCloud,” says Klaas Freitag in the official release announcement.

BioShock Infinite Now Available For Linux, Demands Binary Graphics Drivers

BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games. BioShock Infinite is powered by Unreal Engine 3 and was released for all other platforms in late 2013 while the Linux release is coming one and a half years later. This game used DirectX 11 on Windows while for porting it over to Linux is using eON for translating to OpenGL.

— FEEDBACK —

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• De-Googlefy Android

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The post Kodiculious Review | LAS 357 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Amazon is making movies for the theaters with a faster release online master plan, but could this sink Prime streaming?

Plus how the NSA takes over botnets without a trace & hacks the hackers.

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Become a supporter on Patreon

Show Notes:

Amazon announces plans to make movies for theaters, Prime streaming

Amazon Studios is going to start making movies, and you’ll be seeing them in theaters before they become available for streaming on Prime.Fresh off Golden Globe wins for its original series Transparent, the company today announced it will produce and acquire full-length feature films for theatrical release. Amazon Original Movies, which “focus on unique stories, voices, and characters from top and up-and-coming creators,” will become available to US Prime subscribers just 4 to 8 weeks after they premiere in theaters — a shorter transition to streaming than you’d see from the major movie studios.

And Amazon’s not exactly starting small; it plans to produce up to 12 movies each year as part of the new initiative, and those efforts will kick off in earnest later this year. “Not only will we bring Prime Instant Video customers exciting, unique, and exclusive films soon after a movie’s theatrical run, but we hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience,” said Roy Price, VP of Amazon Studios.

Report: NSA not only creates, but also hijacks, malware

One of the secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by Der Spiegel contains details about a covert NSA program called DEFIANTWARRIOR that’s used to hijack botnet computers and use them as “pervasive network analysis vantage points” and “throw-away non-attributable CNA [computer network attack] nodes.”

This means that if a user’s computer is infected by cybercriminals with some malware, the NSA might step in, deploy their own malware alongside it and then use that computer to attack other interesting targets. Those attacks couldn’t then be traced back to the NSA.

According to the leaked document, this is only done for foreign computers. Bots that are based in the U.S. are reported to the FBI Office of Victim Assistance.

Sometimes the NSA also uses the servers of unsuspecting third parties as scapegoats, Der Spiegel reported. When exfiltrating data from a compromised system, the data is sent to such servers, but it is then intercepted and collected en route though the NSA’s vast upstream surveillance network.

Star Trek Continues 2015 “Kirkstarter 2.0” by Far From Home, LLC — Kickstarter

Star Trek Continues is a successful award-winning, non-profit, fan-based webseries finishing the final 2 years of the original mission.

The post Amazon Treks On | Tech Talk Today 119 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.